HP Colour LaserJet Pro M454dw Printer, White

Bought for home office. Possibly a little large for this use but not enough to be a problem. Very easy to set up and get started. After a few weeks of light use I'm very impressed with the speed and print quality.

This was bought for home use and is proving just the job for us. Moderate use only, so cost per page is not really relevant; good, clear printing is far more important and the duplex facility saves paper. It even prints photos to an acceptable standard, so that is a bonus.

Printer is nice enough but a set of replacement toners is nearly £250. Tried a couple of "HP compatible" and cheaper replacements but HP firmware spotted them and they are not compatible at all so couldn't use them. How do they get away with this? I own the printer but can't use a toner of my choosing?

This replaced my 1998 LJ2100, which finally had problems I couldn't solve. As far as I can tell the infra-red paper sensor had died. 22 years for a printer. And back then it cost as much as this one, not adjusted for inflation.I already have an inket for archival photo printing, but the inks are far too costly for general office printing. Hence the M454dn. Well a lot has changed with laserjets in 20-odd years. My old printer was parallel port, this is USB2 or ethernet, or wireless (probably). Since I wanted it accessible to several Win10 network machines, I used the ethernet cable into a hub.Things got off to a promising start when it very intelligently updated itself to the latest firmware as soon as I turned it on.The first two machines software install went fine eventually, but not without problems. As is usual nowadays, there are no real instructions, just Fisher Price cartoons and an expectation the user will sail through installation without needing to have a clue. Unfortunately that is made very difficult by the fact that there are at least 3 main methods for getting the M454dn up and running, and no explanation of how they differ. There are no drivers with it, you have to go online, and HP gives 2 URL's for software - the auto-everything, don't-bother-your-little head-installer, and the 17 different types of driver and no means of knowing which you need. This isn't my first HP rodeo, and it's because they are a huge company with very diverse markets than range from clueless plug and play hopefuls to corporates with IT departments.There is also an App, HP Smart. It will get installed by the other methods, or you can get it from the MS app store, and it will install what you need. Mostly.On the first two machines, thankfully the option one method worked. You download a stub, which looks at your system then downloads and installs the actual software and drivers. If this works, as it did for these two, great....Except en route you will be asked to open an HP account, asked to supply marketing info, and asked to 'activate' the printer. None of this is explained or expected by the user, and mostly you've no real idea what why exactly you are being asked to do what you are being wizarded through the process.Option 2 is to download the software+drivers directly, and install them yourself. This also works, as long as it does. There is a web page full of software and what you need or don't need isn't clear. Just download the main installer at the top and see how that does.Unfortunately none of it worked on machine #3. I spent 2 days repeatedly installing and uninstalling and reinstalling via every possible permutation. The first photo above shows what happens: it sits for ages 'taking several minutes'. It eventually goes, but in fact it hasn't completed it's just aborted.One of the software item at the HP page is a diagnostic scanner tool to try and figure out what's wrong. That was able to diagnose that something was wrong, and reinstall the software and drivers... but that just put me back where I already was.What was happening, I eventually worked out, was of the 6 devices that represented the printers various systems, only 5 would accept drivers. This left the HP software claiming all was fine when it wasn't. If you looked in the right place you'd find a 'paper out' message and a missing driver in when hovering over the printer's icon in 'Printers and Scanners'.It took me a lot of digging in Device Manager - where one device remained unrecognised and driverless - to identify the troublesome device as the m454dn PCL6 component. Which barfed everytime at the m454dn PCL6 driver in the software. Attempts to 'update' the driver to the actual damn driver (that installed and worked fine on the other two machines) ended in messages that the driver was not certified compatible and couldn't be used. See Pic 2 for details.Ultimately I was able to discover that Device SWD\PRINTENUM\WSD-58a45b06-6163-4905-9aca-d5cca5546120 requires further installation. Brilliant! :(Still, there is at least a clue here...\WSD.... Windows 10 can use a system device called WSD to deal with PnP network printers and other devices, and the HP 'auto' install methods insist on using WSD. Except on some machines WSD doesn't work. I've no idea why. It should do with any current Win10, but it wasted a great deal of my time. The solution is to tell the software not to install to WSD but to do a normal IP install. That is very well hidden behind a small 'Advanced' button in the HP installer that only the desperate will actually click.Anyhow, I uninstalled everything for the 8th or 9th time vis Revo Uninstaller to hoover out all the hundreds of registry entries HP had left, and then did that. And it still didn't work.To cut a long story short I went back to the HP software site and downloaded and installed the generic PCL6 driver package as well. I was then able to update the unidentified device with a PCL6 driver that it accepted and that worked. At last.Why, this was such a struggle I have no idea, and given the quality of HP support forums I wasn't going to waste my time asking. All 3 machines are the same W10x64Pro version, with no disk errors nor other problems. 2 have the same motherboard, firmware and CPU - 1 worked fine, the other gave me all the problems.As for the printer itself, it's hefty and very well made, and feels like it should last many years. It works flawlessly, provided you remember it's a colour laser, so mediocre for photo quality. It's quick and quiet, with no paper feed or jamming issues so far. The only annoyance is that the internal fan stays on even when dozing or in standby. It has to be off before the fan will shut up; it's not loud but not quiet either.I recommend it, but you really do have to ask yourself about the drivers: do you feel lucky punk? Because there is no significant help out there on this fairly new model. That's why I've written as much as I have here.The other gotcha is replacement toner cartridges. There are two versions. A set of the lower capacity ones is about £380, the high capacity about £720. Aftermarket clones can be had for about £90. HP are mad.EDIT: Only after writing this review I discovered that the reason the printer kept the fan running was that I had left the built-in screen menu open. Once returned to the 'ready' home screen, the printer hibernates and becomes completely silent within the specified time (1 min here). This makes it much nicer to live with. And it wakes up almost instantly when you print to it.A few months on, I've almost forgotten the driver install headaches, and it's given me absolutely no issues even with sticky labels. No jams, good print. It doesn't get a lot of use, but the OE cartridges are still showing full.

I absolutely love this printer.It was easy to set up & the colours are great. I always buy HP products.They never disappoint.

After many years of inkjet pain, I finally persuaded my wife to get a laserjet. As the price of colour laserjet has come down I decided to go for it; not expecting a lot.How wrong I was - the colour is exceptional. Slightly flat on regular paper but better than inkjet IMO.The speed of the printer is also great. Far quicker than an inkjet in every way.Have had no jams or similar in the months that I have had the printer. We have printed well in excess of 1000 sheets already.

I bought this for work. It was really easy to set up and the print quality has been exceptional.

This was a fantastic addition to my home office - super fast and great print job