HP Laserjet Pro M281cdw AIO Wireless Printer

Finally decided it was time to invest in a laser printer for at home. My husband and I have no clear idea when we’ll be called to return to in-person work and our son will be distance learning for at least the fall semester this year, so we’ll be needing something a bit more robust than the Epson WF-2750 we bought last year. I use HP MFPs at work, so I’m very familiar with their interfaces and find them to be quite a bit more reliable than their reputation suggested back in the day. We needed color, wireless/wireless direct printing, and an ADF, so that meant an M283, an M479, or an M577. The M577 is Enterprise class and we didn’t need it to be *that* robust. The only major difference between the two was some security features, but I’d consider them overkill for a SOHO situation, so the M283 was the best fit. But, the cost of one brand new was more than we were willing to part with for a home printer. Enter the M281. Comparable to the M283 in every way except the ability to duplex scan. Since we typically only scan single sided pages, it was a feature we were willing to sacrifice. CGT was offering the M281 as a renewed device for a price within our budget, so we went for it. The first one we were shipped was unfortunately missing the shield which goes over the optical scan window. It guides paper fed through the ADF over the optical sensor and into the scanning output tray and prevents the paper from getting stuck on a small lip which divides the optical scan window from the flatbed scanning tray. Needles to say, without that shield, every page we attempted to scan through the ADF got stuck on that lip. Everything else on the printer was impeccable and functioned perfectly. We contacted CGT through Amazon to see if we could get either a replacement shield or a replacement printer. They requested photos of the area where the missing part was supposed to be, and after consulting with their team, found that it was, unfortunately, a part they didn’t have replacements for. So they sent us a shipping label to send the printer back, and they sent a replacement when they received it. The replacement arrived a few days ago and it works great, ADF included. I left a review for the seller to thank them for their assistance. The M281 will be quite sufficient for our needs, and perhaps a little overqualified for the work we’ll be asking it to do, but since laser printers below this price point tend to only be monochrome, we’re happy with our purchase.