HP LaserJet Pro M477fdn All-in-One Color Laser Printer with Built-in Ethernet & Duplex Printing, Amazon Dash Replenishment ready (CF378A)

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We bought the HP M477fdw color Laserjet to replace an aging monochrome Brother MFC-8860DN and a 4-year old HP OfficeJet 8500A Plus inkjet printer. We used the HP inkjet rarely – primarily for prints of my wife’s water color paintings. And like all inkjets its print quality suffered after long idle periods, necessitating expensive replacement of ink cartridges and print heads. She decided to take future occasional “production” prints to Kinko’s, and use the HP 477 for at-home proofing. Initial checkout of the HP was generally satisfactory, but revealed two annoying shortcomings: 1) the loud fan runs for about 15 minutes after any activity before shutting down (I discovered later that this can be configured to 1 be minute); and 2) the scan resolution when using the automatic document feeder is limited to 300 dpi. Documents scanned with Acrobat using the ADF were grainy with clipped text baselines and coarse edges on the letters. This limitation on ADF scan resolution is not described on the Amazon page, and is virtually impossible to find even on the HP website. It is buried in a footnote of a spec sheet that is not even displayed unless expanded. This is particularly frustrating since the ADF scanning hardware itself is clearly capable of MUCH higher resolution. Copies made from the ADF are crisp and clear, but scans are not. Apparently HP has hobbled the scan resolution in firmware or software for some unfathomable reason. After extensive research including multiple calls to both HP (to confirm the 300 dpi ADF limit) and to Brother to confirm that the MFC-L8850CDW provides 1200 dpi scan resolution from its document feeder, we bought the Brother unit. We then conducted a series of side-by-side comparisons of the HP and the Brother. For each device we compared 1) prints of a high resolution photograph; 2) color copies of two water color paintings; 3) prints of a water color painting scanned at high resolution by Kinkos; 4) scans of the same painting (compared on screen); 5) prints of those two scans on each device (HP scan printed on both, Brother scan printed on both); and 6) a B&W document scanned through the document feeder (both on screen and print comparisons). Color Copying Both devices produced good color copies of comparable quality. Neither was great at capturing the lightest shades of water color which could wash out. The color fidelity was good but not great for both. Color Printing All printing was on plain paper. The color print resolution of the Brother was decidedly poorer than that of the HP. Hours spent on the phone with Brother tech support (printing various test pages) confirmed that the hardware was working correctly. But the Brother color rendering generates much grainier output. Even when 2400 dpi output is selected, solid colors are often rendered with parallel dark diagonal lines alternated with lighter diagonal lines that are clearly visible to the naked eye. This was true of prints from the photos and from the all scans. It made a man’s suit in the photo appear to be a herring bone tweed, when in fact it was a smoothly woven solid color. In contrast the HP produced finer grained color print – and the correct weave of the man’s suit was visible. Color Scanning Both devices produced comparable color scans from the flat bed. As with copying, lighter regions of water color were sometimes washed out. But it’s impossible to say whether this is a property of the scanners or of the screen on which the scans were compared. Document Scanning The Brother produced a crisp clear B&W document scanned at 1200 dpi from the automatic feeder. When printed out they were pretty much indistinguishable from the original. As noted above the document scanned from the HP feeder was coarse and grainy with clipped baselines. We elected to return the Brother printer, based on the print quality, and keep the HP - hoping that HP will eventually release a firmware or driver software upgrade to fix the ADF scan resolution limit.

