Every couple of years, I end up with a new printer. In 2009 I purchased a brother laser printer with ethernet and no wifi. I later upgraded it to another brother laser printer with wifi and one that had better support for easy setup drivers for Windows. After all, installing printer drivers in Windows is just about the worst possible way to spend an hour, and it seemed worth it to upgrade for just this reason.

This past week I upgraded again, but this time to a color laser printer with AirPrint, NFC, e-mail print and tons of other features. And get this, it cost $220.

How good can a $220 color laser printer be?

One word; Amazing.

The HP LaserJet Pro M252dw was selected over its competitor, a brother laser printer. The research I did gave the HP a slight edge.

Setting up the unit was easy. Take it out of the box, remove a single piece of tape, plug it in, and the rest of the setup is done on the small capacitive touch LCD screen. I also loaded some paper into its tiny paper tray (only 150 pages). This it turns out is the biggest gripe that I have.

The first thing the printer did was suggest I print out a configuration page. This page had an email address on it. That was a nice touch. I quickly tried this out and it worked great. I can now print anywhere in the world to my printer.

As you'd expect the printer has many features. Duplex printing, color, black and white etc. The best feature was that every device in the house (Mac, PC, iOS) can print without any drivers. This is great for our new mobile first era.

The printer is extremely fast, and the fan turns off as soon as it is done printing. The manual sheet feeder is well designed. I use this a lot to print our return labels for Amazon and various other shippers with Avery Full Sheet Sticker Labels (a must have).

The only downsides I have noticed are that it's larger and heavier than my previous brother (about 20% larger and 40% heavier), and the paper tray is tiny. I did not get any additional toner with the printer as the starter toner should last 1,500 pages.

Print quality, speed, convenience are all fantastic though.

I'm still a bit amazed that I own a color laser printer and that it was so affordable. 15 years ago, that was just un-heard of and we were forced into the ink-jet world for color. I hate nothing more than ink-jet printers. As long as you aren't printing photos, there is simply no match.

★★★★☆
Great. Worth purchasing.