The Bottom Line: Great for home and office, a true workhorse at a reasonable price. Includes all consumables and easy to setup and install. Highly recommend.

WHY I BOTHERED

Every printer (that's laser printer) I have ever own has been a Brother with the one-time exception of acquiring a Xerox Phaser 6120/N color printer. All of the Brother's had been Black and White Laser Printers. Though the Xerox Laser has worked well and produced pretty good results. I have never been total content or satisfied with it. That is the main reason I have had my eye focused on the Brother HL-4070CDW Laser Printer. The Brother HL-4070CDW Laser Printer sports many of the valuable features I've been waiting in a laser for quiet some time. Like a fast processor, good ram size, photo quality printing, network ready (not just network cable ready but completely wireless), and a small footprint, and compact cosmetically attractive. A silent to near silent operation was of top priority. My Xerox Phaser 6120 always sounded as if it was falling apart on warm-up and printing activity.

I DIDN'T NEED A NEW PRINTER NOW BUT

I didn't not need a new printer now but the Brother HL-4070CDW Laser Printer was on sale and I was told it was a clearance pricing. Umm. I couldn't permit this baby to slip through my greedy fingers at this price with all consumables and full standard cartridges. I've had my eye on this model for some time and the cosmetics are a perfect match with my other equipment — excluding the Xerox but I'm planning on off-loading it very soon.

IN THE BOX

When the UPS man arrived I greeted him at the door with a smile and commented "A light parcel today." He smiled back somewhat out of breath and said "yeah, it sure is." I instructed him to have a nice day, thanked him and said "now it's time to throw out my back."

I hoisted the 73 pound box, carried it into the other room for the grand opening. Slitting the sealing tape I, opening the heavy cardboard flaps I was presented in a very ordering fashion four color cartridges and a AC power cord inserted into Styrofoam chambers. The power cord resided in the dead center and each of the cartridges were settled into the North, South, East, and West directions. I left them all in place and lifted the Styrofoam straight out, then placed it aside. My glorious prize sat there in all its splendor waiting to take another hit at my back the entire 62 pounds of it. But I loved him anyway (remember he's a brother) and gathered my strength to retrieve him from the box and onto a table top. One person my friend can set this printer up but Brother does recommend at least two.

Removing the protective shipping tape and insertions went quickly. At this point it was time to situated the printer to its nesting spot in my home office. Lasers don't like to be move around a lot especially once the toner cartridges have been inserted (I saved them to near last).

The toner waste container, imaging film and drums came preinstalled so much of the work had been handled. Thanks Brother.

BOX CONTAINED

1 Brother HL-4070CDW Laser Printer
with imaging film belt, toner drum, and waste container
1 AC Power Cord
1 Black Toner Cartridge
1 Blue Toner Cartridge
1 Red Toner Cartridge
1 Yellow Toner Cartridge
1 manual
1 CDROM with drivers
and some repacking materials.

I followed the easy instructions provided by Brother, many of which was routine from owning several B&W lasers in the past. I then proceeded to installing the four cartridges. Each cartridge was color coded to match a corresponding color coded label on the drum assembly. 1, 2, 3, 4, insert loaded drum close the printer and it was ready. Print drivers and wireless setup were all I had left to complete.

Before moving on I printed two test pages: one test page printing on a single side of the paper and the second testing the built-in duplex printing. During this test the Brother HL-4070CDW Laser Printer was rather quiet and speedy in both printing modes. The test pages were crisp, clear, vivid and highly professional in appearance even under the scrutiny of a magnifying glass.

INSTALLING PRINT DRIVER AND WIRELESS ACTIVATION

It is important to carefully review the Brother HL-4070CDW Laser Printer operation manual prior to installing the print driver and activating the wireless connectivity.

Once you have given the manual a once or even a twice read you are ready to finish the Brother HL-4070CDW Laser Printer setup.

I opted for the totally wireless so all computers in the household will have total access to the printer. Therefore I will only be explaining my setup in this review (however the Brother manual offers several different scenarios).

Dropping the CD ROM into the DVD tray of my computer the installation began. The installation initialized in an unconventional way and did not conform to the standards I have been a custom to the last 27 years. The installation software was FLASH and the procedure very simple. A short series of question were presented and you chose the best one for your needs and setup. I elected the LAN WIRELESS so the installation software instructed me to turn on my Brother HL-4070CDW Laser Printer and step-by-step guided me through preparing the printer by making some simple changes through the menu.

