HP Color LaserJet Pro 4202dw

Rich black text, slick design and rapid duplex printing compensate for the clumsy dial and costly cartridges

- JIM HILL

With its 33ppm print speeds and a recommended load of up to 4,000 pages a month, the HP Color LaserJet Pro 4202dw is well suited to a busy workgroup, and its relatively compact design will also appeal to home workers. Crisp corners, strict symmetry and refreshing blue panels ensure this colour laser stands out from rivals, and there's even expandability thanks to an optional 550-sheet paper tray.

The drawer at the bottom holds up to 250 sheets of A4 paper, while the blue panel above reveals a 50-sheet multipurpose tray – far more useful than the usual single sheet feeder. The output tray on top is also deeper than most, holding up to 150 sheets. There's no touchscreen, only a four-line LCD with a rotary dial beneath it. I found this annoying when entering my WiFi password: like a safe cracker, you must turn it this way and that to enter every digit. There's no Bluetooth so no option to pass the setup of this printer straight to the HP Smart app.

It's a similar chore when choosing from the 33 varieties of media you can pick from when you load paper. It can take any size sheet up to letter, legal or A4 with the heaviest paper it can handle being 200g/m², so thin card.