HP Color Laserjet CM6040 MFP review

HP's Color Laserjet CM6040 MFP is a replacement for the 9500 series and is designed for large workgroups or even small departmental use. The basic machine – if you can call a 40ppm, A3, duplex, colour laser multifunction basic – can be expanded with extra trays, staplers and finishers, so can grow with its environment if requirements change.

As you might expect, this is a substantial machine, with a basic weight of 140kg, so you'll need to get it installed and find a place with good access to control panel and drawers. Everything important in the machine is accessed from the front, though you may need to get at its sides in the event of a paper jam.

The widescreen, mono touch-screen is designed to be simple to understand and makes good use of icons and a logically designed menu hierarchy. A nice touch here is the ability to temporarily switch display languages, which can be useful in a global company, particularly one employing personnel from different language backgrounds in the same office.

Just about everything within the control panel is customisable including the supplied Jetadmin software. For example, a sysadmin can set different privileges for different uses, such as colour or large format printing. Privileges can also be set for particular applications so, for instance, you could prevent emails being printed in colour. This is important if you're running on a service contract where you pay a different rate for black and colour pages. The device also automatically switches to black print if it detects no colour in a page, even if colour is set as a print option.

Each of the two 500-sheet paper trays can print on paper from A5 to A3 and the 150-sheet multi-purpose tray can go down to A6. Two further 500-sheet trays can be added and they come as standard on the CM6040f MFP, which also has direct fax built-in. Paper is normally fed to an output tray directly beneath the scanner, though if you add finishing and stacking options, a transfer unit shifts pages across to these devices.

The scanner has a 50-sheet ADF fitted on top and can scan simplex or duplex, though pages are automatically turned and re-fed to scan their second sides – there's only a single scan head in the machine.