HP Laserjet Pro 300 Color MFP M375nw

You could think of the HP Laserjet Pro 300 Color MFP M375nw ($599 direct) as the junior cousin of the HP LaserJet Pro 400 Color MFP M475dn ($699 direct), with a lower rated print speed and lacking an automatic duplexer, but sharing most other features and specs. It does have one extra that its bigger cousin lacks: WiFi connectivity. In our testing, it was even slower than the already pokey M475dn, but its overall output quality was as good, thanks to top-tier graphics.?

The M375nw prints, copies, faxes, and scans; it can fax either from its 3.5-inch color touch screen or from a computer (PC Fax). You can scan to a USB thumb drive, email, or a network folder. It has a 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) for faxing, scanning, or copying multi-page documents without you having to feed each page by hand. It can scan at up to legal size using the ADF.

This MFP measures 19.7 by 16.5 by 19.0 inches (HWD) and weighs 62 pounds. It?s too big to share a desk with, and moving it into place is a 2-person job. The M375nw has a 300-sheet standard paper capacity, split between a 250-sheet input tray and 50-sheet multipurpose tray; a second 250-sheet tray is available as an option ($115 direct) for a maximum paper capacity of 550 sheets. Unlike the M475dn, it lacks an automatic duplexer for printing on both sides of a sheet of paper.

The M375nw can run HP?s Web apps and comes with a number of them pre-installed. Their printable content ranges from forms to news feeds, coloring book pages, Sudoku puzzles, and more. The M475dn is also ePrint enabled; HP assigns an e-mail address to the printer (which you can later customize), you can send documents to that address, and the printer will automatically print them out (as long as it?s connected to the Internet). You can print to it from an Apple mobile device using the HP ePrint Home & Biz app over a direct wireless connection.

The HP Laserjet Pro 300 M375nw MFP offers USB, Ethernet, and WiFi connectivity. I tested it over an Ethernet connection with a PC running Windows Vista.

Print Speed

I timed the M375nw on the latest version of our business applications suite (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing), at a ponderous 2.6 effective pages per minute (ppm), slow even considering its relatively low rated print speed of 19 ppm?which should be about the speed you would get if you were to print text only. ?(Our test suite includes text pages, graphics pages, and pages with mixed content.) The HP M475dn?s tested speed of 3.2 ppm, slow for a color laser, looks zippy in comparison. The Editors? Choice Dell 2155cn ($549.99 direct) ran through the tests at a 5.9 ppm clip, finishing in less than half the M375nw?s time.

Output Quality

What the M375nw lacks in speed, it makes up for in above-par output quality, thanks to superior graphics. Text quality was typical for a laser, which translates to very good?fine for any business use except those requiring very small fonts, like some desktop publishing applications.

Graphics were top tier, of good enough quality that I wouldn?t hesitate to hand them to clients I was seeking to impress, or?for that matter?use for marketing materials. The only issues I encountered were hardly worth mention, a very mild blotchiness in a couple of backgrounds (seemingly due to uneven toner distribution) and a hint of posterization (a sudden change in color where it should be gradual) in one graphic.

?Photo quality was average for a color laser. Prints generally showed good color and retained detail, especially in dark areas. Most had some dithering (graininess), and a couple showed posterization. They?re fine for printing out recognizable photos from files and Web pages; whether you?d use them for a client newsletter depends on how picky you are.

The HP Laserjet Pro 300 Color MFP M375nw is a solid workhorse color laser MFP for a small office, with one significant flaw and one great strength. Its print speed is unusually slow for a color laser today?it would even be slow among higher-end inkjets. Set against that is its unusually good graphics, easily good enough for graphics-intensive marketing materials. The HP LaserJet Pro 400 Color MFP M475dn has similarly good overall output quality and, while still slow, is somewhat faster. It doesn?t offer WiFi connectivity, although the otherwise identical M475dw ($749 direct) does.

The Editors? Choice Dell 2155cn provides a more well-rounded package than the M375nw, with much better speed and comparable output quality (better for text and photos while not quite as good for graphics). But if graphics quality is paramount and speed a secondary consideration, the HP Laserjet Pro 300 Color MFP M375nw is well worth consideration as a workhorse color laser MFP for a small office.

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