Sharp AL-2040cs Review

At 45 pounds, the all-in-one copier has a footprint 25.4” x 17.5”. The copier is a little large to put on a desk but will feel right at home on any credenza, and the second paper tray brings it at a height comfortable for someone standing next to it to manually make copies or scans.

The AL-2040CS uses a stationary 8.5” x 14” platen for scanning instead of a sliding platform to keep its footprint no bigger than its physical size.  The automatic document feeder (ADF) allows for 50 single-sided originals up to legal-size: more originals can be fed in as the level lowers. By scanning the original once and storing the image into its 16MB memory allows the AL-2040CS to produce copies at the rate of 20 pages per minute and up to 99 copies.

Having built-in Ethernet network support and a hi-speed USB, the AL-2040CS is right at home either in the middle of an office floor or connected to a secretary’s computer. It gives an office with multiple computers to be able to utilize one machine for printing instead of having to buy a printer for every workstation. With its increased memory, the AL-2040CS can easily handle multiple print jobs at a speed of up to 16 pages per minute. Using the provided software on your computer, the AL-2040CS can scan color images with resolutions up to 600 x 1,200 dpi.

The AL-2040CS has three different exposure modes & resolutions (auto, manual, photo). Automatic (or default) resolution is 600 x 300 dpi. “Photo quality” is 600 x 600 dpi at 256 grayscale levels. The magnification can be changed from 25% to 400% in 1% increments or in 6 jumps.

One of the “gotchas” for 2-sided copying is the originals in the ADF must be single-sided. One option rather than burning through paper making the originals 1-sided is if the originals are in electronic form to use the printer capabilities of the AL-2040CS to print them from a computer as 2-sided duplicates.

The control panel for the AL-20x0 series is pretty straightforward, so you don’t need to go to the manual to figure things out. In addition to magnification, quantity, and exposure, you can control which paper tray to use and to switch to the toner save mode. Indicators blink for toner and drum replacement, and paper jams. Unfortunately, the jam indicator does not show where inside the copier the misfeed is, so you’ll have to do the sleuthing yourself.

This Sharp has two sliding paper trays, each holding up to 250 sheets of either letter (8.5” x 11”) or legal (8.5” x 14”) size paper. The two-tray feature is especially nice in an office where legal and standard size papers are often used. Non-standard sizes from 3” x 5” up to 8.5” x 14” can be placed singly on the scanning platform, or up to 50 sheets placed on the multi-purpose flip-tray on the side of the copier.

The design of the AL series is primarily based to focus on copier features, not so much on the printer side. During its prime, having a 16 ppm speed was impressive for a laser printer. In truth, the touted 16 ppm speed can only be achieved at lowest resolution, but that’s the caveat for any printer specs. Don’t expect the faster print speeds of 20 ppm or more that’s typical of current monochrome laser printers.

As this was one of Sharp’s first network copiers, it runs on the slower 10BaseT and cannot be connected to a hub or switch that cannot auto-switch between the two speeds.

The printer emulator doesn’t include PCL or PostScript, but relies on Sharp’s own proprietary emulator. For standard printing, most users won’t notice any difference in performance or print quality.