HP Color Laserjet Enterprise M480f Multifunction Duplex Printer (Renewed Premium)

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.

I have always liked the quality of HP printers, and this one is no exception. Installation was mostly easy; print quality is very good and the Copy function works well. However, the Scan function is a real problem. After two days of trying, I still cannot get the scanner to scan to a file folder on my computer. Despite many attempts, using the HP Smart App on my computer always returns a "Scanner not currently available" , which then refers me to the HP website where there is a full page of instructions on how to correct this problem (none of which works). I downloaded the HP Owner's Manual for the printer (253 pages!!) which provided no help. Why the Print function instantly connected to my computer but the Scan function will not is beyond me. All of HP's "solutions" appear to be written by technical nerds who have no idea how to communicate with the rest of us. I can always scan to a USB thumb drive and then transfer the scans to my computer, but that is an annoying waste of time. So I give the printer a "5" for print quality and copying and a "2" for unresolved scanning issues. Extremely frustrating!!Addendum 12-31-24. I've used this printer for seven months, and I am now even more frustrated. Frequently my computer (also HP) says that the printer is "offline" even though it is actually on. The only way to correct the problem is to unplug the data cable from the printer and then plug it back in again. This problem even happens when a document was just printed a few minutes ago. Print and copy quality are very good, but functionally this printer is really annoying. I originally rated the printer are 3-Stars, but I now consider it 2-Stars.

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.