The Brother HL-4200 color laser printer provides 1200 dpi resolutions and is a mid range work group printer priced at around $1000.00.

The series is marked by the use of a 400 MHz processor paired with a base memory of 64 MB which will almost certainly need to be expanded to the full 320 MB especially if you plan on adding the auto-duplexing to the base model. Standard on the HL-4200CN model are USB, and 10/100Base TX Ethernet connections; the device can be used as the print server in this model, which is not too common in this class. No hard disk is available for this unit, which is to be expected, but the Brother HL-4200 comes with a 600 sheet capacity for media and can be upgraded to 1,600 for larger printing needs. To help with changing company printing needs, Brother has included their own driver in addition to the standard PostScript driver and both can be installed to take advantage of the sizing capabilities of the Brother driver.

Even though the resolution can be set to 1200 dpi the color graphics seem a bit heavy and has noticeable blurring, and the text was overly dark and bold. The PANTONE Color Matching helps, but some of the less expensive models have better print quality for the same price; however, the Brother HL-4200 series legs out the competition in line art. These printed pages will cost, on average, $.10 per color copy and about $.03 per monochromatic print, only a few printers can beat the color cost. To add to this speed is slower than most at 12 pages per minute in color and barely 21 pages per minute in black and white. What the Brother lacks in speed it makes up for in user friendliness; the LCD interface is simpler and easier to use than most in class printers.

With its low cost per printed color page, affordable price tag and user friendliness the Brother HL-4200 provides a great solution for those that don’t require fast high quality color graphics.