HP's LaserJet Pro MFP M281fdw ($429.99) is an entry-level color laser all-in-one (AIO) printer similar in capacity, features, and price to our Editors' Choice Canon Color imageClass MF634Cdw. The M281fdw is smaller and lighter than the Canon model, and its running costs are a little lower. However, the Canon MF634Cdw prints better and comes with a stronger feature set, including a larger touch screen and an auto-duplexing automatic document feeder (ADF), which the M281fdw lacks. Even so, the M281fdw prints well overall, making it a decent alternative to the Canon MF634Cdw as a low-volume color laser AIO for home-based small offices and small workgroups, or for personal use.
Compact Footprint
A replacement for another top pick, the HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M277dw ( at Amazon) , the M281fdw ($839.72 at Walmart) measures 13.2 by 16.5 by 16.6 inches (HWD) and weighs 41.2 pounds, making it ever-so-slightly larger and heavier than its predecessor. Canon's MF634Cdw, on the other hand, is a few inches bigger in all directions, and it's about 7 pounds beefier; a little bigger and beefier (by about 20 pounds) still is one of Brother's lower-end color laser AIOs, the MFC-L8610CDW. But then it comes with several capacity-expansion options, which puts it a cut or two above entry-level. While not small enough to fit many tight spots, the M281fdw and most of the others mentioned here should fit comfortably on the average desktop, as well as many other similar surface areas.
Paper handling for the M281fdw is about average. You can load up to 251 sheets split between two trays, a 250-sheet main drawer and a 1-sheet override slot located at the top of the main cassette. The Canon MF634Cdw ($839.72 at Walmart) , on the other hand, supports only 151 sheets, split between a 150-sheet drawer, and a 1-sheet bypass. The Brother MFC-L8610CDW ($549.99 at Amazon) hold 300 sheets, split between a 250-sheet main drawer and a 50-sheet override tray (expandable to 1,050 sheets). In addition, the M281fdw comes with a 40,000-page monthly duty cycle (with up to 2,500 pages daily recommended). That's 10,000 pages more than the HP M277dw and the Canon MF634Cdw, yet it's the same as the beefier Brother MFC-L8610CDW.
The M281fdw's ADF holds up to 50 pages, but it cannot flip them to scan both sides automatically. Surprisingly, neither does the more robust Brother MFC-L8610CDW. In contrast, the Canon MF634Cdw's ADF is not only auto-duplexing, but also a single-pass auto-duplexer, meaning that the scanning mechanism has two sensors, one for each side of the paper, allowing you to scan both sides simultaneously.
Similar Products
Canon Color imageClass MF634Cdw
Brother MFC-L8610CDW
HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M277dw
Canon Maxify MB5420 Wireless Small Office All-in-One Printer
Brother MFC-J5930DW
Brother MFC-L6800DW
Canon imageClass MF249dw
Canon Pixma TS8020 Wireless Inkjet All-in-One Printer
Dell Color Smart Multifunction Printer S3845cdn
Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4740
HP OfficeJet Pro 6978 All-in-One Printer
Samsung Multifunction Printer ProXpress C3060FW
HP OfficeJet Pro 8216
Xerox VersaLink C405/DN
You can control these and most other setup, configuration, and walkup tasks, such as making copies or printing from a USB thumb drive (the port is located just beneath the control panel) from the control panel, which consists of a 2.7-inch color touch screen and three buttons: Back, Home, and Help. I found the control panel easy enough to figure out and use, though sometimes objects on the screen were a little too small to touch precisely, unless you concentrated. The Canon MF634Cdw's 5-inch touch screen, on the other hand, is much easier to navigate.
Connectivity and Security
There are myriad ways to connect to the M281fdw, as it comes with the latest, fastest wired and wireless options, including Gigabit Ethernet and dual-band 802.11n 2.4/5GHz Wi-Fi, respectively, and can connect to a single PC via USB. Mobile options include Apple AirPrint, Mopria, Wireless Direct (HP's version of the peer-to-peer network protocol, Wi-Fi Direct), HP's ePrint and other various HP mobile apps. It has support for USB memory drives for printing pages formatted in Microsoft Office file formats, as well as PDFs, TIFFs, and JPEGs. And for further connection and emulation compatibility, you get HP PCL6 and PCL5c, HP PostScript level 3 emulation, and PCLm page description languages.
Security features include an embedded web server with secure browsing that allows you to configure, monitor, and maintain the printer either remotely or while on the same network. You can access the backend web pages via basic HTML (SSL) authentication. Missing, though, are features like Secure Print for restricting print jobs by PINs, or controlling access via usernames, and other options found on more robust workgroup printing machines.
Plenty Fast Enough
HP rates the M281fdw at 22 pages per minute (ppm), which is 3ppm faster than its sibling, the HP M277dw, and the Canon MF634Cdw. It's also 11ppm slower than the Brother MFC-L8610CDW. (I tested using our standard Intel Core i5-equipped testbed PC over Ethernet running Windows 10 Professional.) The M281fdw printed our 12-page Microsoft Word text document at a rate of 21.7ppm, or just slightly under its rating. That's almost 2ppm faster than the Canon MF634Cdw, and about 2ppm slower than the Brother MFC-L8610CDW. (The HP M277fw was tested under an earlier set of protocols, using different documents, software, and hardware, so comparing its print speeds here would be impractical).
