Remember the days when a fax machine was used? What about the time when you needed a printer, scanner, and a copier? Well, all of those items, surprisingly, are still needed, but buying individual units is a thing of the past.
The term Multi-Functional Printer or MFP have become the new standard for most businesses. An MFP takes the functionality of a printer and includes a scanner, fax, and copier; voiding the need for three or four separate devices.
As one of the largest printer manufacturers out there, HP has been leading the printing industry for years with some of the most feature-rich business printers in the market. In fact, there is a very good chance that your business has at least one HP printer somewhere in the office.
Here at Tech Support Forum, I’ve gotten to take a look at four different HP business printers over the years. Everything from the smaller business cubical printers to full sized $2,799 small office units. Each MFP that makes its way to me comes with new surprises and features that I wouldn’t even imagine being on a printer.
This time around, I am looking at HP’s latest office printer that is focused for office usage including Microsoft Office document printing and report sharing. Using incredible printing speed and a well managed internal paper management system, the new M477fdw is ready to “wow” the business world.
Welcome to my review of HP’s latest multi-function printer, the M477fdw. Throughout this review, I will be discussing the design, features, functionality, and my final thoughts. A special thank you to HP for providing this printer for this review.
Design
Unlike the last few generations of HP printers, HP has left the dark ages of black printers and have now fully adopted a white layout which provides, in my opinion, a classy look.
Beginning with the physical dimensions of the MFP, width is a maximum 16.8in, depth measuring at 25.7in, and height at 16.3 inches. Weight of the MFP sits at 51.2 pounds, and with its smaller compact size I see this printer to be best fitted in a large personal office space, although, a larger business cubical would be able to support its size.
As mentioned, the body of the printer is 95% white with black plastic for the unit’s touch screen monitor and paper trays.
A physical tour around the body shows a clean front with a chromed HP logo, a lit power button, a USB port, the touch screen display, the NFC transfer pad, and the large 150 paper tray at the bottom. As for the manual paper tray, it is cleverly concealed and incorporated into the front panel. This front panel also doubles as a maintenance access panel when pressing the maintenance button located on the left. Printed documents are exported through the front facing paper export tray for easy access.
Beside the maintenance button, the sides of the MFP contain only ventilation and nothing more. Turning the MFP towards the rear we discover the I/O which includes a power jack, a standard USB port, Ethernet connectivity, Telephone/Fax line-in ports, and a USB-B port. The rear also has maintenance panels for the rare paper jam occurrence.
From a birds eye view, we see the dual paper tray. The top most tray serves its purpose for sending fax or quick paper scanning and the underneath tray serving as the paper return.
Building material of the MFP is hard plastic and should withstand normal business usage. Even with animals around the MFP during this review and not cleaning even a single piece, it still looks like the day I took it out of the box.
I quite enjoy HP’s new white styling and think the body layout of the printer is straight forward. The front paper exhaust tray is well placed and moving around the unit is done with ease.
Although I didn’t disassemble the MFP, internal design is easy to access through the maintenance panels. Quick repairs for toner replacement and clearing jams is clearly visible to the user, but any further internal repairs should most likely be done by an HP technician anyway.
Features
This MFP comes in three different models, but they are fundamentally the same with only the connectivity and dual side printing options varying between them. My M477fdw unit is the highest model and quite frankly, the only real option.
The M477fdw comes with the Built-in Wi-Fi, NFC, and Automatic two-sided printing, whereas one model down loses the wireless capability, and the base model brings back the wireless feature, but loses the two-sided printing.
Very strange, I know. If you can do without the wireless capability, then the M477fdn would be a better option, but the wireless printing voids the timing it takes for your Tech Support team to run an Ethernet line. Although I don’t like how HP offers a feature only to then take away another, the M477fdw is going to the best option here and I’m not just saying that because it’s the one I am reviewing.
Beginning with my favorite and the best feature of this MFP, the MF477fdw is one of the fastest printers that I have encountered. The HP specification sheet states just under ten seconds for the first color print out; I found it to be quicker than that. Black color printing is rated at nine seconds.
With the printer sitting only ten feet away from me, by the time I hit print, for the printer to wake up from idle and for me to get up and walk over there, it’s finished with the first page. I cannot stress enough in words on how fast this unit is and this is helpful with HP’s new toner design.
