What are the best 2021 Printers to buy? |Best 10 List
Brother MFC-L3770CDW Compact Wireless Digital Color All-in-One Printer with NFC, 3.7” Color Touchscreen, Automatic Document Feeder, Wireless and Duplex Printing and Scanning
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When our old all-in-one surrendered to old age, we spent weeks trying to find a good replacement.Every single printer we looked at had too many unhappy customers. Too many complaints of odd failures, random issues and wasted ink.We came across this and noticed the cheaper print cost and the generally higher level of customer satisfaction. I had experience with BROTHER branded printers at work, and we had a few BROTHER label printers, so we decided to splurge and get this more expensive option.I work from home as does my wife, and 4 of my kids are doing distance learning from home. We needed print/scan/fax capabilities and I didn’t want to be held hostage by ridiculous ink costs.We did have some issues getting this product. The thing said it was about to be delivered for several days then just said it was lost. We were quickly refunded our money and went out locally and bought the exact same model for a little more money. I don’t fault the shipper…it looks like the carrier screwed it up.Since receiving our printer we have been incredibly happy with it. — This thing is lightning fast for a residential printer. It receives the print jobs over wifi, wakes up, and spits out quality prints faster than anything we have owned in the past.- Previous printers would randomly lose connection with the network or refuse to scan to certain computers. With the exception of one software update, this printer has never forgotten where it was or declined to cooperate with any of the 7 computers, 2 tables or 2 phones that print to it or receive data from it.- The cost per page is much lower than with an inkjet. Toner last longer, puts out more pages, is less likely to hold you hostage because the magenta is out or some nonsense.- Not that it matters too much, but it is a good looking machine and doesn’t take up much more space than a standard residential printer.All in all, if you have the extra cash to spend up front, this thing will make it worth your while and may even pay for itself in the long run. We are very glad that we spent the extra money and don’t have any complaints about this machine after several months of use, which seems to be very rare these days with modern residential printers.
I’ve unpacked and set up a fair number of printers in my life, and have never had problems like this one. This printer contains four “drum units”, and each drum unit contains a separate toner cartridge. Inside the drum unit is a single, very thin, very fragile wire, known as a “Corona Wire”, which is exposed to the outside.Upon setting up this printer and installing the toner cartridges as directed, I was greeted with a very cryptic “DRUM!” message. Following the onscreen prompts, I had to remove each drum unit, and slide a green tab back and forth several times to “clean” the drum units — units which are, remember, brand new.My first attempt at doing this seemed to go well, but the printer didn’t agree, still insisting that all four drum units were dirty. On the second attempt, the corona wire literally popped out and broke off of the yellow drum unit, rendering it — and the printer — entirely useless.Amazingly — Brother customer support was responsive and helpful. They responded to my email the next business morning, and by that afternoon and shipped me out — overnight and at no cost — four replacement drum units. That, amazingly, fixed the problem, and made everything work again!Now I have a fantastic printer that’s doing a great job, and I’m confident that the manufacturer will stand by their products!
This printer works well and has all the interfaces you would want. You can print from your computers, tablet and phones! I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 because of two reasons. One is because you have to load a software program onto any computer you wish to receive a scanned document. Second is that during its break-in period it didn’t always feed documents straight. copies and scans appeared to be slightly at an angle, but this cleared up.
Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5850 Wireless Color All-in-One Supertank Printer with Scanner, Copier, Fax and Ethernet
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We have owned several printers through the years HP, Epson, and Canon. They each had their strengths. While Cannon generally prints a better photo, this one comes in a close second. We needed a printer that could handle paper, cardstock, envelopes, index cards, and photo paper. We needed it duplex printing and scanning and we needed affordable ink. This is by far the most expensive printer we have purchased but many years ago we purchased a $400 Epson that was spendy for the time. so it’s all relative. It was an easy set up for our home network. We have had this for 2 1/2 weeks with NO connectivity issues, we have printed from phones, laptops, and desktops and even something to print from work via the printer’s email. One of my favorite things. We have duplex scanned many documents and printed a variety of documents on paper and cardstock. We haven’t needed to print photos on photo paper or envelopes yet. We’ve printed several hundred pages and the ink level hasn’t really changed. The two trays make it nice to have 2 kinds of paper; plain and photo, or plain and cardstock. Up to the purchase of this one, my Epson WF 4740 was my favorite printer (in my classroom) but this one has it beat it’s quieter, slightly faster, and ink will be WAY cheaper. Ex: XL cartridges did 900bl/650 color for $50 bl/137 for the 3 color The ET bottles do 7500 bl/6000 color and cost $30 bl/$67 for 3 colors t by the time I buy 3 cartridges each of black and colored XLs for my WF I would save more than the difference in the price of the printer and still have ink in the ET. For me, just in school use, that would be less than a year to have my printer paid for in ink savings.