Preceding with the wireless setup another question was asked as to whether I had the ability to temporarily attach the printer to an Ethernet cable interfacing with my wireless router. I replied "YES" and attached the cable when instructed to do so Then informed the software to continue. NOTE: I did have to turn off the Windows firewall for this process to work. A few seconds later I was told to disconnect the cable and I did. The Brother HL-4070CDW Laser Printer cycled off and then on and the print driver was ready to install.

The driver installation took a couple of seconds and I was ready to print in less then ten minutes. I actually spent more time unpacking the printer and installing cartridges.

HOW'S THE PRINT QUALITY

The Brother HL-4070CDW Laser Printer is Brother's second color laser that they manufacture themselves and they have done an outstanding job. Without setting the printer to its highest DPI the results are fantastic. My niece graduated recently from High School and some photos I took looked good with the Xerox Phaser 6120 color laser printer but when held a certain way one could see it was printed and not a photo. The same photos on the Brother HL-4070CDW Laser Printer look more like photos (even though the Brother HL-4070CDW Laser Printer is not a photo printer), it's very difficult to tell the difference with the Brother output until you feel the paper and when holding the printout at an angle the coloring appears even with no distortion. Under magnification the results are highly pleasing.

No matter what your reason is for buying a new printer, whether it's your first laser or a replacement you will love the Brother HL-4070CDW Laser Printer. If this printer had been my first laser printer I probably would not have replaced so many printers. Every Brother laser I have owned has been a true workhorse and out of the lot only one actually died on me and it was the first laser I had ever purchased. The only reason the other Brother models were replaced was due to my own need to have the latest and greatest new technology. The Brother HL-4070CDW Laser Printer should be no exception to this rule.

NO SPECIFICATIONS

Normally I copy specifications from the manufacture web site and include in my review noting the source of information. Because it is so simple these days to Google this information and the majority of resellers publish it too I'm opting to forgo its inclusion here.

The Brother HL-4070CDW Laser Printer has a USB port on the front in the upper left hand corner permitting one to print directly from a USB drive or PicBridge camera. I have read where some individuals would of liked for the printer to sport a card reader has well. Most of us have USB card readers/thumb readers that will easily interface with this port so I see this as no huge deal or any reason to deter from purchasing this printer. Yeah, it would have been nice but I use Sandisk SDHC cards, one of them came with a USB Reader which is on my desk at all times. It really is that simple.

Here are a few quick highlights that attracted me to this Brother HL-4070CDW Laser Printer.

1] Modern, contemporary design in a two-tone gray (matches well with my Lexmark 7550 all-in one.

2] It sports a USB, Parallel, Ethernet ports and Wireless 802.11 B/G (will work well with "N" also).

3] It's full color and B&W printing

4] Has duplex (two-sided printing) no more manually turning the papers.

5] Large paper tray 250 sheets, easy to use manual paper tray holds 50 sheets, output paper tray holds up to 150 pages.

6] Brother HL-4070CDW Laser Printer is Energy Star

7] Printer has a small footprint using very little desk real estate

8] The LCD screen is easy to read and tilting for perfect viewing

9] Control layout is simple and easy to use located on top the printer in the lower left.

10] Quiet operation

11] Low operational cost including consumables.

12] 2400 x 600 DPI printing and 64MB Ram upgradable.

There is a wealth of information that could easily be written regarding this laser printer. It would not be difficult at write a volume but it is not the intentions for review. I thank you for taking the time to read my review and pray you find it very help in your next laser buying decision. Brother is a solid company with solid products built to last for years and at the same time maintain reasonable pricing as compared to similar products from their competitors. I highly recommend this printer and whole heartily believe you will too.

[UPDATE 1]

I've own this printer for a few months now and have enjoyed it very much. I use it as a standalone wireless printer so all the computers in the household may print from it. With the standard preinstalled 64MB RAM the printer is reasonablely fast and responsive. It must be noted though that in wireless mode there is some delay between when the print command is clicked, the information is received by the printer, until actual print occurs. Since the memory can be upgraded to a total of 576MB of RAM I opted to do so. I ordered the large memory size module the printer would accept — that being 512MB. Installation was child easy, no tools were required to access the memory installation area and the printer recognized and counted the additional memory without issue on powering as it initialized. As for the actual upgrade the printer reacts much more like a wired interfaced printer. Brother would have been wise to install this level of memory during production for better overall customer satisfaction. I have no complaints with this printer it may just be the last printer I'll ever need unless some misfortune should occur. I do recommend that anyone setting the printer up in wireless mode and working will sizable documents and images to upgrade the memory to capacity. I found the 512MB memory module on eBay for $43.50 and free shipping. A very solid value and the company sell the module is fast in shipping and stand behind their product.