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HP LaserJet 3380 All-in-One

M. David Stone
 & M. David Stone Contributing Editor

Our team tests, rates, and reviews more than 1,500 products each year to help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology.

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65 EXPERTS
43 YEARS
41,500+ REVIEWS
- HP LaserJet 3380 All-in-One
4.0 Excellent

The Bottom Line

A solid, easy-to-use MFP, the HP LaserJet 3380 All-in-One could be perfect for the budget-minded small- or home-office consumer primarily interested in text output.

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Pros & Cons

    • Good print speed; excellent text output; excellent scanning, faxing, and copying; 50-sheet ADF for scanning and faxing multipage documents
    • Graphics output shows obvious dithering; photo output is seriously flawed

HP LaserJet 3380 All-in-One Specs

Connection Type: Ethernet
Maximum Scan Area: 8.5" x 15"
Printer Category: Laser
Rated Speed at Default Settings (Color): 20 ppm
Scanner Optical Resolution: 600 pixels per inch
Scanner Type: Flatbed with ADF (Standard or Optional)
Standalone Copier and Fax: Copier
Standalone Copier and Fax: Fax
Type: All-In-One
All Specs
One thing that Hewlett-Packard almost always gets right is its monochrome laser printers. Another is its MFPs. So it's not surprising that the HP LaserJet 3380 All-in-One monochrome laser printer is a capable package. Similar in many ways to the HP LaserJet 3015 and the HP LaserJet 3030, the 3380 is the big brother in the group, with a 20-ppm engine. The 50-page automatic document feeder and 20-ppm scanner combine for just the right mix for the power user, whether in a home or small office.

The 3380 is a small monochrome laser printer with a flatbed scanner mounted on top, an ADF mounted in the scanner's lid, and a front panel that's filled with an LCD-based menu, a numeric keypad, and lots of additional buttons to control various functions. The sheer number of buttons can be overwhelming at first, but since they are conveniently divided into separate groups for scanning, faxing, and copying, we were quickly comfortable using them. The unit's a bit large to share a desk with, as it has a 21.5- by 20.5-inch footprint and stands 19.5 inches high, but it's small enough to fit on a separate table or counter.

Installation is as easy as it gets for an MFP. To use the 3380 as a stand-alone fax machine and copier, insert the input paper tray, attach the output tray support and ADF input tray, insert the toner cartridge, load paper, and plug in the power cord. If you are connecting to a computer, you then run the installation program, which stops at one point, asks you to connect the cable, and then finds the printer and finishes the installation.

Performance for printing was reasonably good, but not impressive. Our 12-page Microsoft Word file, for example, took only 42 seconds, but overall time on our performance suite was 10 minutes. As a point of comparison, the Lexmark X422, with only a 1-ppm advantage in engine rating, was much faster, with a total time of 5 minutes 37 seconds. But keep in mind that the Lexmark MFP, at $1,549 direct, costs more than twice as much as the 3380.

Text output quality was excellent, with most of the fonts easily readable at 4 points. Graphics were merely acceptable, with some obvious dithering, and photos showed both dithering and posterization. This shouldn't be much of a problem, though, since few people buy monochrome printers for graphics or photos.

If speed and photo quality are top concerns, you can do better. But if you just need a solid monochrome MFP that's easy to use and doesn't break the bank, the HP LaserJet 3380 All-in-One should definitely be in the running for your next purchase.

Sub-ratings:
Text:
Graphics:
Photo:

Final Thoughts

- HP LaserJet 3380 All-in-One

HP LaserJet 3380 All-in-One

4.0 Excellent

A solid, easy-to-use MFP, the HP LaserJet 3380 All-in-One could be perfect for the budget-minded small- or home-office consumer primarily interested in text output.

Get It Now

Buy It Now

About Our Expert

M. David Stone

M. David Stone

Contributing Editor

My Experience

Most of my current work for PCMag is about printers and projectors, but I've covered a wide variety of other subjects—in more than 4,000 pieces, over more than 40 years—including both computer-related areas and others ranging from ape language experiments, to politics, to cosmology, to space colonies. I've written for PCMag.com from its start, and for PC Magazine before that, as a Contributor, then a Contributing Editor, then as the Lead Analyst for Printers, Scanners, and Projectors, and now, after a short hiatus, back to Contributing Editor.

I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who worked on every "Project Printer" blockbuster PCMag ever produced, often writing 15 or more reviews for the year's big printer blowout. (I snuck in a single review one year when I was writing a book, strictly so I could keep that claim alive.)

I've always worked for PCMag as a freelancer, which has freed me to take time away to write nine books, be a major contributor to four others, and write for other publications, including Wired, Computer Shopper, Projector Central, and Science Digest, where I was Computers Editor. I also wrote a computer column at one point for The Newark Star-Ledger.

Although I started my career primarily as a science (mostly physics and astronomy) and science-fiction writer (published in Analog), my non-computer-related work runs the gamut from the Project Data Book for NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (written for GE's Astro-Space Division) to the script for a video overview of a top company in the gaming industry (that would be gambling, not video games). My books include The Underground Guide to Color Printers (Addison-Wesley), Troubleshooting Your PC (Microsoft Press), and Faster, Smarter Digital Photography (Microsoft Press).

Having covered a wide range of subjects, I've developed a serial expertise in many of them. The ones most relevant to my current work at PCMag.com are all imaging technologies.

The Technology I Use

I buy new PCs for my writing desk infrequently, because it takes a week or more to customize the settings the way I want them. At the moment, I have an HP Envy tower running Windows 10, but it's old enough to have a Windows 7 sticker on it. Its latest lease on a longer life is courtesy of a newly installed 500GB Samsung SSD 870 EVO.

Elsewhere in my house is an assortment of older and newer PCs. The older ones are dedicated to specific tasks, like the one I've been using to slowly digitize all the paper stored in my filing cabinets, while the newer ones are testbeds for printer and projector reviews.

For writing, I use Microsoft Word 2003, because I find it too annoying to take my hands off the keyboard to give mouse commands using the Ribbon. My workhorse printers are a Xerox Phaser 6280 color laser and a Dymo LabelWriter 450 Twin Turbo for labels and stamps. I also have a Canon Pixma iP8720 for printing photos, and a Canon ImageFormula DR-C225 for scanning.

My first computer was bought to replace my IBM Selectric for writing. After rejecting both the IBM PC (which had just been introduced) and the Apple II because of the keyboards, I chose a Vector Graphics Vector 3 CP/M machine with dual floppies. The first MS-DOS machine I was willing to use for writing was the IBM AT, with its much-improved keyboard compared with the original PC and its gargantuan 20MB hard drive.

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