Kyocera Document Solutions UK has expanded its partnership with Westcoast to include distribution of its ECOSYS A4 printing devices.

Previously a distribution partner covering spare parts, toner, and consumables, the fresh agreement will now see Westcoast operate as a “one-stop shop” for Kyocera’s full range of ECOSYS A4 hardware, consumables, and fulfilment services.

The deal aims to drive further growth for both companies, with Kyocera set to benefit from increased channel visibility, while Westcoast’s sales teams can now offer resellers a wider choice of printers, alongside the promise of a “frictionless order to install process.”

Martin Fairman, Kyocera’s group sales and marketing director, described the move as a “major development” in the companies’ ongoing relationship.

“We’ve shared many successes in the past, so now is the ideal time for us to take our business to the next level, focusing on a holistic approach where Westcoast can offer our full portfolio of print products and services to their customers and partners,” he explained.

“The expanded partnership also complements our existing wider distribution network, adding significantly to our overall channel capabilities.”

Unified

Additionally, the new agreement will see the pair operate as a single, integrated team, with Kyocera’s account managers to work closely with Westcoast’s channel leaders to identify and capitalize on new business opportunities.

The after-sales customer care process will also be coordinated to enable a more streamlined process, the pair said.

“This partnership marks a significant step forward for both parties,” commented Ryan Mitchell, print director at Westcoast. “Our Nottingham print team has the infrastructure and expertise to meet demand for Kyocera’s ECOSYS range.”

By combining the Kyocera product range with Westcoast’s distribution capabilities, Mitchell said both partners and end customers alike will benefit from greater value and enhanced service.

“For many years we have partnered with Kyocera on supplies, so we understand the needs of their customers,” he added. “Expanding this to hardware makes perfect sense.”

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If you need another reason to hate printers, you can add 'security risk' to the list.

A new study from HP Wolf Security reveals that printer security is routinely neglected, with businesses failing to carry out firmware upgrades.

Only 36% of IT and security decision-makers apply printer firmware updates promptly, even though IT teams spend an average of 3.5 hours per printer, per month managing security issues.

Steve Inch, global senior print security strategist at HP, said an often overlooked aspect of printer security is the fact they’re no longer just “harmless office fixtures”.

“They’re smart, connected devices storing sensitive data,” he said. “With multi-year refresh cycles, unsecured printers create long-term vulnerabilities.”

"If compromised, attackers can harvest confidential information for extortion or sale,” Inch added. “The wrong choice can leave organizations blind to firmware attacks, tampering or intrusions, effectively laying out the welcome mat for attackers to access the wider network.”

Printer security is becoming a nightmare

Security gaps are appearing at every stage of the product lifecycle, researchers found, with only 38% of respondents saying procurement, IT, and security teams collaborate to define printer security standards.

Six-in-ten believe this lack of cross-functional collaboration puts their organization at risk.

Meanwhile, 42% said they don't involve IT or security teams in vendor presentations, with 54% failing to request technical documentation to validate security claims, and 55% failing to submit vendor responses to security teams for review.

Nor do they check the printer’s integrity, with more than half saying they can't confirm whether the printer has been tampered with in the factory or in transit.

Moreover, once the printer does arrive, only 35% of IT decision makers said they could identify whether it was vulnerable based on newly published hardware or firmware vulnerabilities.

Only 34% can track unauthorized hardware changes made by users or support teams while just 32% can detect security events linked to hardware-level attacks.

Another key security risk highlighted by the study centers around when printers reach end of life. A majority (86%) of respondents said data security is a barrier to reuse, resale, or recycling.

More than a third said they were uncertain whether printers can be fully and safely wiped.

Notably, a quarter of respondents said they play it safe by physically destroying printer storage drives, and one-in-ten destroy both the storage drives and the device itself.

Enterprises need to get their act in order

HP Wolf Security said organisations need to foster closer collaborative ties between IT, security, and procurement teams on this front to bolster security and resilience.

This includes making sure they get security certificates for products and supply chain processes, the report noted.

Similarly, they should apply firmware updates promptly, use tools to streamline printer policy-based configuration compliance, and select printers with built-in secure erasure capabilities to enable safe recycling.

"By considering security at each stage of a printer’s lifecycle, organizations will not only improve the security and resilience of their endpoint infrastructure, but also benefit from better reliability, performance, and cost-efficiency over the lifetime of their fleets,” said Boris Balacheff, chief technologist for security research and innovation at HP.

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Brother UK has announced a refresh of its A4 Mini Business and Mini Regular inkjet printers in a move the hardware provider said will enable greater choice for resellers.

The revamp aims to help channel partners meet growing demand for compact, affordable, and high-performing inkjet devices among small businesses and home users.

Brother’s A4 Mini Business series, which consists of the MFC-J4340DW and MFC-J4540DW models, has been replaced with new devices - the MFC-J4350DW and MFC-J4550DW - which feature a host of capabilities geared towards ensuring efficient performance across office environments.

The existing A4 Mini Regular series has also been replaced with four new models, ranging from basic printing to options capable of tackling more demanding printing and scanning loads.

“From affordable home devices to more capable machines for small offices, we’re making it easier than ever to match customers with the right solution for their workstyles,” commented Greig Millar, chief revenue officer at Brother UK, in an announcement.

Under the hood of the new Brother printers

Brother’s new MFC-J4350DW and MFC-J4550DW printers offer 20ipm print speeds, automatic two-sided printing, and support for 5GHz wireless connectivity, with each device also including 350 pages of black and colour ink for productivity straight out of the box.

The MFC-J4350DW model arrives with a 4.5cm LCD screen, a 150-sheet front-loading paper tray with a 20-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF), and 150-sheet output.

With the MFC-J4550DW offering, users gain an upgraded 6.8cm LCD screen, dual paper trays that offer an input capacity of 400 sheets, alongside wired LAN and USB support.

Brother UK’s existing A4 Mini Regular devices have also been retired, replaced by the new DCP-J1260W, DCP-J1310DW, DCP-J1360DW, and DCP-J1460DW.

Geared towards home users, the revamped range brings 16ipm print speeds, flatbed scan and copy, 150-sheet paper input, 50-sheet paper output, USB, and upgraded 5GHz wireless connectivity.

With the exception of the entry-level DCP-J1260W, which targets more basic printing needs, the line also offers two-sided printing and includes 200-page in-box inks, with optional 500-page supplies.

