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 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 had1-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 device3-YEARS-LATER-UPDATE: Still works perfectly, I’ve had absolutely zero issues with this printer