Once you get past the unwieldy name, the HP LaserJet Pro 400 color Printer M451dw ($549 direct) has a lot to recommend it. It offers high-quality output, especially for graphics and photos, plus paper handling suitable for typical small to medium-size offices or for a micro office with heavy-duty print needs. The combination qualifies it not just as a workhorse color laser, but as one that should be of particular interest to anyone who needs high-quality output for anything from PowerPoint handouts to small runs of one-page mailers or similar marketing materials.

The M451dw is the mirror image in many ways of the similarly priced Brother HL-4570CDW ($500, 3.5 stars), offering less emphasis on speed and more on output quality. Like the Brother printer, it is small enough, at 12.7 by 15.9 by 19.1 inches (HWD), to fit easily in a small office. It's also heavy enough, at 52.1 pounds, so you may need some help moving it. Once in place, however, setup is standard fare, with support for both wired and WiFi network connections. For my tests, I connected the printer to a wired network and installed the drivers on a Windows Vista system.

Speed and Output Quality

Print speed is a little sluggish for the price. HP rates the M451dw at only 21 pages per minute (ppm) for both monochrome and color. That's a much lower rating than, for example, the HL-4570CDW , at 30 ppm for both, or the Editors' Choice in this category, the Xerox Phaser 6280DN ($649 direct, 4 stars), rated at 31 ppm for mono pages and 26 ppm for color. However, note that these ratings aren't really comparable. HP's rating is based on the relatively new ISO tests, rather than the speed of the engine itself, as with the other two printers.

Even with that in mind, the printer came in at a surprisingly slow speed on our tests. I timed the M451dw on our business applications suite (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing) at a lackadaisical 3.2 ppm. The HL-4570CDW was more than twice as fast, at 6.8 ppm. Even the 6280DN , which also focuses on output quality, was faster, at 4.2 ppm

The good news is that what the M451dw lacks in speed it largely makes up for in output quality. More precisely, text quality is good enough for most purposes, while graphics and photo quality is among the best available.

Text quality is at the low end of the range where the vast majority of color laser printers fall. However, laser text quality is so high in general that even the low end of the range is reasonably high quality. The M451dw text is good enough for anything short of the most demanding desktop publishing applications with small fonts.

Graphics output was in the top tier for laser printers, making it good enough for output going to important clients when it's important to look fully professional. Photos, similarly, were a match for the best color lasers, and just short of true photo quality. Mount the photos in a frame behind glass, and you'll have to take a close look to see that they're not traditional photos.

Other Issues

The M451dw's combination of text, graphics, and photo quality helps make it suitable for small runs of marketing materials as an alternative to using a copy shop. The quality is also easily good enough for client or company newsletters or the like, with full-color photos and graphics. The photo output in particular is good enough to be useful in, say, a real estate office to print photos of properties for potential buyers.

The printer's paper handling is also a strong point. The M451dw offers a 250-sheet drawer, a 50-sheet multipurpose tray, and a built-in duplexer (for two-sided printing), a combination that should be enough for most small offices. If you need more, you can add a second 250 sheet tray ($115.99 direct) for a total 550-sheet capacity.

If you're more concerned with print speed than print quality, you should be looking elsewhere, with the Brother HL-4570CDW a good candidate. If output quality is more important, also be sure to check out the Xerox 6280DN, which doesn't offer quite as high quality graphics and photos, but has absolutely top-quality text. If you can get by with slightly lower text quality, however, the HP LaserJet Pro 400 color Printer M451dw offers good paper handling and a balance of text, graphics, and photo quality that your inner Goldilocks may decide is just right.

More Laser Printer Reviews:

•   HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M180nw
•   Canon imageClass MF424dw
•   Canon imageClass MF236n
•   Canon imageClass MF232w
•   Brother HL-L2370DW XL
•  more