HP LaserJet Pro MFP 3301sdw Wireless Color All-in-One Laser Printer

HP has greatly disappointed me. In order to use the scan software you have to create an account on their servers and log into it. There is no legitimate reason for this to be required. The only thing this can possibly do is allow them to collect data about you so they can sell it. I will not use their software. In stead I will use something like vuescan. Note that they make all sorts of excuses for why this is required. Like sending email direct from the scanner. But the fact is you should be able to just scan it and then use your email client to send it. Logging into an HP machine is just a means of them collecting data about you. Their response to complaints was to say “Use someone else’s software”. My response to this is to say “Use someone else’s printer/scanner”.

Overall I really like this unit. I have and still use an HP M402dn LaserJet, so I am familiar with HP devices. They are robust and of high quality. I find the HP MFP 3301swd to be the same. The quality of product in the print mode, copy mode and scanner mode are all very good. I would not hesitate to purchase this again or recommend it coworkers, friends, and family.

The one thing that was confusing, and prevented me from giving it five stars is an omission from the setup and operation instructions. This clear statement of the difference between Tray 1 and Tray 2 and how people would normally use them, is not to be found in these instructions. The the one and only one paper tray is referred to as Tray 2. What is referred to as Tray 1 is essentially a manual paper feed. If you manually select the paper tray of you choice (as opposed to auto selecting), one would think that you would choose Tray 1. If you do that though the MFP 3301sdw sits and waits for someone to feed paper into the manual paper feed. No where in the information is this stated. I like the MFP 3301sdw. I think it’s price is good and I expect to give many years of use from it. Just remember that Tray 2 (the dark gray pull out tray) is where most people would keep the paper they use most frequently. Tray 1 functions like a manual paper feed and MUST be fed, before it will produce output.

This printer arrived with a broken automatic document feeder. I took it apart, reassembled it, and the ADF started working again. Annoying, but fixable if you are comfortable reassembling printer parts. I did notice the scans done via the ADF were sometimes stretched at points, indicating the ATF rollers weren’t completely grabbing the paper. Great.

Then the firmware wouldn’t update. The self test reported the network connection was working, and I could print to the printer via the network, so I knew the network was good. But it wouldn’t download the firmware when the printer was connected via ethernet. I had to remove ethernet, switch to Wi-Fi, let the firmware update fail once, before it finally worked the second try on Wi-Fi.

Then, the scan to network folder wouldn’t work. Frustratingly, there is no error message. The “scan” button is just greyed out. Okay, HP gives you a utility in the printer’s web interface to verify it can connect to the network folder. This step passes. Scan button is still greyed out. No network scans over ethernet.

For kicks, I tried doing a network scan over Wi-Fi. This worked! Maybe this would be alright if the Wi-Fi didn’t intermittently reconnect. (the printer boasts that it will automatically reconnect to Wi-Fi. The fact they have to advertise this is suspect… maybe put a better NIC in these printers??)

I’m at my wit’s end with this printer and I’ve only had it for 2 hours. A printer shouldn’t take this much troubleshooting to get set up. This one is going back to Amazon.

It took me only a few minutes to set up the printer. It looks very nice. It’s a little louder than I wanted but not annoyingly so. Also, it was the ring size for my small office. It prints so fast and the quality of the copies are amazing. I copied a crumpled piece of yellow paper (receipt) that had faint writing on it. I needed to send a copy to my insurance agency and I did not want to send the original but I was worried the copy would be even more fainted. The copy was so identical I could not tell the difference. It captured every faded detail of the receipt. I rarely write reviews but I had to praise this buy. The HP black ink cartridge replacement was $73 dollars. I bought it just in case but I have not had to use it yet. The one that came with it is still going strong after a month and I print dozens of items every day. Let’s see if this thing lasts longer than 3 years. So far none have.

When it comes to printers, something I value is when the company selling it doesn’t try to force you to use their brand of overpriced consumables (ink, toner). HP is notorious for being pretty bad in that regard, so in the past I’ve used a Brother brand black & white laser printer. The Brother printer I came from has always been rock solid, works beautifully from wired or wireless, airprint (printing from my phone) works great, scanning from my PC or from my phone via the Brother app works great, and I’ve been able to use generic toner refills which also work great and offer print quality that is satisfactory to me.

What intrigued me about the HP is having the opportunity to try a color laser printer, as my Brother one was only black & white. So this printer came packaged really nicely in a sturdy retail display box, looked nice. The printer itself looks fantastic. It’s not like the HP printers from the last few decades, they have revamped the look of them and it looks very modern and cool.

When I went to get the printer setup, I had a pretty finicky experience. Printing from my computer worked on the first try, but airprint from my mobile devices didn’t work at all. I had to restart the printer, and my phone, before airprint worked. Since then, on more than one occasion I have tried to print something from my phone or computer, and the printer just doesn’t respond until I turn the printer off and on again, and then I start getting stuff to print again. I never, not once, had any issue like that with my Brother printer, and this has happened several times with this one over a short period of time.

When it works, the print quality looks nice. I did try printing a full color photo out of curiosity, and completely recognize that laser printers are not great for photos, but it looked decent to good. Not something I’d want to frame, but looked pretty good. Where it shines is documents, not pictures.

