The prices on color laser printers are finally coming down in price. After some Stumbling around the other day, I encountered a review of the Brother HL-4070CDW on MacWorld’s site that was quite favorable. I’ve loved my Brother HL-2040N (no longer made) since the day I brought it home a few years ago. It was a simple black and white laser – but with the number of projects my kids have for school, this was a godsend. I figured that I had such a great experience, I’d gamble again on another Brother product.
I ordered my HL-4070CDW from Costco. Including taxes and shipping (free), the unit cost just under $399!! Costco is running a special of $100 off till April 27th 2008. It was delivered in three days by UPS — and I had it setup within the hour. Initial thoughts: IT ROCKS!!
Once connected to the network by wire (it has wireless capabilities, but why burden my router with unnecessary traffic, especially large postscript print jobs?) all the Macs on the network saw the printer via Bonjour. To my surprise I also discovered that the base Leopard install already had drivers for this printer – so there was all of four mouse clicks and a quick printer name rename in order to get the Macs on the network setup.
Other quick impressions – it’s fast. It’s fast in warming up. It’s fast in printing – both color and b/w. Lastly, but in many cases more importantly, fast in going into ‘sleep’ mode. This will help keep the costs down in running the printer over the course of a year.
Speaking of operating costs, the big question is the cost per page for using this printer. If I simply just add up the cost for the 4 extended life toners: black @ 62.99 + cyan @86.99 + yellow @86.99 + magenta @86.99 = 323.96 / estimated life of toner 4000 pages, we get about .08 cents per page. That’s pretty good. The drum is rated for 12,000 pages (@ $128 replacement value.)
For those Leopard users out there, the included driver software isn’t Leopard compatible. The drivers that you need are already included in the Leopard base install. You’ll want to manually copy over the BRLite Administration program from the CD so that you can manage the printer however.
You can find more information about the Brother HL-4070CDW on the Brother website.
-JT