A printer’s speed is not how fast the motors can pick up the paper and export it to the user, but rather how fast it can put the toner onto the page. HP is now using their new ColorSphere 3 toner which uses a soft core polymer and wax that melts faster than traditional toner. This supports more pages at faster speeds since you don’t need to wait for the heating process. I’ve gone several days before printing anything and the moment I do print, it’s just as fast as the last time.
The toner features continue and as HP likes to call it, it’s known as JetIntelligence. I’ve talked about this intelligent toner before, but new features include a new setup process as well as smarter monitoring. No longer do you need to remove the orange protective band that comes attached to toner cartridges since the toner now removes it for you during initial setup. Furthermore, the smarter monitoring allows you to know the correct number of pages that a toner cartridge can handle; there’s no more guessing when a toner cartridge is going bad.
There is a lot more to this JetIntelligence, but these two final features sparked my interest and hopefully will yours too. The toner can now be locked by your IT department so that end users cannot steal or replace toner on their own. Toner can be expensive so by locking it to the printer, the software inside the toner will not work with other printers even if a person takes it home. Likewise, the printer can be programmed to accept only genuine HP toner to avoid counterfeit cartridges.
Moving on, we have the connectivity options of this MFP. The first is the USB accessibility by enabling users to connect a USB thumb drive and print any documents they wish from the drive. The printer supports Microsoft Office documents which should cover the basics. This printer even supports Microsoft Office Paint in case your inner Bob Ross sparks up during work. Next, users can also use the NFC capability which enables users to drop their smartphones onto the NFC pad and transfer documents from their phone to be printed. Finally, there is the wireless and Ethernet printing which allows both PCs and phones to send documents to the printer through the network.
As with all printers nowadays, this unit comes with HP’s 4.3 inch color touch screen display. The printer uses this interface to interact with the users and removes all physical buttons from the design. This isn’t my first encounter with the HP interface and I was disappointed to see the screen to be identical to the last model I reviewed. As mentioned in other reviews, I find the interface to resemble something from 2010. You get an average touch screen experience, similar to those old touch screen smartphones, and an okay menu layout. Your home, back and help buttons are all capacitive on the screen, and further into the menus things are straightforward, however, when sliding between menus, menu objects can jump into place and isn’t as fluid as it should be. I just don’t find the OS to be that appealing to the eyes.
Moreover, HP has this applications section that means well, but scrolling through the list you discover cooking recipes, news outlets, crossword puzzles, talk shows, and games like Angry Birds. Really? Angry Birds on a printer? Is this applications section for business usage or gaming or getting the daily news?
Okay, so your users won’t actually be sitting there playing Angry Birds or reading the news on this 4.3in screen, but rather be downloading Angry Birds color books and drawing games to be printed. Either way, it serves no purpose on a business printer as with the other applications listed there.
The touch screen display means well, it really does, but it should be a modern flat icon layout and should offer five quick buttons: Current Jobs, USB/NFC/Wireless, Fax, Scan, and Copy; nothing more on the main menu screen. Something so easy that most business users wouldn’t have a problem with it. The rest can be thrown into an IT menu for Tech Support to work on. Things like wireless setup, clearing paper jams, configuring settings, seeing current toner and printer status information should all be hidden away for IT. I deal with end users every day at my work place and I can assure you, they don’t care how much toner is left in the printer or where the settings menu is; they just want it to work and print when they need it to. HP designers make very appealing designs, therefore, they need to take the user interface power away from their developers and give it to the creative team.
Finishing off the features section of the printer, this unit offers duplex printing and is quite fast in doing so. The internal laser printing head is accurate and HP recommends a monthly usage of 750 – 4000 pages to be sent to this machine. While I didn’t hit that 4000 per month mark, I did print my fair share of pages without problems thanks to its impressive calibration and laser technology
Functionality
Printing quality of the M477fdw offers vivid colors with deep blacks, dark blues, and light greens. To show the quality, I took my Samsung Galaxy Note 4 with a 16MP camera with the HDR setting on and took pictures of an image from the M477fdw and my HP Photosmart C7280 home printer. With images at 2160p, I took two images. One inside with indoor lighting and the other outdoor with natural light at 1:30PM with solid clouds above. I used standard letter paper and the image size on the paper is 1024 x 576 and was grabbed from here.
