Brother HL-5040 Laser Printer Review

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(More customer reviews)I purchased my Brother HL-5040 from Amazon.com for $190.00 delivered, including the USB 2.0 cable, and the TN-530 3,000 page "starter" toner cartridge and the DR-500 drum rated for 20,000 pages. I am an English professor and generally use it for printing out my papers (15 to 30 pages) and drafts of books (up to 500 pages), and master copies of handouts and exams and the like for my classes (I have an HP DeskJet for color printing). The Brother HL-5040 printer has a nice compact footprint: there is no hideous projecting tray or paper catcher as with several of the competing models, and the output area on top holds fifty or more printed pages without spilling them. The printer is also low enough at "9.9 inches" to fit under a foot-high shelf in my work room (so it doesn't take up the valuable real-estate on the top shelf) The 12 point text (which is the standard in my field) is very sharp, and the old (circa 1880s) political cartoon images I've reproduced from scanned photocopies of newspapers look great: I've no banding or dark areas.
Having read the other reviews, I want to share some of my thoughts that may shed light on the differing views regarding the Brother printers. This printer replaces a Brother HL-1240 model I've owned for over two years. I replaced that printer (it was given to my sister) because its drum was failing, after making approximately 12,000 copies. Until the drum began to fail, I never had a single problem with the printer: it never ever jammed even once (my previous laser printer, an Epson 1400, jammed all the time). For $110 I could have replaced the drum unit (as my sister did), but for $190 I upgraded to the HL-5040. So, while I've seen the critiques of the Brother printers because of their drums, and I have in fact elected to replace my HL-1240, I still don't think the harsh criticisms directed at Brother for this situation are fair.
Here's what I think: it is not likely that very many $200 laser printers will ever print out 100,000 or even 60,000 high quality copies over their lifetimes. I say this in part because I suspect the paper transport mechanisms in all the printers in the personal use category are likely to be at least somewhat degraded by the time the printer approaches that number of copies, and once that happens--as anyone who's ever tried to nurse an aging photocopier knows--the point of ever diminishing returns has been reached. And I say this also because many, if not most, small office and home users like me are unlikely to use a $200 printer often enough to generate 60k to 100k copies in less than five years. At my rate of use, I will have to own my new printer for 8 years to reach the upper number. Given the rate of technological change, as good as it now is, I seriously doubt that I'll want to have this printer for that long.
That said, this time I intend to keep the printer long enough to replace the drum unit at least twice, and, assuming I get the same 12,000 copies out of each drum, that puts me in the 36,000 copies range. When I crunch the numbers (the drums presently cost $140.00 and the 6,500 page toner cartridges run $75), my cost per copy for the first 16,000 estimated copies (using the included DR-500 drum and the TN-530, and purchasing 2 TN-560 toner cartridges), works out to 2.1 cents per page. Of course, as we all know, the estimated yields are highly inflated. Assuming I get 36,000 copies out of the 3 drums (including the one included with the printer) and 5,000 copies from the TN-560 toner cartridges, plus 2,000 to 2,500 from the included TN-530, I'd need to buy 7 TN-560s to get to that number. This would add up to a $995.00 total investment and would mean my actual per copy cost would be approximately 2.8 cents over the "life" of the printer.
This is not the low 1.3 cents per copy figure I've seen in one magazine review, but once all the inflated estimates are cut down to size, I suspect it is quite competitive with what the other companies can offer.

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Winner of PC World's World Class Award and PC Magazine's Editor's Choice Award, the affordable HL-5040 laser printer is the ideal printer for your office at work or your office at home. It features a fast print speed at up to 17 ppm, PCL 6 emulation, high-quality output, and excellent performance. It also features 8 MB standard memory, graphics-quality HQ1200 print resolution (up to 2,400 x 600 dpi), a convenient, 250-sheet paper tray, and PC and Mac compatibility. To grow with your needs, the printer offers the option of adding memory (136 MB via optional 100-pin DIMM), 10/100 BaseT Ethernet print server network connectivity, and a second, lower paper tray.
The HL-5040 has a single-sheet manual by-pass tray for card stock, letterhead, and envelopes. It comes with drivers for Windows 95/98/NT4.0/Me/2000/XP as well as for Macintosh USB computers (running OS 8.6 to 9.2, OS X, 10.1, and 10.2.1). The printer is backed by a one-year limited Express Exchange warranty.

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