HP - LaserJet Pro M479fdw Wireless Color All-In-One Laser Printer - White

This is my first color laser printer that I’ve used outside of a corporate office environment, and I think it performs every bit as well as the behemoths in the workplace. This printer responds quickly to submitted print jobs and initializes/starts printing within a few seconds of hitting print on my laptop. The prints also come out fast, so you won’t be waiting a long time at the machine unless you’re printing hundreds of pages. Black and white prints and text are crisp, dark, and consistent and color prints are bright, vivid, and fairly true to color. I will say that with photographic prints, I noticed some slight banding in solid color areas, the colors were somewhat less saturated than what you see on a screen; if you look closely you can see grains of distortion in finely detailed portions of the photo, though that could be a combination of the resolution of the original image, print scaling, and the kind of paper used. In general, I thought color photos printed on plain white paper came out looking great. When scanning and photocopying, all colors, including black are somewhat lightened/faded. It’s slight, but if you scan or copy the copy, each pass will make the text and images lighter, and the edges of text and images are softened. This printer is fairly large, bulky, and heavy, so I suggest finding a permanent place for it to live in your home or home office that gives you access to all sides of it. It needs a lot of extra space because the paper tray slides out the front and the back panel may occasionally need to be opened to clear paper jams (at least an extra foot clearance front and back). The scanner bed lid raises the height requirement an extra 10 inches as well. The printer was pretty easy to set up if you follow the quick start manual directions closely. WiFi setup took only a few minutes, and I was able to connect to it wirelessly and start printing after downloading and installing the software to my computer. The only part that was not explained well was changing the IP address of the printer to static versus automatic so that it would be consistently found on my home network. After I did this I stopped having the issue where my computer wouldn’t find the printer on the network after the printer went to sleep or was rebooted. Controlling everything using the touch screen is straightforward with taps and swipes just like on a smart phone or tablet. I like that there are a lot of ways to send jobs to the printer. With Web Services turned on, you’re assigned a unique email address that if you send a document to, the printer will receive the document as a print job from anywhere with an internet connection. You can also use a USB stick and print files directly off of it, or scan documents and save to it as well. If you prefer not to print documents right away when sending jobs over the network, with a USB thumb drive installed in the back of the machine, it can store jobs that you can retrieve and print at the machine instead. You can also password or PIN protect those jobs so they won’t sit unattended in the document retrieval tray if the documents are sensitive and the printer is located in a public area. There’s also the option to connect directly to the printer via USB, WiFi-direct, or Bluetooth if you don’t want it to be network connected. The mobile app was straightforward and simple to use to print documents and photos from mobile devices. You can even select files from online storage like Dropbox, Google Drive, and social media like Facebook and Instagram. The one thing that I don’t like is that the genuine toner cartridges for this printer are pricey (there are 4 of them) and can be exorbitant if you want the high capacity cartridges, but as it is, with my printing needs, the starter cartridges will last me a couple years as they’re supposed to be able to print upward of 2000 pages each. If you print a lot, you may want to invest in the 3rd paper tray (stacks onto the bottom), which is sold separately and can hold up to 550 sheets of paper. The two included trays can only hold 50 and 250 sheets respectively; both can house a variety of sizes of paper and even envelopes. I just wasn’t a fan of how extending paper tray 2 for legal paper made the drawer stick out from the machine about 2 inches. Seems like a dust catcher, though practically, I don’t think I’d ever leave legal paper in that tray making that point moot. Not sure who uses fax anymore, but that’s an available option as well with both a dedicated phone line and pass through phone jack in the back. The printer does not put out a lot of heat, has relatively low toner odor after printing, and is fairly quiet during operation. I have it set to go to sleep after 1 minute of inactivity to save electricity. Overall, this printer has all the bells and whistles that you’d need for an office printer and can handle small to medium volume professional and home business printing. It’s easy to set up and use and gives you flexibility with internet connected apps and security with various types of job handling. The print quality for black and color are great, as are digital scans, though photocopies may end up slightly lighter than the original document.

