Review: HP's smallest laser printer – M140w and Linux set up

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2022/04/review-hps-smallest-laser-printer-m140w-linux-set-up/

by robin_reala • 4 years ago

69 79 4 years ago

shkspr.mobi

torstenvl• 4 years ago

For reference, this multifunction device is 1139 cubic inches, whereas the beloved L23xx series is 1431 cubic inches.

Mostly its significantly shorter front-to-back, in exchange for modest width and height increases.

cripblip• 4 years ago

As this printer was sent by hp for review. I’m really curious what their take was on the verdict

edent2• 4 years ago

I assume they won't send me anything else to review. But that's fine. I'm not a mega publication dependent on getting advertising or a supply of gadgets.

Some 1-star reviews I've written don't seem to bother manufacturers. I guess all publicity is good publicity.

contingencies• 4 years ago

I bought three printers from three different name brands last year: all of them sucked, none of them worked for print and scan across Mac and Windows, much less Linux. We eventually kept the least worst. After 30 years of solid global consumer demand, one can say printers are truly a bullshit industry. Our office is basically paperless now, I tend to use the thing more to scan hand-written notes than to print.

pkulak2• 4 years ago

I just got an Epson Eco Tank thing, and I freakin love it. Works great with CUPS (no scanning, but I don’t care about that) and it’s cheaper per page than any laser; full color!

fignews• 4 years ago

There is actually scanning over the network now under Linux without any special drivers. called eSCL

bpye• 4 years ago

I bought a Brother HL-L2320D which at the time was the cheapest mono laser with duplexing I could find. On Windows and macOS it's fantastically uneventful, unfortunately on Linux the situation is less great. brlaser [0] does mostly work, but it seems there is a bug as some more complex documents (typically scans) won't print [1]. I ended up patching my version to reduce the size of one of the buffers [2], and haven't seen it fail since, but I doubt I've actually fixed the issue and instead just moved the threshold.

[0] https://github.com/pdewacht/brlaser

[1] https://github.com/pdewacht/brlaser/issues/79#issuecomment-7...

[2] https://github.com/benpye/nix-config/blob/main/overlays/brla...

qbasic_forever• 4 years ago

I've found getting a multifunction device with wifi/network capability and the ability to directly upload to Dropbox or other cloud services is a _huge_ sanity saver. You can just completely throw away having to install or janitor drivers for document scanning and do it all on the device. Send things straight to your cloud file store of choice and the doc is right there on whatever computer you need. This is how scanning should work but absolutely never does when you have to touch drivers and such.

For printing if you use a modern version of Ubuntu or other distro it's pretty uneventful and network printers, especially those that support Apple print and advertise themselves on your network, all just work.

sokoloff• 4 years ago

I bought an HP M521dn in 2020 for $150 on craigslist. It takes $30 55A toner cartridges and worked out of the box for Mac, Windows, and Linux and scans to email or a fileshare.

rdw• 4 years ago

Don't give up on the industry. I believe that HP is actually seeding the idea that no printer is better, because I've heard several people resignedly tell me that they're getting an HP because "they're terrible, but every printer is terrible and at least I recognize the brand". Some sort of endgame of marketing perhaps. But reliable and good printers are indeed available to purchase, as long as you can find them. I can recommend the Brother HL-2270DW I purchased nearly a decade ago which is still completely trouble-free (And prints duplex in a small footprint! Delightful.)

Making printers is not trivial. Paper is not as simple as it seems. It's super thin and light which is difficult for machines to handle at speed, and it also comes stacked in a near-solid block from which pieces need to be separated delicately but firmly. The materials science behind the rubber to grip with just the right amount of friction, time after time, accounting for wear and dirt, is mind-boggling. Paper is also noticeably affected by temperature and humidity, both of which change its properties nearly by the minute. This changing nature affects feeding, making the pieces floppier at times and liable to miss the handoff to the next set of rollers, or clingy at others and adhering to a plastic guide for longer than expected. Also the electrostatic properties vary which affects how much charge the drum needs to put on each piece to ensure the correct amount of toner particles adhere -- too much and you get squished smears, too little and the text is faint. And let's not forget the fixing process, which heats the paper to bake the toner into the crevices of the page, which may take twice as long due to extra moisture, but you wouldn't want to burn things if someone is sending through some extra thin paper for some reason. And of course as it's printing the printer is changing all of these variables with its heat and motion, changing the dimensions of every space in its interior. Every printer contains many environmental sensors so they can detect these changes and tweak their control mechanisms for each individual piece of paper. It's kind of akin to baking a perfect baguette every time.