I tried the mobile app. First I went to try and scan a document from the app. It wanted permission to find devices on my local network, which is understandable so that it can find the printer. Then it wanted me to create an account, so you can’t scan something from their app without an account (privacy concern). The scanning did work well. Then I was playing around with the app some more and tapped to see the supply levels, and it instantly brought me to a page that didn’t show me the supply levels, but instead it said that the printer is enrolled in instant ink (this doesn’t use ink?), and to open the HP Smart Admin site to manage that. So I opened HP Smart Admin, and it wanted me to create yet another account, so I did. In there, it didn’t show my printer, couldn’t check anything about the printer. Very odd, and dumb, in my opinion, how that all works. On my Brother printer I don’t recall needing an app, and you can just see the supply levels in the app.

Now for the consumables. This has 4 toner cartridges. A full set of toner costs $300. For other color toner printers, you can find generic sets of toner for maybe as low as $60-70. But HP will force you to use their $300+ toner here.

Update: Dropping my review to 1 star. This printer is so buggy, it drives me nuts. It’s just become more and more problematic. Just had some error saying there was a critical issue on the printer (this after I’ve printed maybe 30 times on it). Had some weird issue with windows where it wouldn’t print to the printer, but my phone would, so had to add the printer by IP address instead of a normal way for it to work. Just lots of little things, keeps being difficult. My old Brother printer never had any issues even remotely like this. Yes, it does work, but I find it finicky and unreliable.

I’m in IT and I have in the past stayed far away from HP, due to the large amount of software needed to install and so many notifications from the printer once installed. This printer has none of that… I guess HP finally realized these messages were just a nuisance. The printer was easy to install and setup on our home network. Followed the instructions on the screen and it was done in a few mins.

I only gave 4 out of 5 stars, due to the scan to email function was lacking… SMTP server is needed for this feature to work. Which you might need a monthly subscription using (Gmail or MailChimp..etc.) Wish it was built in… but all in all, it’s a great printer and worth the money!

This is my 3rd HP color laser jet printer. I like HP products. I have always found them to be reliable. This model was cheaper than some of their other models and it had all of features I wanted (print, copy, scan).

My only drawback was the width which is 16.5 inches (height and depth were acceptable). The reason this is a problem is because finding a suitable stand that is not overly large to fit this particular dimension is difficult. I wanted to place it on top of a standard file cabinet. The width of most file cabinets is approximately 15 to 15.5 inches maximum. Therefore, since I wanted to place it on top of a file cabinet (I wanted the storage of a file cabinet beneath my printer in my home office) I had to improvise. So I purchased a sheet of wood from a local hardware store. Had it cut to 20 by 20 inches and then I rounded the corners. See attached pictures for setup.

The package arrived and it is quite heavy! The contents were well packaged. Setup was easy following the included instructions. I did not need to load any special software on my HP laptop. I connected it wirelessly.

Thus far it works perfectly.

I read most of the reviews by prior customers and, while I understand the varying degree of experience people have with these sorts of things I thought I might be able to provide some additional insight thanks to a career in IT and computers.

First thing I found was that the system operates better with a wired connection. Yes, wireless has gotten a lot faster in recent years but, there is still “overhead” when it comes to using it. Wireless is a half-duplex connection where ethernet is full duplex. If you can connect it to your network with a wire, it will be better.

Toner… These days, equipment manufacturers are pursuing a business model that (attempts to) require a subscription. The government stepped in and said that they cannot void a warranty because a customer chooses to use an “off-brand” of toner. The inclusion and requirement of the chip is troublesome. The process seems relatively simple to break the chips off the original toner cartridges and then keep migrating them to future (off-brand) cartridges.

Internet required. There is some problematic writing and understanding for this. While I don’t mind using my home network to connect and use the printer and scanner, I don’t want anything leaving the house out the actual Internet connection to “phone home.” There are various threads out there that suggest how you can opt-out of sharing any data but when I tried to follow the suggestions, the paths to get there were no longer valid. This is likely due to a firmware update which moved some things around. I called HP to see what could be done. Trying to explain the test below was problematic at best.

The test. I disconnected the input to my home router, which cut the house off from the Internet but left the internal routing and wireless structure in tact. Using the HP Smart application on the PC as well as the Android device (sorry I’m not an Apple person), the results were as follows:

Windows 11 pc app version 156.1.1125.0:
Printing worked
Scanning worked

Android 14 app version 17.30.1.5049
Printing did not work – “This printer isn’t available right now”
Scanning did not work – “This printer isn’t available right now”

On a subsequent test (working with the HP tech), the removal of the WAN component was tried again.

Windows 11 pc:
Printing worked
Scanning worked

Android using HP smart
Printing did not work – “This printer isn’t available right now”
Scanning worked – Even though the app showed no connection to the printer and there was a spinning circle where the estimated supply levels was.

This, more or less, proves that the (Android) app itself is buggy. I hate inconsistencies when it comes to testing this kind of thing… I’ll be keeping an eye out for an update on Google Play.

There are ways, as inconvenient as they are, to print without Internet service – Wi-Fi direct, USB, and possibly Bluetooth. Not happy with these but they are there.

As some of the online posts suggested, there was no “opt-out” that could be pointed to. I recall there are some “options” when installing the apps (Windows and Android) but they won’t save you from ET phoning home.

So I bought this printer because it was a laserjet and good price. However it’s always getting this critical error after every print job, when it goes to sleep it basically shuts off and has to be manually turned on. If it fails to print you have to cancel all jobs, then restart the printer and restart the computer. 50 percent of the time that kills the driver and the printer has to be reinstalled. All sign in info from the manual is incorrect so can’t change anything from admin settings. Definitely need to consider this before purchasing this printer.

We have to continually have to restart this computer. Have to deep dive into settings to get to simple commands. Worst of all, you have to change a chip to replace ink cartridge. Says business quality, but so not. Going to see if we can return.