HP LaserJet Pro 4201dw Wireless Color Laser Printer

Prepare to be held hostage to not only HP’s proprietary toner cartridge chips – I can live with this – but this 4201 printer HAS REMOVED THE OPTION to tick color or B&W printing. Older pre-sets having B&W only don’t get around this — YOU CAN NO LONGER CONSERVE YOUR HP COLOR CARTRIDGES. Tech support was unaware of this when I tried asking just Yes or No — is there a B&W option (some type of override). We went down a 1-1/2 hour wormhole to no avail. VERY disappointed. My other HP laser printer lasted 7 years with heavy use. I may wind up returning this for a different brand…

I have been a pretty staunch HP Printer advocate for their reliability, longevity and print quality. Recently, I’ve rarely shopped around, but this printer has changed that for me in about a weeks time. The printer uses HP proprietary toner cartridges that can only be enabled through an HP app that runs alongside the printer drivers. I have this printer connected via USB to a workstation and shared across a LAN for use by other workstations and have had nothing but aggravation with it and hours of uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers to keep it working. At least every other day, it has ended up with an error or a printing issue that in the end can only be cleared by uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers, re-sharing to the network, then re-installing from the other workstations.
Errors I’ve had in no particular order:
– won’t print in color (traced to cartridge not enabled)
– won’t print in automatic duplex (conflict between HP app and windows)
– constant indication that printer is out of paper though it keeps printing (no resolution)
– documents stuck in print queue before eventually erroring (again, cartridge not enabled which it lost on its own and PIN had to be re-entered)
– printer wouldn’t print after a power outage (PIN had to be re-entered)
– two different versions of print drivers found, one named the printer HP 4201 the other named it as a more generic HP 4201 4202 4203 printer. The first seems to work better, but no idea why one is getting loaded versus the other (have just made sure if the generic version gets loaded, I delete and start again)
– the rotary dial on the printer menu instead of traditional buttons is very flaky and unresponsive at times, not to mention the screen is not clear about which selections are selected versus which is available. Just an all around poorly designed and marginally functional display

There may be others I haven’t detailed, but I have now around 6 hours in less than two weeks fussing with and troubleshooting this thing so I am done with HP. I’ve around 20 printers in a small shop for 60 employees and I have no need to spend portions of my day working on printers, they should just work. This will be the last HP I consider when I need to replace a printer (Sharp, Canon, Epson – will need to find a new go to).

The additional issue is that buying the required HP proprietary toner results in a $700+ price tag for a full set of cartridges of the high yield variety. All the screwing around and wasteful printing of test pages and documents I’ve then binned and the low-yield installed cartridge is already at 80% on the black. So the yield and life doesn’t look favorable either.

It does print nice when it prints, but isn’t that what you expect when you buy a new printer from a normally reputable brand? However, for me, it is not worth the aggravation, lost time or the toner cost.

This is one serious color printer and it puts my Samsung to shame. I was needing a new printer and wasn’t certain if I was going to stick with a laser or try an inkjet printer again. So when the opportunity arose to review this printer, it made my decision to stick with a laser and I am so glad that I did.

