IT Pro Verdict

HP changes the landscape for workgroup colour printing as the M553dn delivers a superb range of features and rock-bottom running costs. It’s fast as well and the new toner provides quality output whilst keeping power consumption to an all-time low

Reasons to buy

+
Compact design; High print speeds; Good output quality; Low running costs and power consumption; Fast duplexing

Reasons to avoid

-
No integral wireless

By Dave Mitchell

published 13 May 2015

in Reviews

The M553dn delivers in the performance stakes with HP quoting 38ppm for both mono and colour A4 prints. These are no idle claims with a 38-page Word test document hustled quietly into the top output tray in precisely 1 minute.

It shrugged off our challenging 24-page DTP document and its big photos and graphics with this also averaging 38ppm at the top 3600dpi interpolated resolution. Amazingly, duplexing is almost as fast as single-sided printing with our 38-page document printed on both sides in 61 seconds.

The M553dn scores if you're in a hurry as the time to first page was never more than 7 seconds and even when the printer was in power saving mode, it still delivered the first page in under 9 seconds. The ColorSphere 3 toner really does reduce power consumption, too.

Whilst printing, we recorded an average draw of around 630-650W and found the printouts were only warm to the touch. To put this in perspective, we measured Xerox WorkCentre 6605 and Oki MC562dnw colour laser MFPs sucking up 1.14kW and 1.17kW respectively.

HP's Connected cloud service lets users print from anywhere

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Dave is an IT consultant and freelance journalist specialising in hands-on reviews of computer networking products covering all market sectors from small businesses to enterprises. Founder of Binary Testing Ltd – the UK’s premier independent network testing laboratory - Dave has over 45 years of experience in the IT industry.

Dave has produced many thousands of in-depth business networking product reviews from his lab which have been reproduced globally. Writing for ITPro and its sister title, PC Pro, he covers all areas of business IT infrastructure, including servers, storage, network security, data protection, cloud, infrastructure and services.