HP LaserJet Pro MFP M428fdw
VS.
HP LaserJet Pro M404dn
Last updated September 2023
HP LaserJet Pro MFP M428fdw
8.5
HP LaserJet Pro M404dn
7.8
Beautiful printer, and beautiful copies!
October 22, 2020
I love my HP M428fdw printer! I purchased this one a year or so ago, and it churns out copies or documents faster than you can imagine. I had an older but excellent Brother printer that needed a new drum (which was a good investment; it still works), but that also lacked a USB port which has become essential for my work. After researching dozens of options, I settled on this HP model. Here's what I love: Literally lives up to the word "laser" in its speed. Spits out the work almost before your finger leaves the print button. The touch screen is a great feature, and lets you choose what you want to do with documents you put in the feeder. You can NAME documents you scan to your USB drive! How cool is that? The USB port is in the FRONT, not hidden in the rear. I'm not sure who thought it was a good idea to hide those things (especially on black printers) but this one is easy to find. If a manufacturer needs to have a rear port, fine, install two of them. The printer is white, and looks beautiful on its stand. I personally find darker colors depressing in my work area. The printer has all the latest bells & whistles for wi-fi, etc. I have not used some of the features yet, so I cannot comment on them. Things I'd change: If you replace the toner, you have to replace the drum as well. This is needlessly expensive and almost kept me from buying the printer (the USB port, its placement in the front of the unit, and the color of the printer were among the deciding factors). The drum and cartridge that came with the unit are still putting out great copies (even though there's an alert that toner is getting low). I never replace toner until I absolutely have to; I purchased the replacement (high volume) cartridge/drum when I bought the printer, just to have on hand and it's still in its box. It appears the HP laser printer will produce a lot of good copies with its original toner before you have to invest in the toner unit. The cost of the toner (which requires buying the drum, too) is the reason for only four stars. I'd have rated it 4-1/2 if that option were possible, because I really do love the printer and all its features.
Do NOT expect any useful support from HP when reporting errors.
November 25, 2020
The HP Laser Jet Pro M404dn Prints great... lousy software... little or no good technical support from HP. Before purchasing this product did research. We checked drivers for it on HP's website. We also downloaded the User's Guide and checked supported Operating Systems. They provide drivers for just about every Windows O/S that would still be in use, including all variants of Windows 2008 R2. We still have one of these and this is where the printer is going to be defined and shared by other hosts. That server will not be migrated up for at lease one more year so it has to work. When we received the printer, we installed it as a network printer locally on a Windows 10 system... it worked. We then uninstalled it from the windows 10 system and installed it as a network printer locally to a Windows 2008 R2 server and it installed fine. We set up a share for it and installed it using the share to other hosts (Windows 10 and Windows 7). They printed to it just fine through the Windows 2008 R2 server. We also tried it on a XP system, where we would expect it to fail and it did, but it failed "cleanly" like it was suppose to. Then we tried to print a document (test page) from the Windows 2008 R2 server itself. It placed the report in the print spool, and indicated the job completed (in the queue... out of the queue, no errors). At the printer, the printer startup but no pages came out. OK, we have two bugs here. First when the report was released to the printer, it behaved as any print job would that was successful (no error). The job was removed from the print spool queue. This is a very serious problem. Second, the job did not print at all. The printer started up but no output. This is an annoyance, I wanted a report and did not get one. Called HP Support to open a case for this issue. I was on the phone for two hours the first day and another hour the second day... what a waste of time. HP told me to use the PostScript driver (I already tried it), it did not work. With the tech on the phone I tried every driver they had on their website for Windows 2008 R2... none worked. HP end up saying even though it says it is supported in the User's Guide, and drivers exist for it on their website, they do not support it. They referred me to an obscure document that does not have it listed. Even though 2008 R2 is past Microsoft support, which occurred on January 14, 2020, the printer has been out for over a year before that. People were running 2008 R2 then, and some are still today. It appears that HP has no interest in fixing programming errors in their drivers, or at least that is how their support staff presents their solutions. So, I would throw this printer in the trash, except I like the printer and it works on other hosts connected to it. So, it you expect some kind of useful support other than how to turn the device on, FORGET HP. It still is a good printer, so if you do not mind basically supporting it yourself, and do not have a problem with their documentation saying it supports something, and having technical support say it really does hot support it, than this is a good printer. After this experience I doubt I will not be buying any more HP products for myself any time soon.