Long-term commitment

The introduction of the new devices marks the latest stage of Brother UK’s wider portfolio refresh, which will see the vendor revamp its offerings over the next 18 months to help resellers respond to the increasing demand for inkjet printing.

Last month, the firm also launched its ‘tankbenefit’ range, marking its debut entry into the Western European refillable tank printer market.

“Our updated A4 Mini Business and A4 Mini Regular series form part of a long-term commitment to being the most trusted print partner for small business and home customers alike,” Millar said.

Additionally, the new devices have been built with an eye on sustainability goals and will be sold in Brother UK’s fully-recyclable, non-polystyrene brown cardboard packaging to help businesses comply with workplace recycling legislation.

“Whether it’s our recyclable packaging or our vision for circular print, we’re ready to help with solutions that meet consumer demand both now and in the long term,” Millar added.

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We always list the dimensions of the devices we review, but that doesn't always tell the full story – Almost without exception, printers and multifunction peripherals (MFPs) need space for their cooling vents or paper trays. And even when they don't, you'll need some clearance just to simply get to their controls, trays, and cassettes. That can be a problem if you need to get a printer into a tight space – such as you might find on a reception desk or in retail environments.

Enter Canon's MAXIFY GX6550, offering an interesting solution. It's a compact and strange-looking inkjet MFP. Aside from its refillable tanks, the main feature of note is an automatic document feeder (ADF) that points to the front, rather than a more typical landscape orientation. So equipped, you can wiggle the GX6550 back into remarkably tight spaces, and still make quick work of prints, and single and multi-page copies.

Oddball arrangement aside, the GX6550 is a fairly typical refillable inkjet MFP. It's equipped with both wired and wireless networking, along with a fairly well-concealed USB host port on the front panel. It's strong on paper handling, with an enclosed 250-sheet paper cassette along with a 100-sheet tray at the rear. Both the printer and ADF offer duplexing, so you can make double-sided prints, scans, and copies. The only real omission is a fax modem, which could be more significant than usual given this MFP's other reception-friendly features.

This MFP's tiltable control panel combines a color touchscreen with a smattering of dedicated buttons. You can use it to print from or scan to an inserted USB stick, and to control other direct functions such as photocopies. It's clear and reasonably responsive, but the menu can be a little fiddly compared to the best.

Canon MAXIFY GX6550 review: Setting up

Canon's refillable ink system is branded MegaTank, and is broadly similar to competing technology from Epson and HP. One feature of the system is that you need to install the heads into a new printer – they're much like empty cartridges. With this done it's a case of inverting ink bottles over the relevant tanks, and waiting while their contents gurgle out. This is foolproof, with keying to prevent an expensive misfuelling mistake. Resist the temptation to squeeze a bottle and you won't spill a drop.

This printer comes with a full set of ink bottles, the contents of which are rated for 6,000 black, or 14,000 color pages. A deal of that is used in the initial ink system priming, which takes around 10 minutes, but you'll still get thousands of pages from just the ink that comes in the box. This alone should be enough to offset the GX6550's higher purchase price: it's about three times what we'd expect to pay for a cartridge-based equivalent.

At the time of our review, this MFP hadn't yet been included in Canon's long-running three-year warranty upgrade. The standard 12-month cover is something to consider if you expect to print in low-ish volumes: if the printer dies before you can use its included ink, you may not yet have recovered your initial outlay through lower running costs.

Over the long term, and in higher volume use, the savings could be considerable. A full new set of bottles comes in at less than £60 (ex VAT). That equates to an ongoing cost per page of just over half a penny for full-color prints, or about 0.16p in black only. Canon doesn't give an estimate of how long the replaceable maintenance cartridge will last, but it's only £14 for a new one.

It's easy enough to install the GX6550's driver package from the Canon website. It's immediately familiar to anyone who's used a Canon inkjet in the last 10 years or so and includes probably the best TWAIN interface around – a great mix of usability and decent features. That said, it's a shame this MFP doesn't come with a more office-orientated software package. Despite its high-speed, dual-sensor ADF, there's no batch scanning application, and no optical character recognition software.

One final point to mention here is that the GX6550's useful second paper tray is at the rear. If you are planning to place it in a cubby, you won't be able to access it.

Canon MAXIFY GX6550 review: Printing, scanning and copying

The MAXIFY GX6550 is fairly rapid by the standards of a compact inkjet MFP. It could deliver a first page of text in just 13 seconds, going on to hit 20.5 pages per minute (ppm) over a 25-page test. That includes the time taken to process the job, so the actual print speed was creditably close to Canon's claimed 24ppm. It's rated at 15.5ppm in color, but our taxing 24-page graphics test appeared at only 4.7ppm – that's still not a bad result for this class of device.

This printer doesn't offer a draft mode, but you can choose Economy, which Canon says will use 50% less ink. In theory, that could see a new set of bottles last for 9,000 black or 21,000 color pages. At 19.2ppm, the Economy was slightly slower than the normal mode in our tests. Like other inkjets, the GX6550 isn't a rapid duplexer, as there's an additional pause to allow ink from the first side to dry. It delivered 10 pages onto five sheets in a little over three minutes, a rate of 3.1 images (sides) per minute.

In monochrome, this MFP is a fairly quick copier, producing a single A4 page in 15 seconds, and needing just 68 seconds to copy 10 pages using the ADF. A single-color page took 16 seconds, but a 10-page copy needed two and a half minutes.

With a duplex scanner and printer, the GX6550 can make double-sided copies of double-sided originals. The dual-sensor scanner captures both sides of an original in a single pass, but the printer can't keep up: it needed five minutes to finish a 20-side, 10-page color copy.

Spend any time using the scanner and you'll discover that its forward-facing orientation is a compromise. Lift the lid and there's a small platen with a portrait orientation and a 5x7" (13x18cm) maximum area. You can't scan A4 pages on the glass, and there's a 600 dots per inch (dpi) maximum when using the ADF. The platen's big enough that you can scan or copy a passport or other ID card, but of course, you'll need to lift the ADF to do it, which won't be possible with the MFP in a particularly tight spot.

One further – and surprising – issue is rather more basic. The ADF input tray folds away completely, and before it can be used it needs to be extracted and clicked properly into place. This isn't immediately obvious as there's a very weak detent. Rely on this and it can fail, dropping the input tray so that it obstructs the ADF output, which can cause scanned pages to get crumpled. Canon has fitted a sticker drawing attention to the correct way to engage the tray, but even this doesn't make the proper position obvious.

