The HP Color LaserJet Pro 4201dw (or 4202dw in the UK) is an office-oriented color laser printer capable of fast high-volume printing. It improves significantly on the HP Color LaserJet Pro 3201dw with faster print speeds, increased paper and toner capacity and an upgradable modular design.

This makes it well-suited to a busy workgroup of around ten people, but I’m sure its slick and relatively compact design will also appeal to home-based workers. For me, the enhanced black print quality is an attraction, while its somewhat expensive toner cartridges aren’t, so let’s see how it performs overall.

HP Color LaserJet Pro 4201dw: Design and build

Crisp corners, strict symmetry and refreshing blue panels ensure the HP Color LaserJet Pro 4201dw stands out from all the other off-white office printers. It’s compact enough to share your desk at home and its modular design can be expanded with the addition of a 550-sheet paper tray to suit a growing business.

The blue drawer at the bottom can hold up to 250 sheets of Letter or A4 paper, the standard amount, while the blue panel above reveals a 50-sheet multi-purpose tray, which is more useful than the usual single sheet. The output tray on top is also deeper than most, holding up to 150 sheets.

To access the toner cartridges, you press a button on the side of the printer to make that blue panel hinge all the way open. Another tiny flap on top of the printer hides a handy USB Host port. Always a welcome feature. All other ports are hidden on the rear panel.

Despite being a fairly costly step up from the HP Color LaserJet Pro 3201dw, there’s still no touchscreen, just a four-line LCD with a rotary dial beneath it. Some users might like this retro design choice, but I found it annoying. Overall, I think the design and build quality inspires confidence.

HP Color LaserJet Pro 4201dw: Features & specifications

HP has endowed this mid-price printer with plenty of features and a pretty high specification. It can duplex print, of course, and has dual-band Wi-Fi 5 with AirPrint and Mopria compatibility. There’s a USB Host port in addition to the usual square USB-B port and HP has even-thrown in a USB-A to USB-B data cable.

It has wide media compatibility with 33 choices appearing on the menu when you come to identify the type of paper you loaded. It can take any size sheet up to letter, legal or A4 with the heaviest paper it can handle being 200 g/m² which is actually fairly thin card. It has HP’s Wolf Pro Security software built in and an adequate 512MB memory.

The print speed is given as 33 or 35ppm (pages per minute) depending whether printing on Letter or A4 paper and that was broadly confirmed by my testing. That’s about equal to the Xerox C320, but slower than HP’s black and white printers.

The HP Color LaserJet Pro 4201dw can take large cartridges capable of holding enough toner for up to 7,500 black and white pages and can be expanded to hold up to 850 sheets of paper if you buy the extra paper tray. That kind of capacity should meet the needs of any SME (small to medium enterprise) and HP suggests a monthly duty cycle of up to 50,000 pages.

HP Color LaserJet Pro 4201dw: Setup and operation

With the set-up cartridges already pre-loaded, this printer is almost ready to print out of the box. The setup guide runs to 5 pages, but you won’t need it. Just load your paper, turn on and follow the on-screen prompts. I found that initiation took longer than usual because of the dial interface. Like a safe cracker, you need to turn it this way and that to enter every letter of your wi-fi password. Unlike some of HP’s printers, there’s no inbuilt Bluetooth to hand the setup of this printer straight to the HP Smart app on your mobile device.

The next model up in this series is the HP Color LaserJet Pro 4301dw multifunction printer, which does have a touchscreen, and I can see HP’s logic. A single-function device doesn’t have enough settings to justify the expense of a touchscreen. But that doesn’t stop most rival printers at this price having one.

The free HP Smart app for Android or iOS gives you an alternative to the dial interface, but you’ll still need to scroll through the paper types at the machine each time you switch media.

HP Color LaserJet Pro 4201dw: Performance

The HP Color LaserJet Pro 4201dw performed very well in my tests, achieving strong print quality in all categories, but most notably with text documents. Black text on plain paper looks especially dark and crisp with unusually sharp definition.

This must be down to HP’s 6-bit resolution enhancement technology (RET) which has the effect of boosting the native 600x600dpi engine to a claimed 38,400x600 in best black mode. Basically, with 64 levels of gray (6-bit), the printer is multiplying 600 dots x 64 to give you 38,400 dots.

Mixed color documents also look impressive, thanks to the vivid nature of HP’s LaserJet toner. It’s applied evenly too, so there’s less of that banding you see when shading blocks of black or solid color. Photographs also fare well here, especially when I switched to laser photo paper.

