HP MDF 3301sdw LaserJet Pro Color Printer Scanner Review

HP MDF 3301sdw LaserJet Pro Color Printer Scanner Review

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Takeaway: Great quality prints, but software is buggy.

You’ll receive the printer, user manuals, and 5 ft power cord. The printer measures 16.5” wide, 13” tall, and 14.75” from front to back. On top is an auto-document feeder that can accommodate up to 50 sheets from 4"" x 6"" to legal size (8.5"" x 14""). To its right is a flip-up document return stopper to prevent scanned and copied pages from sliding off the return deck. When the scanner lid is opened, the total height is 21.5” tall. The glass scanner bed fit sheets up to A4 in size.

At the front left-hand side of the machine is the tiltable touchscreen control panel which measures 3.75” x 2.25”. Just below it is a USB port, and in the middle there’s an output tray extension arm to prevent your copies from sliding off the tray when printing or copying in bulk; it can hold up to 100 pages. The USB port is used for walk-up printing and the power button is located just in front of it.

Inside, the machine comes with 4 pre-installed starter cartridges: black, cyan, magenta, and yellow with yields of 600 pages for black and white and 500 for color respectively. The replacement toner you’ll need is HP 218 which comes in standard or high-yield capacities with yields of 1300 and 3000 respectively for black and 1200 and 2500 for color. One thing to note is that HP toner cartridges have microchips on them, and if you enable cartridge protection, it will permanently lock those cartridges to your machine, so they cannot be removed and used elsewhere. There’s also an “Authorized HP cartridge policy” setting that when disabled allows the use of third-party toners, however, you will still need a compatible chip on any new cartridge for it to work; thankfully you can remove and re-use the chips from spent cartridges. Both these settings are toggled off by default. HP cartridges are also recyclable via their free Planet Partners program. Before use, it’s recommended to shake each cartridge side-to-side and front to back to distribute the toner inside before replacing in the machine.

Just under the access door is the single-sheet priority feed slot which you can use to feed in specialty paper like cardstock and envelopes; the width is adjustable to fit the size of paper you’re using. Finally, at the bottom is a 250-sheet capacity paper tray. There’s a catch at the back that prevents it from being removed fully unless you lift the front of the tray and continuing pulling it out. The front of the tray can be extended by squeezing the blue tab in order to accommodate longer sheets like legal size paper. Just note that while extended the drawer does not close fully and will have a 2” gap at the front. The slider guide at the front lets you adjust its length to properly secure your paper size while the guide at the left adjusts the width. Note there is no option to add any additional trays to increase total paper capacity.

At the left and right sides of the base are handholds that make lifting, carrying, and moving the printer easier. The printer is also fairly lightweight for its size, weighing around 38 lbs. At the back, you can connect to the printer via USB-B or Ethernet, though cables are not provided. You can also open the back panel to clear any paper jams, though note that you should leave at least 10 inches of clearance behind the printer in order to do so. The port for the power cable is located in the back corner.

The first time you turn on the machine, you’ll need to go through a brief setup that takes about 5 minutes. For my setup, I choose to connect the printer to my home’s WiFi network. Having the printer connected to the internet also allowed it to automatically download a firmware update. One issue I ran into was that the date could not be modified when formatted as “MM-DD-YYYY” as the values would revert after hitting “Apply;” however, to get around that, you can select a different display format, update the date, then change the format back. After setup, the printer will perform a quick color calibration.

From the main menu, you can initiate a copy, scan, or print from USB. For scan options, you can scan directly to Email, a Network folder, SharePoint, USB and computer, however, you will need to install HP’s scanning software on your computer first. You can also swipe the icons on the control panel to access more shortcuts, though despite updating to the latest firmware, there’s a function on the control panel that doesn’t appear finished called “GalleryApp.” It’s unclear what this function is for, and when I entered it, there were tons of place holders, dummy text, and menus that you can get stuck in and can’t exit without restarting the machine. However, it was removed in a firmware update. To access administrative settings, you’ll need to enter an admin PIN; the default PIN can be found on the sticker behind the front panel. This is useful for businesses who want to manage the printer remotely via HP Smart Admin, an online, multi-printer, cloud-based dashboard.