Printers are miniature marvels, and there are still some wizards out there who know how to make them well. But we have to, like, patronize those wizards instead of the goblins of HP or else we will truly be buying our own way into the dismal future of crap that HP creates.

isatty• 4 years ago

While a great comment, and not discounting how difficult of a problem it is, most people hate the garbage tier drivers and apps much more than the occasional jam or misprint.

jdkee• 4 years ago

HP created the LaserJet III over 25 years ago. A tank of a printer. Bulletproof. What happened?

Carly Fiorina.

retSava• 4 years ago

It is a hard problem, but it is also largely a solved problem since literally decades ago. If you were to start from scratch, you'd need to reinvent all of those things, which undoubtedly would make any such endeavor not worth it.

Of course, that doesn't make it worth it for just anyone to start making printers. But we see time and time again that where they fail nowadays is in UI, integration, and business models.

It's similar to the post on the first page about USB-C hubs, and graphics cards, and earphones. Typically you buy them as OEM stuff - very very few go through the trouble and design earphone drivers (loudspeakers) from scratch (etc). That, and reference designs. Visiting Shenzhen is an eye opener, browsing Aliexpress too :).

loloquwowndueo• 4 years ago

Last year I got an HP M255dw and it really just works (tm) with all our devices (some iOS and a couple of Ubuntu boxes). This is all over wireless - I have never used a usb cable with this printer. OS-included drivers worked fine, no need to waste hours hunting for drivers on the internet.

neilv• 4 years ago

The review mentions having to pull down the exit tray, so that's part of the footprint, if you just want it as an always-accessible network appliance on a table (rather than something portable, or hidden in a drawer or on a shelf for rare use).

If you want an HP LaserJet, there are a bunch of used ones that might keep running for decades of home use, so long as you buy them a cartridge every few years.

I currently run an M401n, with a little print server in front of it, and with the non-HPLIP "HP LaserJet Series PCL 6 CUPS" driver. (The print server is because I don't trust the firmware with network access.) It's not as imposing as my LaserJet 5N, but it works fine, so long as I use the PCL driver.

jeffreygoesto• 4 years ago

Right. My 4050 with duplexer runs since the early 2000s. I had to "reflow solder" the JetDirect card in the oven, but that worked surprisingly well and gave another happy second printer life.

dylan6042• 4 years ago

" Even more annoyingly, it doesn't use USB-C - instead it's that awful square USB plug. Eugh!"

Isn't this pretty much synonymous with printer port at this point in time? I have a few other devices with this particular USB port like old old USB1.0 external drives. However, over the course of time, it has been pretty much regulated to the realm of printer port. Also, by not shoving USB-C on it means that it's accessible to a much larger range of users. Doesn't seem so strange of a decision to me.

"There's also an "ID copy" button which is specifically for making copies of ID cards and passports. No, I've no idea either. Seems like a feature in search of a user."

This is actually handy where it allows you to scan one side of the ID and then flip it over to scan the second side of the ID and then print both sides onto one piece of paper at once. The fact that the author can't figure that out or be bothered to test it for the review yet add this to the review does not give me much confidence in the reviewer.

MBCook3• 4 years ago

USB-B ports (the square ones) were designed for peripherals, normal USB-A ports were for hosts.

I believe that was so it was clear why you couldn’t plug your hard drive into your printer and expect it to work. There were no B to B cables. Heck there were no A to A cables, right?

I think there were some other weird connectors designed to sort of handle the fact that some devices (phones) could act as either a host or peripheral.

All that said sticking with that connector makes a lot of sense. If you’re buying your first printer it’s unfortunate that you have to buy a cable. Better ton of people will be replacing a previous printer and already have that exact cable on hand. If they used USB-C those people would have to replace the cable.

ID copy? No idea.

dylan6042• 4 years ago

ID copy? No idea.

What do you mean by no idea? Do you mean you have no idea what the reviewer's point was? Do you mean you still have no idea on what it's for even after I just described it?

whoopdedo• 4 years ago

A-A cables do exist. I came across it with a USB 3.0 hard drive. But the version 3 micro-B connector was notoriously fragile, so this one had a sturdier A connector instead.

2000UltraDeluxe• 4 years ago

This.

There are plenty of printers that can print straight from USB storage, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are scanners/multi-function devices that can scan to USB storage as well. Having two USB ports to plug those storage devices into would cause _a lot_ of support calls because some people would insist on using the wrong port.

The same applies for record players able to record to USB storage, many external hard drives and other periopherals from the 2000's and early 2010's. Mini-USB was also quite common for smaller devices in those times.

After 2012-ish, many seems to have switched to micro-USB and now we're gradually moving to USB-C.

