Summary
Our Score
Pros
- Max 800-page paper capacity
- Sub 2p per page print cost
- Fast start up and first page out
Cons
- Stripy photo prints
- No wireless connection
- Noisy when printing
Review Price £187.00
Manufacturer: Brother
Brother HL-5440D - Design and Features
Introduction
The main governing factor in the price of a mono laser printer is its speed, so to find a machine like the Brother HL-5440D, which is specced at 34ppm, for under £200 is unusual. Aimed at small businesses who have no need for wireless connection, but want low running costs, the Brother HL-5440D is an evolution of the company’s earlier desktop lasers.
Brother HL-5440D Design
A squashed cube, with rounded vertical edges, the Brother HL-5440D printer looks very functional and businesslike. The simple control panel is a column of LEDs for toner, drum, paper, back cover and general errors, with two lozenge-shaped buttons coloured green and pink to start and stop print jobs.
The output tray is a recess in the printer’s top cover and the feed tray, with a capacity of 250 sheets, pulls out from the bottom of the front panel. Above that is a pull-down cover, which forms a 50-sheet multipurpose tray. It has a slide out and flip over support, so you can load special media up to A4 in size. You can add up to two extra 250 sheet-trays, for a total paper capacity of 800 sheets.
At the back is a ubiquitous USB socket and a legacy parallel one, but there’s no wireless link, so no easy way to print from phones or tablets.
Brother HL-5440D Features
The Brother HL-5440D uses a two-part drum and toner cartridge, rated at different replacement frequencies. The two clip together and slide down into the centre of the machine, once you’ve pressed a button in front of the output tray and folded down the machine’s front third.
Toner cartridges are available in 3,000, 8,000 and 12,000-page capacities, while the drum is good for 30,000 pages. These are high yields for a machine at this price and, combined with the comparatively large paper capacity, imply low maintenance costs.
There’s very little in the way of support software, other than a pretty straightforward driver. This is available for Windows, OS X and Linux and the driver supports poster prints, multiple pages per sheet and A5 booklet printing, as well as watermarking with predefined or custom text.
