» Brother HL-4070CDW Color Laser Printer with Built-In Duplex Printing and Wireless Interface

Brother HL-4070CDW Color Laser Printer with Built-In Duplex Printing and Wireless Interface Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent Print output, but expensive toner (like all printers)
Comment: I have owned this for a year now, and it has excellent color and B&W output. Relatively easy to set up on a network. Slow startup time, but once it starts printing, it is quite fast, even when duplexing. Need to use a good quality paper. The few jams that I have had was when I used very thin paper. Should definitely upgrade the memory to it's maximum, otherwise it will choke on complex, long, color documents. The type of memory is the same as used in laptop computers, but be careful to get the 144-pin variety. The maximum it can take is 512MB and it is "PC 100" type memory. It is better to order on-line, since most stores only carry the more recent 200-pin variety, although visually they look the same. It is easy to install; through a slot on the side. Toner consumption is reasonable, but the cartridges are quite expensive. Make sure you only get the "high-yield" variety. The only way to really tell is the part number. The standard cartridges are all TN110XX and the high yield ones are TN115XX. For example, at one site, the TN110BK (black) is listed for $45.91 and has a yield of 2,500 pages, and the TN115BK is listed for $70.72 ($24.81 difference) but has a yield of 5,000 pages; double the number of pages! The low yield cartridges are not a bargain in any sense. I have stopped using my inkjet printer for color printing, except on the rare occasion that I was a glossy photo print. The printer is networked, so everyone in the house can print to it, if they want color prints. Have not used it's wireless printing capability. Very satisfied overall.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: This Printer is a Dog
Comment: I bought this printer, not expecting that it would really be that good, because it was the only one that would fit in my cabinet.
It is very good at printing photo images, where there is a lot of detail. Also, it hasn't jammed on me yet.
However, it has its drawbacks.
I put out this kind of money, knowing up front that it has higher operating costs, because I needed it most of all to print drawings that have plain solid color backgrounds.
Unfortunately, the toner imaging strips of this printer are apparently inferior when it comes to maintaining their electronic charges long enough for wide plain fields of color, and so it always prints wide plain color fields with major blotch defects!
Still it is better than having expensive ink jet cartridges, which always dried up and clogged before I could ever print much on them.
Furthermore, the color toner cartridges that came with this printer didn't last that long, although they appear to be advertised as long use everywhere.
It does not let you print with the fading cartridges at all. You get an all or nothing toner experience. It stops working completely and demands that you replace all the color cartridges, before it will start working again, even though it never once printed a faded copy yet.
Additionally, the replacement toner cartridges exceeded the cost of the printer by a fair bit!
This printer also often has a strong, eye burning, ozone emission that is quite noticeable. I found that by keeping it in its closed cabinet that this helped mitigate this quite a bit.
I wouldn't use this printer too much in an unventilated room for that reason.
Worst of all, the black toner cartridge that it came with spewed black toner powder all over the place when changing the color toners!
Forewarned, I was quite ready to take the needed precautions upon finally needing to change the black toner cartridge, by spreading blank papers all over the floor first. Quite the good idea that I did too, by the way!
None of the color cartridges leaked any toner out at all, however.
I pretty much knew ahead of time, that the first generation of affordable color laser printers like this would be kind of trouble prone.
However, I don't think I will buy another Brother color laser when the second generation color lasers are finally out, given its horrible ability to simply print a solid field of color.
If all you print are photos, you won't even notice this defect at all, however.
The duplexing works great so I save money on paper while worrying a little bit about what to do about my bad drawing print outs.
Now I just printed a good color background finally, so maybe I just got scammed on the color cartridges that came with it at first!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Very Good Printer For the Money
Comment: I bought this in August 08 and it is now December 08 and so I thought I would write a quick review.

This printer is great. It sets up easily in wireless mode (although it helps if you have some technical expertise) and it prints well. There is some minor edge curly of the pages, but frankly I hardly notice.

The duplexing works great and the images are very nice too.

My only issue is that 64MB wasn't enough for my wife to print her pdf files with color photos in them. So, I wound up buying more memory.

The good news is that the memory you buy can be any old laptop 144-pin S0-DIMM, so I got 512MB for about $80. Now no more out of memory problems.

I definitely recommend this printer.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Nice but stopped working still under one year warranty so hope
Comment: I bought this Brother HL-4070cdw Color Laser Printer with Built-In Duplex Printing and Wireless Interface in April 2008 for $125 less than it is now at amazon.com. Lately some problems with wireless I did not investigate, so used as wired network printer. I am glad its problem began today, while still within the one-year warranty period. I have an HL-5280DW that quit one week after the one-year warranty; may cost $200 to fix that printer.
I usually turn the switch off at night. This morning I turned the switch on, the LCD control panel did not light up, and only the upper right rear fan was blowing. The fan stopped blowing after 5 minutes. I did a 5-minute power-off step recommended by Brother-USA. I contacted Brother, and a reply email said wait 15 minutes: did not work -- the fan runs, so power is somewhere in the printer. Will update this when it is fixed....

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Great solution for multi-computer home office
Comment: I went with this unit after my Samsung CLP-510 died, and I couldn't be happier. The Brother gives me all the features I need and good fit & finish for an excellent price. After growing accustomed to the Samsung's built-in duplexing, I decided that its replacement must have that feature as well. When compared to the Samsung, the color is a bit muted, but performance otherwise is equal and reliability is much improved. Wireless setup was relatively easy once I figured out what format my router was. Currently we are printing seamlessly on a ethernet-wired PC, a wireless iMac, and a wireless MacBook. I have had few significant encounters with the curled page issue that others have complained about.

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