That being said, A-to-A cables do exist and some rare devices use them.

alx__• 4 years ago

The ID copy is actually pretty useful.

Also it's a needed feature because these printers are targeted for small business and front desk workers (doctors, dentists, gyms, etc). I've seen them do this many times in past. They need a copy of proof of insurance or drivers license you're giving them.

InvaderFizz• 4 years ago

Yep. If this printer is sold in Mexico, that will be the vast, vast majority of uses for the flatbed scanner. So many places of business make double sided copies of IDs as a routine practice.

Beldin• 4 years ago

The fact that the reviewer talked about ink (repeatedly) in a review of a laser printer definitely lowered my expectations.

edent2• 4 years ago

HP literally call their cartridge ordering service "Instant Ink".

Don't blame me for their colloquialism.

lvncelot• 4 years ago

Printers and USB MIDI controllers, I'd say.

masklinn5• 4 years ago

However, over the course of time, it has been pretty much regulated to the realm of printer port.

Mostly because of its significant form factor: the “mini” and “micro” USB plugs people think of are pretty much all Bs (so the smaller version of this one), because before USB-C USB is a very directional protocol: there’s a host and there’s a device, and this relationship is literally hard-wired (through A and B plugs) because the host side provides the power.

That aside, “regular” Type B plugs still exist for things like displays (and probably non-C hubs with detachable host-side cable though that seems rare): in the relationship between computer and display the display is the device, and thus is on the B side, and space is not as a premium so the solidity of the plug is more valuable than the gains in size.

I have 2 of those (in the USB-3 variant with the weird bump for the extra pins) at the bottom of my display, as it has KVM features and can thus connect to 2 “upstream” computers (well 3 because it also has a USB-C input).

ars• 4 years ago

"which is specifically for making copies of ID cards and passports. No, I've no idea either. Seems like a feature in search of a user."

It's so you can print (copy) both sides of the ID on the same page - press it, copy one side, then flip it over. And you get both sides on a single page.

MBCook3• 4 years ago

Oh. I guess that would be useful for some businesses that need to keep copies of insurance cards or drivers licenses.

cpach• 4 years ago

Some hotels does this with ID cards.

dataflow• 4 years ago

Tangent, but what is the smallest reliable color laser printer available on the market today? No need for speed, no need for super high quality, no need for scan/fax - just size, color, reliability, and laser (so occasional use doesn't dry out ink). Is there such a thing?

jjjjoe• 4 years ago

Probably the wee Brother 3200-something you can find at any office supply store. We had a rebranded sibling sold by Dell for a decade. CUPS likes them. They're slow, but they work.

mzi• 4 years ago

I don't even need a small printer. What is the HP LaserJet 4M of today? That can sustain being the daily driver in a computer lab, survive a couple of million pages and has an at least half-reliable PS engine?

jfoutz• 4 years ago

for some reason, I thought it was M4. I had to learn pdf, I had to print pdf. the trusty old _4M_ was an absolute tank. I think I went through a box of paper, not ream, but box, working out edge cases and random floating point rounding errors. I can't bring myself to say _hate_ but I dislike printers. I have a grudging respect for HP 4M printers.

Yeah, when my home laser printer dies, I'm getting a refurb 4M, I'll set up a little shrine in the garage and print a page once every 2 years.

Jedd• 4 years ago

I had an HP Laserjet something (twenty years or so ago) that just kinda worked with CUPS on GNU/Linux -- but PS / PCL on those things was not complex, and it only had to print black anyway, with no network connectivity or scanning function.

Around the time I was looking to replace it - about 8 years ago - with a colour laser, I'd assumed HP was still popular & 'Linux friendly', but it coincided with a horrendous HP laptop experience (of the 'I am never buying from this vendor again' variety). Forums seemed to have a fair flood of people dissatisfied with HP support on our favourite OS, too -- while Brother was getting very positive reviews, and linuxprinting/openprinting showed consistently good-to-great support across their range.

I picked up a HL-3170CDW (colour laser) at around A$350 - which is comparable to the contemporary pricing for TFA's monochrome HP @ £220. I did a pass-me-down of that model a year or so ago, and went to the MFP version - DCP-L3510CDW (colour scanner, copier, laser printer) - for the same price. Print resolution is the same as TFA (600x600), but scan is at least 4x better. My only complaint is that they slightly changed their toner cartridge form between the models ... which felt like a very HP thing to do.

Aloha• 4 years ago

Same.

I won't buy a modern HP Printer, they're not well made or particularly user friendly.

I have some sub 99 dollar brothers which have given me a decade long service life.

busterarm• 4 years ago

I've been buying exclusively laser printers for myself and my family for 20 years now and contrary to the experiences described in this thread, I have had no issues whether the brand is HP, Brother or Samsung.