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After a number of years using a Canon all in one I decided to upgrade to a new device. The old one did not appear to be supported on Windows 10 and the scan tool was less than ideal. On paper this HP m477fdw is great. It is a color laser all in one with duplex printing, single pass duplex scanning, and wireless capabilities. It allows the user to email to print, scan to Google Drive, and can scan to network in addition to scanning locally and it has 600 dpi scanning. Once the device was received it was quickly setup. Based on experience with other devices I immediately updated to the latest firmware. The device printed fine. Scan to email was easy to setup (as long as you have the SMTP settings handy), and email to print was easy to setup as well. However, I was unable to use the scan to Google Drive. When selecting the scan option the printer dropped network connection and after about 3 minutes an error message is shown. HP suggested I exchange the printer. I exchanged the printer and noted that the replacement device worked fine until I upgraded to the most recent firmware. I explained the issue to HP and they were able to replicate. They ultimately solved the issue by downgrading the device’s firmware. Warning: Do not upgrade firmware to the version dated 20160129/7 Jan 2016 if you intend to scan to Google Drive as it may not function with your configuration. Hopefully this issue will be resolved in an upcoming firmware upgrade. Positives -Great specs on paper. -Quick to print -Quiet when the fan isn’t running -Touchscreen -Good form factor Negatives -Unable to figure out how to scan at greater than 300dpi (yet) from the printer console (or from the PC). Spec sheet says up to 1200x1200dpi hardware and optical. -Scanned documents are slightly skewed unless the documents are loaded perfectly. -Setup reports/documents are printed instead of displayed. Wastes a bit of paper -Not sure about the long term durability of the scanner feed mechanism (first device was fine, second device is a little loud) I’ll do my best to update this review when new firmware is available. Hope you find this review helpful. Update 4/26/16: Waiting to hear back from HP if new firmware has Google Drive issue. Update 5/31/16: Still waiting to hear back from HP. Can anyone with this printer comment on the latest firmware and Google Drive? Update 11/5/16: New firmware dated 20160921(20 Oct 2016) appears to fix the scan to Google Drive issue. Maintaining rating of 3 stars due to unpleasant experiences with HPs 1st level customer support.

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I’ve been using this printer combination for five months now – the print quality is pretty good, and it is very quiet. Setup was pretty easy once you took it out of the box, and I have it printing from both a Windows and an Apple machine. The thing I really like is printing from WiFi – I have the printer setup in a relatively unused area in my house so it is out of the way and doesn’t take up any precious desktop space. Scanning is a snap and I’ve been pleased not only with the scans of a few test photos but the quality of the print as I incorporated a few photos into a PowerPoint document. The print quality is good. About the only complaint I have is the toner: the introductory cartridges that come with the box don’t last long before the yellow starts bleeding out on your paper – about 100 pages in my case. The only solution is to replace the cartridge, and one high-yield cartridge (not a remanufactured one) is $162. Considering the entry price point of the color laserjet, I shouldn’t be surprised at the money grab by HP but if you are a casual home user thinking you can finally have color laser capability for an economical price, I caution you to consider the price of the toner!

