HP LaserJet Pro M281fdw All-in-One Wireless Color Laser Printer, Works with Alexa (T6B82A)

I work a virtual job as a Systems Analyst and needed a quick and easy to use printer to replace my all in one HP inkjet (just not enough for the print volume I have now) for both myself as well as my wife who is very tech challenged and my children. I have always used HP printers going back to my days at Dell back in 2000 and HP has always been to me a quality and super long lasting printer (I am running 9 years now on the same HP P2055DN Laserjet). That said my criteria was for the printer to handle color prints, duplex printing, flatbed scanning, feeder scanning, fax and scan to email. The HP LaserJet Pro M281FDW met all the criteria for me while also being a great price. Packaging – The printer came very well packed with the main drawer, flatbed access, paper stops etc all locked down and removing the packaging to get the printer ready for use was a breeze that took all of 5 min. Ease of setup – Setup was easy and quick, yes I am very tech savvy but I feel someone with minimal tech knowledge could get this setup in maybe twice the time it took me, which was about 35 min from first power on which included the WIFI setup, and setting up the printer on my Win10 desktop, two Win10 laptops, my android phone and android tablet. Setup of WIFI was a breeze, and I am sure would have been quicker using WIFI protected setup (which I do not use). Windows 10 caught the printer the moment it connected to the network and if you are looking for basic printing and scanning you can simply use the “HP Smart” windows app and be done with it. NOTE: if you want to have an easier time with two-sided scanning you WILL need the HP Scan software (see Scanning). Setup on our android devices was as simple as just installing and starting the HP Print Service plugin then starting HP Smart and adding the printer, it probably took all of 2-3 min per phone/tablet. Print speed/quality – The print speed is very fast both color and black and white and of course is lightspeed compared to the inkjet we are replacing. We are seeing about 20 ppm on average. The print quality on Cardstock, 24lb bright white paper, and 32lb premium glass paper that I have used are ALL excellent and look professionally printed. Duplex printing works flawlessly even with Cardstock. Scanning – Scanning is a breeze whether it be on the flatbed manually or via the document feeder, if there is a drawback with this printer it is the lack of automatic duplex scanning via the document feeder. This is however very easily overcome if you go to downloads page for this printer on the HP Support website, download and run the “HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M281fdw/M281cdw Printer Full Software Solution” and use the HP Scan software it installs. Using this software you can choose two-sided in the scan options and if you scan one side in a stack, pull the stack from the output tray, rotate (DO NOT FLIP) the stack 180 degrees and place it back in the tray the add pages in the scan, it will auto sort the second side in the correct orientation in the correct order with the first set of scanned pages. Final thoughts – This is a great printer that continues to support how I feel about every HP product I buy (I own a HP Envy Desktop and have owned 5 HP printers over the years), HP stands for long lasting quality in an easy to use product. If I had ANY con at all it would be regarding HP leaving out duplex scanning in an All-In-One printer, other than that lapse in design, this printer is HP perfection.

This HP M281fdw laserjet printer is amazing. I’ve had cheap $20-$30 inkjet printers my entire life and you get what you pay for. We needed a printer that could print on transparency film and vellum sheets so we decided to go with a laser printer. For comparison, current printer is a Canon Pixma MG5750 and it is slow as molasses. This HP printer printed the pictures and documents in seconds... I barely had time to turn around from my computer to the printer before it was done. I tested it with a laptop through the wireless print function and from 2 different phones using the wireless print as well as the HP Smart app. Every function worked perfect and was simple to use. Set up was super easy too. I just plugged it in, entered the wifi setting, and downloaded the software from there website and I was printing in less than 5 minutes. The picture quality was amazing on the plain white paper it honestly didn’t even look like a picture it looked like the actual item. It also printed flawlessly on the vellum sheets and transparency films. My uncle is 60 and not technology savvy at all but even he figured out how to set up and operate the printer super fast. He probably knows how to work the printer better than his phone now. This printer is definitely user friendly for anybody at any skill level when it comes to technology. It also came with the wire for the fax function and a usb cable for wired printer. I’m so happy with this purchase, the quality, speed and setup.

I really did want this printer to work, so much so that I ordered two of them, hoping the print quality problem of the first one was a fluke, but the second printer was even worse. The printed page, black and white and color, has a shadow effect. My wife has an HP 492 and it prints perfectly, but the difference between printing the same document on the two machines is like night and day. I tried all of the calibration and cleaning steps, even though this was a new printer, and nothing helped. Prior to printing, I was really happy with the set up. It connected to the computer both wired and wirelessly easily. The fax function seemed to work well. It's just the first thing a printer needs to do, print well, falls well short of the mark. Just to follow up, I ended up at an Office Max with laptop in hand to try to print the offending file. They had a sale on the HP477fdw and the page (and other pages once we took it home) printed perfectly. It is quite a mystery to me why one HP machine would print differently than another, but I really like the 477 so far. Follow up again. Hate to say this, but for small businesses that do a lot of black and white two sided printing, one single machine like this will not be very economical. The toner is scary expensive. The point of getting an all in one of course is to reduce the number of machines, but the best way to print economically is have a black and white duplex workhorse printer for 90% of print jobs. Machines like the HP LaserJet Pro M201dw (or whatever newer model has replaced it) can handle a lot of volume, are wireless and extremely economical. You can buy three aftermarket toner cartridges (2200 page yield) for about $17 or less per cartridge and they work well. The printer companies have built their business model around playing the expensive toner game. Once aftermarket toner comes out, a new printer with new toner requirements gets introduced.

