|  |
| Customer Reviews: | | Average Customer Review: ( 163 customer reviews )
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
176 of 178 found the following review helpful:
 UPDATED: STILL a Great Home/Small Biz Color Laser Printer Nov 01, 2007
By Joseph H. Armstrong
I purchased the '4070' when I was getting tired of paying for the ink cartridges in my HP DeskJet 6840, especially for 'everyday' home printing (online order confirmations, homework, drawings, etc.) I was also looking for a printer to operate on a Mac network. This one is great! The wireless feature allows you to 'plop' this thing down wherever there's a power cord and setup is fairly easy. It's a single-pass unit (e.g. color and B&W printing are the same print speed) and has duplexing built in. Does a 'realistic' job with color photos (not overly saturated). I don't think it's too noisy as previous reviews have stated, but it's certainly not as quiet as an inkjet. The cartridges are neatly laid out in a removable 'drum' tray, making changeout that much easier. I particularly like the LCD display with 3 backdrop colors (green for 'everythings okeydokey', amber for 'I'm in maintenance mode, so don't bother me' and red for 'Help!'. This screen tilts out so you can read it more easily as you walk by it. There are some notes for those Mac (maybe windoze too???)folks that I'd like to bring up:
1) get the latest firmware update - especially for PDF files, the first version of firmware caused all sorts of problems where files didn't print at all. It may not be an issue, but as I got one of the first ones out I got the original firmware version.
2) memory - get more! Especially if you use the BR3 (Brother's PostScript3 emulator) you'll need at least another 64 MB just to make it work. There may be some confusion as to which memory it takes, but the notch in the connector indicates that it's an SDRAM. I pulled memory out of an old laptop I was parting out and works fine.
If you're looking for a cheaper, water-resistant printout, especially if you need duplex, this is your printer!
---
UPDATE - almost 2 years later and still running strong. I'd recommend locating the 'TN-115' series of cartridges as the 'TN-110's don't last nearly as long. Unfortunately, many traditional brick-and-mortar stores only carry the 110's
225 of 235 found the following review helpful:
 Good but not great Jan 02, 2008
By Mr. Details
I own a small business and I needed a printer to high volume jobs, including eye catching color, and a clean presentation. After a week of solid research on the internet (there aren't many reliable resources), I was down to the decision between the HP and Brother.
After speaking with a very informed salesperson at Office Max, I decided to go with the Brother. Well rated, quick output, and the consumables cost was also low. However, upon getting the unit home, I quickly noticed something annoying. (This ended up being a deal breaker for me; however, it may not bother some people.)
The final paper product comes out of the printer with curled edges. Literally, the top and bottom edge of the paper stock comes out curled. If I set the paper on a desk top, the curl is pretty significant - just under thumb height. I waited over four days on one batch of paper and it remained curled. I tried 20, 24, 28 and even 32 pound laser and color laser paper. No change. Now the paper path on the Brother machine is pretty acute, and combine that with the extreme heat and you have the result I discovered.
I went back to the store where I purchased the machine and found the same issue with the store display - I just didn't notice how extreme it was until I was handling the documents.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention another small glitch with this printer: the noise. If you plan on sitting this anywhere near a person (especially the right side of the printer), the fans are pretty loud, shattering typical office ambience.
Besides these two issues, the printer networked easily. The setup CD was quick, painless, and easy to install on both my Mac and PC. Quality is high, with a solid build and unremarkable colors (i.e., fits right in). Again, the curling paper doesn't work for me; you may find it otherwise.
74 of 74 found the following review helpful:
Excellent Color Laser Printer Feb 28, 2008
By Andy Wycislo
"Go Illini"
We needed a printer to print a fairly large volume of B&W and color notes and slides for my wife, who is in vet school. My Canon iP6000D, which is a great photo printer by the way, just wasn't cutting it speed-wise, since she prints maybe 100 pages of color notes a week, usually all at once. Ink was killing us, too. So, I knew we needed a color laser printer with built-in duplex, which cuts down on the number of pages she has to pack around. It would also save us a bunch on ink, since laser toner goes a lot further.
Now I'm pretty picky when it comes to electronics purchases, so I did a lot of reading. After the positive reviews for this printer on Amazon I made the leap and got this one. I'm very glad I did.
SETUP
First of all, this thing is pretty heavy, something like 75 pounds in the box. The UPS man was glad to be rid of it. It's all assembled out of the box, just a bunch of tape to take off, etc. Directions are easy to follow. It just fits on top of cheapo two-drawer metal filing cabinet like you'd get at Wal-Mart. It hangs off the edge maybe a half-inch on either side.