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This is a very versatile and capable printer, but Ill address the biggest issue. The Automatic Document Feeder, (ADF, which can scan both sides at once) is indeed the weak point as other reviewers have mentioned, it somehow manages to scan most everything crooked. The odd thing is that when you watch the documents enter and exit the feeder, they look like they go in and come out perfectly straight, without jamming, wrinkling or cocking at all. Since both sides are scanned in one pass when using the ADF, the REALLY odd thing is that the printout will sometimes be crooked on one side of a 2-sided printout, and perfectly straight on the other. However, if you dont use the ADF, and instead use the flatbed scanner portion of this machine, those prints, copies, scans come out perfectly aligned. So this creates more work if you are scanning multiple pages or 2-sided pages, but acceptable quality. After searching online for this issue, including Amazon reviews, I discovered this is a fairly common problem, probably would not have bought this printer if Id known that. I called HP, and after finally getting them to admit that this is a KNOWN problem with this printer, they said that the cause is when their vendors or shippers stack the shipping boxes more than 3 high, it damages the document feeder due to not strong enough packaging material. Of course, I really had to push the issue and escalate it a few levels before I talked to an HP manager that was VERY familiar with the problem. They told me they thought they had fixed this problem (apparently not), and offered to send a technician (free of charge) to my house to replace the ADF. I had a feeling that this might be a waste of time, so I decided to just return the printer to Amazon for refund. I looked high and low for a similar Laser printer from another source than HP, and just could not find one, so decided to order a different version of this 477 (fdw vs. fdn, as I realized the wireless version would be more useful to me than the wired network version), again from Amazon and see if maybe I just got a lemon the 1st time. Well, Amazon doesnt sell the one I wanted (fdw) on Prime, only through 3rd-party vendors, so I ended up ordering one from Office Depot directly. Ive been testing it out a bit, and it stills scans just a tiny bit crooked (inconsistently), not nearly as bad as the 1st one I bought. If it gets worse, I will take HP up on their offer for a new technician-installed replacement ADF. If you are having problems with one of these ADFs scanning crooked, I would recommend calling them and INSISTING that they replace yours free of charge, and that they send a technician out to do the work. Personally, I dont scan many documents of more than a few pages, so slightly crooked isnt that big a deal, and if I need straight output, I can always use the flatbed scanner. If you do a lot of multiple-page or 2-sided copying or scanning, you will not be happy with this printer as is, unless you luck out and get one that wasnt damaged in the shipping process like many seem to be. As far as setting up the wireless network, I found it pretty straight forward and easy, the software talks you through the process on whatever device you have. I connected iPhone 7, iPads, 2 laptops, and a Surface. All were easy, except of course the Surface with Windows 10, nothing seems easy on Windows 10, or on a Surface. (just another reason for me to sell that POS) The HP Smart App is the best way to connect with mobile devices, the supplied PC software is easiest for computers. Now I am able to send print jobs from all my devices in my home, so can get rid of several other printers I previously had connected directly to other devices, saving on ink, supplies, etc. I am also able to email an attached document directly to the printer and it is waiting for me, all printed, when I get home (the printer has its own email address, which you can change to your liking). This only works if you set the printer to never power completely off, easy to do in the printers settings. You can tell it to sleep so it is silent when not in use, but if you tell it to completely shut down, then it wont be able to accept remote print jobs. The wired network version of this printer (fdn) seems a lot harder to setup from the reviews I have read, and requires that you route a network line to the printer from a router (wont work directly from a computer except through USB) For a few $$ more the fdW version buys a LOT more setup options, as it can be hooked up through a wired network router, but also as a wireless WI-FI printer, great if you want to print from phones and tablets. With the wireless, no permanent USB connection is necessary to ANY device. You DO need to connect the USB to one computer when you are 1st setting up the printer, so the software can communicate with the printer to setup and connect it to your WI-FI router wirelessly. After setup is complete and the WI-FI connection has been made to the printer, no more USB required, so you can put this printer anywhere you want, as long as the power cord can reach an outlet. All communication with the printer is then through your WI-FI router, even from the computer you initially use to set it all up. All this connection flexibility is only available with the fdW version, so I would recommend buying that one instead of the fdN, unless you dont need the flexibility and have an available network cable from a nearby router. I hope Amazon starts selling the fdW on Prime again, and whichever version you buy, good luck getting one with a fully functioning ADF.

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OMG! I am so in love with my new printer, the HP LaserJet Pro M477fnw wireless All-in-One printer. I have been using my old color laser printer for over 10 years: the HP 2550N. It was the very first low priced color laser printer for home office use. Well, it finally died last week. I did some research and found that none of the new color laser printers for home use seem like they are compatible with CARDSTOCK printing. The specs of all the new printers only list "post card" with the highest weight rating being 58lb. I thought, really? How can this be? I have been printing on 65lb card stock all this time. I found that lots of people have been making the same inquiries, with no luck. There just did not seem to be any new color laser printers for home use with this capability. So I took my old printer to the repair shop. They had it for over a week and said that they could not fix it. So . . . I bit the bullet and bought the best printer I had researched for me: the HP LaserJet Pro M477fnw. Well, here is some really good news, folks! I got home, went to print something and when I looked at the "paper type" choices menu, I discovered that it had a CARDSTOCK listing and its weights are rated at 176-220 gms. That is 85lb card stock! Whoopie! That is heavier than what my old 2550 would do, by far! I tried out some CARDSTOCK and it printed it with no problems, and not curled either. It spit it out nice and flat. Also, this new printer is lightning fast, even with my complex color brochures. It does not wait for 5 minutes to print a full color, complex page like my old printer. It prints my most difficult color brochures in under 30 seconds. And text pages print in like, 3 seconds. No lie! It is amazing. Needless to say, I am very happy with it. I recommend this printer to anyone who is on the fence about a color laser printer. It is great. Thank you, HP!