Purchased the EPSON EcoTank Pro ET-16600 Wide-Format printer in December 2020 and waited four months to write a review because I do not like writing bad reviews. I have been using EPSON and HP printers since the mid-1980s. My very first printer was an EPSON dot-matrix printer that I used to spit-out computer program code like confetti. Printers in general have “devolved” since then. This printer epitomizes the devolution. Nothing prepared me for the absolute disaster of the ET-16600. It was not the hardware. It was the software, the printer firmware. I contacted Tech Support via email once after buying the printer and they responded with information that was helpful but did not then solve the problem. Since setting the printer up I have received three firmware updates and the printer has improved functionally with every update. When I first got the printer any print job from my Windows 10 computer had to be set from the Windows printer properties interface. With the updates, I can now set some–not all, but some–printer preferences from my WordPerfect and other software. After three months and the three firmware updates, I was finally able to get a non-interrupted (“wrong paper tray”, “wrong paper size”, “paper-jam”) 11X17" printout of my graphic landscaping project. The print quality is very good, about what you would expect from an inkjet printer. It compares favorably with my old HP Laserjet printer. The ink tank feature is a definite plus and was a consideration in my decision to buy. It was the tank feature that prompted my decision over two other wide-format printer brands I looked at. Considering the devolution of personal computer printers, I doubt whether the other brands would have been any better–or any worst.
Great product so far. Although photo quality not quite as crisp as Xerox dry ink printers. Perfect for printing on ANY Type or SIZE paper. Perfect for printing greeting cards, flyers, brochures and everyday printing. Have not used the scanner, as I have an Epson Scanner I use just for pictures & negatives (that I am VERY pleased with). Agree with all pluses on ink usage.
HP LaserJet 550-sheet Feeder Tray (CF404A)
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works as expected, the tray that comes with the printer is way to small for a printer such as this. You will run out of paper too frequently. I choose to purchase the larger tray and program the printer to use it as the default so if the large runs out the smaller one takes over so you can refill the main tray. between the two you have enough paper to run a semi big jobs without running out of paper and is a good size for small to med office.
Took all of 30 seconds to get this installed and working properly.
Just put the printer on top of it and go! Was WAY more easy to install than I expected.
Canon Image CLASS D570 Monochrome Laser Printer with Scanner and Copier — Black
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I am and have been my church’s treasurer for almost 25 years. Normally, I was at the church on Sunday every week and could easily do my copying there. With the pandemic, we have not been gathering due to the age of most of our congregants and worshipping and holding meetings via Zoom. Therefore, I have been generating all my reports that couldn’t be emailed and mailing them or emailing those which were able to be done that way. My old copier died in the process and I needed to replace it, post haste. This Canon D570 has done a very good job and I anticipate, it will be doing it more economically as well. Very pleased with it.
I’m liking this printer. It prints on both sides at same time. However, the price has dropped $40 since I purchased it and I’ve had it less than a month. I think I deserve a refund. That’s easier and more practical that returning it and reordering one.
Set up is nightnare. Very bad instruction manual. I have used and still have 3 Canon image class machines in around our offices, set was always a breeze.This one is as bad as it gets. I have abandoned the set up in wireless and just hooked it up into the network ‘wired’.