Okay let me start by saying I bought this one from the Amazon Warehouse for a discounted price. Said condition good, but packaging may be damaged. The outer packaging looked fine, when I opened it though, you could easily see if was a repack:_) The outer bag was torn, and the shipping tapes were simply reattached plus all the accessories were simply thrown on top. That was no biggie I was sort of expecting that. Once I got the printer out of the box and hooked up the printer looked fine, I did a lifetime printing report and it showed zero prints, and all the inks were all at 100 percent. So from what I was seeing the printer was never used, looking at those reports. Although I was wrong lol ! First of all after watching the install videos I saw that the LCD screen had a nice blue background color with the selections highlighted, this one was a grey scale background making the selections hard to read, and to select since I have large fingers ! So after talking to support for almost an hour, the videos are actually wrong, the true color of this LCD screen is not blue but grey scale, just the different apps are in color ? No idea how the videos showed a much nicer screen ! Now the reason I know this printer has been used before is when I tried to setup web services, apparently it had already been done by someone else !, so I could NOT add this printer to my account, to change the stupid long printer email default address, or add it for auto refills, though I probably will not use the refill option. I really wanted to change the address though so I can print docs off my cellphone when needed, while I am on the road (BTW Nice Feature). So after going thru three different HP reps until I actually found someone that understood my problem, he sent me another printer code to add it ! Okay there are my gripes, now for the good ! This printer is a great printer ! Hooking up to WIFI, was done fairly easy. and it gives you a lot of different wireless setups to choose from, depending on you network needs. Comparing it to my Brother 2550, the black text print is far superior, though my brother spits out prints like a machine gun! 36ppm ! , but unfortunately also sounds like one when it does (lol). The HP is a slower printer for black and white printing, but again text is far superior to the Brother! It also was able to hook up to my 2019 Server! without buying anymore specialized software! to print and to scan, though features are less than in Win 10. Another thing I noticed it does not take long to warm up or to print, and its so much quieter compared to the Brother printer. Features Forever, this thing is pretty much setup to print, scan or copy in anyway possible that I have seen before ;-) with the exception of manually have to turn pages over for duplex scanning. Not a biggie for the price. So happy with the printer, for me this will be a keeper.

Great printer for labels. I did a lot of research. I needed a printer to print product labels. The label manuf recommended and tested this model without the 'all in one'. I also contacted HP and they also recommended this printer. I'm glad I bought it. The labels always print without movement of the image. There is no smearing or flaking of the ink. It was very easy to set up, but kept going offline. I downloaded HP's printer fix software and kept having it 'fix' the issue. After about 10 times of it going offline and the software 'fixing' it... it stayed fixed and now I have no problems.

This printer works exactly as advertised, it was extremely easy to set up and all the features worked perfectly even after i put them through the ringer to make sure it worked as it should. I purchased this printer refurbished, mostly because it had 4 starts and a lot of reviews, has a very reasonable price, and came with a 1 year warranty. After ordering it i started to go through the 1 star reviews and basically freaked out when i saw how many people had major issues with this printer. I can tell you that I did not experience ANY of the problems that people described (I did make sure to follow the setup steps exactly). - The setup went perfect - I have internet hardwired in my house to I used an Ethernet connection, rather than wireless, to connect it to my network. - I am using Windows 10 (and Apple iOS on my phone and tablets) so i installed the HP Easy Start app via the Windows Store (for Windows 10). It worked perfectly. - I then FULLY tested this printer, i printed hundreds of pages, PDF documents that had 136 pages in them and used the two-sided printing feature - I printed photos of people and graphics (they look great, not as perfect as an Ink Jet would for pics of people but really good for a laser printer). - I scanned multiple page documents using the document tray (located on the top) - I scanned documents using the scanning glass (worked perfect), - I printed from my iPhone (worked perfect) - I set up Print to Email and tested it (worked perfect). - I printed 50 copies of a flyer (came out perfect). - I printed on heavy card stock (110 lb) paper (worked perfect). - I tested this printer over multiple days to ensure it would "wake up" when a print job came in (worked perfect). I literally have zero complaints at this point, if it continues to work as it has so far I will be 1000% satisfied. UPDATE: it’s been several weeks since I first received the unit and wrote this review, it continues to work flawlessly, definitely the best printer I’ve ever had 1-YEAR-LATER UPDATE: its been 14 months since I purchased this printer and it has been great. Zero issues. I do notice that Window 10 sometimes has issues connecting but I am certain that’s an issue with Windows and not the printer. Absolutely recommend this device 3-YEARS-LATER-UPDATE: Still works perfectly, I’ve had absolutely zero issues with this printer