The GX6550 can't preview an A4 page, so we couldn't complete our timed test, but the scanner previewed a 6x4" (15x10cm) photo from the platen in seven seconds. It needed 18 seconds to scan an A4 sheet at 150 or 300dpi, and 29 seconds to scan a 6x4" photo at a detailed 600dpi. 

This printer's pigment-based inks should be ideal for plain paper prints. They're less so for glossy photo printing, where the bigger ink particles are too big to play nicely with coated papers. It's happy to try photos, and does a decent job on matte photo papers and high-quality, thicker stock, although it won't print borderless photos on any paper size. At the highest print quality, an A4 print took two and a half minutes, while six postcard-sized prints were completed in just over five minutes.

This is primarily an office MFP, and as we'd expect, its pigment black ink delivered dark and crisp text. This was about as good as we've seen from an inkjet, but the GX6550's graphics prints were altogether less convincing. While color images stood up strongly from the page, they lacked saturation when compared to the best inkjet or laser output, leaving them a little dull and uninspiring. It was a similar story with photocopies, where color prints were drab but usable.

Despite its strange configuration, there's little wrong with the GX6550's scanner. It did a particularly good job of capturing photographs, with a wide dynamic range that preserved detail across the full range of shades in our Q60 reference target. It's odd, then, that it did a little less well with documents, where it tended to underexpose the darkest shades. We also noticed a little distortion in A4 images from the ADF, where parts of the same image shifted slightly between scans of the same page. Overall, however, it's still likely to be good enough for the vast majority of office uses.

Canon MAXIFY GX6550 review: Is it worth it? 

While $500 is a lot of money for a compact office inkjet, the GX6550's high asking price isn't a major concern. Provided you'll print enough to use up all or most of its bundled ink, you'll pay less overall than you would for a similar, but cartridge-based device. That leaves you free to relax and enjoy the other clear benefits of an ink tank printer – low maintenance, and long service intervals.

This MFP's design is certainly compact, and it could be ideal in confined spaces, but it's not quite as clever as it thinks it is. The scanner's portrait orientation limits what you can do on the platen, while if you take advantage of its ability to slot under a low shelf, you won't be able to use the second paper input. We wonder why Canon didn't pair a landscape scanner with a front-loading, landscape ADF and – as it did with the MAXIFY GX7050 – fit a second front-facing paper tray.

This slightly compromised packaging and underwhelming color printing means that the Canon MAXIFY GX6550 isn't ideal for general-purpose use in a home or small office. However, it could still be uniquely beneficial – a niche MFP, for literal niches. 

Canon MAXIFY GX6550 specifications

A lawsuit against HP alleging the company defrauded investors is set to continue after a US appeals court reversed a ruling which dismissed the case. 

The case was previously dismissed amid claims that complainants had filed a legal challenge too late. 

However, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the decision on Tuesday, potentially paving the way for a renewed challenge. 

Complainants in the case argue that HP misled shareholders by making “fraudulent statements” about its printing supplies business in 2015 and 2016. 

A key element in the case is that HP unveiled plans to reduce product inventories across distribution channels in June 2016. 

The firm said at the time that this move would reduce revenue from printing supplies by nearly $450 million across two quarters in that year. 

However, in September 2020 the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued HP with a $6 million fine over these sales practices. 

 The SEC said at the time that regional managers had incentivized staff to “accelerate sales” and offer discounted supplies to HP-linked resellers, meaning that the company cannibalized sales from affiliate distributors. 

“During the period relevant to this case, HP sold its supplies through a ‘push model’. Under this model, HP offered incentives to ‘Tier 1’ distributors to purchase printing supplies,” legal documents read. 

“Those Tier 1 distributors, in turn, sold to ‘Tier 2’ distributors who sold HP products to other resellers or to end users,” read the court documents.

“These sales, offered at a discount, “[cannibalized]” sales from local distributors, who would have to lower prices to compete with marked-down goods from other territories.”

HP investors were not informed of these practices, the SEC noted, which prompted a swift legal challenge just weeks after the SEC settlement agreement. 

In March 2022, a California court dismissed the case, claiming that investors should have lodged a complaint within a two-year time frame of the ‘discovery’ of fraudulent activities. 

However, it was argued that investors could not have known of such activities prior to the SEC ruling.  

“Lead plaintiff Maryland Electrical Industry Pension Fund alleged that HP and individual defendants made fraudulent statements about HP’s printing supplies business,” court documents read.

“The district court concluded that the complaint, filed in 2020, was barred by the two-year statute of limitations, 28 U.S.C. § 1658(b)(1), because the public statements, loss in profits, and reductions in channel inventory at the heart of Maryland Electrical’s claims had all taken place by 2016.”

The successful appeal means that investors could pursue compensation against the California-based firm. 

Darren Robbins, an attorney for the Maryland-based pension fund leading the lawsuit, told Reuters that the decision will help investors seeking a resolution to the dispute. 

ITPro has approached HP for comment. 

You can learn a lot from the manufacturers’ specifications, but there’s no substitute for hands-on testing. In all our printer and scanner reviews, we tease out devices true strengths and weaknesses through a battery of tests designed to mimic real-world print, scan and copy jobs.

We’ll also make more subjective assessments of elements such as the design, appearance and build quality, as well as the additional quality-of-life features it offers, and the value for money.

Print quality

We start with untimed print tests across a variety of print types, including black and white text, colour photos and greyscale images. We use these to check the output quality of the printer, looking for factors such as colour banding, text sharpness, image definition and whether there’s any run between ink colours.

Print speeds

To measure print speeds, we time how quickly a printer delivers a first page of black text, and a full 25-page mono job. Because we include all the time taken from clicking Print to the last page dropping into the output tray, our page-per-minute (ppm) speeds are always somewhat lower than the manufacturers’. On inkjets, we repeat this test at draft quality, which usually produces a faster result.

Our next test uses a 24-page document comprising web pages, presentation slides and magazine pages to measure colour speed. It’s a challenging test, so colour printers usually fall well behind their rated speed - mono printers typically get closer. Where there’s duplex, we print the first 10 pages onto five sheets, quoting the speed as images (sides) per minute. On laser printers we use a page from this document to time how long a first colour page takes. We repeat the mono and colour time-to-first-page tests from cold.

On inkjets we print two 10 x 8in photos onto A4 photo paper, then six borderless 6x4” photos. With lasers we print the latter test onto three A4 sheets. We do all our photo tests at the highest available quality settings.