Brother HL-L3230CDW Compact Digital Color Printer Providing Laser Printer Quality Results with Wireless Printing and Duplex Printing, Amazon Dash Replenishment Ready
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I’ve used Brother products for a long time. My venerable B&W laser printer is still going strong after many years and many thousands of pages.I was a bit hesitant about a color laser but I finally took the plunge. Glad I did. Print quality is impressive and cost is comparable to inkjet.After setting the printer up, I was surprised to find it in my list of Alexa-supported devices. I wasn’t expecting that. It’s a bit of a gimmick, but I still get a kick out of saying: “Alexa, print my shopping list” and having it spit out of the printer.Based on my experience with Brother, I expect many years of excellent service from my new color laser.
The print quality isnt perfect, but good. Set up is a pill. The instructions given are not adequate for a phone , so I had to refer to YouTube. Printing , once set up, is easy. My huge disappointment, and what made me consider a 1-star rating, is that Brother designed this printer so that the cartridges cannot be refilled, making it much more expensive to use. I have always gotten high quality toner from tonerrefillkits (their brand) for a considerable savings. Thankfully I can at least buy their cartridges, but it still results in paying more than if I just replaced the toner and reuse the cartridges. So, be aware refilling is not an option with this printer.
I was disappointed it did not have scanning capabilities. I assumed it did.
Brother HL-L3270CDW Compact Wireless Digital Color Printer with NFC, Mobile Device and Duplex Printing — Ideal for Home and Small Office Use, Amazon Dash Replenishment Ready
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I have worked in the IT industry for over 17 years (and even longer as the “family computer guy”) and have come across a multitude of printers: Canon, Lexmark, Epson, Brother, Konica, HP, Ricoh, and all have their Pros and Cons. Equally, there are a wide variety of printing technologies available, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Personally, I prefer laser printers for their speed, sharpness, and longevity (their toners don’t dry up like ink-based sources when not used for a long period of time.) For printing photos, however, lasers do not produce the same, stunning results as competing methods.So, how does this color Brother HL-L3270CDW fare? For a budget $200 color laser printer, VERY well!PROS- Inexpensively priced for a color laser printer- Crisp, sharp print quality for text- Graphics and photo quality is excellent- Individual toner cartridges for each color (3 + Black). Note that used ones should be recycled- Extended replacement toner available for VERY high capacity printing- Easy to set up- Small, tilting touch screen on top of the printer for easy configuration (such as WiFi)- Duplex printing (prints on both sides) for supported sizes (letter, legal, executive, etc)- Windows 10 discovered and made ready the printer without any additional steps needed- Sturdy and professional looking- Tray 1 opens on the front for checks/envelopes/manual/photo paper feeding- Tray 2 holds paper for 250-sheet feeding- Printing options: WiFi, WiFi Direct (device directly connected to printer), Ethernet wired network, or USB cable printing- Can print directly via “Brother Web Connect” from cloud storage or social media via the touch screen, such as Dropbox, Google Drive, OneNote, Evernote- Can print directly from mobile devices (both Android and Apple iOS) either through the Brother “iPrint&Scan” app or from other apps that support mobile printing (AirPrint/Apple Mac, Mopria Print Service, etc) — — Direct printing can be facilitated via NFC touch- Google Cloud Print & Apple AirPrint compatible- Toner Save Mode to reduce toner usage- Advanced network and security configuration available through a web browser interface (ie. Secure Print) and Windows’ built-in printer manager — — Secure Print password protects documents from printing and deletes the print data upon power off — — Security options include printing over SSL/TLS (secured via self-signed or CA-issued certificate)- Configurable, automatic power on/off/sleep modes- Quick Start guide was easy to follow. Complete manual available on Brother’s websiteCONS- A bit heavy at about 40 lbs- Bulkier than many black-and-white laser printers, and that is expected for color ones (17.3" x 18.1" x 9.9")- Mediocre print speed of up to 25 ppm (even slower for color prints), but comparatively fast for printers at this price range- USB and Ethernet network cable not included (which is a good thing too: less waste to the environment!)- Expensive toner cartridges, though pricing is about the same as with other brands — — Standard Yield for Black and White, 3 Colors: Part #TN223 BK/C/M/Y ($261 combined, as of this writing) — — High Yield for Black and White, 3 Colors: Part #TN227 BK/C/M/Y ($327 combined, as of this writing)TIPS- You can access the full, complete printer configuration by finding the IP address on the printer (or through the Brother BRAdmin app) and typing it into your web browserOverall, this is a budget, color laser printer with excellent output and fast speed for its class. With a wide variety of ways to print, Brother has made this product versatile, secure, and easy to use, and the downloadable User Guide (PDF) is very well-written.I hope you found this review helpful, and thank you for reading! Thank you!
