Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 11-15 of 73
 Great color laser printer at an amazing price November 6, 2007
D. Featherstone (Chicago)
20 out of 21 found this review helpful
I thought this printer's features were impressive given the price, and expected that there would be caveats (hard to set up, not-so-great print quality, slow, etc). None of the caveats materialized. This printer was easier to setup (the wireless connectivity is GREAT) and works nicer/better than any sub-$1000 printer I've ever used.
Time to take Brother Seriously January 2, 2008
A. Meador (Morgan Hill, CA USA)
19 out of 19 found this review helpful
Brother has always been the red-headed step-child in the world of computer peripherals. This printer is a significant step in the right direction to change all that.
In my business I've dealt with all kinds of output devices for 25 years now, from high end 5-figure professional printers to consumer ink jets. In the world of printers there is always some sort of tradeoff, be that color output (photo and graphics), type quality, speed and of course software. I currently have HP, Lexmark and Konica Minolta printers as a comparison. I never thought I'd ever even consider a brother.
However, the range of features available for the price range seemed perfect for my home office, and a demo cinched the deal. Upon arrival, I found that the installation CD was missing. Not a good start! However, a quick call to the brother hot-line and they 2 day couriered the CD out to me! I'd still be on hold with some other companies. Yes, they do have an extensive download section on their website - however the CD still has features not available there.
The install CD worked like a charm, on 3 systems without a hiccup (Vista and Windows XP). I can honestly say that is a rare thing indeed. I had my wireless network up and running in no time, without ever hooking it directly to a machine, or needing any of the IP or Node addresses I'd written down.
Printing is relatively fast for a machine of this size. Of course duplex printing is about 60% slower, but the quality on both sides is great. Something I've had issues with on larger machines. The color output is very good - if you are used to ink jets then it will look somewhat muted. However, I've run a few Pantone color tests and it is much closer than any other machine I've had except for ones that are pantone certified. Ink Jets are really made to match RGB colors for photographs, this is typical for CMYK. Shading is very smooth, skin tones are good but not saturated, and no noticeable banding on color gradients. The actual finish is very flat (good for me), where some printers lay the toner on so heavy it's actually shiny.
The adjustable LCD panel has 3 colors - yellow green and red, and you can quickly from across the room tell if it's complaining about something (the panel turns red) instead of looking for a tiny flashing light, or warning text on the menu. The whole control panel is well thought out and easy to use. The additional Brother software allows easy control of quality and output on your computer as well as consumables status.
What more could you ask for? It's a great printer for the home or small office, it's fast, quiet, comes out of sleep quickly, doesn't smell (try saying that about some color lasers), is insanely easy to network - even with PCs! Consumables are very fairly priced, and the color output is easily comparable to lasers that cost well over a grand.
Cons? Okay, the paper curls. It doesn't do tabloid sized paper.
Good job Brother!
** Update 5/08 **
The price of this printer has gone up considerably from $360 since I purchased it (yikes), and although no longer the screaming deal it was - it's still extremely competitive with the best in this range (Lexmark, Xerox).
After 5 months of use I ran out of yellow toner. This is from printing mostly full-page image files (real estate flyers), or text documents. I purchased the high yield toner cartridges from Amazon, I'll update as to when those finally expire.
Here's a quick breakdown from the settings sheet I just printed -
Device status:
Total page count: 1087
Color page count: 829
Image count total: 3515
Cyan: 812
Magenta:811
Yellow:816
Black:1076
1.Toner life end Y Page: 1055 (when it says the toner is gone, the toner is gone!)
2.Jam MP Tray Page: 1013 (no jam, I just didn't load the manual tray correctly)
3.That's it!
Drum Unit 93.60% life left
Belt Unit 95.81% life left
All else over 99%.
So, I'm still delighted with this printer, I'd buy it again! In fact, I got rid of my crappy HP Officejet All-In-One (they won't support Vista, they just want you to buy a new one), and my nasty HP Scanner (horrible bloat-ware, terrible, awful, useless color scanning - grayscale is fine) and got the Brother MFC-465CN. I'll write that one up once I spend some time with it, but so far it looks like another winner!