Laser photo paper is only slightly heavier and glossier than regular paper, which is one reason lasers aren’t as good as inkjets when it comes to photos. The other reason is you can always see the dots that make up the 600x600 dpi laser photo and that’s still the case here. Even so, this laser printer is better than most and certainly good enough for printing eye-catching images on brochures and handouts.

HP Color LaserJet Pro 4201dw: Consumables

The consumables cost for the HP Color LaserJet Pro 4201dw is competitive for monochrome prints, but slightly higher than average for color prints. And there’s only a limited amount of pre-loaded toner. It ships with four setup cartridges which should yield up to 1,200 black or 1,000 color pages, which is about half the toner you get in HP’s standard carts.

The extra high-yield carts, however, can deliver up to 7,500 and 2,200 black and color pages respectively and it’s these expensive carts that give the lowest cost per page (CPP). With the black cartridges having a much higher yield than color, but small difference in price, you have monochrome pages with a pretty good CCP of around two and half cents and color pages costing more than 15 cents.

HP uses software to block any cartridge without a genuine HP chip, so I wouldn’t recommend buying cheaper third-party toner. Given the high quality of its monochrome output in particular, the answer is to buy this printer if you print predominantly in black and white.

HP Color LaserJet Pro 4201dw: Maintenance

Like other low-maintenance laser printers, the HP Color LaserJet Pro 4201dw combines the optical drum with the toner cartridge, so drum replacement is not a consideration. On the downside, it explains why the cost of its cartridges is relatively high.

HP Color LaserJet Pro 4201dw: Final verdict

There’s a lot to like about the HP Color LaserJet Pro 4201dw. Its slick and compact design, the rapid duplex print rate and the enhanced black print quality for a start. Having two paper inputs is very convenient, while the option to add a third is sensible future-proofing for a growing business.

I’m not so keen on the rotary dial interface — I would have preferred a touchscreen — and it’s a pity it can’t handle paper heavier than 200 g/m². A bigger concern is the relatively high cost of HP’s color cartridges, but that still doesn’t put me off.

The high quality of its black and white output and the more competitive price of its black toner make this an ideal printer for anyone who needs to print a high volume of predominantly monochrome pages.

For more top-rated options, check out my guides to the best home printers and the best laser printers I've tested.

The HP Color LaserJet Pro 4201dw (or 4202dw in the UK) is an office-oriented color laser printer capable of fast high-volume printing. It improves significantly on the HP Color LaserJet Pro 3201dw with faster print speeds, increased paper and toner capacity and an upgradable modular design.

This makes it well-suited to a busy workgroup of around ten people, but I’m sure its slick and relatively compact design will also appeal to home-based workers. For me, the enhanced black print quality is an attraction, while its somewhat expensive toner cartridges aren’t, so let’s see how it performs overall.

HP Color LaserJet Pro 4201dw: Design and build

Crisp corners, strict symmetry and refreshing blue panels ensure the HP Color LaserJet Pro 4201dw stands out from all the other off-white office printers. It’s compact enough to share your desk at home and its modular design can be expanded with the addition of a 550-sheet paper tray to suit a growing business.

The blue drawer at the bottom can hold up to 250 sheets of Letter or A4 paper, the standard amount, while the blue panel above reveals a 50-sheet multi-purpose tray, which is more useful than the usual single sheet. The output tray on top is also deeper than most, holding up to 150 sheets.

To access the toner cartridges, you press a button on the side of the printer to make that blue panel hinge all the way open. Another tiny flap on top of the printer hides a handy USB Host port. Always a welcome feature. All other ports are hidden on the rear panel.

Despite being a fairly costly step up from the HP Color LaserJet Pro 3201dw, there’s still no touchscreen, just a four-line LCD with a rotary dial beneath it. Some users might like this retro design choice, but I found it annoying. Overall, I think the design and build quality inspires confidence.

HP Color LaserJet Pro 4201dw: Features & specifications

HP has endowed this mid-price printer with plenty of features and a pretty high specification. It can duplex print, of course, and has dual-band Wi-Fi 5 with AirPrint and Mopria compatibility. There’s a USB Host port in addition to the usual square USB-B port and HP has even-thrown in a USB-A to USB-B data cable.

It has wide media compatibility with 33 choices appearing on the menu when you come to identify the type of paper you loaded. It can take any size sheet up to letter, legal or A4 with the heaviest paper it can handle being 200 g/m² which is actually fairly thin card. It has HP’s Wolf Pro Security software built in and an adequate 512MB memory.