Copy speeds

On an MFP we time a single photocopy and, where there’s an ADF, a 10-page copy, repeating this test in colour where available. If both the printer and ADF support duplexing, we time a 10-page, 20-sided colour copy. While we’re at it, we check the menu system’s usability, particularly when it comes to direct print and scan features.

Scan speeds

We test scanners with an office document, a 6 x 4in colour photo and a Kodak Q-60 colour input target. We time how long it takes to obtain a preview image, and create A4 scans at 150 and 300 dots per inch (dpi). We also time 600dpi and 1,200dpi scans of the photograph. The target helps reveal limitations in a scanner’s dynamic range, most commonly manifested as poorly distinguished dark shades.

Power consumption

Finally, we measure each printer’s power use in sleep and standby modes. We also measure peak consumption, usually during mono photocopying. It’s worth noting that, for laser printers in particular, our peak measurements are usually far higher than the typical power consumption.

When it comes time to purchase a printer, all IT leaders want to make the right decision. Much like refreshing user devices, this is a purchase that only comes around every few years – or longer, depending on organizational strategy – and one that must be based on careful consideration of costs, longevity, and print quality.

Two of the most popular printer types for business are LED and laser printers. Both use toner instead of ink, unlike inkjet printers.

Overall, LED and laser printers tend to remain a more common feature in your office setting

Of course, there’s no such thing as one-size-fits-all hardware and whether LED or laser printers are perfect for your business will largely depend on your unique organizational needs. To get a better idea of which could be best, we’ve listed the key differences between the two printing technologies.

Are laser printers best?

Laser printers have become the go-to choice for enterprise printing for a few, key reasons.

First and foremost, laser printers reproduce graphics and the printed word with incredibly sharp detail. Businesses looking for the top quality in printing could do worse than investing in a range of new laser printers.

Laser printers also come with a lower price tag than some alternatives, such as inkjet printers, as they use powdered toner which is cheaper in bulk. Laser printers work by beaming patterns onto a positively-charged drum, leaving behind a negative charge in the shape of what is being printed. This attracts the toner, which sticks to the drum that is then rolled over the paper itself.

Crucially, the laser is directed by a moving mirror, which spins to direct the laser onto different sections of the moving drum to control where on the page toner is placed.

However, leaders should note that the initial cost of laser printers can be higher than LED printers, even though the cost disparity is narrowing. If you’re comparing LED printers to inkjet printers in an environment where hundreds of sheets of paper are printed per week, the up-front investment could be outweighed by savings in the long run. But in comparison to LED, the math is harder to figure.

With our best practice guide on reducing print costs, a laser printer can still be a very shrewd investment.

It’s worth noting that size can be an issue with laser printers, largely due to the drum and laser setup, unlike LED printers which have fewer moving parts and are therefore comparatively compact. If you’re short on space in your office, you’re best advised to seek out a more compact printer.

Are LED printers best?

LED printers also use a drum and mirror to transfer toner to a page using electrophotography. The key difference is they use an array of LEDs instead of a laser, which strobe an image onto a positively-charged drum – creating a focused, negative charge that attracts toner in a specific shape to reproduce the user’s words and images.

Because LED printers don’t use a laser, they don’t require a spinning mirror. Instead, the LED array spans the full width of the drum, with individual LEDs activating when required to determine where toner is placed on the page. This makes them more compact, quieter, and easier to maintain as they contain fewer moving parts. This means there are also fewer printer problems to troubleshoot with LED printers.

All of this is to say that LED printers come with some significant benefits over laser printers.

But be in no doubt: there are some downsides to LED printers. Because they also rely on internally producing intense light to attract toner to the paper, they draw a significant amount of energy. Businesses looking to roll out many LED printers will see their bills rise as a result. That said, LED printers are still more energy efficient than laser printers.

What LED printers struggle to compete with laser printers on is quality. Indeed, they can be less dependable overall for detail and consistent print results, as the quality of LEDs varies slightly within the array producing uneven light distribution across the drum. Laser printers produce sharper text and graphics overall.

Which produces higher quality prints?

Enterprises that print a lot of client-facing materials may be particularly concerned about the quality of work produced by their printers.

Top of the range laser and LED printers are both capable of rendering images at up to 1,200 dots per inch (DPI).

This is what makes it a very difficult decision when choosing between an LED or laser printer: there’s no clear winner in terms of image quality. From a customization and flexibility perspective, however, LEDs use a fixed drum, meaning they cannot vary in resolution.

Conversely, laser printers have resolutions that can be changed based on your individual needs. If it’s flexibility that you’re seeking, even on a minute level, then our recommendation is to choose a laser printer on this occasion.

Paper quality is also a consideration here. Ultimately, the quality of paper you’re using has a tangible impact on the quality of prints. Both of these devices work best with heat-resistant paper and there are a range of options here for businesses.

Similarly, paper also comes in a range of grams per square meter (GSM) and so anything above a certain thickness is likely incompatible with either.

Is an LED printer better than a laser printer?

Both LED printers and laser printers have their clear pros and cons. As we’ve covered throughout this article, both kinds of printer can deliver at the enterprise level.

What’s clear is that for enterprises looking to complete regular, large print jobs to a high standard, these are the kinds of printer to go for, certainly compared to inkjet devices.

Over the long term, LED printers have a slightly longer shelf life. This is purely because they have fewer moving parts – so if you’re looking to cut down on replacement costs, LED printers may be right for you. On the other hand, if you want the best detail possible, laser printers are the ideal choice.

Many printers are chunky beasts, but the Canon Pixma Pro-200 is a true giant. It actually isn’t all that heavy at 14.1kg, considering its size, but it has an enormous footprint, particularly when its rear input and front output trays are fully extended. It’s 837mm wide so, before you buy, make sure you factor in the price of a second desk to put it on.

The reason for its enormity is its ability to print on A3 paper. Actually, this isn’t strictly true, since the Epson Photo HD XP-15000 can also print on A3 and is significantly more compact. However, we can’t bring ourselves to be too critical of the Pixma Pro-200’s proportions because it prints photos like an absolute dream.

Every photo we printed came out perfectly. Blacks are deep and rich; skin tones of all shades look natural; and colours are bright and pin sharp. Whether we printed on Canon’s own A3+ paper or cheap 6 x 4in photo paper, the results were simply wonderful. We tested it with a broad range of photos, from bright, colourful prints to misty landscapes requiring subtle colour transitions, and it produced everything exceptionally. If you’re looking for a printer that can print off superb quality photos at any size, this really is the one.

