BROTHER HL-3045CN COLOR TONER CARTRIDGES SET

Brother HL-3045CN Review

Overview:

Similar in almost every way to the Brother HL-3075CW, the Brother HL-3045CN offers a lower purchase price with a few less goodies than its higher end sibling. For about a thirty dollar price difference, buyers of the Brother HL-3045CN lose wifi connectivity and PictBridge compatibility, making it a worse value per dollar, but the right choice for those who do not require the additional features.

Pros:

Unlike a laser printer, the Brother HL-3045CN actually uses LEDs to make impressions on its drum as opposed to the usual red laser. This LED color printer can produce output in both color and black and white at a rate of about 19 pages per minute. While this is certainly very slow by monochrome standards, it is up to par when it comes to affordable color LED printers. To achieve the 30 page per minute and above standard that is out there for black and white printers, a buyer would have to spend in excess of a thousand dollars on a color printer; either that or go with a low volume inkjet device.

While the Brother HL-3045CN does not have wireless capabilities like the 3075, it is complete with a wired Ethernet card and port. It also has a USB 2.0 port for single PC hosting, though users who do not wish to use networking could probably shave off a little more money from the overhead cost by buying a color printer with no network support whatsoever.

With a 25,000 page maximum monthly duty cycle, the Brother HL-3045CN can take a considerable amount of abuse before suffering from mechanical problems. A recommended monthly usage of only 300 to 1,500 pages will ensure the maximum product life of the printer, but those who are still protected under their one year included warranty have nothing to fear from pressing the printer for heavy volume.

32 MBs of standard memory are included and installed in the Brother HL-3045CN, but a single 144 pin DIMM slot allows for an additional 64 MB, 128 MB, 256 MB, or 512 MB card to be added for improved performance when printing color imagery.

Cons:

The Brother HL-3045CN loses the built in printer languages found in the Brother HL-3075CW. No PCL or Postscript emulation is possible with the printer, so the host PCs connected to it are forced to do all the work. Also lacking PictBridge compatibility, the Brother HL-3045CN cannot connect directly to a camera like the 75 can.

It’s kind of a toss up if the Brother HL-3045CN’s print resolution should be considered above or below average. Color laser printers have an inherent need to provide superior print resolution to the poor 600 x 600 dot per inch quality found in a lot of black and white document printers. Usually, this means a solid 1200 x 1200 or 1200 x 2400 dot per inch print quality, but the HL-3045CN produces 600 x 2400 dots per inch. While technically this resolution provides the same amount of pixels as true 1200 dpi, it cannot achieve the same accuracy when it comes to color imagery and is therefore inferior.