The print speed is given as 33 or 35ppm (pages per minute) depending whether printing on Letter or A4 paper and that was broadly confirmed by my testing. That’s about equal to the Xerox C320, but slower than HP’s black and white printers.

The HP Color LaserJet Pro 4201dw can take large cartridges capable of holding enough toner for up to 7,500 black and white pages and can be expanded to hold up to 850 sheets of paper if you buy the extra paper tray. That kind of capacity should meet the needs of any SME (small to medium enterprise) and HP suggests a monthly duty cycle of up to 50,000 pages.

HP Color LaserJet Pro 4201dw: Setup and operation

With the set-up cartridges already pre-loaded, this printer is almost ready to print out of the box. The setup guide runs to 5 pages, but you won’t need it. Just load your paper, turn on and follow the on-screen prompts. I found that initiation took longer than usual because of the dial interface. Like a safe cracker, you need to turn it this way and that to enter every letter of your wi-fi password. Unlike some of HP’s printers, there’s no inbuilt Bluetooth to hand the setup of this printer straight to the HP Smart app on your mobile device.

The next model up in this series is the HP Color LaserJet Pro 4301dw multifunction printer, which does have a touchscreen, and I can see HP’s logic. A single-function device doesn’t have enough settings to justify the expense of a touchscreen. But that doesn’t stop most rival printers at this price having one.

The free HP Smart app for Android or iOS gives you an alternative to the dial interface, but you’ll still need to scroll through the paper types at the machine each time you switch media.

HP Color LaserJet Pro 4201dw: Performance

The HP Color LaserJet Pro 4201dw performed very well in my tests, achieving strong print quality in all categories, but most notably with text documents. Black text on plain paper looks especially dark and crisp with unusually sharp definition.

This must be down to HP’s 6-bit resolution enhancement technology (RET) which has the effect of boosting the native 600x600dpi engine to a claimed 38,400x600 in best black mode. Basically, with 64 levels of gray (6-bit), the printer is multiplying 600 dots x 64 to give you 38,400 dots.

Mixed color documents also look impressive, thanks to the vivid nature of HP’s LaserJet toner. It’s applied evenly too, so there’s less of that banding you see when shading blocks of black or solid color. Photographs also fare well here, especially when I switched to laser photo paper.

Laser photo paper is only slightly heavier and glossier than regular paper, which is one reason lasers aren’t as good as inkjets when it comes to photos. The other reason is you can always see the dots that make up the 600x600 dpi laser photo and that’s still the case here. Even so, this laser printer is better than most and certainly good enough for printing eye-catching images on brochures and handouts.

HP Color LaserJet Pro 4201dw: Consumables

The consumables cost for the HP Color LaserJet Pro 4201dw is competitive for monochrome prints, but slightly higher than average for color prints. And there’s only a limited amount of pre-loaded toner. It ships with four setup cartridges which should yield up to 1,200 black or 1,000 color pages, which is about half the toner you get in HP’s standard carts.

The extra high-yield carts, however, can deliver up to 7,500 and 2,200 black and color pages respectively and it’s these expensive carts that give the lowest cost per page (CPP). With the black cartridges having a much higher yield than color, but small difference in price, you have monochrome pages with a pretty good CCP of around two and half cents and color pages costing more than 15 cents.

HP uses software to block any cartridge without a genuine HP chip, so I wouldn’t recommend buying cheaper third-party toner. Given the high quality of its monochrome output in particular, the answer is to buy this printer if you print predominantly in black and white.

HP Color LaserJet Pro 4201dw: Maintenance

Like other low-maintenance laser printers, the HP Color LaserJet Pro 4201dw combines the optical drum with the toner cartridge, so drum replacement is not a consideration. On the downside, it explains why the cost of its cartridges is relatively high.

HP Color LaserJet Pro 4201dw: Final verdict

There’s a lot to like about the HP Color LaserJet Pro 4201dw. Its slick and compact design, the rapid duplex print rate and the enhanced black print quality for a start. Having two paper inputs is very convenient, while the option to add a third is sensible future-proofing for a growing business.

I’m not so keen on the rotary dial interface — I would have preferred a touchscreen — and it’s a pity it can’t handle paper heavier than 200 g/m². A bigger concern is the relatively high cost of HP’s color cartridges, but that still doesn’t put me off.

The high quality of its black and white output and the more competitive price of its black toner make this an ideal printer for anyone who needs to print a high volume of predominantly monochrome pages.

For more top-rated options, check out my guides to the best home printers and the best laser printers I've tested.

The people at Paylocity recognize that HR teams want to do more – but they’re often bogged down in tedious administrative tasks.