**Update 9/08**
Black cartridge replaced on 7/08, magenta and cyan 8/08. All replaced with high capacity cartridges.
One common comment I've seen is that some think the cartridges still have life left in them when they read as empty. I found that there was a definite degradation in print quality before they read as empty, so I do believe that there wasn't much if any life left in them. There was definite improvement after installing new ones.
More Cons:
One thing I never tested was envelopes (I usually use a different printer). The inability to open the back or use a "straight pass" causes the envelopes to get pretty messed up (wrinkled and/or sealed). If this is an important aspect and this would be your only printer, then you should look elsewhere!! Some printers have the ability to open the back so it doesn't make a loop up to the top.
Additionally, I was duplex printing on some *very* heavy stock (110 lb), and the duplexer was unable to function. For common card stock I haven't had this problem.
Easy setup for mac December 14, 2007
D. Schoepke (Nashville, TN, USA)
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
I have owned this printer about 2 weeks now and love it. The unpacking directions were fairly easy to follow. I didn't have any problem following the configuration instructions, but they may confuse a less computer literate person because of the myriad of setup options. It took about 5 minutes to setup the print server on my wired network. I have 2 macs that print to it and both found it immediately after installing the driver. It also prints flawlessly via the USB connection. I was not able to get it to associate with my roommate's wireless router (some off name router with hacked firmware via WPA2), but it did print wirelessly via ad-hoc by switching my computer to the printers default SSID (no encryption). I have not had a chance to setup my linksys wireless router to see if it associates with that. The output quality is outstanding for a sub $400 printer; just don't expect the same quality as a $3000+ color laser. The speed is very good and the warmup time is minimal. If I have printed something within the same day, the first page is out 10-15 seconds from the time I hit print. It was hard to find, but the printer margins are 0.17" all around. Overall, I am very satisfied with my purchase and would recommend this printer to anyone on a limited budget who wants good quality laser printing.
Excellent printer worth twice the price November 12, 2007
Robert Salazar
12 out of 14 found this review helpful
I have been using this printer for 4 months and have found the quality to be excellent. Its a great value.
 Things I liked/Things I hated. June 6, 2008
Kevin Hrim
11 out of 14 found this review helpful
We purchased a color laser printer last month to do limited mailings and brochures. After shopping around and reading reviews, I selected the Brother HL-4070CDW mainly because it was color, duplex ready, and cheap. I'm sorry to say that it hasn't lived up to my expectations.
Things I liked.
#1 Price $500 for a color laser with duplex and networking built in.
Things I hated.
#1 Consumables. Yes, the non-chipped cartridges have severe limitations over more expensive cartridges that have a microchip built in. When you print about 1700 pages with "highlight" color(less than 1% coverage on a page) the cartridges will register empty based on page count, not toner level.
You may ask how do I know? I took my full set of empties to the local "Cartridge World" and had them weighed, and cracked open. The findings: From 3 sets of empties, I was able to combine the left over toner to overfill one set with sufficient toner remaining to maybe get half a charge again when those run out.
These cartridges have an obvious mechanical limit to the page count, and will read empty while toner still is present. Just as a test, the guys from cartridge world did a mechanical reset on an empty cartridge to see if the printer was capable of detecting toner empty. Yes, once the empty (of toner), but mechanical sensor indicating full cartridge was installed it calibrated and was sensed as empty.
Footnote: If you get a refilled cartridge it may have started life as a starter cartridge. We didn't test this scenario, but if it is a mechanical indicator your refilled starter cartridge may never get beyond 1200 pages before tripping the mechanical sensor.
#2 Brother Support. 30 Minutes on the phone, and the person on the other end could not understand what I was talking about.
Overall, Now that I have a cheaper avenue to cartridges. I'm going to keep the printer until the service contract expires and then trade it in on something different/better.
Kevin Hrim is President of 916 Resources. He is an Oracle 10g Database Certified Master, Oracle Certified RAC Expert, and Oracle Certified Instructor.[...]
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