Summary: As a little background, I am not new to color laser printers. My first was a Tektronix 740N which set the bar really high. It was and is a great printer and I recommend it to anyone that is serious about quality prints. My current printer is a Xerox 6120 which for the money couldn't be beat (~$160 with full toner set).
The HL-4040CN was purchased for my office to use, when our old HP inkjet printer took a turn for the worse. It was going to be too much money to buy parts, so it was only logical to move to a color laser.
We were looking for a printer that was mainly 1) competitively priced, 2) offered quality output, 3) could handle a moderate load of printing, and 4) overall low operating cost.
Our expectations were met with this color laser. It's fast print speed (we average 20ppm black and about 5ppm color) works for us. What was even better was it's easy setup. Whether a seasoned computer geek or not, you should be able to set it up by following the instructions. USB is a nice option, however, we obviously set it up on a network. The lost cost consumables and ability to print a few thousand pages before replacing them was nice since we print about 15,000 pages/month color (we have a dedicated high-speed b&w copier).
On the slightly negative side, we weren't too hot on how heavy the printer is. While solid is nice, know that you are going to have to have a heavy duty desk, table, or something of the such. Compared to my Tektronix and my Xerox, the blacks are softer than they should be. My Tektronix was by far the winner in this test. They were simply amazing as they almost jumped off the page. High quality black output seems to be an issue with most of the newer color lasers. Not that it's a major issue, but I've noticed that photo output could be better. My Xerox 6120 is a little better and yet was half the price.
Overall this printer is very good and filled out need well. We paid $285 after a 5% Buy.com coupon and that included free shipping. I would definitely recommend this printer to any workgroup of people who need to be able to print better than average color quality. Cost per print is very affordable which in the end is one of the major stengths we were looking for in a color laser.
