Brother HL-1440 Laser Printer - HL-1440
Brother HL 1440 - Monochrome Laser Printer - 15ppm

We have purchased several of these over the last 3+ years, perhaps 6 or 7. One lasted for close to 3 years, one lasted only 3 months, the others are somewhere in between. The cause of failure appears electrical, but is something that I haven't been able to determine, yet eventually all of those that have failed have done so in the same way. They start out with the red alarm light coming on. Changing the drum, toner, or both cartridges doesn't stop it. Then they intermitently refuse to print; it becomes necessary to hit the Reset (or Print?) button at the front of the unit to get the a document to print. Over a couple of weeks this gradually gets more frequent/worse until they refuse to print at all, even after resetting. Nothing can help them at this point. We have had several HL-1440 printers fail in this way. When this happens, we just switch to a different HL-1440. They are so inexpensive now, it never pays to purchase a new drum, and sometimes new units are so inexpensive ($90.00 as I write this, after rebate, freight included), that it barely costs more than a new toner cartridge to get a whole new printer. We keep a spare HL-1440 around here rather than a spare drum. One reviewer reported having one that always printed too light. Yes, we had one like this also. Obviously 1 out of 6 or 7 is a small percentage, but it is still too high. The others were OK. We had not had a problem so far with streaking (as reported by another reviewer), unless near the end of the drum or toner cartridge life. Lately, Consumer Reports has consistently rated this printer a "Best Buy" for monochrome laser printers. If you get a good one (odds are in your favor that you will) they are a great buy, but if you get one that refuses to print after a few months or prints too light, obviously they are not.
 
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I've used two of these over the last 3 years. Both units have required a new drum after 1-2 yrs of use. The drums cost as much as a new unit.
 
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I purchased this laser printer under the assumption that all laser printers have postcript. As a graphic designer, it is imperative that my prints match my screen. Because this printer doesn't have postscript, it won't print the postscript fonts correctly. It does fine with True Type fonts, but very poor with postscript fonts. I bought this printer as a workhorse for my business and am very dissatisfied with the print quality when using postscript fonts. It took me 2 months of correspondence with Brother to determine the problem.
 
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The Brother HL-1440 Laser Printer. I have owned this printer for about a year now. Here is my review. TONER CARTRIDGE: On this printer the toner cartridge and drum unit are two separate parts. The toner cartridge (or toner hopper) contains the toner powder and nothing else. The drum unit contains the electrostatic drum. I may be just a "shade tree mechanic" but I refill my toner cartridge, and have been able to get perfect results. Of course, you know that the toner is a very fine black powder that gets on everything. I would recommend that you had access to a good air compressor, if you want to keep your toner cartridge and drum unit clean. No need to drill holes. On the toner cartridge there is a plastic cap that can be removed for adding more toner. The cap was difficult to remove at first, but after removing it and installing it a few times, it was much easier. I would not recommend using Universal (brand) toner. I tried using it and the whole page came out solid black. I have had excellent results with toner sold by a company called Future Graphics. If your lucky, you can set up an account, and buy toner for the HL-1240 (it's the same toner) for as cheap as $8.50 for a quart size bottle. But I could not get them to sell me anything. They said they only sell to printer and copy machine repair businesses, and the minimum order is 100 bucks. Surely these people have competition. Maybe there are other companies that sell toner? But you can look through the phone book and see if you can find a repair man who would be willing to sell you a bottle of toner. DRUM UNIT: The drum unit was difficult to disassemble at first. I had to very slightly modify the drum unit to make it easier to disassemble. If you can remove the electrostatic drum, you can wax and polish the drum, using ordinary car wax. Handle the drum wearing a pair of soft cotton knit gloves, (brown gloves) available at the Home Depot ect. If the drum is waxed and polished with each toner refill, how long will it last? Well, I wish I knew the answer to this, but it might take me a couple of years to find out. PRINTER OPERATION: So far, I've had good luck with this printer. Have used it for printing 200 page books. Not once has the paper ever jamed. Of course, I always "fan" the paper before putting it into the printer drawer. The printer has a "manuel duplex" mode for printing on both sides of the paper. If the printer runs out of paper in the middle of a print job, just add more paper and press the button on the front of the printer to resume printing. Have never had trouble with printer software. GRAPHICS: The printer is able to print photographs up to 1200 X 600 dpi resolution. The quality may not be as high as a more expensive machine, but I would consider the quality of the printed graphics to be "excellent" and good enough for all practical purposes. Turn your home or office into a giant black & white photo gallery if you want to. MEMORY: One last thing: memory. If you want to print graphics, it will be absolutely necessary to buy a memory upgrade for about 25-30 bucks. There is a metal access door on the back of the printer that will expose the circuit board and the memory upgrade socket. But installing the memory upgrade was more difficult than expected. Had to use plastic probe to get the plastic clips to spread apart so that the memory upgrade would snap into place. Also print configuration page showed an increase of only 16 megabytes, even though I installed a 32 megabyte card. Tried 2 different brands. Still same problem. I guess this is the only problem I've ever had with the printer. END
 
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The first printer that arrived produced streaks on the page. Using the cross-send replacement warranty, I received a new machine without toner. I placed the toner and drum assembly from the previous printer in and still had streaks. I was sent a new toner and drum assembly. This worked for 4 months...then the streaks re-appeared. I have seen reviews in other forums that speak of the unreliable nature of the drum on this printer. I cannot recommend it. In frustration I got rid of the printer and will not use another Brother product.
 