To that end, Paylocity’s HR and payroll solutions place a strong focus on automation, process simplification, and ease of compliance to give your teams the time they need to think strategically and have a greater impact.

There’s a lot of emphasis on employee experience in this tool, too, thanks to a smart set of employee engagement features. The most recent addition to the app is an AI assistant that can streamline your experience.

Paylocity believes that by combining technology with humanity, it can produce the ideal, all-around HR and payroll solution.

Paylocity: Plans and pricing

As with most HR solutions, Paylocity’s pricing is devised on a case-by-case basis, with no concrete costing information provided on the company’s website.

While this enables you to pick the modules you need and build a package that is suited to your business, the lack of pricing transparency can make initial budgeting and comparison difficult, and adding plenty of modules could see your pricing scale quickly.

The company says that sample pricing ranges from $18 to $32 per employee per month, with potential setup fees as an additional cost. Those figures tally with what we’ve seen on third-party sites that list approximate pricing for the Paylocity solution.

Paylocity: Features

With a name like Paylocity and a company ethos that “everything leads back to payroll,” it’s no surprise that this app features strong financial functionality.

Its payroll options are completely customizable, and once you’ve built processes that work for your organization, you can review and run a complete payroll in a few clicks – reducing manual work for your HR teams.

Data flows directly into the payroll system from your employee database, and the system automatically flags employees with discrepancies. It’s both fast and easy to set up general ledger mapping.

Paylocity’s Payroll Readiness Dashboard highlights critical tasks that need attention before your next payment, and a tax geolocation system can audit your staff to ensure they’re paying the correct taxes. It’s also possible to pay local and global employees from the system when using Paylocity.

If your business has grown and has global needs, Paylocity also offers global payroll services alongside consulting, compliance, and treasury management, though these services may incur additional fees because Paylocity is primarily designed for US payroll requirements.

Paylocity’s excellent payroll capabilities are paired with good core HR features. You get centralized document storage and custom, automated workflows across the platform – alongside automation templates to make deploying those workflows even easier.

There’s plenty of personalization available here, too, because you can add unlimited custom fields for tracking and reporting that reflect your organizational needs.

On top of all this, real-time analytics and dashboards that help you analyze your workforce and make smarter, data-based decisions, and AI-powered tools throughout the app improve search functionality and answer your basic questions.

Paylocity’s reporting and analytics revolve around a module called Modern Workforce Index. This insight and benchmarking tool is a relatively new addition to the solution, and it collates sentiment, utilization, and organizational health data to track the health of your business when compared to the rest of the market.

It’ll track how employees are using Paylocity to inform discussions around ROI, it’ll suggest how you can make improvements, and illustrate your progress over time.

The employee self-service module enables your staff to access and modify payroll and HR data via web browsers and the Paylocity mobile app.

Paylocity’s time and attendance management tools include automated policy enforcement, real-time notifications, and in-depth analytics – so you can easily spot trends, plan shifts, monitor budgets, and reduce administrative overheads.

The app offers AI-enhanced shift recommendations, open shift claiming and shift swapping, and a range of time capture options, from badges and biometrics to apps, kiosks, and smart watches. Geolocation, fingerprint validation, and facial recognition are all supported.

Paylocity’s in-built social network supports greater employee collaboration and engagement, and it’s available on the mobile app too. It’s got a company feed, “ask an expert” options, and AI-assisted announcement creation. Users can even “follow” particularly active colleagues.

A module called Employee Voice collects automatic feedback from your staff that you can then use for analysis and reporting, and you can build customized employee recognition programs with rewards linked to your budget to foster connections throughout your workforce.

The tool’s community engagement features are particularly impressive, so it’s no surprise that Paylocity describes them as a “crown jewel” of the app.

Guided benefits support is available for both providers and employees, so deployment and enrollment are easier, and you’ll get notifications about eligibility changes and benefit requests.

Paylocity supports a broad range of benefit options and can manage flexible benefits, too, and the system will help you manage benefit compliance at the same time. It also enables you to look after your technology, with an asset management module that tracks hardware assignments and locations – perfect for keeping track of laptops, smartphones, and other equipment.

This solution also includes a broad slate of recruitment options, including candidate screening, headcount planning tools, and self-service interview scheduling. HR teams can use automated job posting to over 20,000 job boards alongside integrations with LinkedIn, ZipRecruiter, and Indeed.

Pre-written templates and AI tools accelerate job requisition, and you can keep recruitment moving by sending emails and text messages from within the platform. It’s even possible to define roles and compensation from within Paylocity by browsing market data – and then create and send personalized offer packages to candidates.