We just bought this printer because our other one didn’t work with our iPhone Xs. This one had very fast printing and has very clear quality. The first couple sheets had spotting, which is normal but that did not continue to be a problem. We can all find this printer on our iPhones which is pretty awesome for wireless printing. It also has an auto on an auto off feature so you don’t have to fool around with it. I did all the research reap the benefits and just buy this one.Months and months later…. still awesome!
Needed to scan and fax. This does neither. Had to send back.
Canon SELPHY CP910 Compact Photo Color Printer, Wireless, Portable (Black) (Discontinued By Manufacturer)
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I was hoping it would have a direct connect USB cable so that I would not have to download the app on each smartphone that wanted to print.I am trying to contact Canon for the cable but it not as easy as I thought.The one photo did print was good color quality, however, it was cropped and not exactly as seen on my phone or the printer display.I will work with it some more tonight, stand by.
Printed well for about 2 months, then I started to get a line across all my photos… tried dusting it numerous times, but line still appearing. Really disappointed. Still a economical printer though, hence 3 stars.
I just wanted to get onto amazon and say how amazing this little printer is. I bought myself one in 2015, loved it so i gifted it to others, and I’ve been using it on/off for the past five years. I absolutely love how simple and usable it is — the photos print insantly, are easy to edit with the Selphy app, and the ink is dried when it comes out.My favorite usage has been printing out photos to mail to my friend in the army — it’s perfect for decorating walls with your instagram photos, inspirational collections, and for grandparents too! Would buy again 10/10.**also, since the beginning I’ve followed someone else’s advice where you need to remove the ink cartridge before turning the power ON or OFF. that makes each cartridge last a full set of paper and not go to waste.
HP Color LaserJet Pro Multifunction M479fdn Laser Printer with One-Year, Next-Business Day, Onsite Warranty, Works with Alexa (W1A79A) — Built-in Ethernet
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This review is in two parts, short and extended:Short review:=========This laser jet is a very nice machine, but unless you have worked with one before, you may find it confusing to install. The instructions are NOT clear and they leave a lot out. As an example, you are told about removing the film from the front of the machine, but no where does it describe all of the places where they have packed foam and tape onto the machine that needs to be removed.This printer is also NOT wireless. It is a hardwire USB or Ethernet cable machine. The directions are again not clear about how to go about getting your machine up and running. As an example, you a re told to download software to configure the machine, but no one mentions that you need to connect the Ethernet cable first!!!With patience, common sense, and online videos you should be able to install this printer. Once you have, the quality is excellent and it is a very good printer in my opinion. It is one that I would recommend as long as you either have help or the time to install this machine.LONG VERSION OF REVIEW:=================HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M479fdn — ReviewI have a HP Insperion laptop and a Dell desktop PC both running Windows 10 on a home “Wi-Fi network” of Orbi routers from Net Gear.Instructions for removing the printer are a cartoon on the inside lid of the printer’s box as you open it up. Simple and straight forward. Several pieces of paper are in with the printer. One has a numeral one on the top corner and another has a two. There are several more covering support and registration one of which urges you to download the latest firmware for your new printer.I am going to be a home user. This will be the first laser printer for home use I have owned. Previously I used ribbon (a long time ago) and ink jet printers. This will be VERY IMPORTANT to understanding my review and its criticisms of the package as delivered.I placed the printer in the “office room” in my home and sorted through the papers. I started with the set of instructions marked with a big one (1) in the upper right corner. The first pane shows you need to remove the plastic covering on the control panel of the printer, nothing else. The second panel shows how to load paper. The third shows making connections for power and a USB drive. There are also in this panel, printed instructions on selecting proper power, the USB drive and to turn on power. Before turning on