Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I purchased this item directly from HP's small-medium business (SMB) center. I was looking for a printer to replace my Brother MFC-9840CDW, which is a color/wireless all-in-one (AIO). Brother had not come out with a newer model that bettered this AIO that I have had for a couple of years. Since I was going to have to buy multiple new Brother toner cartridges for color, which would be 1/2 the price of a completely new model, I was in the market for a new AIO. My reqirements were AIO, laser, color, wireless networking and good user feedback. My Brother repair center told me that they can definitely tell the difference in HP color printers versus the other guys. Since my Brother gave out weak/light color prints, and the color accuracy was pretty bad, I wanted to like the HP LaserJet Pro CM1415fnw, which just came out and did not have any user comments.
I purchased from HP's SMB with a 30-day return policy. If you go through another center, your return period may be shorter. When I opened the box, only the main unit and an installation guide were inside. The box said I should get power/USB/phone cables and an installation CD, but they were missing. Due to a backorder delay, I was advised to order a new unit and ship the old one back. I got the drivers online and used a spare 3-prong computer-type power cable to test out the unit. Based on my findings in the rest of this review, I will be returning the HP for my money back.
I wanted wireless to minimize the cables going into my Apple Mac mini (mid-2010) which also has built-in wireless networking. I am running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit via Boot Camp. You initially need the USB cable so the installation software can configure the unit to your computer and router. Once that was done, the computer was able to see the HP right away. This was much easier than the Brother, which required me to manually configure both the computer and AIO, and I had to call Brother's customer service, even though I am computer savvy.
I don't need much color, since I mostly print documents, nevertheless I would only consider laser for black or color. The color is definitely better than Brother. However, the color on the HP is a little too saturated and printing color is not quite as sharp as printing black. I made a color copy of a color copy, and the saturation increased, further distorting the original image. You get starter toner cartridges that are about 60% full. HP is not the only manufacturer doing that these days.
The paper tray is a puny 150 pages. The Brother has a 250-sheet tray and I purchased a 500 sheet 2nd tray. You cannot add a second tray to the HP. Also, the HP does not have a manual feed tray for envelopes or other paper. The Brother nicely holds 3 envelopes at a time in its manual feed tray. The HP claims to have a manual feed for envelopes, but all it does is pause printing until you pull out the tray, pull out your paper, slide the guides to envelope size, insert your envelopes, close the tray, and then you may have to tell it to print the envelope (I never bothered to print an envelope from the HP after discovering how convoluted the process is). I would have likely kept the HP if it had a manual feed for envelopes, and I only had to pull out the tray to add fancy bond paper. This AIO is not made for any office work in which you print letters, unless you only print envelopes in batches. So why would any home or small office buy one?
When I print a letter to my Brother, my Word document has the first page(s) formatted as an envelope(s) and the remaining pages letter-size. The documents also have Word's Page Setup defined to pull paper from the designated tray: manual feed for envelopes, 250-sheet Tray 1 for letter-size bond paper for correspondence, and 500-sheet Default Tray (Tray 2) for regular letter-size paper for everything else.
I liked the fact that the HP has a color touchpad as its user interface. But in real use in making copies, you have to touch the screen to wake it up and then hit the print button. Dedicated print buttons would have been preferred, one for black and one for color like the Brother.
The unit stays pretty quiet and printing noise is not excessive. I do not notice the fan running as loud as the Brother after a print or copy job. It occasionally self-calibrates, but infrequent enough to not be excessively annoying. The HP's first page out when printing comes out in one-third or one-quarter the time as the Brother, which takes about 1-minute from sleep mode and acts like it is printing 3-pages before it actually prints the first page. The HP is smaller than the Brother, but I would gladly trade a little height to get a bigger tray and options for a manual feed or an additional tray.
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HP LaserJet Pro CM1415 CM1415FNW Laser Multifunction Printer - Color - Plain Paper Print - Desktop CE862A#BGJ 74
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