Let’s not pretend that such luxury isn’t expensive, however, with the Pro-200 only just falling short of the £500 mark after tax. It also comes with a high printing cost. Canon only quotes cartridge capacity in terms of printing A3 photos, which makes sense given the type of printer it is, but isn’t a fair comparison to the prices we’ve quoted elsewhere.

However, we’ve tried to work out comparable print costs based on that. If anything, it’s likely to work out cheaper than the 13.4p colour and 13p mono figures that we arrived at, but even so, it’s best paired with an ink tank workhorse if you print with any kind of volume. This simply isn’t an everyday printer.

The Pro-200 requires more ink cartridges than any of the other printers we've tested, with space for eight cartridges at a time. These are the usual four colours, along with grey, light grey, photo cyan and photo magenta. This might leave you working through more cartridges, but it’s clearly part of the process that produces exceptional prints.

If there was any proof needed that this isn’t an appropriate printer for regular document work, take a look at its performance in our speed tests: you will have to look hard to find a printer that doesn’t outpace it, with mono print speeds of 2.5ppm and colour speeds of 1.6ppm at normal quality. Even in draft mode, it could only manage mono prints at 3.9ppm, which even the sub-£100 HP DeskJet 4120e puts to shame. Text and regular graphics really aren’t its thing, and it lagged a long way behind other printers in these tests.

The one speed test the Pro-200 didn’t fall foul of was our 6 x 4in photo printing test, where it lined up around the middle of the pack compared to rival inkjets. Those that beat it weren’t the best at producing photos and we suspect that most users won’t mind waiting a little bit longer to get prints that look this good.

Setting up and connecting the printer is as simple as Canon’s consumer models, and most easily done via the setup website, where you choose your printer from a list and are then guided through the process with as much (or as little) hand-holding as you need. There’s a CD included in the box, however, if you prefer that method. The printer can connect to a computer via USB, or connect to a network via Wi-Fi or Ethernet.

Photography enthusiasts might miss the fact that this doesn’t have a scanner built-in, especially given the size. It can’t automatically duplex, either, but if that stops you from printing regular documents on the Pro-200 by mistake, then it’s probably a good thing.

We’ve given this printer a five-star rating because it produced by far the best photo prints we've seen recently and, if that’s important to you or your business, this is definitely the printer to choose. If you want something that’s more versatile but can still print in A3, we recommend choosing the Epson XP-15000 instead - it’s significantly cheaper to both buy and run, particularly if you need to use the same device to print both text and photos.

However, image enthusiasts who end up with one of these in their office won’t be disappointed, as it really does produce the most exceptional prints.

Canon Pixma Pro-200 specifications

The HP Envy Inspire 7920e will look very familiar to anyone who has seen or used anything from the HP Inspire series – in particular, the HP Envy 7224e, which bears an almost identical design. However, there is one clear addition here, in that it has a 35-page auto-document feeder above the A4 flatbed scanner. 

The Inspire 7224e was far from perfect, but it had the feel of a machine that was designed by teams that had clearly spent time in a home office; its ease of use, its unobtrusive style, and the simplicity of its maintenance tools. On first impression, the same is true of the 7920e, though it is further enhanced with more scope for multi-page scanning and copying.

However, at 46cm wide and 38cm deep, the HP Envy Inspire 7920e is hardly compact. The two-tone off-white and beige color scheme does a considerable job of making it blend into its surroundings, though any walls that clash will emphasize the printer's bulk. However, it's worth pointing out that size works in its favor; the build quality is solid, and that is particularly notable for a relatively inexpensive machine.

HP Envy Inspire 7224e review: Performance

The 7920e has a maximum monthly duty cycle of 1000 pages, and HP states the target use case is a small team of under 5 people printing roughly 400 pages a month. In that case, the 125-sheet main input tray should be perfectly adequate, while there’s space for envelopes, cards, and photo paper in the secondary tray above. This strictly takes 6x4 and 5x7in photo sheets – we couldn’t get A5 photo paper to print correctly from either tray. All the same, for home office purposes, you’ll spend most of your time printing A4 documents, anyway.

The controls are minimal, with most operations covered through the 2.7in touchscreen, which helpfully tilts upwards so that you don’t need to crouch down just to see what’s going on. Here you’ll find basic settings, black-and-white and colour photocopying and shortcuts to scan to a specific device. All setup and configuration, meanwhile, happens through the HP Smart smartphone app.

This does an excellent job of setup, connecting to a network, inserting the paper and ink cartridges and running through the hassle-free alignment process. Once that’s done, you can print straight from your smartphone or tablet, the macOS or Windows companion app, or simply use the standard Windows driver, which gets installed when Windows 10 or 11 picks up the printer automatically.

Needless to say, there’s pressure during setup to sign up for HP’s HP+ and Instant Ink services, with warnings to stick to the safe path of official HP supplies rather than using third-party ink cartridges, but you can skip through if you’d rather avoid any such subscription, even if it’s arguably the smarter way to run this printer.

Print speeds are, unsurprisingly, on a par with the 7224e, meaning they’re decent rather than fast. The first page of our 24-page black and white text document arrived in 18 seconds, with subsequent pages coming through at a speed of 12.3ppm. Dropping down to draft quality boosted that to 16 seconds and 12.5ppm. The first page of a coloured document with a mix of text and business graphics took 25 seconds to hit the output tray, with the remaining pages appearing at a rate of 3.5ppm.

The 7920e also supports duplex printing, at speeds of roughly 7ppm, and has the same Quiet mode as the 7224e. This adjusts the print engine to lower the noise output, and while the reduction isn’t huge, it’s focused on the noises and pitches that are most likely to disturb other people. That might be crucial in a home environment where other people are trying to sleep or work – and could even be very useful in the average office.

Text quality is excellent on the better and best quality settings and passable even on draft. The 7920e also does a fine job with business graphics; they look crisp and well-defined, with smooth graduated fills and accurate colours.

The 7920e also does a better job of photo printing than you might expect from an office device. Despite having a fairly ordinary four-colour, 1200dpi print engine, photos have natural-looking colours, good levels of detail and no noticeable banding or colour smearing issues, particularly on photo paper. You can’t get borderless printing, weirdly, when you have photo paper selected in the secondary input tray, but all in all you get a good result from something that’s clearly not a specialist printer – certainly good enough for business or casual personal use. Just be prepared to wait. Even a 6x4in photo took 96 seconds to emerge, while a full-colour, A4 photo test sheet took 3 minutes and 25 seconds to print.