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The HP of my youth was like the Lexus of printing; expensive, yes, but with unassailable quality and reliability. The undisputed industry standard that prompted me, later on, to buy a few shares in the company... So what the blue blankety-blank am I doing up at 2am, cleaning up HPs hot mess of an installation process, when the damned thing should just bloody-well work straight out of the box? Like others with Windows 10 x64 issues, I got a fatal installation timeout error that supposedly rendered the product inoperable. Except that it wasnt. I managed to get the most software-based features important to me (i.e. duplex printing and duplex scanning) finally working. In an effort to help someone else, Im going to detail the workarounds that enabled duplexing. For me, the drivers for the M477fdw were actually (partially) installed, despite the fatal error dialog box that HP kindly displayed. I could print and scan single-sided, but thats not the reason I bought this product. Duplex Printing: The problem was that the M477fdw was not enabled to print on both sides by default -- thats utterly ridiculous for a printer with a duplexing unit already built in! But heres how you activate auto-duplex printing under Win10: In Control Panel, go to "Devices and Printers" > right click MFP 477 icon > select "Printer Properties" > select the "Device Settings" tab > "Duplex Unit" should be changed from "Not Installed" to "Installed" > click "Update Now" > hit "Apply" > hit "OK" In any program, you should now be able to go to the "Printing preferences" menu and under the "Finishing" tab, check "Print on both sides" and under the "Printer shortcuts" tab, choose "Yes, flip over" for "Printing on both sides" to enable printing on both sides automatically! Duplex scanning (and auto sheet feeder for multiple pages) : To use duplex scanning (and auto sheet feeder for multiple pages) a TWAIN driver must be installed (WIA-AIO wont scan both sides), and heres how you accomplish that: You must use the original CD included with the printer, or download the no-installer driver. exe file from HPs support website. Pop the into your CD-ROM drive but dont autorun it; if you are using the downloaded no-installer driver, run the .exe file and note where it unpacks the driver (c:/ by default). Youll need to access the CDs (or unpacked drivers) directory structure, specifically go to Setup/Product/Scan_App/ and double-click HPScanLJ477.msi, which will install the appropriate scanner drivers, including TWAIN. You can now configure a scan program, like Acrobat Pro, to use TWAIN and thus perform duplex scanning! Again, I couldnt find this information readily. Not on forums, discussion boards, support websites. The actual hardware appears to 4.5/5 in my use of it, but if you have to jump through these ever-loving hoops just to employ its features, thats a 1.5/5 for usability in my books. (The fact I got it to work spares the garbage installation process the lowest score 1/5 possible) Hope this helps someone and good luck!

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Awesome product! For home use, had a HP OfficeJet Pro 8500A Inkjet for years and was happy with that. But got tired of constantly changing out cartridges (heavy use) and adjusting the paper-tray to work even though full. The Laserjet Pro M477fdw quality is better than other Laserjets with higher specs, outputting exceptionally crisp letters and bright colors with no smearing or lines in pictures. It warms up and prints fast. It is full duplex, able to automatically print both sides. And wireless network capable. Set up on the home wireless network quickly with no problems. Having used it for a couple of months, the only negative is that the paper-tray is too small. Okay for Small Office Home Office use, but you would definitely want a larger capacity for full time Office use. Caution: With the Inkjet printers, you can get by with Multipurpose paper, but not with a Laserjet.. for long anyway. At work we have both color and monochrome Laserjets. Multipurpose paper is used and color Laserjets have constant problems with color runs, unwanted lines, etc. Ive read the chemicals in the multipurpose paper (intended for copy machines) cause problems with Laserjets. Ive confirmed it at the local Staples store, the Manager explaining they have to use Laserjet paper with their Laserjet printers or it will void their repair contract. Maybe it takes longer for problems to manifest in the monochrome printers. In either case, Im not going to chance it at home, and use only Laserjet quality paper. It is more expensive, and heavier weight. The lightest weight paper I can find is 24 lb. which is comparable with the multipurpose 20 lb paper. Any more than 24 lb seems too thick and doesnt feel right. With that in mind, any money you may save in price per print with a Laserjet versus Inkjet, will be offset by the added expensive of quality Laserjet paper. In all, I think the professional quality of prints and ease of use is worth switching from Inkjet to Laserjet. Update on printer cartridge refill 19 Mar 2016: Get the CF410 series of cartridges and Not the CE410 (for 300 & 400 series laserjets) as Amazon shows both compatible for the M477fdw, but they are not.

