Product Reviews

Laser printer manufacturers have been pushing the benefits of colour for some time now, and many, including Lexmark, Minolta-QMS and Xerox, have invested in single-pass colour laser engines. Brother's HL-4000CN is the latest addition to the single-pass camp, and uses the same engine as Minolta-QMS's magicolor 3100 (see Reviews, issue 90, p126) to obtain 16ppm in mono and colour.

As the HL-4000CN and magicolor 3100 use the same mechanism and chassis, it's hardly surprising that the two offer similar features. These include a 1,200dpi four-colour tandem print engine, built-in duplex capability, 10/100BaseTX Ethernet, plus USB and parallel ports. Paper handling is also the same: 500 sheets for the main paper tray supplemented by an extra 100 in the multipurpose tray. The multipurpose tray can also be used to feed in heavier media up to 216g/m2. One difference is that the HL-4000CN has less memory as standard: 192Mb as opposed to 256Mb. However, this can be upgraded to 320Mb using standard 144-pin SODIMMs.

Perhaps the most significant difference is that the HL-4000CN features genuine Adobe PostScript 3 support, as opposed to the magicolor 3100's (and most of its rivals') emulated mode. This feature will be most beneficial to DTP users or graphic artists looking for a printer to produce prints more closely comparable to professional processes.

To test this feature, we printed a 6.5Mb image drawn using Adobe Illustrator both in PCL6 and PostScript 3 modes. The differences were clear, with the results from PostScript 3 possessing cleaner lines, accurate fades and a truer colour balance. The print time of six minutes and 30 seconds is also good and notably faster than the magicolor 3100's emulated mode, which took 11 and a half minutes. If you don't need PostScript 3's accuracy, the results from PCL were good too, and the default quality settings produced a more visually pleasing result with more saturated colours.

Another good feature in the HL-4000CN is the Printer Deployment Wizard. This is essentially a software tool designed to ease installation over a network. The Wizard can be used to search for printers attached to the network and install the PCL6 driver. Brother also includes its BRAdmin Professional software for

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managing and configuring connected devices, and there's an integrated Web server that can be used, for example, to change settings and view front-panel status and toner levels.

Once installed, we kicked off our usual suite of tests with the 50-page plain text document, which printed in three minutes and 12 seconds, almost spot on at 16ppm. Text quality is great too, on a par with the Lexmark C750n (see Reviews, issue 89, p121) and marginally crisper than the magicolor 3100.

Next up was our 50-page letter test containing a colour logo and some coloured text. This was also reproduced well at the full speed of 16ppm and the results were almost identical to the magicolor 3100. The next test was our tough 12-page Excel spreadsheet, featuring text on top of block shades. The HL-4000CN continued to impress, finishing in one minute and 20 seconds for a perfect 16ppm. The print quality was impressive too, with strong colours and clearly readable text, even at small font sizes.

Photographic images and high-quality DTP documents were dealt with admirably in the 1,200dpi mode, where maximum print speeds drop to 8ppm. We did notice some colour balance problems though, where greyscales in particular were tinted with magenta. Overall photo quality is still nowhere near that offered by inkjets, although it's certainly good enough for corporate presentations or simple promotional material.

Printing is an expensive task, especially if you're using colour, so the inclusion of a duplex unit is always welcome. Usefully, Brother hasn't just installed it as a token gesture either, adding a booklet-printing feature that allows you to make simple brochures. Performance was spot on again, printing a 22-page document at just shy of ten faces per minute (4.8ppm).

The small number of consumables used in the HL-4000CN helps keep running costs at a sensible level. A replacement black toner costs £32 for 8,500 pages, while each colour cartridge costs £90 for 6,000 pages. The only other consumables are a print head unit and transfer roller, which last for 30,000 pages and 25,000 pages respectively.

Overall running costs are 1.3p per page in mono (5 per cent coverage) and 6.7p per page in colour (20 per cent coverage). This is reasonable, although if economy is your main priority Kyocera's FS-8000C (see Reviews, issue 88, p149) is still the best choice with page costs of 0.56p in mono and 3.1p in colour.

The HL-4000CN is a great addition to Brother's arsenal of laser printers. It's not the fastest laser engine available, but the output quality is superb, while genuine Adobe PostScript 3 support will be a great benefit to some. The price of £2,042 is excellent too, costing around £100 less than the magicolor 3100 on the high street, making it the obvious choice for our A List.