HP LaserJet Pro M1217nfw MFP

All but identical in most ways to the HP LaserJet Pro M1212nf MFP ($199 direct, 3.5 stars) that I reviewed well over a year ago, the HP LaserJet Pro M1217nfw MFP ($249.99 direct) adds WiFi and either one or two other features (depending on how you count them) that I'll get to shortly. Beyond that, it's built around the same laser engine and offers much the same speed and output quality plus all of the same features, including an Ethernet connector. Given its higher cost, the M1217nfw isn't quite as much of a bargain as the M1212nf, but if you need WiFi along with the MFP capability, it still offers a lot for the price.

Other than WiFi, the biggest difference between the M1217nfw and M1212nf is the addition of support for Apple AirPrint for printing over the WiFi connection. The printer also adds support for HP's ePrint, which lets you print through the cloud by assigning the printer an email address and then sending a document to it. However, the M1212nf now supports ePrint also, so it's added to the M1217nfw only in the sense that it wasn't available for the M1212nf when I reviewed it.

Like the M1212nf, the M1217nfw is small enough to use as a personal printer in any size office and can also serve as a shared printer in a micro office. However, its paper handling limits it to light duty printing even by micro office standards, with a 150 sheet tray, manual duplexing only, and no additional options available.

What you get along with the light-duty printing capability is a wealth of MFP features. The M1217nfw can print and fax from as well as scan to a PC even over a network, it works as a standalone copier and fax machine, and it can send email through your PC by launching an email message on the PC and adding a scanned document as an attachment. It also offers a 35-page automatic document feeder (ADF) that complements the letter-size flatbed to scan multi-page documents as well as legal-size pages. And you can print using AirPrint, or print through the cloud.

Setup, Speed, and Output Quality
Setting up the M1217nfw is standard fare. For my tests, I connected it to a network using the Ethernet connector and ran the tests from a Windows Vista system. I timed it on our business applications suite (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing) at 11.1 effective pages per minute, which is fast for the 19 ppm engine rating and essentially tied with the M1217nfw at 11.3 ppm. (Differences of 0.2 ppm on our tests aren't significant.) It's also not much slower than the Editors' Choice Canon imageClass MF4570dn ($299 direct, 4 stars) at 12.3 ppm.

Output quality is just a touch below par across the board, with scores for text, graphics, and photos each at the bottom of a very tight range where the vast majority of mono laser MFPs fall.

For text, that translates to output that's easily good enough for most business use, as long as you don't have an unusual need for small fonts. Graphics were good enough for internal business use, but I'd hesitate to hand the output to a client or customer who I was trying to impress with a sense of my professionalism. Photo output was good enough for printing Web pages with recognizable photos. Depending on how much of a perfectionist you are, you may or may not consider it good enough for, say, a client newsletter.

One other issue you need to consider for the M1217nfw is its relatively high running cost. Based on the cartridge cost and claimed yield, the cost per page is 4.3 cents, or about 0.4 cents more than the claimed cost per page for the MF4570dn. If you print just 100 pages per week, or about 5000 pages per year, that works out to a difference of $20 per year in running costs, or about $60 in three years? enough to more than cover the $50 difference in initial price between the two printers.

More generally, the more pages you expect to print, the more likely it is that the MF1217nfw will wind up being more expensive in the long run than a printer with a higher initial cost but a lower running cost. On the other hand, if you don't expect to print many pages, the cost per page isn't much of an issue.

I'd be more enthusiastic about the HP LaserJet Pro M1217nfw MFP if its running costs were lower. That said, there's still enough here to make the printer worth considering, thanks to its long list of MFP features and highly welcome conveniences like ePrint for printing through the cloud. As long as your print needs are light enough so you're not concerned about the cost per page, it's a more than reasonable choice.

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