However, the 7920e’s real strength isn’t its performance or its print quality, but the flexible document handling you get from its scanning and copying features. You’re looking at 15 seconds for a single black-and-white copy and 24 seconds for colour, but load up the ADF and it’ll copy at 6.3ppm (black and white) or 3.3ppm (colour), or scan a 9-page black and white text document at 6.4ppm. You can also set it to copy documents through the ADF and print them double-sided, reducing a 24-page report, for instance, down to just 12 sheets of paper. Combine that with customisable shortcuts, which you can set up through the app, and you’ve got a really flexible device, which you can set to, say, scan a multi-page report and email it to your team at the tap of a button on the touchscreen.

HP Envy Inspire 7224e review: is it worth it?

The first stumbling block for the HP Envy Inspire 7224e is print costs: For a set of 303XL black and color cartridges – what you would use for roughly 600 black and white pages – you can expect to pay $65 (£52) which is particularly expensive compared to some bottle-fed office inkjets, such as the Epson EcoTank ET-3850. This is probably why HP would prefer you to sign up for its HP+ subscription with Instant Ink. With this, you can opt-in for the 300-page per month subscription, which is $9.99 (£9.99) per month. It would still, however, be significantly cheaper in the long run, to buy the Canon Maxify GX70505, or the Canon Pixma G7050 – particularly if you're printing high volumes.

The Envy Inspire 7920e isn't a particularly speedy printer and with its high running costs, it might not be the best option for the office. It is, therefore, more of a home office buddy, one that can offer scanning and sharing capabilities too. However, even with those considerations, we recommend pairing it with the HP+ and Instant Ink subscriptions.

It is a well-built and neatly designed printer, capable of delivering reliable and professional results, but we suggest checking out other bottle-fed models to see what you'll be spending over the long term. 

HP Envy Inspire 7224e specifications

At first glance, HP’s Envy 6432e looks promising. While it’s quite ambitiously priced – particularly when you consider that it has no fax modem or display – it looks great, with a sleek, modern design that stands out amongst the usual squat grey boxes that make up most of the printer market.

It’s reminiscent of HP’s Deskjet 4120e, which also impressed us with its construction. Part of the reason for its slick appearance is the lack of any obvious controls; a mix of power, status and copy buttons are all concealed to the right of the paper tray, lighting up only when relevant. It even somehow manages to include a 35-sheet ADF without appearing cluttered or business-like.

At this price we’d usually expect more than this printer’s 120-page black and 75-page colour in-box cartridges, but the Envy 6432e does qualify for nine months’ free Instant Ink – worth up to 6,300 pages if you use the maximum 700 each month.

After this, Instant Ink subscriptions are reasonable with, for example, 300 pages costing £10 per month. Choose to buy your own cartridges, however, and you’ll be paying 7p per black page, and a wince-inducing 21.6p every time you dare dabble in colour. Compare this, for example, to the Canon Pixma TS8350, which manages 6.2p per page for colour prints and 3.4p per page for mono, and with outstanding quality to boot.

The Envy 6432e looks to offset its lack of display with coloured status LEDs that pulse and glow above the paper output tray. But while these might be amusing, we’d rather have a display capable of helping us set up, use and maintain the MFP. While it was easy to join a network, we spent a fruitless hour trying to work out why the copy buttons weren’t illuminated, before concluding that our sample probably had a fault.

We couldn’t complete our copy tests, but this MFP was underwhelming in most other respects. Its 11.1ppm text speed and 2.1ppm colour graphics speed are far slower than we’d expect at this price. Although it offers duplex printing, it delivered ten sides on five pages at only 1.5 images per minute (ipm). Scans were a little more competitive, but the Envy 6432e still needed 22 seconds to capture an A4 page at 300dpi. Generally, both print and scan quality were good, but not as good as the best rivals at this price.

Overall, the Envy 6432e doesn’t do enough to justify its price. While it looks good, it’s underwhelming in most other respects, and its lack of a screen makes it harder to use than many competitors. If you’re looking for an affordable workhorse for day-to-day printing, then both the Epson Expression Home XP-4100 and the Canon Pixma TS6250 make better options, with more straightforward user interfaces and stronger performance - particularly the latter.

HP Envy 6432e specifications

Troubleshooting printers can be an immensely frustrating task. There’s a good reason why the classic scene from 1999’s Office Space - where a group of workers beat a printer to death with a baseball bat - is still a regular reference more than twenty years later. Printers are one of the last pieces of office equipment that still include moving parts, and are therefore more prone to failure than most other devices.

When your carefully crafted creativeness fails to rattle onto your printer’s output tray, the cause of the fault may not be obvious. However, while diagnosing printer issues can be a somewhat arcane task, there are a few likely places to start. Below, we’ve rounded up some of the most common printing errors and their causes, as well as how to fix them, but there are also some general-purpose tips which can be handy for keeping printer induced panic attacks to a minimum.

Top tips for printer maintenance

First, keep a USB cable handy for emergencies. Wireless printing is convenient most of the time, but if your connection fails when you’re on a tight deadline, it’s easier to print first and resolve the connectivity issue later.

Next, while it may be tempting to bulk-buy consumables hoping to save money, don’t mistake a saving for a bargain. There’s no point having 1,000 sheets worth of ink in reserve if you only print 50 sheets a month, and if your printer needs to be replaced before you use it all, that ink investment will end up as a waste of money. You should aim to have around a month’s worth of consumables in stock - which will vary depending on your usage.

Finally, make sure you’re using your printer on a regular basis. Similar to how cars need to be turned over on a regular basis to stop the engine seizing up, you should try to pass something through your printer at least once a week to prevent blockages. Remember: a happy printer is a working printer.

Improving print quality

The most common issue you’re likely to encounter is documents coming out either poorly printed or completely blank. Before you go any further, begin with the fundamentals and check there’s something usable inside the cartridges. You’d be amazed how many ‘broken printers’ are nothing more than ‘empty printers’. If you’ve been dismissing the low-toner warnings for weeks by vigorously shaking the cartridge, there’s a good chance that it may have finally run dry.