It was a splurge for me to have a laser printer at home, but well worth it. This is still working fine after nearly 4 years, great looking and fast printouts and scans. Connected wirelessly by itself before I had time to work on it. With different software patches it has gone through phases where I had to turn it off and back on to get it to print, and one patch took the better part of an hour troubleshooting. At this point, though, it comes out of sleep mode and prints just fine.

Update 10/14/2019 Today when I turned the M281fdw on, it keeps saying it is out of paper, but it isn't. I've reloaded the Letter Size paper, checked for paper jams, opened the rear duplex roller. Even called HP Support for 30 min. The unit sounds like something is "clicking" in the back, and thinks there's no paper in the unit. It won't even print from the Manual Tray 1 opening in the front. Unit is only 1 week old! I'm replacing with another M281 from Amazon, hope it's just a fluke with this one, but I'm lowering my Rating from 4 stars to 3 stars because of this! ----- Original Review: I had purchased the HP M281fdw from Amazon a week ago for $348 and didn't have any problems with it. Then I saw the newer M479fdw was on sale for $398, only $50 more and decided it to buy it, since it was to be a newer better model and with 2-sided scanning. But after using both models for the past week, I can say that the M281fdw is the better built unit, while the M479fdw has some issues. First off, the M479 has a very loud cooling fan that always stays on while the unit is on (even when not printing). The only way to stop the fan is to have the unit set to go into Sleep Mode after 10 minutes of non-use. When printing, there is also a noticeable high-voltage electrical sound coming from the vents on the right side. This is the only laser printer that I've ever heard this type of sound from, and it just sounds like there's an electrical problem. The M281 model doesn't have a loud cooling fan that stays on all the time (in fact, I'm not sure if it has a fan) and there is no high-voltage transformer buzzing when it prints. Regarding the actual printing, for Black Text and basic color documents, both M479 and M281 are identical. But when it comes to printing a color picture, the M281 produces better looking and more realistic colors, while the M479 colors are more dull/faded and don't match the original picture. I made sure both printers are using the same color settings and have the newest Firmware and Drivers installed. But no matter what I try, the color pictures from the M479 don't look as good as from the M281. Lastly, for copying Black Text, both models are the same, with the advantage of 2-sided scanning on the M479. But for color copying, the M479 looks terrible. I tried to copy a few pictures (that where original film-to-paper prints or from an inkjet) and the color copies on the M479 look way off. But on the M281 the color copies are much closer to the original. That being said, the M479 is Made in Mexico and the M281 is made in Vietnam, so I'm not sure if that has something to do with it. Overall, I wish the M479fdw worked as well for colors as the M281fdw, as I like the 2-sided scanning and the larger LCD Display. But the loud cooling fan and high-voltage electrical buzzing on the M479 are a deal-breaker for me. Between the two, I just like the M281fdw more, it prints better colors, is a quieter and smaller unit, and feels better made.

Great printer, fast and accurate as advertised. I wish scan to email is faster but it works.

La instalación en Mac o en Windows funciona de maravilla, todo conectado vía wireless y sin problemas. La calidad de las impresiones es mucho mejor que la impresora de tinta anterior. Si hace un poco más de sonido por ser laser al momento de imprimir, pero nada de que preocuparse. La configuraciónde Wireless no es tan amigable como lo piensas, pero tampoco es para preocuparse

Its so good scan fax print from phone print 2 face m281 same modal

Works perfectly and is simple t operate. Does double sided colour printing and is a high quality copier/scanner. 100% satisfied with this printer. Purchased replacement toner because the printer indicated that the original toner was running low. After several months of use, still haven't had to replace that original toner. A bit of the "printed that cried wolf" but am happy the toner is lasting so long without quality issues.

Cada dia imprimimos menos, mas é uma necessidade ainda. Só tive jato de tinta. E não tem nenhuma que não esgote sua paciência. Se um dos cartucho estiver meia boca, já não imprimem mais e por aí vai. Sem contar o alto preço dos cartuchos HP, a não ser que você faça impressões todos os dias, aí há soluções interessantes, mas só se usar muito. Esta impressora é top. Pode ficar meses sem imprimir e isso não afeta em nada o desempenho e qualidade. Já devia ter adotado há tempo. E garanto que a qualidade é bem superior a essas jato de tinta mais baratas. Essa aqui pelo preço e qualidade é imbatível. E olha que estou acostumado com essas laser corporativas, geralmente de outras marcas. Não valem o preço inferior em relação às HP.