– Extremely fast at printing. See the video. I was printing two lease contracts for our rental business and I needed a copy for us and them. So I printed one set (7 copies) on the Samsung and one set on the HP (ended up being 4 copies because of the double-sided print option). Samsung was still in the spooling process while HP had already begun printing. Amazing speed. Note: The Samsung was even connected by wire with an ethernet cable and the HP was printing wirelessly.
– Like the double-sided print option to save paper and the ability to override it if I choose to.
– I send letters all the time and the print slot for “irregulars” is very handy, right up front with a simple pull down.
– Smaller footprint than my old Samsung. Clean design.
– I connected my printer with the wireless option to my Mac and it was rather simple, however, make sure you go directly to HP’s site for the printer driver. There are so many illegitimate sites out there that come up when you search for them that you may be guided to a bad player. Use caution and go directly to HP, select your printer, and then obtain the print driver for your Mac or Windows computer.
– To print with your iPhone, download the free HP Smart App and use the same login credentials that you used to set up your printer with HP. Then you can easily print photos and documents right from the app, even on your iPad.
– The scroll knob on the top of the unit is how you navigate to all your printer options and it is set up rather intuitively. You do not receive a printed manual with the unit and can instead download the manual from the HP site and I highly recommend that you do. This way you will educate yourself on all the options your printer has to offer and there are lots (148 pages of good stuff).
– Laser vs Inkjet. I have had negative results with inkjets in the past because I didn’t print much and the nozzles would always clog and dry out and then give me a poor print quality. So, I converted to Laser about 5 years ago and have been very pleased. A laser printer can sit almost indefinitely and not have a deterioration in the print quality because of the stability of the toner and no jets to clog. The reason I was considering going back was that I was now using my printer more often due to our business and I thought maybe the technology has also improved. The laser was always a better quality print, but Inkjet has really made some improvements over time. I may pay more upfront for the laser but I find them to operate for longer periods of time before failing. I was lucky to get two to three years out of an inkjet printer. I have no regrets about sticking with Laser.
– Biggest negative is the cost of toner replacements. HP prefers you buy their toners because they have a chip that the printer recognizes and they are certain you will get the best print quality because you are using factory toner. Currently, a 2,000-copy toner cartridge costs about $110 and you could possibly need all four (black, magenta, blue, and yellow) at the time of replacement. This will set you back almost $440, but then again 2,000 copies is a lot of copies. The preinstalled cartridges are black 1,200 and the colors are 1,000 copies. I suspect I will get about two years out of that before I have to buy replacement cartridges.
– I have not had the need to contact customer support, because it was installed flawlessly, but I am certain with HP’s reputation that they will be there for me if I need them.
– Ideal for office situations where you need a network printer. It can easily support many workers.

Overall I am really pleased with the print quality and definitely the speed of this printer and would highly recommend this printer.

This prints beautiful color photos on plain paper. I can’t wait to try this on bright white or photo paper. This is a laser jet printer, so be cautious of the requirements of the paper you’re using. Some paper, such as shrink a dink or water slide require an ink jet printer. Laser ink has a nice sheen and sits on top of the paper (the ink of my ink jet printer absorbs into paper).

This printer doesn’t take as much room as I was expecting. It’s slightly larger than my flat bed printer, which I’m keeping for scans and printing on paper that requires ink jet.

The hardest part about setting this up was finding the “on” button, which is on the front of printer, upper right hand corner (I was looking for a switch). You basically just plug this in, turn it on, and follow the directions on the screen. I connected this to my Wi-Fi. I usually print from my iPhone or iPad. This works great with them. I just select print, and hit print. This printer has two paper trays. Tray one is feeding, tray 2 is a drawer that’s tucked below tray one.

I bought this printer two days ago and it came to me quickly yesterday. I set it up out of the box, it was surprised at how easy it was to set up! I’m not a big fan of the dial, but with a little bit of use, I was able to get used to it and set up the Wi-Fi. I loaded it with paper and when I tried to print, it didn’t even try, it just said that there was paper jammed. Even though I didn’t hear any of the mechanics working to try to feed the paper. I opened up all three of the doors to make sure that there was no paper jammed in them, and there wasn’t any. There was no jam to be found. I went online to get help videos to see if maybe there was a secret way to unjam the printer, and found that there was not. There’s a front door where you load the toner, there is the bottom paper tray, and then there is the back access panel. I’ve also tried to hard reboot using the method provided by the manufacture. None of these things worked.

I fully believed this would be a slam-dunk review, five stars all the way, but not so. This is a seriously competent, compact printer and HP products are known for their quality and durability, but I still have unresolved issues and I’m just tired of working on it.

First the good stuff…

I acquired this printer because I facilitate a “Writers Group” where myself and fellow “writers” gather to read and share critiques. We average sharing about four pages each so depending on the number that show up, usually four to seven, we can have a lot of printing since everyone gets a copy to read and mark up. That’s usually between 150 and 200 pages each gathering. Printing at thirty-eight pages a minute is a blessing.

