A stylish colour laser printer for the home or small office
HP’s attractive and compact Colour LaserJet Pro M252dw is the laser printer-only version of the M277dw MFP. At its base you’ll find a simple 150-sheet paper tray. Above that there’s a slot into which you feed envelopes and other non-standard stationery. Sitting on top is an excellent colour touchscreen used to set up the printer and control features such as printing directly from a USB stick. Other features include automatic double-sided printing and support for printing via the internet or from mobile devices.
HP says that the M252dw can print 18 mono or colour pages per minute (ppm), and it got reasonably close to that in our tests. It delivered the first full page of black text 17 seconds after we sent the job from our PC, taking 30 seconds in total to complete the five-page text document. Surprisingly, five pages of colour business graphics were produced in less time. It managed 20 pages of text at a rate of 14.6ppm.
As we’d expect from a laser printer, the text looked superb, but we weren’t blown away by the quality of the graphics, which had a blue tint and were overall quite drab. We experimented with different colour settings in the driver, but couldn’t improve the results.
The M252dw takes four toner cartridges, with each available in a standard or high-yield capacity. Using the latter, print costs are competitive at 9.2p per page of text and graphics.
The M252dw is a good colour laser, but an inkjet equivalent would be cheaper to run. Unless you need to print a lot – this printer has a high maximum monthly load of 2,500 pages – the HP Officejet Pro 6230 would be a better buy.
VERDICT
There’s plenty to like about this stylish printer, but its colour print quality is a letdown and an inkjet would be cheaper to run.
SPECIFICATIONS
600x600dpi maximum print resolution • 18ppm colour and mono quoted speeds • USB2 • Ethernet • Wi-Fi • One-year warranty