When sending print jobs the printer wakes up and starts immediately, and it takes about 15 seconds per side of the page. Printed text is crisp and clear with even line spacing and easy to read. For color prints, fine details are sharp and distinct, the colors are vibrant and nicely saturated, though when compared to the source image file on my screen, has a somewhat warmer tone than expected. Note than when printing, the maximum output is 26 pages per minutes with a max resolution of 600x600 dpi. Copies are completed about 23 second after pressing the copy button, and when compared to the original there are some slight differences. While clarity and accuracy look very good, colors appear slightly darker than on the original. Legibility of the text is good, but has a very slight stretch and thicker footprint, giving it the appearance of being bold. The alignment on the reproduction is just slightly offset from the original’s positioning, but the edges are clean.

You can take two single sided pages and turn them into a 2-sided document using the ADF. You’ll notice that there are no options for 2-sided original and that’s because this printer cannot scan both sides of a page in a single pass, as it lacks a scanner glass in the upper portion of the ADF lid. This printer can handle single-sided scanning of up to 20 pages per min for black and white and up to 9 for color scans. Color copies look pretty great when comparing them there's a slight darkening of the colors, but all the fine details are there. The colors are nicely saturated and lively colors, and the gradients have clean transitions without any noticeable banding. As for black and white copies, these were noticeably darker, although an adjustment in the color calibration settings can correct this.

When scanning using the flatbed glass, you have the option to scan directly to email, network folder, Sharepoint, USB, or to computer; the resolution can be set from 300 to 1200 dpi and saved in a variety of formats. By default the scan utility crops bounding white space instead of outputting the entire scan area; to change this, you must use the web interface or the HP Scan utility on a computer to change the settings from “Detect Content” to “Entire Scan Area” and make sure to save these changes as there’s no way to change this behavior from the on-board controls.

For scans, I noticed the saturation is reduced and the brightness and contrast are much higher compared to the digital source image. Zooming in, you can see the graininess and pixilation in the scan, however, most of the fine detail like the texture of the lips was preserved. For comparison, I scanned the same image at 1200 dpi and 300 dpi, and I was surprised to find that the 300 dpi image file was actually larger. It appears any time you scan at higher resolutions than 300 dpi, the scanner will sample those pixels, and then compress them down to 200 dpi in the final image file. The result is that the 300 dpi scan has better smoothness, less noise, and cleaner lines, which in my opinion is the better reproduction.

One thing I will say is that the machine is quite loud when operating (around 51 dBA), and you’ll notice this during the machine’s warm upon turning on, waking from sleep, and printing; however, in sleep mode it is completely silent. There’s also an energy saving mode that will turn the printer off completely after a period of inactivity (1 to 8 hours), but you will have to press the power button to turn it on again later. That said, there is a setting called Quiet Mode that, when enabled, slows down printing to reduce noise while preserving print quality. With USB walk-up printing, the printer doesn’t even have to be connected to a network. Just plug in a USB thumb drive with the files you want to print and select them on the LCD. You are also supposed to be able to save scans directly to the thumb drive, however, I wasn’t able to get this feature to work regardless of which options were selected. The HP Smart mobile app also works pretty well, and it’s easy to add the printer and print from your phone. However, I wasn’t able to get the scan to phone feature to work either. Hopefully these issues will be corrected in a future firmware update.

Overall, the print quality from the 3301sdw is excellent. Text is clear and easy to read and colors are well-saturated and vibrant. WiFi connectivity and direct-connect options make the printer easy to use wirelessly, and I found the network connections to be stable and reliable. The main drawback for this model is that you cannot perform duplex or 2-sided scanning/copying in a single pass. You can only convert 1-sided pages into 2-sided prints using the ADF. Printing, scanning, and copying are quick, though there may be some small visible differences between the original and copy. While there are a few features I couldn’t get to work properly, these could potentially be fixed in future firmware or software updates. This printer won’t be ideal for those that need to scan or make lots of copies of 2-sided documents, but for everything else I think it works great.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. #CommissionsEarned
Buy it at Amazon: HP MDF 3301sdw LaserJet Pro Color Printer Scanner [Affiliate Link]