The trick is that I exclusively install and use them as network printers. CUPS always works like a charm and I can print from windows, mac and my phones as well. Occasionally on linux I have to reach for foomatic drivers, but it's rare. I haven't plugged a USB cable into a printer since the 90s.

Current brother model has been going strong for 4 years now.

PennRobotics• 4 years ago

seconding Brother's laser printers

They simply work with most modern Linux distros and Android releases. There's no nickel and diming. They are reliable and maintainable.

When I need high-quality photos? I drive to the drugstore and use the kiosk.

simonjgreen• 4 years ago

Minor nitpicking, but this isn't the smallest printer they do. It's the smallest with a scanner. The smallest printer they do is the MFP110we. It's essentially identical but without the scanner.

I know this is recently bought and returned one (nothing fundamentally wrong, just couldn't print on the cardstock I needed to use).

I'm still trying to work out how to cancel the ink subscription...

ComradePhil• 4 years ago

I have a similar model from HP. Every time I have to print (which is once every couple of months), I have to reinstall the software or otherwise troubleshoot.

pacifika• 4 years ago

Had this problem. Enabling the preference so it powers off automatically instead of sleeping fixed that.

G3rn0ti• 4 years ago

If you connect using WiFi make sure you assign the printer a fixed IP address in your router. Missing out on that I think explained 60% of the printing problems friends and family had. I also noticed the standard Windows supplied drivers for my Office Jet Pro 8500 do not work well. After printing a job (successfully), the Windows printer queue always would get stuck. Installing the >1GB (wtf) driver package provided by HP resolved this issue and Windows printing worked fine. With Linux and even Mac I never had problems. My printer runs fine even after >10 years of service.

AceJohnny2• 4 years ago

This is kind of out there but... are there open-source laser printer designs?

I guess the key elements (scanner, toner dispenser, heater) aren't exactly commodity/interchangeable, so maybe better: are there open-source laser printer firmware?

I feel like the technology has been established for a few decades now, and the latest consumer iterations often add ridiculous "features" and outright user-hostility that maybe there's room for an alternate solution.

Edit: see rdw's answer elsewhere here, for why a laser printer is a pretty complicated piece of control system

fho• 4 years ago

I guess we are over "peak printing" already. Every open hardware printer design would be one or two decades too late.

ClumsyPilot• 4 years ago

Open source hardware is quite limited so far, what have we got besides 3D printers and drones?

There is no opensource car or house or motorbike, is there? How about an oven, microwave?

londons_explore• 4 years ago

It seems rather large for the smallest printer...

I'm imagining a micro printer/scanner where to scan a document you pass it through the same route as the printer. And the printer is the width of the page and a cylinder about 3 inches diameter containing the toner, electronics, developer, fuser, and feed rollers. If there's a little spare room, put in a lithium battery good for printing 50 pages or so while out and about.

robin_reala• 4 years ago

Most people want to scan things that can’t be folded through a print route though: the aforementioned id cards, passports, pages of books, fragile old documents, photos, certificates, etc.

darkwater• 4 years ago

The "every wifi gadget out there is only 2.4GHz" is really annoying. I understand that it's probably because 2.4GHz chips are extremely cheap but we will forced to keep those slow and overcrowded networks for 15 extra years at very least.

chaostheory• 4 years ago

Don’t buy HP printers, even their laser jets. It seems like they’re still using the same business model of making you buy ink cartridges at specific intervals regardless of how much ink that you actually use.

mschuster91• 4 years ago

Good lord that web interface. It still looks like the JetDirect interface from eons ago... and probably is.

detuur• 4 years ago

The square USB plug is intentional. USB-C is not always the best plug. Take a look at USB channel loss budgets[1]. This is a very simple read, even for people who are not at home in electronics and signals.

To summarise the document, the "square USB plug" aka USB-B was conceived when USB client devices were simple, had short traces, little noise, and thus were expected to emit a signal with very little signal loss. This allowed for a relatively long cable. USB-C was conceived to deal with complex devices, which incurred more signal loss, allowing for a shorter cable to keep the total signal loss in the system in check. So even today, A-to-B cables can be longer than C-to-C (even though it is only marginally).

The odd thing is that the spec defines legacy C-to-B cables at far below their true capabilities. According to the spec the loss budget for a C host device is 6.5dB, as opposed to the 10dB of an old A/B host. This should allow for a cable assembly with a channel loss of 11dB! And yet the spec insists on a mere 4dB. So technically someone could make a "non-standard" 11dB cable that should just work, given the guarantees by the rest of the spec.