power I looked over the entire printer and made sure to remove all the tape and plastic not pointed out in the instructions so far. I opened all drawers and panels and lifted the scanner and so forth. There are a lot of tape and plastic and even foam protection pieces to remove. I then moved on to the set of instructions marked with a big two (2) in the upper right corner called the “Getting Started Guide”.I selected the Self-managed Optimized default on the control panel for step 4.We were ready to download firmware update as specified. Now this model is not equipped with Wi-Fi. There is another model just like this one that does have Wi-Fi; it is fdw where this one is fdn. I next downloaded HP Smart instead of HP Easy Start as suggested for the downloading of software step five (5) in the instructions. It appears Easy Start is no longer supported. If needed, the software is SUPPOSED to tell me when to use a USB cable (not supplied) to load updates for the printer. This did not happen.Now, how do I update and print? Well, I am hoping that if I connect the LAN port on my printer to a physical router node, my printer will visible to my home network. It is connected now! Step five (5) does say, in small print (I am 70), “Easy Start will detect the printer, assist with selecting the printer connection type (USB, Wired, or Wireless), and install the software”. HP Smart performed the connecting instead of Easy Start. The automatic detecting and selecting of a connection type happened after I connected the printer to my router so you need to do this FIRST.I skipped all the updating and registered the printer and then had to fake out the fax settings. HP demands you enter a phone number and set up for faxing even if you do not have a land line. I am not connecting my cell phone to the printer and I do not have a dial-up modem.Since I have a HP laptop at home I went to my HP Support Assistant on the laptop to do the software update. After I had my laptop “discover” my new HP Laser Printer; a COMPLETE download started. I then had to go through the configuration process and questions again to set up the printer. It is working again. For a home user this process is NOT intuitive. Some clarification in the various steps would be nice. Not everyone would have the training, patience, nor friends and family to get this Laser Printer working quickly. The option to skip a step during the setup would be good. I scan and e-mail. I do not fax.I loaded HP Smart to a second PC on my home network and after the installation was complete, it detected and set up for printing to the M479fdn with no problems.Text printing is as expected; clear and sharp. I printed a couple of pictures of my grand-daughter and they are excellent also. I scanned in a couple of items (text and pictures). After starting the scan from a PC, I was prompted to set up a network folder to store different types of scans to (JPEG, PDF, etc.). This was all very easy and straightforward with the HP software. The scans were all very clear and sharp. For home use this will be a very nice machine.
The printer probably ships with the 414A cartridges that only are rated for 2,000 pages. Replacement cartridges cost about 2/3 of the printer. 414X cartridges rated for 12 reams instead of 4 run 150% of the printer for a set. There are knockoff toner cartridges that cost a fraction of the price, but they require transferring the “chip” from the official cartridges.
At this time I did not test the fax part and double printing, but everything else works as expected.Unfortunately, I could not test the double printing capability which requires heavier paper than what I have. I got 5,000 pages which can’t be used for double sided printing because they are too light (75g). At the speed at which I use them, I have a stock for like 10 years… oh well. Maybe I’ll get a pack for double sided printing when I need such.Otherwise, I’m really pleased, the scanning is extremely fast compared to my old Epson Perfection 1260 and can be done in duplex in one pass and that gives me a PDF automatically. It’s much more practical for most of my scanning needs.The printing looks a bit “faded” compared to my old printer, but the quality is still very good. The fact that there is a tray where I can leave paper and not have to load each time I print is also a great improvement.Finally, I got the network only (no WiFi) since I have a WiFi router on my network I did not need to have yet another EMF emitter in my house. I just had to connect the printer to my switch and voilà it worked as expected. Zero setup and I could print my first invoice.So… if you want to be able to print double side, make sure to get the correct paper. From what I understand, it’s at least 120g/page. Outside of that, this is a great gadget!
