HP LaserJet Enterprise MFP M480f Color Laser Printer

Purchased this printer and unlike all the other printers it will not install. They encourage you to use tech support because this machine is so difficult. We ended up paying an outside IT service to come try and get this loaded but despite multiple efforts over several weeks we never were able to get this machine to do the basic features a MUCH less expensive machine can do. Save yourself the headache and pick a different printer.

TL;DR — copy/scan/print/communicate is excellent, but flimsy physical construction is worrisome.

This model prints/scans/copies/communicates VERY well… no significant issues with quality, speed, duplexing, input and output functions. It quickly spits out a ream-plus of color duplex copies/printouts without breaking a sweat. Scan quality is fine for home-office use. It communicates effortlessly with my laptop and mobile phone. I also bought the CF404A 550-sheet paper tray accessory, and the 3JN69A Jetdirect 3100w wireless accessory. And I am happy to say good riddance to the soul-sucking, long-term costs of printer ink.

ISSUES: construction/design, installation, automatic document feeder (ADF)

WEAK CONSTRUCTION/ DESIGN !!! This is clearly where corners were cut on manufacturing costs. It is so incredibly flimsy and cheaply made compared to its Hewlett Packard Laser Jet (HPLJ) predecessors, such as the HPLJ 3 and HPLJ 5 and even HPLJ 4250, which felt rock solid for every operator touch/manual task — buttons, trays, guides, hinges, clips, toner replacement, sides, panel access locking tabs, etc. Those models could fall over or drop 2 inches, and still operate flawlessly without a second thought. I would gladly pay for an additional $10 worth of thicker/rugged plastic construction in this current model so that it could nonchalantly tolerate real-world operator use, rather than hesitantly handle something that feels only slightly stronger than papier-mâché .

The physical design tolerances are poor. This model is definitely not the pinnacle of fine German engineering. Like its better-designed HPLJ antecedents noted earlier, you would expect this model’s trays to track smoothly, solidly, and surely for a modern $1,000+ purchase (including accessories), but not so. Both paper trays simply sway from side-to-side by over a full inch every time I pull one out/push one in to restock it with paper, just begging for a retaining clip to snap off or the tray to crack from a sure-handed tug or push. Also, the paper guides inside the trays (A4, letter) and ADF are wiggly and unsure. Even opening the ADF lid feels dicey, as though the lid hinges will break from the stress of routine use, or simply leaving the lid in the up/open position for a while. The wires from the ADF lid to the main body’s logic board move with each open/close of the lid, and are shielded by the thinnest piece of flexible plastic — the copper wires and plastic are destined for premature metal fatigue/ breakage as they bend with each ADF lid opening and closing.

Just the flimsy sounds when the operator performs manual actions expose the lowest-bidder physical construction of the platform. When you tap any side of the platform, it feels/sounds thin and hollow.

You expect cheap construction from cheap ink-jet printers. However, this high-end home-office model’s physical design quality does not live up to its comparable HPLJ predecessors.

SETUP IS USER-HOSTILE. You would expect integrated wireless on this high-end consumer model tier; alas, no. I had to buy the Jetdirect 3100w Wi-Fi accessory and trip through that installation procedure using the non-intuitive prompts on the integrated display screen. The display could really stand to be at least one diagonal inch larger to dramatically improve operator ease-of-use for tactile/legibility aspects. Once the Wi-Fi was installed, it has worked fine since then with both 2.4GHz & 5GHz Wi-Fi bands with both my HP Envy laptop and iPhone 11.

Installing the printer itself to my laptop was arduous. Clearly, Microsoft and HP no longer play nice. Rather than simply have Windows 10 recognize the accessory and automatically load the drivers as we’ve been trained for years…. this accessory required installing HP’s own printer software, declining their account/marketing offers, and divining the obtuse steps for setup. Installation succeeded on the second or third attempt. Once installed, it has worked fine since then.

ADF CAN BE DODGY ON SMALL JOBS. This probably goes back to the cheap construction of the ADF’s grip and guide mechanism. It’s fine for large volume work, but occasionally on single sheet jobs, it feeds at an angle, which provides a distorted/canted scan or copy. I gave up fighting and just lay the original on the glass, as needed.

In summary, everything you expect and need it to do, it does VERY well; but its weak construction/ design leaves me wondering how long it will be able to do it.