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The Windows XP driver works flawlessly on my WinXP Pro across the Win2000 & WinXP workgroup I setup at my apartment, so I don't know what the previous reviewer's complaining about (try checking the permission groups and enabling sharing of non-WinXP drivers for Win9x or 2000 users). I've been using multiple Brother laser printers since the DX-600 series, and would never go near the garbage "personal" HP laser printers that constantly suffer from slow performance and jams. I've been using HL-1440 for almost a year now and bought a HL-1240 for my father some time ago, and haven't had a problem except for a dirty drum in the HL-1240 that had to be replaced (be leary of printing used label sheets in any printer). Having extensive experience with various printer vendors & model, I can vounch Brother's performance, value, and reliability (perhaps 1 paper jam in a year) can't be beat. I encourage buyers to always try searching on pcmag.com, pcworld.com, and cnet.com for reviews first.
 
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I was getting ready to purchase an HP LaserJet 1000 when I saw the Brother HL-1440. The Brother was less expensive and much, much faster! I have used HP's for years and lost my love for HP's after their top feed problem that landed them a class action suit. I am a software developer and consultant and I have since recommended this printer to many of my customers and will continue to do so. Now, I am recommending it to you.
 
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What a piece of junk. Several jams and problems later, I am returning it. I use Times as my default font on most of my business forms. The printer printed the font so lightly that you could barely read it. When I contacted Brother to inquire about darkening the text they told me there was no way to adjust the amount of toner and to switch fonts. This is Times for God's sake not Helvetica light.
 
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I bought one for our small business and loved it some much that I purchased another one for home. I astounded at the quality that such an inexpensive laser printer can produce. WOW (sums it up)!
 
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This printer is everything you could ask for in a low cost laser printer. Yes, it's not built as solid as my old HP LP IIP, but it's only about 1/4 of the price, 10 years later. Print quality leaves nothing to be desired, unless you use a magnifying glass to read things. Graphics quality is outstanding too - I use the Win98 driver. Another nice thing is the internal paper tray - helps to get it into low profile cabinets.
 
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This is probably the best laser printer you can buy for a small office environment. I have several of these at work and they print fast with good quality. Somebody commented about sharing this printer with XP--I do know you can at least print to this *from* an XP computer to a win98 PC. For a personal laser, this (even though it's really cheap) might be a bit overkill and you'll probably be just as happy with the even cheaper Samsung ML-1210 or 1430. But if you go with the Brother, I'm sure you'll like it!
 
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Easy driver installation for Windows XP. You must however download the driver from the Brother website. It took about 15 minutes to download driver, install driver, and begin printing. Print quality is excellent. Printer also attached to Linksys PrintServer .... no problems. Using printer in same office environment (Vacation Timeshare Resales - Orlando, FL). Printer is a lot of bang for the buck!!!
 
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This is a great printer for the money. I had read a review that this printer was difficult to set up, but I unpacked it, followed the USB connection procedures, and had it printing in about 5 minutes. The print quality is fantastic at 300, 600 and 600x1200 dpi resolutions. It prints fast and quiet which is a nice change from inkjets. The only downside is that a memory upgrade from the standard 2MB is required to achieve 600x1200 resolution. But it takes a 72 pin SIMMs which are cheap and readily available. Overall, a fantastic printer for home and most small business applications.
 
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Couldn't be better. Works perfectly, even in linux. Very fast, very low ink usage, and very high quality printouts. Upgradeable memory slot is very handy and improves performance even more.
 
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After numerous phone calls and emails w/ this sewing machine maker (Brother), as well as an 80+ minute toll call w/ Microsoft, it was finally determined that Brother's XP driver is incapable of allowing printer sharing across a network! End result, against Brother's recommendation, I'm using their Windows 2000 driver. Just trying to save others the frustration I endured! :-)
 
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The Brother printer has proved to be an excellent investment. I’ve had it for about a month and use it on a small business network (5 computers), and it is more than effective for handling the workload. It prints very crisp text and images and offers a toner cartridge that will handle up to 6,000 pages. My only complaint is the small paper capacity, but this is only a minor flaw.
 
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I have had this printer for about 3 months and have nothing but praise for it. the print quality is great and the speed is remarkably fast for such an inexpensive printer. I would recommend this printer to anyone looking to get an inexpensive but reliable laser printer.
 
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Execlent print quality, easy of use, very fast start/warm up. Very pleased. Well worth it's cost.
 
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