HP Enterprise Colour Lasers: M653 vs M577 vs M855 vs M880

The HP Color LaserJet M653 is one of the most searched printers on our site, usually alongside the M577, M855 and M880. All four are enterprise colour lasers that big offices abroad retire on lease cycles, and all four cost a fraction of their new price as tested imports. They are aimed at quite different jobs, though — A4 or A3, printer or MFP, speed or scanning — so this is the comparison we walk customers through.

Comparison table

HP Color LaserJet Enterprise M653: A4 colour at speed

The M653 is built to print colour A4 all day: well over 50 pages a minute in colour and black, automatic duplex, Gigabit Ethernet, a 4.3-inch touch screen and a recommended volume of 3,000–12,000 pages a month. It uses HP's 655A cartridges, and the high-yield 656X series cuts cost per page further. Print shops use it for flyers, menus, certificates and colour assignments; offices for colour reports. It is a printer only — no scanner — so pair it with a document scanner if you need one.

HP Color LaserJet Enterprise Flow MFP M577: colour copying and scanning

The M577 prints at 38 ppm in colour and adds what the M653 lacks: a 100-sheet single-pass duplex document feeder, an 8-inch touch screen, colour copying and scan-to-email or scan-to-folder. It uses the widely available 508A/508X cartridges, shared with the M552 and M553 printers. For an office that needs one colour machine to do everything, the M577 is the better buy; for a counter that only prints colour, the M653 is faster.

HP Color LaserJet Enterprise M855: A3 colour printing

The M855 is a floor-standing A3 colour printer: 46 ppm, paper up to SRA3, automatic duplex and a 120,000-page duty cycle. Its 826A cartridges yield roughly 29,000 black and over 30,000 colour pages, which keeps the cost per page low for a machine of this size. Buy it for A3 posters, result sheets, architectural drawings or menus — not as an office printer, because it needs real floor space.

HP Color LaserJet Enterprise M880 MFP and E87660: A3 colour copiers

The M880 is the M855's multifunction sibling: A3 colour printing, copying and scanning at 46 ppm with an 8-inch touch screen, internal hard disk and 827A cartridges. The managed E87660dn goes further at 60 ppm with a 300,000-page duty cycle. Both are copier-class machines — plan delivery, a dedicated power line with a stabiliser, and a service arrangement before you buy. They replace a colour photocopier at a fraction of the new price.

Which should you buy?

• Print shop or office printing lots of A4 colour → M653.
• Office needing colour print, copy and scan in one → M577.
• A3 colour printing only → M855.
• A3 colour copying and scanning → M880, or the E87660 at copier volumes.
• Light colour use, under 1,000 pages a month → a desktop colour laser; see the best colour laser printers.