This printer is kind of heavy, weighing about 36 pounds, about like an economy sized sack of cat litter. It has all the latest features including wireless, ethernet or USB stick. The wireless setup is the best I’ve seen. Easy to setup and connect, and seems to work with everything, laptops, Androids, Iphones, etc.

Considering this printer is capable of printing two-sided images in full color at 38 pages a minute, I consider this to be blazing for printer in this form-size and price range. It’s not exactly cheap, but you only need one printer to service a group of 10 or so users, doing steady printing throughout the day.

The printer comes with all 4 preinstalled HP LaserJet Toner cartridges. Average pages per cartridge are Black: 1,200, Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow: 1,000 pages. You can purchase higher yield cartridges: 1,420 pages black, 1,330 pages cyan, magenta and yellow that run about $330 for the 4 cartridge set. Ouch, yes indeed, but not bad considering the average ink jet printer yields about 300 pages per cartridge, so lasers are significantly cheaper (about 25%) in the long run. (Sheets printed per cartridge are averages based on 50% ink usage per page, so numbers will vary.)

The print quality is fantastic considering I’m using cheap, letter quality paper. Lasers have great resolution and deep colors, definitely better than ink-jets. Laser printer toner also has the advantage of not going bad as quickly as ink-jets. It can sit unused for months with no ill effects. It can last two to three years sitting in a closet as long it’s still sealed. Ink-jets use liquid ink which can clog the jets relatively quick if unused for several months.

This printer supposedly has auto paper-jam recovery. It hasn’t jammed with me yet so I don’t know how good it is…or maybe it did jam and fixed itself! I couldn’t say for sure. So far, zero problems. It prints fantastic, I find it comparable to the 20k Ricoh printer we have at work.

HP has two other models of this printer that have the document feeder, unfortunately, this 4201dw model does not. This model doesn’t have a touch-screen either. The knob used to select options might be a little cumbersome for some, but it’s easy enough.

Now the trouble…

Initially setup was easy. I had it printing within 5 minutes. BTW…I’ve been a software developer for 26 years. Technical issues are not new to me.

Using a Lenovo Yoga laptop and Windows 11, the first problem occurred when I tried printing in color. It just didn’t. No color, just greyscale. Tried all kinds of things, different programs, different graphics, different documents with different font colors. I fiddled with every setting I could find but nothing worked until finally, I got into printer properties: Preset Settings/basic color mode/ where I change the value to “officeRGB” and voilà, I had color. It took me about an hour researching to find this though.

The second problem was trying to get it to print double-sided. It just wouldn’t, even though it shows up as an option and is selected. I spent hours over three days researching and trying different suggestions including those on HP’s support website before finding the solution when I connected a different computer, which worked, and noticed that in it’s Printer Properties, the “Preset Settings” was set to “General Everyday Printing” instead of “Factory Defaults”. Once I changed it, double sided printing began working. Interestingly, I used the HP Smart Printer App to install the driver on the trouble computer, but Windows installed the driver on the one that worked. Maybe I shouldn’t have used the HP Smart Printer app.

But here is where I got ticked off. I tried to get support from HP but they REQUIRE you to create an account and to do that, you must enter the product serial number and product code. Ok. Sure. So I fill out the info, name address, etcetera, and create the account but to proceed you must enter the product serial number, so ok, I enter the serial number, ok, but with the product code I get “INVALID PRODUCT CODE”! No. It is not invalid. It’s the product code reported by the HP Smart Printer App. (There are no external physical stickers on this printer anywhere.) After four tries and restarts, I give up. So now I try to get someone from HP on the phone. “Sure”, the sweet automated assistant says, then asked me to provide the product ID and a PIN number found on a sticker inside the printer on an ink cartridge. I enter these and the automated assistant says, “Thank you for using HP support. We are unable to process your request at this time. Good bye.” Arrrrrrrg! I tried three more times and decided to write this review as it is. I never did get to talk to a human.

After getting color and duplex working on my Lenovo Yoga, it seems to be working fine, but I’ve yet to figure out why my other laptop still doesn’t print in color. On that computer the options to change the “Basic Color Mode” do not appear so I can’t fix it the same as I did the Yoga. I can only guess there is some difference in the drivers that were installed.