In another test, I combined the results from the previous 12-page document with those from printing several colorful Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint documents containing business graphics, charts, and photos. Here, the M281fdw churned at a rate of 11.8ppm, which isn't bad for an entry-level AIO. The Canon MF634Cdw printed the same pages at the rate of 10.6ppm, and the Brother MFC-L8610CDW managed 11.6ppm.
For the final test, I timed the M281fdw as it printed our two highly detailed and color-rich 4-by-6-inch snapshots. It printed them both at an average of 29 seconds each. That's 15 seconds slower (or twice as slow) than the HP MF634Cdw and the Brother MFC-L8610CDW, but still well within a minute. What's more important here, however, is how well it prints photos.
Pristine Text, So-So Graphics and Photos
I can't recall when the last time was I said this about an HP printer, but in this case, output, compared with several competing models, is not one of the M281fdw's strongest attributes, especially when printing photos. Text came out well-shaped and easy to read down to about 7 points, which isn't bad, but not ideal for printing business documents that require fine print. Otherwise, the sample text pages I printed were more than passable, suggesting that the M281fdw's text output should look good in most types of simple business and home-based-business documents.
Our sample excel charts and PowerPoint handouts looked good, too, though I did notice some slight banding in dark background fills and gradients, but in many instances they were just slightly noticeable. On one particular slide, where a dark-green gradation flows in to black, the steps in the transition are highly noticeable. In addition, colors throughout looked slightly darker than when they were printed on competing machines.
The biggest disappointment, though, was photo output. While most of the test images I printed came out passible, many of them had perceptible flaws, and some were glaring. Many of the images were too dark, to the extent that bright colors and skin tones were slightly muted and lacked vibrancy. All this is not to say that the M281fdw'a photograph output isn't good enough for certain kinds of home-office and business use, such as, say, in-house distribution. Overall, print and copy quality should be fine for everyday reports and such, but if pristine, impressive-looking documents containing good, high-quality photos and graphics are what you're after, you might have better luck with the Canon MF634Cdw, or perhaps even another HP model, such as the HP M277dw, which churns excellent content across the board.
Somewhat Costly to Use
Another shortcoming of the M281fwp is that it costs a lot to use in terms of a per-page price of toner. In fact, high running costs have been a primary drawback to using this class of printer for a while now. While every other printer type seems to moving toward lower cost per page (CPP), the entry-level and midrange laser machines seemed to have stagnated. When you buy Canon's highest-yield cartridges for this machine, the cost per page comes out to about 3 cents per monochrome page and 15.3 cents per color page, which really isn't cost-effective for printing more than 200 to 300 pages each month.
Unfortunately, most of the other little lasers in this class don't provide much better CPPs. The Canon MF634Cdw, for example, runs 3.2 cents for monochrome pages and 16.4 for color, and Brother's MFC-L8610CDW costs about 2.5 cents for black and 12.7 cents for color. If you need lower costs, you have several choices, such as buying a higher-volume laser AIO or one of the several midrange inkjet laser printer alternatives. Canon's Maxify MB5420 ($299.00 at Amazon) , and its 1.5 cent monochrome and 7.1 cents color, comes to mind, as does several of Brother's INKvestment models, such as the MFC-J5930DW ($799.99 at Amazon) . The Brother inkjet AIO delivers under 1 cent per monochrome page and just under 5 cents for color.
Keep in mind that for every 5,000 pages you print at a 4-cent difference in running costs, it will cost you an additional $200 to use your printer. Thus, while the M281fwp is capable of printing several hundred or thousands of pages each month, its high running costs relegate it to being a relatively low-volume printer.
Bringing It Together
The HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M281fdw is a small, entry-level AIO laser printer designed for small offices, home-based offices, and small workgroups. Its small size also makes it a good fit as a personal color laser. It prints fast enough for its class, but it lacks a few features, such as the ability to scan and copy multipage, two-sided documents without your having to flip them manually. In addition, its high running costs will, for most users, relegate it to being a low-volume printer capable of churning out only a few hundred pages each month. If you need more than that, several models, especially inkjet alternatives and higher-volume laser AIOs, are available with the ability to deliver monochrome pages at under 1 cent per page, and color pages for 5 cents or less.
If you need better-looking graphics and photos, the Canon MF634Cdw, our Editors' Choice, should serve you well. If, on the other hand, a couple hundred every day-use prints and copies are what you need, the M281fdw is a decent alternative for an entry-level, low-volume color laser for small offices and workgroups.
An entry-level color laser AIO printer, the HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M281fdw prints well overall, albeit somewhat expensively, making it a good fit for companies that don't require more than a few hundred prints and copies each month.
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