The HP Color LaserJet Pro M479fdn is our choice as the best laser all-in-one printer for Mac of 2023 due to a combination of speed, high print quality and value for money.
The HP Color LaserJet Pro M479fdn is easy to setup and connect to Macs, iPads and iPhones via a WiFi connection.
Most importantly, it delivers excellent print quality in both color and in black and white for everything from book reports to corporate reports.
When it comes to hassle free printing, you simply can’t beat laser printers over inkjets such as our top rated inkjet for Mac the Canon Pixma TS9120.
Laser printers are not only much faster than inkjets, but they’re less hassle to maintain as they don’t get clogged up like inkjet cartridges do if they’re not used for a while.
Other advantages of laser printers include:
- Much sharper print quality than inkjets
- More economical in the long run due to less problems with ink blockages
- Laser toner doesn’t smear like ink
For a laser printer, the HP Color LaserJet Pro M479fdn is pretty big at 16.5 x 15.4 x 9.7 inches and is also quite heavy weighing in at around 30 pounds which is pretty hefty.
It comes with introductory toner included which consists of HP LaserJet Black, Cyan, Magenta and Yellow cartridges which are good for around 700-800 pages of printing.
It can print on any type of printing paper including of course laserjet photo paper for photos. Note that its important that you buy laserjet photo paper as opposed to inkjet photo paper for best results.
Setup of the HP Color LaserJet Pro M479fdn is extremely simple on a Mac.
On the touchscreen, you simply connect the printer to your WiFi connection by entering your WiFi password. You must then download and install the latest HP Color LaserJet Pro M479fdn drivers for Mac and you’re done.
Note that the HP LaserJet Pro requires macOS High Sierra or above for the drivers to work with a Mac.
HP can be a bit slow to update Laserjet drivers for new releases of macOS but usually there are workarounds to keep them printing.
The HP Color LaserJet Pro M479fdn will then appear as a list of options in any application you want to print from such as Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc.
You can print very easily from iPads, iPhones and Android devices using the HP Smart app which connects instantly to the HP LaserJet Pro.
You can also choose to connect the HP Color LaserJet Pro M479fdn to your Mac via a USB cable which comes included in the box.
There’s also an Ethernet connection and although newer Macs no longer have an Ethernet port, it does allow you to connect the printer directly to your router so multiple Macs can print on it.
This is also possible via the wireless network but a wired network connection is more reliable and stable.
From sending a print job from your Mac to the HP LaserJet Pro, expect to wait around 10 seconds before it leaps into life from standby.
The HP LaserJet Pro prints at around 22 pages per minute (ppm) including automatic two sided printing. You can also print labels, envelopes and other smaller print jobs due to a bypass slot.
In fact, the speed of the HP Color LaserJet Pro M479fdn is arguably its most outstanding feature as it seems to fly through long documents in no time.
There’s a well designed 2.7 inch mobile phone style touch screen which you can tilt and makes it easy to control the printer or run diagnostics.
One nice touch is the HP Color LaserJet Pro M479fdn allows you to scan to email instantly from the touch screen.
This means you can scan a document and send it directly to someone’s email address by typing it in the touchscreen. You can even send documents to multiple email addresses directly from the printer itself.
You can also scan documents and send them to a USB pent drive attached to the printer or even a Dropbox account.
Another thing we liked is that the HP Color LaserJet Pro M479fdn also secures wireless connections to the printer. This is to give greater protection to prevent hackers or anyone intercepting your documents when they’re sent for printing.
Finally, you can even activate printing by voice commands although this isn’t via Alexa as it is with some printers.
On the downside, we found the HP LaserJet Pro to be a bit noisy although considering the speed it goes at, its hardly surprising.
Although it’s fast, the main difference between the HP LaserJet Pro and the more advanced HP Office Jet Pro is that it’s a lot slower and a smaller paper loading cartridge (250 sheets compared to 500 sheets in the Office Jet Pro).
Official HP toner replacements are also expensive at around $70 for each color although you can use cheaper unofficial toner cartridges. However, HP don’t make this very apparent and you actually have to change some settings in the printer to use unofficial cartridges.
Under Settings > Supplies > Supply Settings there’s a setting for “Cartridge Policy” which states “The printer can be configured to use only new, genuine HP supplies.
Genuine HP supplies that have been used previously—or non-HP supplies—must be replaced to continue printing.” You can however set that to “Off” or “Authorized HP”.
The HP Color LaserJet Pro M479fdn comes with a one-year limited hardware warranty and there’s 24-hour, 7 days a week Web support.
Downsides
Unfortunately, you can’t fax from your Mac using the HP LaserJet Pro as there’s no in-built fax.
However, this is not a great loss for Mac users because for reasons outlined here, this doesn’t work on macOS Ventura and recent versions of macOS due Apple’s decision to drop fax modem support in the latest versions of macOS.
You also can’t scan documents with the HP Color LaserJet Pro M479fdn so it’s no good if you want to go paperless or need to scan things like ID cards.
HP have also been very slow to update drivers for the latest versions of macOS such as Ventura and Monterey 12.2.1 although there is a workaround for this.
You can check pricing and availability of the M479fdn here.
This review should go to one star, all features being overshadowed by the riduculous cost of toner replacements. The game by HP here is to make money off toner by a low price point on the printer. Oldest sam in the book and we all really tired of it.
Toner replacements are more expensive for all laser printers than inkjets although they also last longer too and have fewer ink related problems. There are also unofficial toners replacements available. Whichever laser printer you get, it’s the same problem so you can only judge the printer on its overall performance and usability.
I recently switched from a Brother inkjet all-in-one to this laser printer. I am over the dried up ink cartridges, having to repeatedly clean the heads (and thereby using up ink in the process), and the time it took me to get a simple print job done. If I used the printer more frequently, perhaps some of these issues wouldn’t have been as significant; but using it occasionally, it’s way too much of a pita to keep. Hence, the switch to the laser printer. Plus the print quality is much better, except for photos, maybe. But I don’t print photos any more.
And, of course, the price of toner replacement factored into my purchase decision. Expensive, yes, but not out of line with other color laser printers. When I figure in the aggravation factor (inkjet printing), it’s worth the difference to me.
The tip on configuring this printer for non-HP toner cartridges is much appreciated, and I will definitely look into using aftermarket toner when the initial toner runs out.
I couldn’t be happier with my new printer.
Thanks for sharing your experiences with the HP Color LaserJet Pro M255dw. There’s no doubt that even though the cartridges are more expensive, laser printers are far less problematic than inkjets. As you say, the problem with inkjets is that if you don’t use them regularly, you get all kinds of ink related problems and the fact is most people don’t use their printers on a daily or even weekly basis.
Your review specifically stated that this model has scan functionality, and can scan both single-side and duplex; based on your review, I have just purchased it for my home office. However, I have yet to discover how to scan at all; it appears to be only a printer. Please share exactly how the scanner functionality is accessed on this model. Thank you!
It should have been made clearer that you can scan and send it to the HP Color LaserJet Pro M255dw but only via the HP Smart App on a mobile device. The review has been revised to clarify this.