Brother DCPL2540DW Wireless Compact Laser Printer, Amazon Dash Replenishment Ready
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I bought this 2 years ago, used it for a year, and had it sit in a box for a year. And now it no longer works and the repair company is quoting a whole new PCB board installation. I can’t tell if I broke it from moving it or if the part was just poorly assembled.In terms of when I had it, it was a good workhorse printer. I could never get it to print wirelessly via Apple airport home network, but otherwise it worked fine via USB with my MacBook and Windows PC. scan/print quality was great for the price.Ultimately I feel a little gutted to have to pay $200 to fix a $100 printer. If anyone else reports just a general failure of the circuit board, then maybe it’s build quality with these printers. Otherwise I’m just a dud.
I really like this printer and here is why I like it and how I use it.How I use it:I’ve had the printer for almost a month and use it constantly, daily, for my office. I probably print about 200–300 pages per day from the line of work I’m in which is very paper-intensive (kill trees) type of industry still (unfortunately). I go through toner fairly quickly as a result but thanks to Youtube, figured out which buttons to press to prolong toner life. Downside effect to this hack is that you won’t actually know when the toner truly is out so you start to get really bad print quality fwiw.Things I like:Wireless — took me a while to configure it but it finally worked and love this! LOVE IT! You will have to wait about 2 seconds after hitting print for the printer to wake up and register the data and then scrollers will start spinning. This is great! You’re no longer bound to the printer and I didn’t have to buy an extra printer cable and hog up a USB port on my computer as result.Print speed- is much faster than my old Canon, which I also still use — maybe faster by a few milliseconds? Maybe not noticeable to average person but makes a difference when you are printing a lot of docs.Sound — it’s so much quieter than my old Canon. Even when it runs out of paper, the beeping is noticeable but not piercing.Things I can live with:Extension flaps — designed by an unpaid intern? When you scan or copy documents, the part of the printer where the paper will eventually rest has an extension flap that unfolds. This is to keep the paper from flying around or falling off the printer. However, it’s wonky. When you unfold it, you think it will stay unfolded — but nope, it folds back into itself — mocking you. Since it’s cosmetic and doesn’t really affect the quality of my printouts, I can live with this. I hope the unpaid intern has obtained a paid job finally. Brother, if you read these reviews, maybe you can add just another % into the redesign. (First world problems, I know.) This is where Canon has you beat. Their extension flaps are great!Scanning speed- is meh. Not fast at all. I know it’s marketed as a multi-function but it’s really just a really good printer for me and an occasional, convenient scanner. I would not use this to scan docs that are higher res than 300 dpi and expect it to perform quickly. Now, if you want to scan docs at 300 dpi (which is fine for most docs), it’s fine. But b/c I’m scanning my docs in order to store important documents, I have to make sure the scans capture all info (including any hand written notes or notations that are really small print, in addition to capturing images with higher quality images). I think I will have to separately invest in a high-speed and high-quality scanner. I’m not knocking off any stars for this issue (and fine to live with this issue) since the price point was very reasonable. (Hey, I’m a reasonable consumer.)Area where printouts rest — has about 2 inch clearance, at best. You have to squeeze your fingers (and good luck if they are fat) into this clearance section. I just wish it was a smidge larger.Things I don’t like about this printer and should really be fixed because it’s wasting my time:Manual feed — OMG it’s like the designers forgot this still existed, then remembered it after the fact, and then added it in as an afterthought… If you look at the frontal image, the flap that says “brother” is where you pull down the flap, slide the “paper guards”(?), insert your paper or envelope or label or whatever, to manually feed. The problem is when you insert a regular sized paper, you have to stand there and wait for the printer to latch onto the paper (like a babe’s mouth to his mother’s teat) to make sure the printer will pull the paper in to print. But even then, sometimes I get a paper jam error. One time, for some reason, the paper was sucked into the printer at an angle and the printout was not usable. (This was after making sure I slid the paper guards to the correct size to help feed it.) I think having an extension flap here for the manual feed would really help alleviate this problem altogether. (Brother — please consider this in your next redesign.) I can’t hep but feel like this might be the doing of the unpaid intern again. If this was their summer project, they get a fail. (Hence I knocked off one-star because of this.)Photocopy quality- whatever the default settings are, the standard photocopy settings produce poor quality copies. I’m talking a passport photo will look 3 degrees darker and muddier — definitely not true fidelity. I’m not knocking off any stars b/c you can adjust the copy quality on the keypad. I do it when I absolutely have to but I haven’t figured out how to change this setting to make it default.Faxing: I don’t use this functionality so I can’t comment on that.Overall, for the price I paid (almost 40% less than what I paid for my Canon multi-function 8 years ago), I’m still very satisfied with the brother’s performance. I hope it remains a workhorse for what I put it through. Hopefully it will last me at 8 years!