Once talent is recruited, onboarding is bolstered by automation, in-built compliance tools, background checks, pre-boarding tasks in the mobile app video welcomes, auto-assigned training, and team introductions.

Employee performance is monitored using easy feedback collection, 360-degree reviews, and talent assessment templates. Training is handled by an interactive environment that features a vast library of courses, and you can use Paylocity to create, define, and manage your compensation strategy using company and market data. The system supports annual increases and customized bonus payments.

Paylocity supports hundreds of third-party integrations, including Microsoft 365 and Dynamics, Google Workspace, Dropbox, Slack, HubSpot, and QuickBooks.

Hundreds more integrations are available in the Paylocity Marketplace across categories like benefits, finance, compliance, health, and recruiting. The solution also includes API support for creating your own integrations.

As usual with HR solutions, you’ll only get many of these features if you include those modules in your custom package. With Paylocity, we’d advise you to check the international payroll situation before you invest.

Paylocity is a US-first business, and while the company does offer global payroll services, you may need to use additional third-party integrations to ensure smooth operations.

Elsewhere, while Paylocity offers good analytics, reporting, and customization, SAP is stronger for reporting; you’ll find more in-depth customization with some rival products, and the mobile app doesn’t have feature parity with the desktop product.

Paylocity: Ease of use

There’s no denying that Paylocity is packed with features – and there’s no denying that the team has done a decent job with the interface.

It’s consistent and straightforward, with a navigation pane on the left and a dashboard that’s packed with quick links to common actions. That dashboard presents loads of information, including key details about pay, budgeting, timesheets, urgent tasks, activity, and more.

The dashboard is customizable – you can rearrange the location of the widgets or remove them entirely – but you can’t build your own, and the data displayed in each widget is hard-coded.

Employee and equipment records are well-designed and easy to navigate, and the reporting section is comprehensive, with dozens of options quickly available if you know where to look.

The payroll module does a great job of presenting your payroll options and enabling you to easily start your next run. The community section is great, with a social media-style feed, team-specific groups, and easy-to-spot pinned announcements.

The Modern Workforce Index is one of the more colorful parts of the app, with a dial that gives an easy indicator of your company’s score – and you can dive further into the data to track sentiment, health, and organization across a variety of charts.

Paylocity’s interface does a good job of collating the tool’s wealth of features, but it has some minor downsides.

The data-rich, busy interface could prove overwhelming at first, especially for users who aren’t familiar with complex software packages, and if you want a visually attractive interface, then you would be better off shopping elsewhere.

We’ve seen user sentiment online suggest that implementation experiences vary – some customers experience smooth deployments, while others describe a lengthy implementation due to the complexity of the software.

Paylocity: Support

Paylocity offers live phone support from 6am to 7.30pm Central Time between Monday and Friday. While it’s not unusual for HR solution providers to restrict phone support to working days, not many offer the breadth of hours as Paylocity, so that’s a plus. It’s also possible to email Paylocity for live, responsive support during those hours, too.

The company assigns customers an account manager and support team to help with implementation and ongoing questions.

As with many HR solution providers, Paylocity offers an online knowledge base, an AI assistant to answer product questions, and a selection of live webinars and on-demand training sessions.

Paylocity: The Competition

Paylocity targets its solutions at businesses of all sizes, though it traditionally focuses on SMBs. While that’s a lucrative and popular part of the market, it brings it up against some strong competitors.

There aren’t many solutions that are as effective as Paylocity when it comes to payroll, but if you’d like to explore your options, then RUN Powered by ADP is a strong contender for smaller businesses, and ADP Workforce Now is the company’s offering for larger organizations.

If you’d like more automation in your HR workflows, then Rippling should be on your list of potential options, and BambooHR is an all-rounder that’s worth consideration, too. And if you need an enterprise-level option, add SAP SuccessFactors to your list of contenders.

Paylocity: Final verdict

Paylocity is one of the most feature-rich HR and payroll solutions you’ll find anywhere, and it’s particularly strong when it comes to financial features, automation, and employee engagement – its community tools are excellent, and the app does a good job of collating so much data and sentiment into useful, actionable information.

There are some trade-offs, though: the depth of functionality available here means Paylocity could seem overwhelming, especially for inexperienced users, and we’ve seen reports of lengthy implementation procedures. There’s no transparency on pricing, either.

That said, if you’re a mid-sized business looking for a powerhouse HR and payroll solution, Paylocity is a strong contender.