If your tanks are still bountiful, then it’s likely that a blockage has occurred. Inkjets have head cleaning functions hidden within their software packages (or sometimes via the devices’ LCD screen) which will fix basic obstructions, and some models - including many of Epson’s Eco-Tank devices - have an intensive cleaning function. Check the manufacturer’s documentation on how to activate yours.

If output remains smeary after a full cycle, then cleaning kits are available from specialist vendors such as Printhead Hospital to pump chemicals directly into the head unit. If your inkjet has a removable print head (a rare thing these days) then you can also give it a soak in a shallow bath of Isopropyl alcohol to clean it . Let it dry thoroughly before replacing and restarting the head-clean process.

For laser printers, meanwhile, poor output is usually caused by dust and dirt clinging to the drum mechanism. Before cleaning a drum - which could be part of a toner cartridge, depending on the model - ensure the printer has been powered off to let it cool, then use some isopropyl alcohol on a lint-free cloth to clean things up.

You can also use activated toner cloth, which is a treated cleaning fabric, ideal for collecting toner particles. Check the manufacturer’s documentation as some devices have automatic drum cleaning facilities as well as ways of cleaning the corona wires (or charge rollers), which will also improve output quality.

If the inside of your aged printer resembles an explosion in a paint factory, it’s possible that some of the residue from the consumables may be preventing your machine from correctly picking them up. If you’re getting errors indicating that your consumables can’t be found, a few drops of Isopropyl alcohol to clean the cartridge/toner chips may do the job.

Fixing a blocked printer

Torn paper, wonky feeds and erroneous ‘out of paper’ messages are all symptomatic of a physical blockage, so grab a torch and go hunting. Removing paper trays and duplex units will reveal major blockages, but smaller ones can be well hidden.

If possible, remove inks and toners whilst searching for paper fragments crammed into dark corners. Inkjets can harbour paper scraps near the waste pads which absorb ink, becoming invisible, so a pair of tweezers are really useful. Top-loaders are susceptible to foreign bodies dropping into the paper feed and often the easiest way to loosen them is by upending the unit and giving it a firm shake.

You can expose hidden paper fragments blocking the feeder by passing thicker paper stock (or thin cardboard) through the system with a simple test print. Use tweezers to pluck out anything that shouldn’t be there. Toner dust is a major contributor to laser blockages, so remove the cartridges, drums and trays then give it a thorough blast with some compressed air - just remember to do this outside and not whilst wearing your best tweeds. Most printers have a scanner unit too, so remember to clean the ADF, as these can also trigger warnings about blockages which won’t be resolved by rummaging around inside the printer.

Not all blockages are physical though, and hidden firmware counters can also ruin your day. Sensors on some machines detect when a waste tank is full, whereas others use page count to make an educated guess. Either way, once the flag is raised, the printer will refuse to work. Rarely does manufacturer’s documentation explain how to clear the error, but a quick search will reveal reset codes and procedures posted by other disgruntled printer owners.

A couple of taps on the LCD clears most errors but some Canon and Epson printers require a software fix to reset the counters. For around £7.50, the WIC Reset Utility will talk to your device, reset the counters and get the ink flowing again. If the error returns quickly, then it’s likely that the waste tank requires replacement, but a vast number of devices will let you get away with one or two software resets before this point.

Connecting to wireless printers

Printers failing to be detected remains as problematic for users today as it did in the 90s, but wireless connection errors are harder to pinpoint than a missing USB cable. Again, start with the basics to solve this problem: check you and the printer are on the same network, and make sure any recent network changes don’t require the printer’s configuration to be updated. Tapping the router’s IP address into a browser should give you access to a ‘connected devices’ list; you may need an admin password to access this, which is probably printed on the underside of the router.

This will help determine if the router can detect the printer. If it’s missing, go through a re-connection process (usually via the device’s LCD panel) to bring it back on-line. Printers which have their IP addresses allocated by the router via DHCP can often go on an IP address walkabout and many computers seem incapable of locating them.

A useful tip is to assign the printer to a static (or reserved) IP address via the router’s management console so that it can easily be discovered. If your printer is accessible via a browser, using the IP address to launch the web interface, then a driver and/or software re-installation will resolve most issues.

For USB connections, misconfigured printers often show in Windows’ Device Manager alongside exclamation marks, indicating trouble. Right-click to remove the entries, then disconnect the USB cable. Even in 2022, USB installations are still easily derailed, so the best advice remains to avoid inserting the USB cable until the setup software tells you.

The HP DeskJet 4120e has three main virtues: it’s fairly compact, simple to use and very cheap. At the time of writing, you can pick one up for under £60 exc VAT, with 6 months of HP+ and Instant Ink thrown in. Yet it’s a fully-fledged multi-function printer with a 1200 dpi print engine, a 1,000 page maximum monthly duty cycle and a 35-page auto document feeder on the scanner. Most IT teams and even some small business owners will probably discount it for being too cheap, but as a printer for remote workers, small offices and personal use, it makes a certain amount of sense.

When we say that it’s compact, we’re being relative, but it has a desktop footprint of roughly 26 x 39cm, expanding as the case slopes outwards to just under 34 x 43cm. With the rear input and front output tray extended it takes up more space, roughly 43 x 58cm, but these fold away neatly when not in use and make this a comparatively unobtrusive MFP.

Impressively, it doesn’t feel as cheap as it is. The output tray and extender wouldn’t take much to break off and we have some reservations about the paper input, but the body as a whole feels solid and the plastics robust. The paper input is our first hint that this isn’t a printer designed for heavy workloads. It only takes a maximum 60 sheets, and that’s at a push. At much above 30 you feel that you’re almost forcing them in between the lighter plastic flap that covers the input while not in use and the guides on either side.

There’s a USB port at the rear, but the 4210e is clearly designed to be used through Wi-Fi. Like other recent HP printers, the default way to set it up is through HP’s Smart smartphone app, which does a great job of taking you through the physical setup, connecting to the network, installing inks and paper and printing a test page. Weirdly, though, it only surfaced the auto-calibration routine after we’d printed a few documents, when most recent HP printers run it as standard, straight after setup.

Simplicity is one of the cornerstones of the design. There are just six buttons and a basic mono LCD display, which covers status and ink levels. With no real menu systems to work with, all configuration is through the smartphone or desktop apps, or a web-based control panel, and if you want to switch modes, change settings or install new firmware, that’s where you’ll need to head. Luckily, it’s all very straightforward and intuitive, and it’s unlikely that you’ll need to visit it much, anyway.

