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| HP LaserJet 400 Pro MFP M425dn |
Well-built software and the intuitive interface of its touch-sensitive control panel is icing on the cake for Hewlet-Packard's LaserJet Pro 400 MFP M425dn, a monochromatic multifunction printer for the small-to-medium sized office or department. For $499 list, the unit delivers a capable, two-sided PCL/PostScript laser printer with high-resolution black-and-white copier, color scanner and fax that's easy to install, set up and use locally or over a network.
An imposing figure, HP's 400-series MFP stands 17 inches tall, but needs almost 10 inches more than that for accessing its scanner and copier bed. Its squarish footprint occupies about 14 by 16 inches, and all everyday functions are accessible from the front. These include access to its 250-sheet paper cassette (with low-paper indicator gauge) and toner service, which takes place through a large tilt-down door that also helps facilitate the clearing of paper jams.
Also in front is a USB 2.0 port for walk-up printing of JPG and PDF formats and for saving scanned images to JPG, PDF, RTF, TXT, BMP, PNG and TIFF formats. Scanned images also can be shipped off to a server, email recipient or the cloud. The scanner's hardware maxes out at 1,200-x-1,200 dpi when using the flatbed, and can handle up to 8.5-by-11.7-inch originals. Maximum resolution when using the auto-document feeder is 300-x-300 dpi, and it's rated at 20 pages per minute for letter-sized, black-and-white and 9 ppm for color.
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Though the M425dn has a rated duty cycle of 50,000 pages a month, HP recommends a page volume between 750 and 3,000 pages, placing it squarely in the small-office category. The black-and-white-only copier supports 600-x-600 dpi and is rated to crank out copies as quickly as the printer can print -- that's at 35 ppm. Like most copiers, originals are placed in the top-loading (50-sheet) feeder, which wakes the M425dn from power-save mode. Two button presses and 10 seconds later, a perfect duplicate (rotated 90 degrees) is dumped into the 150-sheet output bin. A multipurpose tray can hold 50 sheets or 10 envelopes, bringing the unit's standard capacity to 300 sheets; a 500-sheet third tray is a $125 option.