I like this printer except when I have to connect wirelessly. In the three years that I have owned this printer I have contacted Brother tech support a couple of times, followed their recommendations but no matter: it loves to disconnect from your device and never reconnect until you start over and reinstall the software. I have done that about 20 times and now no longer bother with the wireless function. I have no idea why Brother cannot get their wireless connectivity act together.
HP Color LaserJet Pro Multifunction M479fdw Wireless Laser Printer with One-Year, Next-Business Day, Onsite Warranty, Works with Alexa (W1A80A)
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The good: — Administration interface over HTTP/HTTPS is relatively intuitive and exposes a lot more functionality than the printer itself does on its touchscreen (as far as I could tell). — Sleep mode seems to work as intended, and as expected for a laser printer when not in use it is silent. Does not wake up for maintenance. — Supports a lot of protocols for printing to the printer (IPP/IPPS, AirPrint, some stuff through HP apps, Google Cloud Print, LDP, and a few more). — Thankfully allows for moderately complex setup of networking (can change hostname, configure/manage IPv4 and IPv6 networking, NTP time sync, etc.). — Wireless connectivity works as advertised. Did not try printing with a direct wireless connection, Bluetooth, or Ethernet (although options for managing all of those exist in the administration pages). — Printing works as expected. Seeing that this is my first laser printer, it is significantly faster than any inkjet I’ve printed. It doesn’t take particularly long to warm up. Color printing of photos works well, although they seem a bit dark compared to a calibrated display (could also be the lighting in the rooms I was looking at wasn’t the brightest). Details are sharp, and I’m honestly surprised at the quality. I’m not seeing any artifacting, really. I would still print photos with some other device (say, at Walmart or CVS or Walgreens using a dedicated photo kiosk) to conserve color toner (plus it’ll likely be better), but this printer looks to be good for general purpose color printing.The meh: — Support was prompt, but had me follow a pretty basic script to diagnose issues with the scanner. They were unable to fix my issues, and told me to get a replacement unit from Amazon, which I did. The fact that I had to get a new unit was an annoyance, and looking at all of the forums online, it looks like ADF issues with HP printers are very frequent. Either HP sells way more printers than everyone else combined, or HP has a quality control issue when it comes to ADFs. — Installation software for Windows is slow and sluggish (and hung once for me). I expect some of that is downloading a whole swath of archives, but it also hung for about 20 minutes trying to set up faxing (I think, the UI was glitching) even though I didn’t need to set that up. The second time I went through the setup the software didn’t hang, although sometimes it looked like it did. It went much faster.The bad: — Bug in the web server: if the password for the email account one is going to use to send notifications has an ampersand (&) in it, the web server or whatever service the printer has escapes “&” to “& amp” (without the space, Amazon seems to be filtering out the & HTML code) (e.g. “abc&123” becomes “abc& amp123”), which obviously causes SMTP authentication to fail. Since the internal software for the printer is closed source, there is nothing I could do to fix that. This is something that HP will have to address. — For my original printer, ADF scanning was tilted/skewed, which seems to be a common problem. Seeing that I specifically bought this printer for its ADF (otherwise I would have picked a Brother with better reviews for a color laser printer), this was a deal breaker for me. I followed instructions from HP support to clean the (brand new) ADF sheet feeder rollers, and to adjust the paper binders of the ADF, to no avail. They told me to send the printer back for a replacement, which I received. The very first thing I tested was the ADF alignment, since if that was bad I was just going to request a full refund and just buy a printer from a different manufacturer. Lucky for HP (for now), this ADF seems to work better.