Review: HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M277dw

Intro and design

As one of the first printers to sport HP's new JetIntelligence technology, HP makes bold promises on the performance of its Color LaserJet Pro MP M277dw ($429, £273, AU$528). The M277dw is a multifunction office printer that's more compact, faster and delivers more prints from its cartridge thanks to JetIntelligent.

HP's marketing claims that the new ColorSphere technology inside the toner allows the ink to melt at a lower temperature and uses less energy for efficient, high yield prints inside a printer that occupies less space on a desk.

he M277dw competes in a crowded space against personal and small workgroup inkjet and laser printers. Competitors include multifunction inkjet printers like the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4630 ($200, £130, AU$253), Canon Maxify MB5320 ($399, £260, AU$505) and the HP OfficeJet Pro X551dw ($300, £200, AU$380). The printer will also compete in the same segment as smaller multifunction color laser printers, like Samsung's Multifunction Printer Xpress C1860FW ($224, £145, AU$285).

Design

Although the M277dw takes up less space than the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-3630 that we recently reviewed, the size difference isn't that big unless you have a shallow desk. The M277dw weighs 35.9 pounds (16.28kg) and measures 16.5 x 16.4 x 12.7 inches (41.91 x 41.66 x 32.26cm) compared to the 31.3-pound (14.19kg) WF-4630's 18.1 x 25.8 x 15.1-inch (46.0 x 65.5 x 38.4cm) dimensions. HP claims that the M277dw is 41% smaller in size than last year's LaserJet Pro 200 color MFP M276nw.

The M277dw's size makes it somewhat of a tweener, falling in between a personal printer that can be placed on a desk and a shared workgroup printer. HP could have made a small tweak by increasing the capacity of the paper tray to make the M277dw a solid workgroup multifunction printer, but that would make the printer taller, eroding HP's compact claims.

Even though the M277dw can be used as a workgroup printer, the small 150-sheet paper capacity will likely limit the printer to personal use. You'll likely end up having to refill the tray more often than you'd like if you're sharing this printer with a team.

Compared to the angular lines and faux brushed metal finish on last year's M177fw and M276nw, the boxy, off-white design and horizontal lines on this year's model feels uninspiring. Aesthetically, it feels like HP downgraded the visual elegance on the M277dw. This year's model looks like a standard HP Color LaserJet Pro M252dw ($299, £192, AU$378) with an automatic document feeder attached on the top.

The automatic document feeder can be lifted and tilted at an angle, similar to the hood of a car, to give access to the paper output tray. I found the tilting aspect makes a big difference.

Before tilting, there is about a 1.5-inch clearance to access prints. The tilt widens the clearance to over six inches, meaning you can comfortably retrieve smaller prints, like photos, envelopes and postcards. As I rarely scan, the default position is with the automatic document feeder in its up position.

Even though the M277dw has a 150-page tray, HP says the output tray can accommodate only 100 pages, meaning you'll max out the output tray before you run out of paper. We've reached out to HP about this design decision and are awaiting response.

Save for a physical power button, the three-inch tilting touchscreen serves as the primary and only interface to control the M277dw.

Setup and print costs

For basic printing needs, initial setup is a breeze. The printer is packaged inside a large bag that's sandwiched between foam inserts for protection during shipping. To remove the printer from the box, HP recommends that you lay the box on its side and pull the plastic bag with the printer out, making it easier than having to lift a heavy printer out of a snug box.

Once the printer is out of the box, it takes about 30 seconds for the printer to initialize when it's powered on. Unlike the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4630 inkjet that I recently reviewed, the laser toner cartridges are pre-installed in the front bay of the M277dw, which can be accessed by pulling the front hatch down. The four color toners - black, cyan, magenta and yellow - are installed on a tray that slides out.

The initial process takes about five minutes as the printer calibrates, far quicker than the twenty minutes required for calibration on the Epson WF-4630. After the process is complete, users can begin immediately using the printer as a copier and for faxing by plugging in a standard telephone line.

Connecting the printer to the router took about another minute. Using the three-inch LCD screen, I was able to choose the Wi-Fi Protected Setup, or WPS, which required me to push the WPS button on my router.

In terms of software installation, HP ships the printer with a DVD containing the drivers and software. I chose to download the software from HP's website to get the most up-to-date drivers available for my Mac. Unlike other manufacturers that bundle convoluted software, drivers and installation packages on their support page, HP had a single download to make things easy.