Upon reviewing this new HP Color laser Jet Pro MFP M479FDW, I have some experience with wireless printers. At work we have a lot, somewhere around 18 of these laser units. They mainly consist of Brothers MFC and a Few Color Canons so I compared this HP to what we are using now, just to name a few. Brother MFC-L2700DW Brother MFC-9330CDW Canon MF624CW Now it’s tough to beat Brother and Canon but I had an open mind. I’m not no expert in Wi-Fi copiers but I’ve had more than my share of frustration setting copiers on the Wi-Fi before. I did purposely did NOT look at the setup instructions. I literally opened the box, placed the Copier next to our Canon MF624CW, removed the protective films and plugged it in. Weight and footprint (size) was pretty much identical to the Canon and Brother 933. Its footprint is 16 ½” Wide 18” Deep 15 ¾ “ High at 51lbs but keep in mind there is a rear paper feeder which would increase the depth , with the top door open its 26” high. Holds 250 sheets of paper capacity and can hold 50 sheets for scanning on its top feeder. Opening up the trays and toner storage, it felt well-built and sturdy, like a business copier should. It comes with a phone cable and a USB printer cable. Trust me in this, you won’t need the USB cable unless you don’t have Wi-Fi. The control screen is large for a printer and a breeze to navigate and tilt-able. Unlike the competitors, you don’t have to tap to go to a next page, just swipe left or right as you would do on your cell phone. It was bright, clear, easy to navigate and self-explanatory. Within MINUTES I had it connected to our Wi-Fi, a first. I then scanned for wireless networks, found the HP Printer and connected to the printer directly with a simple password. Next step I did a search for wireless network printers, found the HP printer and windows installed it. Once done I reconnected my PC to my Wi-Fi internet and all was done! It WAS that simple. Loaded with features such as double sided printing, 1 pass double sided scanning so you can scan a double sided page in just 1 pass, impressive. It’s equipped with a walk up USB slot as well as a rear USB for Storage. It can handle up to 7 PC’s connected wirelessly. Printing was fast and clear. I then installed The HP Smart App on my cell and within minutes I was printing from my cell directly to the HP MFP M479FDW, so easy a caveman can do it. Once sent, it woke the printer and was printing within seconds. The quality of the color prints were amazing for a color laser and I was using regular stock 20 lb. paper, I wished I had photo paper to really get a feel for color. This is the FIRST printer I ever had to deal with where I could not only connect 1 but up to 7 PC’s so easily and wirelessly. Not To leave out it has Apple Air and Google Cloud print, first page prints in 9.5 seconds and 28 PPM which these specs beats all of our in house laser printers. A check on price when comparing, this HP is a bit more expensive than the competitors BUT you get Blue Tooth print, Apple air and Google cloud which others don’t support. I just noticed it’s on sale, a bargain and a no brainer loaded with options and ease of use. It outperformed ALL our in house laser printers in EVERY aspect. Speed, resolution and especially in ease of set up. I can stress enough how easy it was to set up! After a little reading I see HP designed this copier with small business in mind and HP got it right. No fuss, no Cat lines, just plug and connect. Everyone in our office has taken notice and has spent a little time with it. Several have connected to it and are using it. Everyone has been impressed. Time will tell how rugged it is but as of now, HP has a winner. I took my company Black and White Brother MFC-L2700DW Laser printer off, gave it to my boss and said I’ll use my new HP printer thank you!

In terms of general all around performance, you can’t do much better. This HP Laserjet Pro does everything really well, with the exception of scanning (could be better) and photo printing (which it’s not built to do). It’s ease of use, after initial setup, is another feather in its cap. The only real downside (and it’s a function of what it is) is it’s footprint and weight. That’s not a con, but something to keep in mind depending on your space. The other downside, again, common to all color laser printers, is the cost of the toner. IN THE BOX After getting the printer out of the box (which is a chore given how heavy it is) you will find a power cable, USB cable and ethernet cable. Nothing special. The color toner is already installed, so in terms of physically putting things together, there’s not much to do. You just need to find a space in your office/home that’s big enough to handle it. SETUP For whatever reason, I struggle with getting printers to work the first time. Especially wireless ones. A lot of my struggles relates to getting the right drivers. Windows will find the printer but it just won’t work. Luckily, the touchscreen on the printer itself is helpful. It directs you to the website where you can download the printer’s software on your computer. For me, I am using this