TL;DR — copy/scan/print/communicate is excellent, but flimsy physical construction is worrisome.

The scanner functionality of the M480f we received had significant flaws. First, the ADF frequently fed pages in crooked, no matter how carefully we inserted the pages or adjusted the page guides, so scanned images ended up askew. This is a problem that I see some other reviews have mentioned about the M480f and similar M479 model. Second, the scan-to-file as a PDF created very low-quality images, looking worse than even a fax at 150 dpi despite having set the PDF output to 300 dpi (default is 200), with the high compression mode disabled (default is enabled), and the base compression rate set to low (default is medium). We frequently use other brands of scanners that generate very clean, crisp scans to PDF at 300 dpi with a medium compression rate, so we know what we are doing and what to expect in terms of PDF creation. We even made sure to run a scanner calibration, but it did not improve.

Interestingly, a copy operation (internal scan-to-print) would generate a much cleaner printed image, although strangely regular non bold text on the original would come out bold on the copy, presumably as part of the HP image enhancement in the copy program. Among other documents, we used the first page of the printer’s own configuration report as a test original. One would expect the copy defaults to produce as close to a one-for-one match as possible, but even with various tweaks to the settings we were unable to get a suitable “copy” that one can generally expect from units doing internal scan-to-print as a copy function. It seems there are multiple issues with the internal scanning and output firmware.

The printer side was a much better experience. The color output was excellent for this class of laser printer. Both business graphics and photos printed with good detail, no banding, and accurate colors on plain paper with the default “Normal” quality setting of the Windows print driver. In testing the “Enhanced” quality setting, which causes slower output with supposedly a higher interpolated resolution a la HP ImageREt, we perceived a reduction in photo detail and more washout of contrasting lighter colors. In this regard there seems to be no point in opting for the slower, reportedly higher quality setting.

So, in summary, I’m rating the M480f as 1 star due to the horrible scanning behavior, which is a key part of an MFP. I’d give it 4 stars for the printer functionally alone. Because of the scanner issues we returned the M480f and plan to replace it with an M455dn print only unit which is the equivalent bottom half of the MFP. For scanning we will be sticking with other brands that we know work much better and will avoid buying HP MFPs.

HP is hurting their brand. Advertised as a wireless printer but there is no way to connect to a wi-fi network without an adapter. And not just any USB wifi dongle will work, it has to be HP’s. I will never buy another printer from HP without double checking the specs. Very disappointed.

Your site states Wireless, Bluetooth capabilities but that is not the case. You have to buy an addition wireless adapter for $100 to make the wireless/Bluetooth feature work!

First off buyer should be where that this printer does not have Wi-Fi capability regardless what the marketing copy says. Pretty much the only way you can hook this printer up to a computer is through ethernet, as it will not work properly if you use a USB 2.0 plug unless you have a dated laptop that has USB 2.0 connections. If your computer has USB 3.0 then the printer will not function properly. I’ve had this printer for a couple of months and I’m completely frustrated with it. I’ve spent hours on the phone with HP customer service and still am not able to hook this up through my ethernet as they could not figure out how to connect the ethernet over the phone.

Amazon should pull this listing down immediately and fixing the false advertising that this is WiFi capable.

Compared to other HP mfp printers I have owned, it is a big pain to add to a wired network. While print quality is the usual HP great, the management software is terrible. Out of the box, HP Smart does not recognize the scanner (!!!), and a bunch of settings have to be changed through the admin interface. If you are not willing to invest IT professional-level effort to get access to the full capabilities, better look elsewhere.

Doesn’t default to automatic duplex printing and instructions don’t tell you how to set this option on as default. Instead, defaults to manually duplexing. Once I figured it out, it works great – better than previous HP business laser duplex printer method. The M480 prints both sides at once, rather than mechanically turning over paper to print other side.

Instructions for updating firmware also lacking in sufficient detail for updating via USB slot.

Marked down review due to inadequate and sometimes misleading instructions. Otherwise, I’m very happy with performance so far.

On-line chat support not very helpful.

We use both macs and pcs here. I previously reported that we could not get the printer to scan to a Mac after several days of effort. So we moved them (we bought three) to another office where we use pcs. It won’t print in color from a pc! I believe the hardware is good, but HP’s print drivers are terrible.

great printer: Windows likes it but HP Smart won’t talk to my Mac