Brother HL-4050CDN review

Brother's HL-4050CDN is a close relative of the HL-4040CN reviewed in What's New, Shopper 238.

This version combines the same reasonable print costs and high speeds with the benefit of an automatic duplexer and an optional 500-sheet paper tray, which brings its total paper capacity up to 800 sheets.

This single-pass workgroup laser is one of the largest and heaviest in the group, but it's easy to set up, with toner cartridges that slot into a tray that slides out from the front of the device. It supports USB, parallel and Ethernet connections, and is the only device on test with a PictBridge USB port for printing files directly from a digital camera or flash drive.

The HL-4050CDN has the highest print resolution in the group, at 2,400x600dpi. Mono and colour print quality is excellent, with sharp text and detailed, accurate images. Greyscale shading was smooth, but greyscale images printed in Auto or Colour modes suffered from a tint of colour. Greyscale prints produced in mono print mode looked excellent, with no trace of this problem.

The HL-4050CDN produced the fastest and best-quality colour prints in the group, and mono speeds were also quick. Both colour and mono print costs are remarkably low if you buy high-yield cartridges, and the printer comes equipped with enough toner for 2,500 mono and 1,500 colour pages. It requires more consumables than any other printer here, including a £112 photoconductor drum that must be replaced every 17,000 pages. Despite this, the total cost of ownership is low, with only HP's Color LaserJet 3600 and Kyocera's FS-C5015N costing less to run over three years of heavy use. However, it's less economical over three years of light or medium use.

Brother's HL-4050CDN is expensive to buy and complicated to maintain, so it isn't ideal for home or home office users. It's cheap to run if you do a lot of printing, though, and has outstanding print quality, so it's an excellent choice for a small-to-medium-sized office in need of a presentation-quality laser printer.