printer connected to my desktop via USB cable. So I plugged the cable into my computer and printer, and after the HP software was downloaded, my printer was registered and the proper drivers downloaded. I can’t speak to the Wi-Fi set up, meaning, set up via Wi-Fi only (although I did easily connect the printer to my Wi-Fi, made easy via the touchscreen). More on printing via Wi-Fi in a moment. All in all, I thought the set up via USB cable was easy and straightforward so points to HP in helping this printer-setup challenged guy. EASE OF USE Now the first time I used it, I was printing a Word document. The printer was listed in the menu, but it wouldn’t connect and print. Luckily, after a few tries it just worked. From there, it’s been like magic. Whether I’m printing from my Android phone (NOTE: you have to download HP print services from Play Store) or from a Wi-Fi computer (again, after downloading the HP print services program) I can print anything from anywhere. I’ve printed double-sided without issues. Changing color to B/W is easy in the menus itself. The touchscreen is intuitive and easy to use. Truly, this is one of the few professional printers/scanners/fax machines that is really easy to operate. Having it do what you want is no problem. After downloading the HP software mentioned above, I was able to find the printer on my laptop while connected to my wireless network (again, after connecting the printer to Wi-Fi network). The printer appeared as if it was plugged directly in to my computer and I never had any issues printing while on the same Wi-Fi network. When scanning, you have the option to email the scan to someone or you can save it to your computer. I typically scan documents to myself, so saving them to the computer saves me the time of having to find the document in my inbox. When you’re done scanning the documents folder pops up and the PDF you just scanned is already there. QUALITY As a laserjet color printer, I expect great results. I was not disappointed. The quality of both B/W and color text is above-average in my humble opinion. The speed of printing is pretty good too. I don’t recall the actual PPM numbers, but that doesn’t matter. This will print B/W, color, and double-sided fast enough for any use. Even if it’s a large document. Printing color pictures on the other hand, wasn’t anything special. It was good, don’t get me wrong, but I wasn’t too impressed. But I didn’t get this to print pictures so that’s okay to me. Scanning, however, I was left wanting more. Before I get into quality, I do want to say that the auto feeder for scanning works well even on folded pages (as in, they scan straight and don’t get too skewed one way or the other) and my guess, can handle about 50 pages although I haven’t tested it. In other words, it can handle most things you need to scan in one fell swoop. Quality however, was a different story. I was underwhelmed with the scan quality both on the scanning bed and the feeder. The text and pictures were left jagged and the colors muted. It’s not so bad for me to say that you shouldn’t get it, but if scan quality is a top priority I might second guess it. For me, I mostly scan to save digital copies of hard files for filing purposes and for that, the scan quality is fine. CONS While I’ve mentioned a few already, the cons can be described as: 1) size and footprint and weight (again, it’s not surprising, it’s just something to keep in mind); 2) scan quality (below average, if you must have great scans, look elsewhere); 3) noise (this baby is loud when it’s working and warming up, louder than other multi function use printers I’ve used in the past). I would also add having to download HP software on your phone and laptops to print wirelessly. It’s not really that big of a deal, but the printer itself doesn’t tell you that it’s necessary (neither do the instruction manuals, which could really use some help in the readability department). I didn’t know to do this until I did some Google searching. Again, it’s not a deal breaker, but having clear instructions is important to me and HP fails in regards to showing the user how to take advantage of ALL of the functions and abilities of this very capable printer. But once you figure it out and how to use the features, it works great. Lastly, the cost of toner. Toner is ALWAYS expensive regardless of the printer, but when you add in color, the cost increases exponentially. It’s probably $200 to replace these. I haven’t gone through all of the toner yet, but it will sting my wallet when that time comes. But again, it comes with the territory. I only mention that for the people who might not have known about laser toner costs. CONCLUSION While it’s too much printer for the average home, if you do a lot of printing and/or have a small business, this printer is a terrific option. It prints in high quality at fast speeds (except photos) and the scanning and fax functions are adequate enough for most purposes. Best of all it’s simple to use after it’s all set up (which might require some Google searching). All in all, I’m very happy with the printer.

