By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla
I remember a time when the only options for coloured home printing were inkjet printers and the somewhat expensive multi-coloured ink refills. Coloured Laser printers were too expensive for SOHO (Small Office Home Office). Brother's $270 HL-3045CN Colour Laser Printer is an affordable option for this space.
Out of the box, HL-3045CN is quite easy to set up. It needs to be situated near a live Ethernet port for network printing. It would have been convenient and useful if Brother included WiFi capability. This would make it possible to place the printer, or even hide it, provided it is within wireless range. For our test, we connected it to our home Airport Express via Ethernet.
Setup and Networking
Easy does it: Th Brother HL-3045CN's controls are straightforward and uncomplicatedAttaching the four coloured printer cartridges is easy as there are many diagrams and helpful graphics on the printer itself.
Anyone who has had to install toner before should be able to figure it out. Toner cartridges cost $88.00 for Black and $82.00 apiece for Cyan, Magenta and Yellow.
Find the printer on the network with our Macs was straightforward, we simply added the Brother HL-3045CN and OS X downloaded and installed the appropriate.
On Windows 7 the installation wasn't nearly as automatic, we had to go to Brother's website and download then install the drivers, reboot and then we were good to go.
The Brother HL-3045CN is one of the few networked printers that offers an option for Linux users and shows that Brother has considered a wide range of possible use case scenarios.
In terms of user experience, the Brother HL-3045CN's controls are simple and clear. This less is more approach makes it easy for almost anyone to figure it out in a matter of minutes.
Performance
Once set up, we were impressed by the crisp colour quality of the HL3045CN's prints. Not ideal for photos or high-resolution graphics but great for general and office use.
With printing speeds up to 19 ppm in both colour and monochrome, and up to 600 x 2400 dpi resolution, the HL-3045CN is ideal for printing high-impact, colour brochures, presentations and other important business documents, quickly and affordable. Households with kids who print out a lot of workbooks, puzzles or projects will find this printer up to the task.
We printed a number of maps and directions and were impressed by the detail and clarity of the prints. We found the 250 sheet paper capacity to be generous and only had to restock paper once during our testing period.
The Brother HL-3045CN Colour Laser printer is an ideal replacement for an older networked monochrome Laser printer that's already connected to a Ethernet port. Buyers looking for more flexibility and built-in WiFi will need to look elsewhere or figure out a workaround with remote routers.
Still, there's no question that Brother has addressed a need for affordable colour laser printing with this model. The speed, performance and feature set are what one would expect in more expensive office printers.
We found paper handling to be consistently good. After three weeks of extensive use, we experienced no jams or paper errors, which is very rare for fast printers that handle volume print jobs from a variety of sources. Users also have a manual duplex option to print two sided documents. Auto duplex would have been nice but manual works.
Moreover, we were very pleased with the 19 pages per minute output which is faster than most printers in this class.
We also found the ease and simplicity of the setup instructions to be very helpful. Even less technically inclined business owners should find it easy enought to set up and troubleshoot this printer.
As a bonus, iOS users can download the Brother™ iPrint&Scan Wireless Printing app and print directly from their iPhone or iPad which is convenient for as long as they are on the same network as the printer.
Thw Brother HL-3045CN is one of the best examples of a simple to use yet exceedling versatile home or small office colour laser printer that can play well with Windows, Mac, Linux and a host of smartphones and tablets.
If your old monochrome laser printer is sputtering along, it might be a good time to make the move to colour with the HL-3045CN Colour Laser printer. .
Rating: 5 out of 5