- This second printer developed a squeak when feeding paper through the system. HP support thinks is the toner/drum, but I tested removing one at a time to no avail, and the drum is very securely held in the system so I did not remove it (requires removing parts of the casing and unscrewing some elements and manually disconnecting a bunch of small wires). HP support did send a technician to look at it, and they replaced the power board, which changed the squeaking/chirping noise slightly, but it was still there. The first printer did not have this. In the end, I returned the second printer to Amazon for a refund. — I did notice something about the ADF which seems like a design flaw, and might be the cause of all of the mis-alignment complaints that plague a lot of HP ADFs. Well, really two things, but related: 1. There is only one motorized wheel in the middle of the ADF to move papers through the ADF for scanning, and 2. it seems like this roller sticks out a tiny amount from where the paper rests in the ADF, so if the paper guides aren’t set properly, the paper, once pushed into the ADF securely, will most likely lean to one side or another, likely leading to the skew or tilt I saw with the other printer. The paper guides must be set pretty much perfectly (tall order) to prevent this skew. I noticed this with my current printer, but I took a lot more care to make sure the paper guides were pretty much perfect to prevent the paper from tilting inside the ADF. The way to do this (or at least how I did it) is to take a stack of papers, place the papers on the ADF but don’t push them all the way in (so the stack doesn’t swivel around the wheel), make sure they stay as much as in a stack as possible, and now adjust the paper guides around this stack (the way I did this was over-adjusting the guides so the papers bent a little, then holding the guides with one hand and pushing the paper flat with the other slowly, so that the guides were slowly pushed to the perfect size). So long as nothing touches the guides after this adjustment (and one doesn’t get a defective ADF), there should be next to no tilt or skew.I’ve taken a few pictures of the print quality report the printer took. The first picture is one of both the original (on the left), and the copied one, read in from the ADF. Notice the lack of a skew. The second picture is a closeup of the original quality report, and the third picture is the copy of the quality report as scanned through the ADF. One thing to note with the third image is that it seems that with solid colors, the scan produced some line patterns. Since I haven’t played enough with the scanner yet, I don’t know if this is a limitation of the scanner, the result of some pre/post-processing to “clean-up” the image, or just the quality of the scanner. Looking at the quality of the printer, it’s not the printer part that’s producing those artifacts.Overall: If you get a printer with a decent ADF, it seems to be a good color laser printer for its price. Some units tend to have a bad ADF, and even with a good printer it looks like the ADF has a design flaw that makes it difficult to line up the pages, but it can be made to work. Printer works as expected and I am pleased at how fast it is, and the web administration is pretty nice. I’m taking one star away for the password bug I mentioned and how finicky the ADF can be, and another for HP’s bad QA, otherwise this looks like a capable printer. I would like to see HP design a better ADF for future models, though. I’m sure some people will like the printer, but I just don’t want to deal with the possibility of getting another bad one, so I will be taking my business elsewhere.
The HP Color LaserJet Pro Multifunction M479fdw insists on having tray 1 loaded with paper, which is the pull open tray that I don’t use. It loses connection with the network constantly — though it is less than 12 feet from the router. HP has been the worst for connectivity in my history of having four of their printers over the past 20 years. The most recent printer I replaced with this one was a Brother Workforce which was fantastic — — it was damaged in a move so I had to replace it.This laser printer prints very nicely. The interface, connectivity and paper tray control are terrible.
This is a good quality printer. We received our printer and out of the box got an error for the wrong toner cartridges even though it was bought new from Amazon. Contacted HP Tech Support through Chat and tried to reset but it did not fix the issues. They provided me a tech support ticket number and advised to reach out to the seller and get it replaced.Contacted Amazon customer service and they immediately setup for a return pickup which was picked up within 24 hrs. They advised the new one would take 2–3 weeks to get as their was a national back order which we were fine with. The new printer showed up within a week (way to go Amazon). New printer worked as advertised.Thanks Amazon for fixing this problem so quickly.
