Small businesses searching for a printer need look no further than HP's Colour LaserJet Pro line.

We've recently spent some time with the HP Colour LaserJet Pro MFP M477FNW model, a compact multifunction printer that comes with a strong feature set to support fast duplex printing of both text and graphics. It's even equipped with scanner, document feeder, Wi-Fi, and faxing capabilities, making it an appealing choice for small offices and workgroups.

To help you decide if it's worth the $529.99 asking price, we've determined 7 specific features of the M477FNW that help it reinvent your office.

HP Colour LaserJet Pro MFP M477FNW: Compact

Measuring 16.4 x 18.1 x 16.7 inches, the 48-pound M477FNW is a compact printer for a MFP. 

Although it's a mammoth when compared to typical laser printers found in the home, the M477FNW is meant for small businesses. It's size and design therefore make sense, but it can can still fit in the corner of a large desk or be tucked away in any office without taking up too much space.

Stand-out design features include a flatbed at the top, along with an automatic document feeder that supports single-pass, two-sided scanning. There's also a 4.3-inch touchscreen colour display to control the machine's MFP functions, and a USB thumb drive tucked away underneath that.

HP Colour LaserJet Pro MFP M477FNW: Easy setup

The M477FNW is a breeze to setup. HP offers the ability to download the printer's software from its website, ensuring you get the most up-to-date drivers available. Also, all software, drivers, and installation packages are bundled into a single download to make things easy.

There's an HP Easy Start printer app for your computer too. It detects the printer and prompts you to choose the basic download as well as the scanner drivers. Installation should take less than 5 minutes.

HP Colour LaserJet Pro MFP M477FNW: 300-sheet capacity

The M477FNW has a 250-sheet input tray and a 50-sheet multipurpose feeder, meaning it has a capacity of 300 sheets for legal-size paper. An optional 550-sheet paper tray ($149.99) can be added, bringing the maximum paper capacity to 850 sheets.

You can expect a maximum monthly duty cycle of up to 50,000 pages and a recommended monthly duty cycle of up to 4,000 sheets.

HP Colour LaserJet Pro MFP M477FNW: 28ppm speed

The M477FNW has a 28-page-per-minute rated colour printing speed. That - combined with paper capacity and substantial monthly duty cycle - make it a solid choice for up to medium-duty printing. It also has good graphics quality.

HP Colour LaserJet Pro MFP M477FNW: Wi-Fi connectivity

The M477FNW offers both wired and wireless printing choices. There is one USB 2.0 for connecting to a computer and Ethernet for connecting to a wired LAN. The printer further comes with Wi-Fi built in and support for HP wireless direct, Apple AirPrint, and Google Cloud Print.

Perhaps our favourite option though is the ability to print straight from a mobile device in just a steps.

HP Colour LaserJet Pro MFP M477FNW: Duplex printing

The M477FNW has a duplexer for two-sided printing. HP is promising you should get your first black page out in about 8.9 seconds, while a colour page can come out fast as 9.8 seconds. From what we could tell, those quote times are accurate, and we can see this printer being especially useful for printing brochures, newsletters, and other two-sided documents commonly printed in small-office situations.

HP Colour LaserJet Pro MFP M477FNW: Double-sided scanning

The M477FNW can handle duplex, or double-sided, printing, and it has a document feeder that allows for double-sided scanning and copying. With copying, the document feeder can make single-sided to double-sided copies and supports resolutions up to 600 x 600 dpi.

There's also a flatbed for single-sided scanning and copying.