New design and new TerraJet toner now available for SMBs. With the introduction of the Color LaserJet Pro 3000, HP completes its offering and has a modern MFP for virtually any size of business.
At the HP Amplify Partner Conference, there is understandably a lot of emphasis on the new AI PCs. However, HP also has news about the business area that contributes quite a bit to its bottom line – printing. Last year we already went into detail about the innovations in that segment. We did this through an extensive conversation with someone from HP and a review of an MFP in which this innovation was visible. You can click through to those articles at the bottom of this article.
If you want to know all the ins and outs, we recommend that you definitely read through those articles as well. For now, it is important to reiterate that it is the new TerraJet toner in particular that steals the show with the latest lineup. This toner, which HP developed with Canon, has a lower melting point and makes the MFPs that use it more energy efficient. Print quality also goes up, something that is especially noticeable in color printing. Laser printers with TerraJet toner deliver nice saturated color prints with quite a lot of detail by laser standards. We observed this ourselves in the review cited earlier and linked to at the bottom of this page.
HP Color LaserJet Pro 3000 series
Until now, the 4000 series was the entry level machine in HP’s new offerings. It is aimed at somewhat smaller business environments, but also, for example, workgroups within larger organizations. However, for the real bottom end of the market, an MFP of more than 500 euros (including VAT, via HP’s site) is still a bit too much. Hence, HP today announced the Color LaserJet Pro 3000 series. The exact price of this is not yet known at the time of writing, but it should be lower than that of the 4000 series.
The HP Color LaserJet Pro 3000 series initially consists of four models: LaserJet Pro 3201dw and 3301cdw, LaserJet Pro MFP 3301sdw and 3301fdw. The “c” in a type number stands for color, “d” stands for duplex (double-sided printing), “s” stands for scan, “w” stands for wireless and “f” stands for fax. It’s good to see that HP leaves out a non-duplex model in this new series too, just like it did with the 4000 series last year.
The 3301cdw and the 3301fdw are exactly the same machines. The 3301fdw is the retail SKU for the market, the 3301cdw is a SKU for several (American) retailers like Costco and Amazon. Also good to know is that the 3201 is only a printer, while you can scan but not fax with the 3301sdw.
Speed and “Wi-Fi 2”
In terms of features, HP talks about some familiar things. For example, it claims to have the fastest duplex print speed in this class with this new line and to be the fastest at printing the first page. The latter makes perfect sense, by the way. The printer has to warm up less, so it is ready to print faster. It is also interesting to note that the 3000 series has Wi-Fi 2. We have honestly never heard of that term before and cannot find anything else about it online. According to HP, however, this offers a better connection. One that does not drop, something that still sometimes happens with wirelessly connected printers, in our experience.
The HP Color LaserJet 3000 series will be available from May of this year. Prices, as already indicated, are not known at the moment. Should we still get them, we will add them to this article.
Below are the two articles we talked about at the beginning of this article:
HP’s vision for the printing market: Printers and MFPs remain important, but must keep up with the trends
Review of HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP 4302fdw: Review: HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP 4302fdw – new toner gives new momentum
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