[1] https://usb.org/sites/default/files/USB_3.1_Loss_Budget_Rev_...

amelius• 4 years ago

Why no error correction in the USB-C protocol, though?

blagie• 4 years ago

I think the other issue is mechanical robustness. μUSB, mUSB, and USB-C were engineered to fit on small devices like phones, cameras, and laptops. μUSB ports and cables fail all the time. mUSB and USB-C are better, but the large USB-B connector is king.

The original idea was to have a few sizes corresponding to a few sizes of devices. For large devices expected to last many years, like printers, scanners, multi-drive storage devices, many types of pro-AV equipment (e.g. one of those pan/tilt/zoom cameras permanently installed in some lecture halls), scientific equipment, and so on, the square plug is king.

You don't want to lose a $5000 device due to a failed connector.

I mind having a proprietary cable for each device. I don't mind having a few types of cables as they make sense.

gambiting• 4 years ago

>Annoyingly, it doesn't come with a USB cable! I thought that was to save money - but they included a UK and EU power cable, so I think it's just to "encourage" using the WiFi.

I don't think any domestic laser printer came with a USB cable in the last 20 years. It's not a conspiracy to make you use wi-fi - it's just manufacturers being cheap and not including the USB cable has been the standard for a really really long time.

>" Even more annoyingly, it doesn't use USB-C - instead it's that awful square USB plug. Eugh!"

Again, that has been the standard in printers since forever.

b112• 4 years ago

Yet what will happen, is some marketing yukity-yuk, will see this blog, and proclaim it's getting "lots of comments and traffic". Ports will be changed, for no good reason, as well as a dozen other things. (See! That ID mode confuses people, axe it!)

Meanwhile, they won't look at discussions like this, and on other sites linking to similar discussions about this blog post. And thus, more dumbing down of computing. More reduction in capability, and ease of use.

I bet calling toner, ink, is due to a single person in Iowa, being confused for 12 seconds, and posting about it.

Meanwhile, they got it, are not still confused, but of course who updates a post to reflect that.

(The above is how I view the competences of marketing types)

trhoad• 4 years ago

I bought a Brother HL-L5000D mono laser off eBay for £50. It's been going for 2 years and hasn't needed any maintenance whatsoever (or any new toner). It just works.

vishwajeetv• 4 years ago

You can't write "Printer" and "Linux" in the same sentence! :D

fmajid4• 4 years ago

My experience is that Ubuntu auto-detects and auto-configures all my network printers, even the Brother QL label printers. Far easier than MacOS.

fmajid4• 4 years ago

It's ridiculously hard to get the Web UI on printers use proper Let's Encrypt certificates. You often can do it manually, but there is no provision for automation and doing it every 3 months get old. Not to mention the printers that won't accept 4096-bit certificates or old firmwares that don't do SHA-256.

Then you have the wide variety of baroque protocols used by Windows. I don't do Windows and I'd like to reduce the attack surface, but if you disable them, often standard IPP/CUPS or lpd stops working for no reason.

I'm surprised printers are not more commonly used by botnets, their security is abysmal and they usually stop getting firmware updates just a couple years after being discontinued, which is itself only a couple of years after being introduced.

bbojan2• 4 years ago

An interesting thing happened to me since I started using an inkjet printer with user refillable ink tanks. I actually like to print! I don't have to deliberate "Do I really need this printed?" I don't mind printing a bunch of stuff for the kids. I can print interesting photos and put them up somewhere or give them away to the family.

Previously with an HP inkjet, I would dread printing because what if I use up the ink, and then need to print something urgently (e.g. a government form)?

The feeling is that now the printer is serving me, as opposed to previously where I felt I am its servant.

luke2m• 4 years ago

Most popular 3D printers are open source hardware. I would love to see some conventional printers as well. Does anyone know the limitations or challenges that make it hard to do this?

kkfx• 4 years ago

My own personal non-review:

- WiFi is optional (and I prefer not having it) BUT having a physical ethernet port should be universal;

- do not have nor require any specific "app" must be mandatory, we have made "driverless" printers, we have pdf and ps printers, we have a2ps, nothing more should be needed for printing;

- bit toner issue: no "chip" must be required, no issues with third party cartridge should be present, at least not those made by design choice by the printer OEM.

Long story short: in the past HP have made various nice enough printer, after Samsung deal overall quality is descending to a level I can't buy them anymore.

The rest are minor things to choose from like automatic double-side printing, covered paper so if one do not print for a certain period of time sheets do not get dusty, easy access to all paper path in case of jammed paper, easy cleaning/change for printer pad just in case etc.

Review: HP's smallest laser printer – M140w and Linux set up

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