HP LaserJet Pro M428fdw Review

The HP LaserJet Pro M428fdw is the printer to choose if print speed is your top priority. With a strong all-around printing package, it is also a worthwhile consideration for those who want a great black and white laser printer. The only real detractors of this machine are its high(er) initial purchase price and its mediocre photo and graphics printing — though we don't expect many consumers to be looking at this printer for its photo or graphic abilities.

Performance Comparison

Text Quality

The HP LaserJet Pro M428fdw scored very well for monochrome text quality and resolution. The text quality was consistently good with every print, and the text resolution was sharp with occasional faintness. Some fast laser printers can produce distractingly faint text, but the M428fdw stands out here above the rest.

In office settings that require high output and cannot sacrifice text quality, the M428fdw is a good option. Overall, the subtle lightness in some text wasn't so noticeable or glaring as to detract much from the M428fdw's overall score, though, and, considering how fast it's able to spit out pages, it seems like a fair compromise.

Operating Cost

The initial purchase price of the M428fdw is among the highest in our lineup, but its operating costs, once purchased, are fairly low.

Its cost per black and white ream comes out to around $18.50, and the three-year estimated lifetime cost is around $850. Not the best and also not the worst, the M428fdw sits about dead middle in our lineup for estimated lifetime cost.

The takeaway here is that this printer is an investment in speed and efficiency for your home or small office, and that speed comes at a higher initial purchase price. Though, once it's in your arsenal, it doesn't cost much to maintain relative to its competitors.

It's also worth noting that the M428fdw has one of the largest paper handling inputs of printers that we tested, adding to its value in a busy office and its manufacturing costs, and thus purchase price.

Considering its cost and its particular set of strengths, the M428fdw may be overkill for many consumers looking for a more budget-friendly option.

Ease of Use

The M428fdw was pretty painless to set up and use. Whereas other printers scored cumulatively well here but may have had one area they struggled in, the M428fdw performed well across the board.

This printer is easy to set up and align, the supplementary mobile app was slow but very easy to navigate, and the website is straightforward and helpful. We appreciated the simple touch display that makes it easy to find and adjust settings.

It has two paper drawers that can hold 350 pages in total. This capacity is quite a reserve and sets it up for one of the highest monthly duty cycles of any printer we tested. We did experience the printer not registering paper refills a couple of times, but opening and shutting the drawer a few times cleared the error. If anything, that was the only real drawback besides the sluggish mobile app.

While big and bulky and possibly overkill for some, the M428fdw is a pleasure to use, and it would make a great buy for the home or small office that prints a lot of documents and needs them to be produced ASAP.

Graphics/Photos

It is important to note that the M428fdw does not print color, so keep that in mind when reading through this section. We scored it against the rest of our lineup and used its ability to properly display the grayscale and its image resolution as our measurements. But as expected, it didn't perform as strongly in this metric.

Photo prints had enough fuzziness and blurring to detract from the overall image. The resolution of images was quite distorted, and objects appeared blurry and fuzzy throughout. However, it printed business graphics very well, using the grayscale gradient and crisp, clear text. That's the key takeaway here. This is a great printer for offices that do not need color prints but still want things like PowerPoints and general business graphics to print well. While it can't produce good photos or images, its graphic prints were some of the best we observed in our testing.

The M428fdw's graphic prints set it apart from less-expensive laser alternatives. It can produce high-quality business graphic prints, which many lasers fall short of because they tend to produce fainter images at speed. This makes it stand out as a Top Pick for us: it's a great black and white laser printer without significant compromises.

Printing Speed

King of the Hill and the only printer to score off our charts for this metric, the M428fdw is an absolute beast. It can spit out full-page photos (though notably low quality) in 5 seconds flat and print 25 duplex and 43 simplex pages per minute.

Our tests push out 9-page composite image and text documents in about 28 seconds, with good clarity and resolution. Again, for reference, the next best printer is half as fast.

This machine is amazingly quick. Coupled with its dual, high capacity paper trays, it's well-equipped to be the keystone of a home or small office that prints many documents and needs them ASAP.

Should You Buy the HP LaserJet Pro M428fdw?

The HP LaserJet Pro M428fdw fills the niche of the high-demand home or small office that prints many text documents. While it does have a high initial purchase price, its operating costs are quite low. So, if you're in a situation where time is of the essence, and you're producing a lot of prints every day, the M428fdw has a great dollar-to-utility ratio.

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