Overview The HP LaserJet Pro M479fdw is a multifunction device, it can print in color, scan, fax and copy. Its big and a bit on the heavy side, 50lbs and sits 16” tall. The box advises you to tip over and pull out on its side, good advice! My printer arrived packed very securely, all the flaps and covers were taped to minimize movement during shipping. This is my first laser printer in a long time. I noticed you no longer have to pull out a strip on the toner cartridges and risk getting ink powder on the floor. Once the packaging has been removed, just plug it in and setup. Setup: The LCD screen is a pleasure to use, unlike my current printer, an older inkjet, this LCD screen is large (approximately 4.25” corner to corner), bright (brightness adjustable), the on-screen keyboard is precise and the screen feels sturdy, doesn’t flop around when you press the buttons. Basic setup was simple, type in your WiFi password, follow the prompts. In addition to setting up the printer on WiFi, (I didn’t use USB cable), I also enabled HP ePrint (under “web services”). This feature allows you to email print jobs to the printer from anywhere by simply emailing your unique HP ePrint email address. The printer will provide you with a unique eprint email. This feature is great especially if you have technology challenged family members you need to occasionally send stuff to, like I do. Rather then calling and walking them through how to print an attachment each time, I just email the printer. Setup to “Scan to network”: I have a NAS (network attached storage), I wanted to set up scanning directly to a folder the network drive. I found this to be not as straightforward as it should be. All the printer settings can be access through a web browser, simply type the printer’s IP address, for example, 192.168.1.100. In the “SCAN” – “SCAN TO NETWORK” you can set your default scan settings, such as paper size, double sided, file name prefix or suffix. But it doesn’t have the “folder path” here. To set up a folder to scan to, you have to go to “ADDRESS BOOK” – “CONTACTS” and create an entry here under UNC Folder Path. I think it would’ve been more intuitive to have put this setting under “SCAN TO NETWORK”. ON a side note, this scanner can scan both sides of the page with 1 pass. Performance: The copy, scan and print quality of this printer is excellent! The text on the print outs are very crisp and sharp, exactly as I expected from a laser printer. I was surprised how nicely pictures print out, although I’ll probably keep my inkjet printers for that. Air Print works flawlessly with my idevices. There are many different ways to print from the printer, you can connect directly with WiFi Direct, Bluetooth, air print, USB drive, Google drive, Dropbox and perhaps the most common, USB cable, WiFi or wired ethernet cable. There are almost too many options, if there’s such a thing. I printed a test page from https://printatestpage.com/ to compare my current inkjet to the color laser, the text is sharper and the images more saturated on the laser. For home usage, the difference isn’t a big deal. The inkjet is fine for most if not all printing tasks of a typical household plus inkjets still print photos better. Overview: If you need a printer for high volume, this multifunction laser printer is an excellent choice. With print speeds of 27 pages per minute and monthly cycle of up to 50,000 pages, this printer is suitable for an office environment. Pros: 1. Excellent print quality 2. Myriad of connectivity options 3. Many options of there to “Scan to” (email, network folder, USB drive, dropbox, Google drive) 4. Nice display screen, intuitive menu’s Cons: 1. Printer cost. 2. Would be nice if the 3 buttons (Return to prev, Home, Help) under the display screen lit up.

HP Color LaserJest Pro MFP M479fdw Full disclosure: I received the HP Color LaserJest Pro MFP M479fdw as part of a program where I receive products in exchange for an honest and timely review. The printer came in a good size box that was fairly heavy. Some people may require or desire help with lifting it. The instructions recommend laying the box on its side after opening the top, so the printer can be pulled (slid) out via the conveniently provided tape in the stop. The foam packing was broken in several places, but there was no apparent damage to the printer. The printer display, doors and trays were all well secured for shipment. The tape was thoughtfully folded over on one end making it easy to remove. The printer comes with a power cord, USB cable and telephone cord, but no network cable. I suppose since most people will connect the printer to their wireless network, HP didn’t think a network cable was needed in the box. I have a good collection of network patch cords of various lengths, so that wasn’t a problem for me. I also own an M477fdw that I purchased two years ago, so I am able to do a nice side by side comparison. Visually, they are nearly identical. The only difference I could see with casual observation was that there is a little graphic on the left side of the M477 showing two concentric circles with what looks like perhaps an RFID tag touching on the corner. The M479 does not have this graphic. After unpacking, removing the tape and plugging in the power and my network cable, I powered up the printer. It went through a brief first prep cycle of some sort and then displayed the setup menu on the screen. I selected English and USA from the first two menus. The 3rd menu displayed the correct date automatically, but the wrong time on the next screen. I correct the time and moved on. The next screen asked me to select a printer setup environment. Self-Managed or IT-Managed. I selected Self-Managed since this