HP Color LaserJet Pro CP1525NW Printer

First of all:
This printer works fine with OS X 10.7.x and AirPrint on my iPad 2

Ordering:
I ordered this machine on Thursday and received on Friday morning - that was some speedy delivery, thanks Amazon! It arrived safe and sound with DPD.

About the printer:
The printer itself is VERY heavy, so be prepared for some weight (about 50 pounds / 25 kilograms) and look for a durable stand for it. I wouldn't suggest putting it on a glass table, for example.

In the box:
After unboxing everything, you will find the printer (yes, really), two power cords (one 3-prong for UK, one 2-prong for other EU countries like Germany) and a printer cable, some leaflets and a driver CD (you won't need the CD, so throw it away if you're on Mac :)

Setup:
I don't know why people are having troubles, it took me less than 10 minutes to hook it up wirelessly to my Time Capsule and to get everything to work, including AirPrint - so here's how.

- Find a place for your new printer and remove ALL of the orange transport locks and tapes, those are the orange thingies. Look at the included leaflet where to find them.
- Load up paper.
- Hook it up to the power and turn it on. Do not connect ANY other cables (no LAN, no USB, nothing)
- Look at the LCD on your printer, it will ask you for the display language and the region where it's going to be used in.
- The printer will now initialize, clean itself and calibrate the colors. Wait until it's done - you will notice once it goes silent)
- Press the radio button at the front of the printer. The printer will reboot, and the radio LED will light up blue.
- Take a look at the LCD. Press the right or left arrow button, navigate to "Reports" and print the network summary.
- Disconnect from your current WLAN on your Mac, and let it scan for a wireless network (SSID) which starts with something like HP, connect to it.
- Look at the page it just printed. You will find an IPv4 address, something like 169.254.x.x
- Go back to your Mac and enter that IP address in your web browser, it will load up a page. That's the printers integrated web server / config utility
- Click on the green "networking" tab, then in the left sidebar on "wireless configuration"
- Look for your WLAN, leave everything on auto and enter your WLANs passphrase (password), click on apply.
- Confirm everything, then disconnect from the printers network and connect to your own one again.
- Open system preferences and the printer utility, then on the "+" to add a printer, and you should see your new printer. Select it, and let it download and install the newest driver from Apple.
- Your printer is now ready to use, but there is one more thing: Firmware Update... the default firmware won't let you use AirPrint.
- Google for HP CP1525nw firmware, one of the first 5 links should bring you to the download page at Hewlett Packard. Chose Mac OS X as operating system and let it download the firmware updater.
- Mount the DMG you got from HP, drag the firmware updater to your desktop, eject the DMG and trash it. Run the updater.
- Select your printer from within the updater, let it check for updates and install it.
- Your printer will reboot after the firmware is done, but the firmware updater will keep saying that it's busy and eventually "fail". Don't worry, that seems to be normal.
- After it "failed", close and trash it. Firmware update done, AirPrint ready.

Observations:
The printer is, compared to others, quiet. It's sitting in my bedroom, and I don't wake up if someone prints - only if they breach my door to collect their pages.
The build quality is superb. You won't have to fear that it falls apart if you touch it like other printers. It's VERY solid.
Text quality is outstanding, even the smallest fonts (4px) are sharp, crisp and clean.
Image quality is good-very good for a laser printer (they never were great for images, but photos look pretty nice with rich colors.)

Conclusion:
It's a heavy, bulky, easy to set up printer which works perfectly together with Mac OS X 10.7.x and iPad 2 via AirPrint. The driver is fully integrated into Mac OS X and displays everything: Supplies, Status, Configurations, etc... really smooth! For the price (got it at 159 quid) you won't get a better color laser printer, however, the toner is VERY expensive, but that's how they earn their money: Give away the machine for cheap, claim back money via toner.

I can fully recommend this for the private user who likes to have crisp text prints and occasional photos. It's a bit slow for small offices, and the paper tray only holds about 150 pages.
If you are planning on printing photos mainly, I'd suggest looking at ink printers, they beat the hell out of any laser printers in this price range though.

I'll give it 5 stars, because it's the best color laser printer money can buy you in the 200 pounds range, and because I had its predecessor, the 1515n for 4 years and it did not fail me once.

Easy to set up. The design of this printer is so user-friendly. Change of toner cartridge is so easy, just by pulling out a tray and replace! The printer can be shared by a network of computers in the house/office. On top of that, it can print materials sent in from everywhere, sent by computers or mobile phones using ePrinting. The ePrinting is a fantastic function of this machine. On the whole, the proper word for describing this printer is "convenient". Printing quality is superb too. Highly recommended.

A first class home colour laser printer with easy set up and excellent print quality on basic paper. My kids were printing more and more pictures on my reliable HP Laserjet 1018 but could only print in monochrome. I also now have a wireless network at home but still had to return the laptop/netbook to the desk and plug in the USB cable to print. I also couldn't print from the ipad or iphone.

The overall function of this printer - especially wireless e-print - is superb. Set up took the usual 20 minutes by downloading most recent drivers from the HP Support website, rather than the supplied CD. It recognised my Wireless hub no problem and the test page arrived shortly afterwards. I can now print effortlessly to the printer from ipad 2, iphone 3GS, netbook and laptop (both running Windows 7) from anywhere in the house. Digital photos, e-mails, PDFs all print in good quality.

Print is a litle noisy but there is no residual background noise or occasional "clunking". There are comments elsewhere about the lack of a duplex /2-sided option, but for around £[] and for the low volume that I put through this, I am happy to turn pages manually. What did suprise me was the size of this printer - the footprint is about double that of the monochrome Laserjet. It is also much heavier - although you don't notice that when it is on the desk!

This is my third HP laserjet printer and they just keep getting better.

Overall 5 stars!