HP Color LaserJet Pro M454dw

A Small Footprint for a Color Laser

The HP Color LaserJet Pro M454dw is relatively compact and lightweight, though not the smallest or lightest in its class. The abovementioned Brother HL-L8260CDW is a few inches smaller in all directions and about 6 pounds lighter, as is the Canon Color image-Class LBP664Cdw. Both the Epson WF-C5290 and Eco-Tank Pro ET-5850, another inkjet-based laser alternative, are a little trimmer and several pounds lighter. Even though as a print-only rather than multifunction model it doesn’t give you many output options to configure, the Color LaserJet Pro M454dw comes with a 2.7-inch color touch screen, shown below. You can use the panel to monitor consumables, generate usage reports, configure security and other features, and more. Alternatively, like most printers nowadays, this one comes with a built-in web portal that lets you perform configuration tasks, maintenance, monitoring, and report generation from nearly any browser, including your smartphone’s or tablet’s.

Smart App: Controlling the M454dw

Smart App is HP’s multi-platform combination driver and value-added interface. One way it attempts to streamline your interaction with the printer is by providing a similar interface across the Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows platforms it runs on. You also get HP Smart Tasks, a collection of customizable workflow profiles—such as printing from specific cloud sites and scanning to a local drive or cloud site with your phone’s or tablet’s camera—that you access from shortcuts inside HP Smart App.

Output To Be Proud Of

Most likely, you’re springing for a color laser to print documents that represent you and your company or organization well. Few, if any, vendors have more laser printer imaging experience than HP. Overall, the HP Color LaserJet Pro M454dw produces excellent-looking text, near-perfect business graphics, and good-looking photos (for a color laser, that is). The text documents I printed came out with immaculate, near-typesetter-quality fonts at all sizes we test, down to 6 points or so.

A Capable Choice

This LaserJet, like most others of its kind, is a solid machine that prints well and isn’t ruinously expensive to use (though it isn’t cheap). It is, however, one of many contenders in a glutted market for color printers. If all you need is to print a few hundred pages each month, the M454dw will serve as well as most others and in some cases better. When your print volume gets up toward a few thousand pages each month, though, it’s less of a value. We like this printer just fine, but only for moderate volume scenarios.