HP LaserJet Pro MFP 3102fdwe

Verdict

HP’s LaserJet Pro MFP 3102fdwe is a compact and rapid multifunction full of useful small office features. It delivers great prints, scans and copies, and is generally pretty easy to use. However, it’s not especially cheap for a mono MFP, and it doesn’t make up for it with low running costs. As with other HP printers denoted by an ‘e’, it will only work with an internet connection and HP’s own consumables. That makes it hard for us to recommend it.

Introduction

HP’s LaserJet Pro MFP 3102fdwe is a reasonably well-specified laser multifunction peripheral (MFP), designed for small and home offices. It’s a mono device, so it can only print, copy or receive mono faxes, but its scanner operates in full colour.

This MFP supports both wired and wireless network connections. You can also use it to print from, or scan to, any USB drive inserted in a slot just in front of the colour touchscreen. It’s built to cope with regular use, with HP recommending a monthly print volume of up to 2,500 pages. It’s fast, with a 33 pages per minute (ppm) speed rating.

Like all current HP printers ending with an ‘e’, the 3102fdwe is an HP+ device. This means it must be registered on the HP+ service, that it won’t function unless it’s connected to the internet, and that you can only use it with genuine HP supplies. The printer comes with a pre-installed black cartridge, rated for around 1,000 pages.

Design and Features

• Compact and smart
• Mostly easy to use
• HP+ limitations could be annoying

Mono laser MFPs aren’t known for their looks, but there’s not much wrong with the LaserJet Pro MFP 3102fdwe in this department. It’s fairly squat and made from tasteful white and dark grey plastics. At the front left of the top panel, a 6.9cm colour touchscreen offers direct control over copies and features such as USB prints and scans. It’s an easy screen to use, although with copies in particular it often feels as though operations take one or two more taps than ideal.

Squatting low above the printer’s 150-sheet paper output, the scanner is fitted with a 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF). This pulls through multi-page documents, letting you fax or copy them without shuffling paper around, but it’s a shame it doesn’t support duplex (double-sided) scanning. You can also lift the ADF to use the scan platen, which is flush with its plastic surround – this makes it much easier to retrieve originals after you’ve scanned them.

In the printer’s base, there’s a fully enclosed 250-sheet paper cassette, but there’s no bypass or multipurpose feed. If you want to print headed paper or special media, you’ll need to load it in the cassette, which is a bit of an inconvenience.

This, and the lack of duplex scanning, are probably the only slight letdowns. The printer itself does offer a duplex, which is essential to saving paper and producing professional-looking reports and printouts.

Like most printer manufacturers, HP has stopped shipping drivers with its products, instead pointing customers at an online setup process. This seems more complex than necessary, with the freshly switched-on printer displaying a pairing code which you then need to enter online. With this done, you need to sign up for HP+ and agree to its terms before HP will let you set up your printer.

Personally, I’m unconvinced by the need for HP+ printers, which require that you sign up for the service, register them, and agree only to use HP consumables for the life of the printer. Thereafter, the device will only work while it has an internet connection – even if you connect to it via USB.

This seems like an unnecessary complication, particularly given that it’ll render your printer useless whenever your internet connection goes down. The requirement for genuine HP supplies could have other implications for users: during my testing, the 3102fdwe warned me that the (genuine) inserted supplies weren’t communicating with the printer, and it refused to print. The message cleared when I removed and reinserted the toner, but printers can be annoying enough for users without imposing additional hurdles.

Fortunately, there is a non-HP+ alternative, the MFP 3102fdw, which is otherwise identical. With both devices, you can choose whether to sign up for Instant Ink or buy consumables yourself.

Print Speed and Quality

• Fast at everything, except high-resolution scans
• Strong print, scan and copy quality
• Unimpressive running costs

In use, this is mostly an impressive MFP. While some laser printers impose a warm-up time if you haven’t used them for a while, the MFP 3102fdwe sprung into life to deliver a first page in as little as nine seconds, regardless of how long it had been idle. Like other printers, its print speeds were dependent on the type of job. Longer documents require a longer job preparation, so the first page took 34 seconds in our 20-page standard test, and the MFP 3102fdwe peaked at only 7.3ppm. Switching to a different test in which we repeat a single page 25 times, it peaked at a much more impressive 27.8 ppm.

Complex graphics usually slow printers down, but our single-page graphics test cut the preparation time, giving a best result of 25ppm over 20 pages. Tested with a more complex, multi-page document, this dropped to 16ppm – still a decent result.

The LaserJet Pro MFP 3102fdwe has a fast scanner when working at low resolutions suitable for archiving and copying office documents. It could capture an A4 page at 150 dots per inch (dpi) in nine seconds, needing just 20 seconds at 300 dpi. Only at the maximum 1,200 dpi was it less impressive, needing a minute and 40 seconds to finish scanning a 10x15cm photograph.

This MFP combines quick scanning and printing to race through photocopies. It finished a single mono copy in 16 seconds and could complete 10 single-sided pages in an impressive 37 seconds.

Happily, this nippy performance didn’t come at the cost of quality. All of our test prints were excellent by the standards of a mono laser. The text was bold and very crisp, as you’d expect, but mono graphics and photographs were surprisingly detailed and mercifully free of the banding you often get from cheaper laser printers. This great quality extended to photocopies, which were near-perfectly exposed, with no resulting loss of detail in light or dark areas.

While HP’s scan interface feels a little overblown, I have few complaints about this MFP’s scan quality. Document scans were again excellent. At higher resolutions, the picture was a little more mixed. The Auto Exposure feature tended to over-expose the lightest shades in photos, but with it off the results were very good. However, viewed at 100% zoom I could see evidence of digital processing, which could leave the results looking odd and artificial.

Buy your own consumables, stick to the high-capacity toner that lasts for 4,000 pages, and you’ll pay around 2.5p per page to print. That’s not especially competitive for a mono printer in this class, but it’s not outrageous. Alternatively, you can sign up to HP’s Instant Ink service (which is separate from HP+), and choose from toner plans covering 50-800 pages per month.

For inkjets and colour lasers, these often work out better value, provided you print at or near the relevant monthly volume, but they work less well for a mono laser. At 2.25p per page, only the £18-per-month top tier offers any saving over buying your own toner, although it does cut down the hassle of shopping for supplies.

Like all laser printers, the MFP 3102fdwe has comparatively high peak power use – I measured 872 Watts while copying. This is a result of heating up the fuser, which bonds the toner to the page, but it’s more typical to see a consumption of around 200W when printing. I measured 5W of standby power use, dropping to just 1W in sleep mode – which is where printers spend most of their time.

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