I really wanted this to be a five star review. I have no doubt this printer is a great product, but these problems should be handled automatically by the initial setup process. More than that, technical support should ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS have an option to talk with a real human being at any level, but HP doesn’t. Unreal.

So it is what it is. Sadly, I’m giving this great printer three stars for unresolved issues due to lack of technical support. My $180 Epson inkjet printed color and duplex right out of the box, no tech support needed. What a shame this $560 HP failed to do the same.

Soooo, who ever thought I’d need a printer for my home in 2023???? Honestly, I have not had a printer in my life since maybe 2001. Well, the kid is getting up to so many crafts and related projects that require printing, and I’ve grown tired of bothering our property manager to print things. Between arty endeavors and more homework being sent to us via email … well it was time to invest.

And, if you are ok dropping a decent amount of cash, as much as a nice apple device … well this thing is pretty amazing. We’ve only used it a few days so cant speak about inks, and as mentioned just for kids stuff and basics … no 25 page pitches. But it’s pretty darn rad.

It’s normal sized for a color laser printer — and will take up a good chunk of space. We put ours next to our den sofa on a stool and that works well, out of the way but pretty accessible without adult oversight. It is decently heavy and unless you are relatively strong and healthy, you might need some help unboxing and setting up.

Speaking of which, the set up instructions are really easy and totally work. THIS ONE IS REALLY WIRELESS. It can do ethernet direct to a router and print from a usb stick too. But setting up was as easy as plug it in, follow prompts on the spin wheel touch screen to access wifi, download software and you’re good to go. On Macs you will need to grab an HP print monitor app from the App Store but that was so easy and actually preferable. It took about 3 minutes to do that. Once that was done, any of the apple devices on our wifi network were able to print instantly and easily. Pretty sweet. Just remember to turn the printer on!!! ha …

so far we’ve printed on sticker paper, card stock and photo paper … and all were great, though the last was not like super pro but good enough. Really happy my daughter can now expand her mixed media adventures with this thing. I am sure there are cheaper options available but getting a truly wireless super easy to set up HP product is a win for us.

Well, I advise no. Buy a Brother is what I heard from a friend. The item I got came up with four flaws in one month: first, please note that this $500 computer is not equipped to make copies; second, it would only print if the tray was full of paper and I mean full; third; it would not connect to Wi-Fi and I know what I’m doing; fourth, it would spontaneously turn on and stay on. So I was three days past the return date when I finally lost my s$?& and contacted Amazon and got on chat and they wanted me to trouble shoot and “Have you tried removing the paper tray and putting it back in?” and I politely but directly replied something along the lines of “What do you think I’ve been doing for a month? Now, are you going to take this thing back or not? Tell me now”. And, to their credit, they did. You decide whether it’s worth the $500 chance or not.

What do I like? That it finally works. What do I not like? That it took forever and a lot of struggling to get it to actually work.

1. The wireless function on this printer is absolutely the worst engineering job the universe has ever encountered ( and yes, I am an engineer and have been building and using computers for decades ). The “enter the wifi password” function using the dial is horrific. And that’s the good part. Once setup for wireless operation and connected to a network, getting it to print is, well, almost impossible. There is no “logic” to it. You randomly press buttons, twist the dial, over and over, in various ways, and suddenly it prints. Next job, repeat the whole process, with a different random sequence, and it finally prints. You could spend the rest of your life doing that.

2. The solution is to connect the ethernet cable. Then it prints easily, every time, no hassle.

Printer is plug and play. Unboxed it and set it up on the WIFI. Easy to load the HP Smart software on a Windows 11 computer. Was up and running in 15 minutes. This is a new model and replaces the traditional operator display and input. Now the’s a jog wheel that you use run through the menus and enter info like the WIFI password. I found the Jog dial to be a bit clumsy and slow, but I guess you’ll be doing that only once. Other than that, print quality looked good and the printer is fairly fast. Appreciate that the price is lower than the previous model. Hope this works out to be a reliable printer. Will update this review in a year or so.