HP LaserJet Pro M251nw Pro Reviews

The HP LaserJet Pro 200 Colour Printer M251nw offers good colour output quality and connectivity with an easy-to-use touchscreen control panel. Unfortunately the toner is pricey and there is no automatic two-sided printing. If you are in the market for a cheap colour laser printer this is about as good as it gets. But you may wish to consider an inkjet if your initial budget is constrained.

Expensive toner and the lack of two-sided printing are typical deficiencies among low-priced color laser printers. While they can add to the cost of ownership, our tests with inkjets show that light-volume users may not feel the ink or toner pinch for some time. Given all that, the HP LaserJet Pro 200 color Printer M251nw is one of the best choices in its class, because of its good output quality, connectivity, and ease of use.

The M251nw prints good-looking documents and respectable-looking photos (for a laser printer, that is) at competitive speeds. It’s also well-built, attractive, and easy to set up and use. However, like its costlier MFP sibling, the M276nw, this single-function LaserJet’s input tray is too small. (If you use it a lot, you or somebody else in your office will spend too much time replenishing it.) In addition, it has no override tray for printing one-off envelopes or other specialty media. Each time you need to change paper size or type, you’ll have to remove the drawer and refill or reconfigure it. Furthermore, it has no auto-duplexer for printing two-sided pages automatically. These shortcomings are all strikes-against for high-volume print environments. But the biggest cut of all is the extraordinarily high per-page cost of toner. Whether you print thousands of pages each month, or just a few, you’ll be paying way too much for each page. Our bottom line: Despite the M251nw's great-looking output and respectable print speeds, we can’t recommend it unless your print-volume needs are really light. Like we said about the M276nw, HP needs to reduce the per-page cost of toner. Only then might we be able to get excited about this single-function sibling.

The HP LaserJet Pro 200 color M251nw laser printer delivers speed and output quality, but its paper handling is suitable for only light duty use even by micro office standards.