Following the directions for the software setup is easy, too. I initially set it up and configured it to print via the built-in wireless, since that's how all my computers are networked. After the printer is setup on the first computer, you just install the drivers on the other computers with the same disk. Again, follow the instructions and it's pretty simple. It prints flawlessly from all my computers, both Mac and PC (Apple iMac Intel, Apple iBook G4, HP Pavilion TX1000Z Tablet). By the way, I'm running Mac OS X Leopard on my Macs and Windows Vista on the HP Tablet. It also prints great from Boot Camp on the iMac (with Vista), as well as through VMWare Fusion (using the Boot Camp Partition as the virtual machine).
PRINTER START-UP
First, let me state that I leave the printer on all the time. It comes preset to sleep after 5 minutes, which is about right. When it sleeps it is silent. After you click print, it only takes maybe 20-30 seconds (on average) for it to get warmed up and start printing. If you have printed recently it takes less time. If it isn't sleeping, it starts pretty much right away.
As expected for a laser printer, it uses a fair amount of power, as my lights flicker slightly when it starts up. But I haven't blown the breaker yet, and I have quite a bit of stuff hooked up on that circuit.
SPEED
I haven't timed it exactly, but I would say that the stated 21 ppm is about right for single-sided pages. In duplex, it's less than half that, probably 8-10 per minute. This still suits me just fine, as my Canon iP6000D printed about 1 page every 3 minutes in duplex mode.
QUALITY
The print quality is very good. It is what you would expect from a good color laser printer. I have not printed photos with it, but I have no need to. It isn't a photo printer and I don't expect it to print them like they came from the lab. My Canon does, but it's a photo printer. That said, it prints pictures of animal anatomy, etc. in my wife's lecture slides very well. Definitely with enough detail to make everything out, even in small pictures.
It does curl the pages somewhat, but not bad. They flatten back out over time. This hasn't been an issue for me, and it was something I was concerned about before I ordered it.
CONCLUSIONS
In summary, this is an excellent printer. I've had it for a month and a half now, with no complaints. I've printed over 500 pages, mostly mixed B&W and color, and all four toner cartridges still register as full. If I run into any problems I will edit this post, but I don't foresee any. Excellent color printer with built-in duplex for the price. Of course, this printer isn't for everybody, but if your needs are similar to mine, then this is the printer for you.
Hope this helps. I tried to include everything I was wondering about before I bought it. If I think of something else later, I'll edit this review.
UPDATE 5/11/08: I've ran through the initial set of toner cartridges. The color ones gave out first (all at the same time). One thing I forgot to mention in my initial review is that through the printer control panel on your computer, you can access a printer info page on your local network. It is really cool because it tells you how many total pages you've printed, how many of those pages used which color, etc. That lets me see just how many pages I'm getting out of each toner cartridge. Anyway, the color cartridges that come with the printer are rated to put out 1500 pages at 5% cover. I got about 2000 color pages, while printing way more than 5% cover on my wife's slide printouts! The black finally gave out today at 3295 total pages, and it's rated at 2500. So I am not unhappy with that. I have replaced all the cartridges with the high-yield types, even though they are more expensive. They should last me quite a while. After about 4 months, this printer is still 5 out of 5 stars!
93 of 97 found the following review helpful:
 Big RIP-OFF With the Toner! Jul 25, 2008
By PC Gamer
I know this review is going to be buried, but I hope that you see it. What nobody tells you about this printer is that the three color toner cartridges ALWAYS all go empty at the same time, no matter what you've actually used. So expect a sudden three hundred plus dollar expense every once in a while. And it's apparently by some page count or something rather than actual usage, because you can't get it to accept the ones that you know aren't empty. I barely use any color at all, but they're constantly empty and this printer ends up being extremely expensive because of it - a real rip off by Brother.
78 of 82 found the following review helpful:
Some weaknesses, but very good value Nov 30, 2007
By Graham
I was looking for a cheap color laser printer with a built-in duplexer. The Brother 4070CDW delivers that, with good text quality. The color quality is a little weak, but overall it still seems like extremely good value.
First the good:
* Black-and-white text quality is excellent: crisp and clear.
* Setup was very straightforward, with clear and simple instructions.
* It is silent when in sleep mode, and wakes up in around 15 seconds.
Minor weaknesses:
* Colors tend to be somewhat subdued. (For the price and the media, this is what I was expecting.) As is common with color laser printers, it seems fine for printing out web pages or powerpoint but not for any application requiring very bold or very accurate colors.
* Pages tend to get slightly curled.
* Double sided printing is significantly slower than single-sided. The documentation says around 20 sides per minute for single-sided, but only 7 sides per minute double-sided.
Overall, the 4070CDW more than meets my expectations. For $500 (less now!) I'm very happy with both the functionality and the print quality, especially for text.
See all 163 customer reviews on Amazon.com
|
| | |
