I run a small MSP business. And recently a sold HP MFP 4302fdw, has become a real fiasko. There are multiple problems with these models. And the customer in question has already had one replaced under warranty. However, due to HPs suprisingly bad support even with care packs and such. And the printer deal in general being such a failure. I’m now looking at the competition, to see what other good options are out there.
So I would greatly apreciate it if the collective could share their reomendations. Preferably from a smaller MSP point of view. Where you have to be able to support some pro-lite features.
Wendel is quite vocal at times about his thoughts on HP. And right now I’m starting to see growing cracks in their products.
Right now the requirements for a printer from the customers point of view is:
Automatic Double sided scanning
Scan to email (compatible with modern oauth 2.0)
Document feeder for scanner
Scan to sharepoint
Scan to network share (not necessary, but nice to have)
Fully compatible with MacOS (customer is 100% apple based)
Double sided print
Both Wireless and wired networking
Price preferably reasonable <1000$
Customer in question is about 10-15 employees at the moment. And we’re based in Sweden. So not all brands might be available?
Please and thank you for your input. I apreciate it!
In general I always recommend Brother laser printers. AFAICT they are available in SE. The big AIOs tick most of the boxes, but you may need to reach to customer service for details.
+1 for Brother. Currently on my 3rd (or 4th? lost count!) MFC (MFC-J54740DW) purchased last summer, the previous one I bought back in 2011 ( !!) Admittedly I don’t use it very often and it’s a home setting. And the only reason the old one was replaced was due to it no longer picking up the paper (quite an essential feature for a printer, right? ) from the tray. If I would feed paper from the rear directly, it would still print. But that gets old PDQ!
We make big circles around hp products in general because we had bad experience with their printers, notebooks and support on both products. Sometimes we have to buy pro books but we try to avoid that.
Brother are relatively cheap devices but running costs are relatively high, they have limited capatibilities when it comes to integration (often quite slow and clunky) and in general feels quite cheap even if you go for the higher end devices. In terms of reliability they seem to do okay but they’re usually rated quite low in terms of duty cycles. Do note that most people refering to Brother is usually referring to their “personal” tier rather than SMB office equipment.
In your case I’d take a look at Kyocera MA3500cix or MA3500cifx whichever is the cheapest, they’re quite a step up from Brother devices. Kyocera devices in general are workhorsses, have a much better UI and feel more well built overall. Running costs (toner) is also quite a bit cheaper if you’re looking at genuine cartridges. För att förtydliga, de bara fungerar och är inte en horribla att jobba med. The only feature I’m not entirely sure about is “Scan to Sharepoint” which in the HyPAS framework.
The only issue is that they can be a bit hard to source in Sweden (I believe Techdata still are distributor in Sweden), however it’s usually easy to order one from .de or .es without any issues.
I’ve also had rather poor experience with Canon over the years and their “new” UI is downright terrible both admin and user.
!!) Admittedly I don’t use it very often and it’s a home setting. And the only reason the old one was replaced was due to it no longer picking up the paper (quite an essential feature for a printer, right? 
) from the tray. If I would feed paper from the rear directly, it would still print. But that gets old PDQ! 