The above image is indoors with lights directly above.
The above image is outdoors at 1:30PM on a cloudy day.
On the M477fdw, the image is rich with color and deeper as well. Others who I asked about which they enjoyed better chose the M477fdw image as well. The printer quality is excellent and I find it to be spot on when compared to other units in the past. Even after hundreds of documents being printed, it remained in perfect color every time. This is due to the 600 x 600 DPI or 38,400 x 600 DPI on enhanced mode.
The power button on the unit glows a nice white when the unit is on and then blinks every four seconds when idling. It is, however, very easily pressed and with multiple users, it can be accidently turned off.
Something that I took great interest in was the edgeless glass scanner surface on the M477fdw. When opening up the top surface to scan a document, HP left the glass surface without an edge or lip. This allows you to slide paper on and off with ease and offers a great stylish look.
Scanning a document completes quite quickly and accurately. The same goes for sending faxes. The process is straightforward and completed within seconds of hitting the on-screen buttons.
In terms of managing the printer for business usage, this printer is very well self-contained. I had zero paper jams and the toner lasted until the end of hundreds of sheets. These smaller personal printers for business usage are a great way to increase productivity as well as the quality of your business documents. Management through the settings was easy and I did find my way to the settings I needed with ease.
Something to take note of is the cost of the toner. Each original, non-high yield, cartridge reports a maximum page print of 2,300 pages. This printer accepts four colors: yellow, cyan, magenta, and black. With the standard color cartridges being $109.99 each and black at $84.99, you’re looking at a $414.96 replacement cost for a full toner replacement. These prices are from HP direct and you might be able to find them cheaper elsewhere, but regardless the toner can get expensive quickly.
My Final Thoughts
This multi-functional printer offers some great new designs and surpasses its M476 predecessor. At a friendly business price of $629.99 the HP M477fdw gets the stamp of approval from me. The printer’s incredible speed matched by its new toner design allows for an increase in productivity as well as overall quality. The user interface needs a bump in the right direction, but for now it’s useable and functional in getting the job done. Both small businesses and personal office users will not regret this purchase.
Buy it Now:
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11 Comments
This printer is easy to manage. No paper zero paper jams and the toner lasts for a long time. These smaller personal printers for business usage are a great way to increase productivity.
How do I set just black printing on the MFP M277dw?
That setting would be performed on the printer driver within Windows or Mac, not the printer.
How can it be performed? I have a Mac and no place to go set black/white only
printing.
I use the predecessor to the 477, the MFP 476dn. If the 477 is equal or better than the 476, it has to be a fantastic, All in One printer! I was amazed at the photo quality color printing the 476 has, so I can imagine the quality of the 477. No price was mentioned, but I would hazard 5 to 600 dollars, U.S.
For general printing, I use aftermarket toners, but for quality photo printing, I use the HP genuine product. ***BIG*** difference in color quality! (Big difference in price too.) Sorry, HP likes to gouge on its toner prices. Name of the game, I suppose. They would be advised to follow S.S. Kresge’s business model: “I would rather sell 10 of something at a dollar profit, than one of something at 10 dollars profit.” The practice of, more items sold, the better a price on restoring inventory, increases profit!
When I wear my 476 out, I will seriously consider the 477, unless a newer model has come out, that is, obviously, better! 🙂
Woa!
Images very sharp
This printer is full with errors and HP should spent more time on actual printing software instead of stuffing UI with dozens of useless web apps that dont work anyway – like printing stamps or newsarticles.
It does not work on 5Ghz wi-fi
It does not scan to Google drive
It has problems printing from Adobe Acrobat
It cannot scan to MAC desktop or anywhere (only scan to email)
Once goes to sleep it is impossible to wake up despite “auto on” feature
This
printer has major issues printing over a network, wired or wireless.
After a few hours the printer will stop responding over the network and
will no longer be discover-able. Printing will fail, the built-in
webserver page will fail, the printer will go completely offline, but
still report that it is “ready” and connected to the network. This is a
major, well known issue with most HP printers this year. There are
lots of help articles about this problem and HP claims to have a
“solution”, but nothing I’ve found will solve the problem permanently.
The best workaround I’ve found is to restart the printer when the
problem occurs, then the printer will work fine for a few hours before
needing restarted again.