On my Mac, I downloaded the HP Easy Start printer app. Once the app runs, it will detect the printer and prompt users to choose the basic download as well as the scanner drivers. Installation took less than five minutes.

Although the printer setup was straightforward, setting up the scanner for Wi-Fi scanning and remote scanning was a bit more complicated. Unlike Epson, which allows users to scan to a PC, email or to a cloud account, HP delivers scanned files to a shared folder, email or groups. This offers convenience to teams working with shared documents, but requires more effort in setting up.

The setup process could have been simpler, but as it stands users will need to know the SMTP address and port for their email as well as how to configure a shared folder on their PCs. It's not overly complicated, but does require a little bit of tinkering and non-tech savvy users may be put off by the extra involvement required.

Print costs

Unfortunately, despite the JetIntelligence technology, print costs are expensive, with color prints exceeding 10 cents per page, even with the high yield toner cartridges.

The standard black toner, which retails for $66 (£42, AU$83), provides a 1,500 page yield, delivers a cost of 4.5 cents for black-and-white prints. Color prints are more expensive. There are three color toners at a cost of $78 (£50, AU$99) per toner with a print yield of 1,400 pages. This means that color jobs will cost roughly 21.4 cents per page.

The costs are lower with the high yield toner cartridges, but per page costs aren't as cheap as HP's enterprise inkjet printers or Epson's WorkForce Pro 4630 inkjet.

With the high yield cartridges, black-and-white jobs cost three cents per print and color jobs cost 15.9 cents per print. The black cartridge retails for $89 (£57, AU$113) and delivers 2,800 pages of prints while each of the color cartridges costs $99 (£64, AU$125) with a yield of 2,300 pages.

For comparison, the inkjet-based HP Officejet Pro x551dw ($299, £192, AU$378) costs less and delivers even more economical print costs with 1.3 cents for black-and-white and 6.1 cents for color. Using the Epson's XL-branded high yield inkjet cartridges, the WF-4630 delivers black-and-white and color prints at half the cost of HP's Color LaserJet.

Performance

HP claims that the new laser printing technology used inside the M277dw allows it to deliver up to 40% faster print speeds and 28% more prints per cartridge in a package that's 40% smaller while using 53% less energy.

HP advertises that the M277dw can print up to 19 pages-per-minute in either color or black-and-white. While the speeds are only about half as fast as HP's larger and much more expensive enterprise-class office printers, they match print speeds delivered by modern workgroup printers.

Printing a two-page PDF in color with fine text, it took about four seconds for the printer to warm up, and a total of twelve seconds for the first print to arrive. The total print time for two sheets took about 25 seconds from the moment I hit print on my Mac. With a standard five-page Word document with standard text size and minimum formatting, it took about thirty seconds for the total job. In general, I averaged between 12 and 18 pages-per-minute with simple documents.

Overall print quality is great, but lack the sharpness that an inkjet printer produces. Even though text quality is good for all but the smallest of font sizes, I notice slight pixelation and jagged edges around each letter.

Printing PowerPoint decks with heavy graphics, I found the quality to be about average, with colors appearing slightly darker than normal. There is also some graininess to the print, but fortunately with large patches of colors I didn't notice any posterization, or color banding.

For enterprise users who work with confidential documents, HP's JetAdvantage Private Print technology will hold your print jobs in a cloud queue until you're at the printer and can authenticate with a PIN, or a smart card on a larger office MFP. In addition to privacy, JetAdvantage Private Print also prevents your print jobs from sitting on the output tray, potentially getting mingled or lost in a colleague's finished print job.

An upgrade from the LaserJet Pro 200 MFP M276nw is the support for automatic duplex printing on the M277dw. On last year's model, duplex printing required manual intervention. HP claims that print speeds have improved on this year's model by 26%, and users can squeeze out 28% more pages out of the standard and high capacity cartridges.

As HP didn't provide photo paper for laser printer, I did not test photo printing using the M277dw. Because laser printers generate heat to print, photo paper designed for inkjets would not work with a laser printer, and the paper's coating may melt going through the M277dw.

I found photos that are part of a PDF marketing brochure and PowerPoint presentation that I had printed appear good on standard office paper, but lacked the sharpness and vividness produced by an inkjet printer that may be required for discerning photographers.