will be installed in my home and I don’t have a management platform installed in my home IT environment. This then resulted in the display letting me know that LaserJet Update had been set to “On”..presumably for automatics software/firmware updates. The next screen was the last, telling me to finish the setup online and to get the latest software updates at 123.hp.com/laserjet After this, the printer completed a calibration and turned off. I touched the display and it came back on. The menus are similar, but clearly different on the M479. It is brighter with more color and a new ribbon at the top. The power saver seems more aggressive also, since it turns off quickly as I stop to type my setup notes. I looked though the menus to see my network setup and to turn off “direct print”, since I don’t use it and don’t want to see yet another SSID on my WiFi list. Next I printed an email message from my iPhone. I just selected print and then chose the new printer from the choice of the two MFPs I have here. The printer awakened and printed a nice crisp color copy of the email message. Then I grabbed my iPad and printed a copy of the note I used to type this product review. It behaved the same. Printing was very fast even for double sided printing. One reason I prefer laser printers is the lack of needed wait time when doing double sided printing. Laser toner doesn’t require time to dry before flipping the page to print the other side. That’s a huge time saver for long double sided documents. Fax setup appears good. I set up my fax number, header information, auto-answer, telephone line type (several options including traditional phone (POTS) lines and VoIP). I don’t have a phone line in my home office yet and I didn’t need to send a fax, so I did not test faxing. I found a setting for two sided fax printing, so incoming faxes can be printed on both sides of the paper. Next I inserted a page in the Automatic Document Feeder to try scanning. I was directed to do some setup via a web page or via the HP app. I used a Windows PC for this and quickly added the printer and scanned the page. I then moved to my MacBook Pro, added the printer and scanned a number of documents from the ADF. This all worked great. Scanning was fast, high quality and the pages were well aligned. I have not yet configured “scan to email” on this printer, but I have done that on my 477 and found it works ok. I assume it will be similar on this printer. You can also set up scanning to a network folder. A datapoint that I have from my two year experience with the 477 model of this printer is that I am still using the original toner cartridges in that printer. Unlike inkjet printers which need to go through cleaning cycles or get replaced periodically due to lack of use, the laser printer appears to just keep going and going even with relatively light usage and that was one of the reasons I purchased a laser printer two years ago. There is a lot more functionality built into the MFP M479fdw than I’ll ever use, but there is likely something there for everyone. I’m really happy with it so far and I would recommend this printer to other people with similar needs. It is nice looking, fast, high quality and functional. I look forward to using it for many years to come.

The HP - LaserJet Pro M479fdw Wireless Color All-In-One Printer sets a new standard to maximize business productivity in a modern, fully equipped machine. I replaced a similar Brother printer that performed well for 5 years but the interface was getting dated. Here are the differences that jumped out at me: 1- The HP M479fdw clearly deserved it's Energy Star Award. Starting the printer is quiet & uneventful compared with the Brother & similar 5-year old printers. Press start on those & the lights in the room dim as the laser starts up. This HP draws far less energy; no visible light dimming in the room during start-up & the HP is much quieter. 2- The scan speed of the HP is amazing & it is virtually silent! Easily controlled by the onboard color touch screen or on a Mac OS or PC; touch scan & the image is available in a couple seconds, 5 times faster than the Brother. 3- Print Quality is superb; colors are vibrant & black is crisp. 4- Fast Print Speed: up to 28 pages / minute. 5- Easy to Set-up. Simply select the WiFi & enter the Password. Within 2 minutes the machine is fully functional. 6- Equally Mac OS & PC Friendly. I use Mac OS & my wife uses PC. We were impressed that this HP was equally accessible on both platforms. Printing & scanning is super intuitive on both Mac OS & PC. 7- AirPrint directly from the iPad & iPhone. Effortless. 8- 5ghz Wireless capable. The WiFi is State-of-the-Art & the machine performance reflects that with ultimate flexibility & speed. Whether you have a basic 2.4ghz WiFi or a faster 5ghz speed, this HP will operate the fastest possible, based on what you provide it. 9- Easy-to-Read Large Touchscreen makes printing & scanning a simple, one-touch process. See attached photo. 10- A Full Complement of Business Features: Scans to email; print from an email; even a login can be required to print, just one of many security features built-in. CONCLUSION: The HP LaserJet Pro M479fdw is the very BEST all-in-one Laser Printer I have ever tested. It easily commands 5 Stars & is positioned above all others that I have tested to date. It earns my HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION.

So far so good. Had enough of Ink Jet printers breaking down after 2 years and wanted to switch laser jet. A bit on the expensive side for home use but well worth the investment for the long run.

While I can do with a smaller and cheaper printer, this one worked out perfect for my home needed. No complains