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Printer would not update and would always say offline when i try to print. I am very good with technology and went through all the troubleshoot. I tried to update the software which i would not update. I spent 3 hours on the phone with HP doing all the basic troubleshoot and then they decided to send someone out. Once the service tech came out he replaced the board and it would not even turn on. The replacement refurbished board was defective. After they came out again it worked. About a a month and a half later it would boot and say NFC hardware missing or not seated correctly. Now they sent another part and another tech out but it still does not work. I will post and let you know what they decide to do to make this right. As of now i have a $469 ornament on the counter.

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I have repeating spots on the left side of all documents that call for color printing. They are cyan dots. It is most likely a bad cyan toner cartridge. I have followed the procedures on the HP web site and the conclusion is a bad toner cartridge. The printer is only 3 months old. I have only printed 187 color pages and 465 monochrome pages. I tried to contact HP by phone. That was a terrible experience. I dont recommend it to anyone. Especially if you have high blood pressure already, or any heart conditions. Update on April 6, 2018: I tried the Chat option of HP support. The experience was the exact opposite of the phone support. Very knowledgeable and helpful HP support person. They said I have a new cyan cartridge on the way. I will write more when I receive it. Update on April 9, 2018: The Chat support worked perfect. Chatted with a knowledgeable and very helpful person. I received a couple of emails letting me know when the replacement cartridge would arrive. Installed the cartridge just seconds ago and all is well. I upgraded to 4 stars because of the Chat Support. The printer is also working perfect. I would give it 5 stars if the cartridges were not so expensive. The replacement cartridges (Cyan, Yellow, Magenta, and Black) cost more than I paid for the printer! Update on April 10, 2018: Last night I received a telephone call from HP Support. They wanted to make sure my problem had been solved. The HP Support went from terrible while trying calling them, to outstanding with chat. I have never been called by any company to see if my problem had been solved.

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Update Nov 11, 2016 The HP replacement cartridges are expensive. Its almost like you buy 4 cartridges, and the printer comes for free! I did find a generic replacement set that costs a lot less. Black and cyan seem to go the fastest, so having an extra cartridge for each on hand is a good idea. Luckily, the local office max carries the cartridges. End Update My wife runs her business out of our house. She was always complaining about having to frequently reload the paper tray on our inkjet printer, the ink cartridges were always running out, and it was slow. I did my due diligence in my research. The inkjets tray was 100 sheets. The next size up was 150, which wasnt much of an improvement, and after that, 250 sheets. I figured that was good. Also, its a Laser printer, so you get a lot more pages from the toner cartridges than from an ink cartridge. Finally, she was tired of waiting a long time to print, because she has a slow laptop, and it did most of the formatting for print. I never had a problem, but my desktop is several orders of magnitude faster than hers. It is heavy, about 55 lbs. out of the box. Packing adds a few more pounds. The box isnt sturdy enough to pick it up by the cutouts provided in the box. The delivery man tore one a bit, and I tore the other one. It has a USB slot for a 16+ GB thumb drive, and other slot for a USB cable. You have to remove a cover to get to the fax phone connections. You also get a standard 3 prong heavy duty AC cord. Setup is straight forward. You have to remove a lot of tape and plastic that was applied to keep the pieces from jiggling during shipping, but they are easy to remove. You install the software thats on the disk, first, then plug in the provided USB cable. Theres an Ethernet port, if you want to use it, but I went wireless, so it wasnt necessary. The only application provided is a Scan Tool. It gives a lot of flexibility for formats to save to, as well as destination folders. The inkjet has a lot more applications, but I only use the web print tool. Most paper feeds through the document feeder with no problems, but one glossy sheet fed crooked no matter what we tried. In that case, we can always put the document directly on the platen. I think the printer got my wifes seal of approval. It printed color accurately last night, and this morning she said "Its really fast." Thats a lot, coming from my wife. My mother-in-law was a bank manager for many years. She recognized this as an office printer, and wants to steal it. Considering its weight, and her frailness, I said, "If you can pick it up, you can take it". :-) It is expensive, but Amazon has the best prices on the internet. Theres no need to hire someone to install it, if you are halfway technically competent, and can lift 55 lbs., or you can get help. It takes a little while to process the print jobs, but after it starts, the pages come out quickly.

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