Unfortunately, even though the M277dw can handle duplex, or double-sided, printing, the automatic document feeder only allows for one-sided scanning and copying. With copying, the automatic document feeder can make single-sided to single-sided copies or single-sided to double-sided copies. You can't do double-sided to double-sided or double-sided to single-sided copies with the M277dw, which is an unfortunate limitation given that this printer is marketed to business users.

The upside to the scanner is that it can handle resolutions up to 1,200 x 1,200 dpi while the copier can handle resolutions up to 300 x 420 dpi. The M277dw has a scan speed of 21 pages-per-minute for black-and-white and 14 pages-per-minute for color. Like printing, copying speed is 19 pages-per-minute for both black-and-white and color jobs.

If you're opting to use the flatbed for scanning and copying instead of the automatic document feeder, HP made a great design decision to remove the edges on the scanner bed. This reduces the time it takes to remove paper for scanning as you can slide off the sheets when you're done instead of trying to lift the sheets up.

There are plenty of options for printing and scanning using the M277dw. Users can print on the network, send a job to the printer via an email, or print remotely off the network using HP ePrint. Mobile users can use AirPrint on iOS or download HP's mobile print app on Android. Additionally, ePrint is also supported, allowing you to print from configured email and cloud accounts from your smartphone or tablet.

Even though the initial setup process of the M277dw is straightforward, I found the more advanced remote scanning capabilities clunky. For instance, even scanning while on the network required a rather complicated setup process compared to the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4630. HP's scanning feature allows you to scan and send files to a shared network drive, rather than to a computer on the network itself like on the Epson, but requires a bit more technical know-how to setup.

Similarly, for remote scanning, I wasn't able to simply configure an email address for the printer to deliver my scans; I had to enter in ports and SMTP settings.

Although the M277dw offers more flexibility for larger workgroups, busy executives may not want to dig around and manually configure these settings themselves. Because of the more involved setup process for advanced features, it feels like the M277dw should be configured by an IT department rather than an average personal user.

For those who still live in the paper world, HP also includes a number of apps that allow you to print content straight from the printer. For example, news apps such as NBC News and Forbes Daily allow you to print news and financial information on demand or at a scheduled time each day. It's like having the paperboy deliver a fresh copy of the paper each day.

Verdict

It's not just the M277dw's size that makes it feel like a tweener, sitting somewhere between a personal printer and a workgroup printer. Although the M277dw produces great print results and can quickly handle most office print jobs with speeds up to 19 pages per minute, the printer has some shortcomings that limit its appeal as either a personal office printer or as a shared printer.

We liked

The M277dw is a solid office printer that can handle most documents. Print speeds for PDFs, PowerPoint decks, Excel spreadsheets and Word documents were fast, with sharp text and nice color saturation.

The compact size of the M277dw makes it versatile for use as a personal office printer or for a shared workgroup, provided you don't mind frequently reloading paper into the small paper tray.

We disliked

As a workgroup printer, the HP M277dw falls short on a few key areas. First, the printer ships with a single document tray that accommodates only 150 sheets of paper, whereas rivals typically can hold 250 sheets. Second, the M277dw lacks duplex scanning ability, which limits its utility as a workgroup scanner.

If users are looking to adopt the HP M277dw as a personal printer in an executive office or home office, complex remote scanning places a heavy burden on the average user. Inherent with laser printers, those with a keen sense of smell may not want to place the M277dw on their desk as there is a faint odor coming from the system due to the heat generated in melting the toner when printing.

Final verdict

As a workgroup printer, the M277dw trades duplex scanning and a high volume paper tray for a more compact size, yet as a personal printer the M277dw's complicated scanning setup may turn off busy executives unwilling to dig into the printer's settings. The M277dw makes sacrifices on both ends of the spectrum in HP's attempt to keep size down, and unless you're only after solid prints, there may be better offerings in the multifunction department.

Enterprise users sharing this printer in a team or bigger office will appreciate HP's JetAdvantage Private Print technology, which will hold jobs in a cloud queue until the user releases the job for printing by entering a PIN into the printer. This ensures that confidential documents won't be picked up by a colleague accidentally.

The M277dw is a solid printer, but one whose identity isn't fully thought through. With solid enterprise features for a workgroup printer, it's still held back by a miserly paper tray capacity. For offices with high volume printing needs, a professional inkjet can offer similar features with even lower per-page printing costs.

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