I usually have to buy a new printer
every 2 years because they stop working. The quality and longevity of
HP printers has gone way down over the past 10 years, even when you pay
up and buy the $500+ models. Other manufactures are following a similar
pattern hoping to increase the “buying cycle” of printers since
competition have forced prices down. Buying an extended warranty is a
good idea.
Spent most
of the day setting this printer up. I am extremely disappointed that
it is not possible to connect my office network via ethernet and have
the option to print wirelessly from airprint or laptops. I have a small
office network with 3 clients. Between everyone we probably have 6
Apple iPhones/iPads. The only way to print from Airprint is to disable
the ethernet by physically unplugging it from the machine.
SETUP
OF WIRELESS: If you are having problems, check that your router is set
at 2.4ghz. I have a TZ300 Dell Sonicwall. We were using it at 5.0ghz
(preferred), but this printer only runs on 2.4ghz (more interference,
not as good). I switched over my firewall to the 2.4ghz instead of
5.0ghz to accommodate the printer, but you can’t even use the network
function with the wireless.
SETUP OF NETWORK PRINT FOLDER: This
process is really difficult and not user friendly. HP has it setup so
you absolutely must have a “Shared folder” on a machine. I have a file
server and 3 clients attached. Rather than simply point to a folder on
the file server, I had to create a “Shared folder” on the Windows Server
2012 machine, then ensure each user had access to the shared folder
with Read/Write access. Then, I had to add a shortcut to each user
profile on each Client machine to ensure that all staff have access to
the folder. Other manufacturers have simplified this for their devices
such as Olympus. We use a shared folder to drop dictation files with
Olympus that is not nearly as onerous to set up.
The scan quality
is OK if you need a flatbed scanner, but the auto document feeder is
not great. Especially compared to the ScanSnap. This will function as a
backup to our ScanSnap ix500s.
PRINTING: The printer prints OK
in color. We tried to print some brochures and the detail on the photo
is not as clear as we expected. However, it does print everyday letters
in color very well.
CONCLUSION: If I had it to go again, I
would have just bought an ethernet ready COLOR PRINTER without the fax
and scanner. I am truly amazed that it is not possible to have the
printer connected to the network via Ethernet and have the wireless
functionality.
We have to remember that, while this is a enterprise printer, it’s priced at a friendly consumer price. This means that we don’t get all the bells and whistles on large MFP printers in an office building.
While it’s nice, a 5GHz connection on a printer is pretty much pointless. If 2.4GHz is going to have a tough time making a connection through walls or cubes, then 5GHz doesn’t have a chance. Best to go the wired route.
Remember, to have Google Drive scanning capability, HP would need to work with Google directly and that costs additional funds and time. As for printing from Adobe Acrobat, I don’t seem to have any issues. Moreover, even at my place of work, I have never seen somebody use the scan to MAC function on our MFP, so I don’t feel like you are missing much on this printer by it not having it.
For this sleep mode, I have the printer here in front of me. With it in sleep mode, I walked up to it, tapped the screen and it came to life.
I’ve printed large workflows through this printer and did not experience the same problem you had, but these results may vary. I will say that this HP printer did just undergo a software update. Did you download this and have the printer install it?
As for your Apple devices, do you have an Apple server by chance? If so, then you could configure AirPrint through that. May be helpful rather than disconnecting the printer.
For the wireless comments, I’ve never seen a printer that handles both wireless and Ethernet at the same time, mainly because I don’t see a point to do so. If this is on a print server then this printer will have an assigned IP, print jobs to go the server and then are sent by the server to the printer. Do note that this would most likely relieve some of your problems with wireless and other devices printing.
I’m sorry to hear that you didn’t like the printer as much as I did. Please, post your working environment or start a discussion on our forums and I can hopefully help troubleshoot a few things with you in making the printer better than what you are experiencing.
Apart from the power button, the unit employs no other analog buttons.”
Uh… a standard on/off switch has two discrete states. It’s digital, not analog.
I did like your remark about the apps being present to get you to print more. Your cynicism is refreshing.
Question: My print is printing 1 sheet at a time how do I stop that.. It takes forever to print.
Help!
My Printer is amazing but…… I need help it does not print the whole job at once there is a delay in printing. 1 sheet at a time how do I get it to stop doing that.
HELP!