Sadly, we did. While the test page and other documents printed with no trouble from the smartphone app, we couldn’t get the printer to print anything from a Windows 11 laptop either through the default Windows driver or with HP’s Smart app installed. This may have been an isolated problem and was fixed by a firmware update, but it didn’t exactly leave us with much confidence as testing began.

If you’re looking for a fast printer, move on. HP’s stated print speeds are 8.5ppm monochrome and 5.5ppm colour, and though we saw higher speeds that this when we tested it, we wouldn’t go overboard in our praise. On our standard 24-page black text test at normal quality, the first page took 20 seconds to emerge with subsequent pages following at a speed of 10.5ppm. In draft mode, the first page took 16 seconds, while the speed for the remaining pages increased to 14ppm. That’s still one of the slowest monochrome performances we’ve seen in recent years. To make things worse, there’s no automatic duplex option. You can select double-sided printing, but you’ll be removing each sheet and re-inserting it to print the second side.

Unsurprisingly, colour printing speeds are even slower. With a five-page test with a mix of black text and colour charts and business graphics, the first page took 44 seconds to drop, while the print speed after that was just 3ppm. A4 and 6x4in photos took 50 seconds to emerge with the print quality set to high. Nor should you expect instant photocopies; both black and white and colour copies took over 30 seconds to scan and print. Even scanning speeds are relatively slow, at nearly 25 seconds for a 300dpi colour scan or three minutes and 15 seconds for nine pages to be scanned through the ADF.

As for the print quality, it’s best described as solid. On the default ‘Better’ setting, text is crisp and black with good definition on plain paper, though with just a hint of fuzziness when printing on a light-coloured background. Text printed in draft mode is lighter and not quite so sharp, but still perfectly usable for most purposes. We spotted the very odd, thin white line creeping into business graphics, even after alignment, but nothing serious.

The 4120e will also handle photos, but don’t expect what you’d call true photo quality. At the Best setting on photo paper you get reasonable levels of detail, but the presentation is slightly flat, skin tones lack warmth and elements that should stand out with vibrant colours don’t. It’ll do for inset photos in a business document, but you wouldn’t want to print out marketing materials – or sneaky holiday snaps.

If you’re not planning to use Instant Ink, the 4120e also suffers from high running costs. Even with the XL cartridges, you’re looking at costs of 6.9p per black and white print, and 14p per colour print before VAT. As a result, the 4210e only makes sense with an Instant Ink subscription, and even then as a low volume printer. For example, on the Moderate plan you’d be looking at £4.49 for 100 pages per month, bringing the costs down (for either black and white or colour) to 4.5p per page per month. On the 300 page, £9.99 Frequent plan, that comes down to around 3.3p per page.

With HP+ and Instant Ink, the DeskJet 4120e could work as a cheap, low-volume, home office printer, where it’s biggest issues – slow speeds, average quality, no duplex – aren’t going to be deal breakers, and where features like the ADF will have some value.

For anything more, though, you have to wonder whether it’s more sensible and cost-effective to spend more for a printer that will cost you less over the long term and give you better performance as well. While the Epson EcoTank ET-3850 will cost you a lot more upfront, for instance, it might still work out cheaper over the lifespan of the printer as a whole.

HP Deskjet 4120e specifications

If your expectation is that a printer capable of printing on A3 paper must be huge, Epson’s Photo HD XP-15000 will be a pleasant surprise. It barely takes up any more room than a standard A4 multifunctional device – at least, not until you fold out the support arm for the rear paper feed, which necessarily extends some distance above the printer to stop A3 sheets in portrait orientation from bending. Even with all its trays and supports extended, however, it’s a lot smaller than the Canon Pixma Pro-200.

It’s also rather sleek, with an attractive black finish and pleasingly rounded lines. It looks distinctly similar to its stablemate, the Epson Expression Home XP-4100, complete with colour display and control pad.

While it may be the size of a multifunctional device, there’s no scanner to be found here. However, unlike Canon’s A3 printer, the XP-15000 is much better suited to being the only printer in your office because it’s just as capable of printing out documents without wasting precious photo ink.

It doesn’t have a dedicated high-capacity black cartridge for mono printing, using the same ink for photos and text, but black prints still work out at a reasonable 3.5p each. The printer uses six colour cartridges in total, with the standard black, cyan, magenta and yellow cartridges joined by additional photo red and grey.

They make a great job of printing photos onto photo paper, too: you can look forward to deep blacks and rich, bright colours. It’s only unfortunate for this printer that we had prints from the Canon Pixma Pro-200 available to compare against, because while the XP-15000 comes close, it can’t quite match the quality of the Canon’s prints.

On the other hand, while its photo performance is good, it’s not quite as versatile for mixed jobs as other machines we’ve tested. While the XP-15000 printed black text well, it struggled with our mixed text and colour document – especially when we dropped paper quality. For example, when we printed duplex on cheap plain paper, the ink soaked through the page.

Unsurprisingly, this isn’t the fastest inkjet we’ve tested, and its mono printing - which we clocked at 8 pages per minute - is outpaced by the printers aimed more at offices than photographers’ studios. However, it held its own on the colour printing side with a speed of 5ppm, and remained competitively speedy when printing a stack of 6 x 4in photos.

If you’re serious about your A3 photo prints, it’s worth considering the Canon Pixma Pro-200 over the Epson because the results are definitely superior. However, the Photo HD XP-15000 runs it a close second, and its relatively modest size makes it a good choice for offices that are tight on space.

It’s not just the footprint that’s small either; the price is surprisingly agreeable for an A3 inkjet, so if you can’t part with the eye-watering amount Canon is charging, the Epson Photo HD XP-15000 is a good compromise.

Epson Photo HD XP-15000 specifications

Choosing the best small printer for a business can be a tricky process, requiring careful consideration in terms of costs, maintenance, and, ultimately, convenience.

If you’re hoping to tuck your printer away in a bookshelf or squeeze it onto a desk, choosing a bulkier model is a surefire way to cause headaches and clutter up your workspace.

Notably, opting for a device that gets the job done is crucial. Luckily there’s no shortage of capable printers out there on the market.

As with any purchase though, choosing a printer is often a case of making concessions – be that in terms of price, quality, and even speed. The reality is that manufacturers simply can’t fit everything into these compact devices, but if you shop around you’ll find there are options that tick most of the necessary boxes.

With that in mind, if you’re looking for a compact business printer, here are five of the best out there on the market. Our selection ranges from a sub-£60 marvel right through to a do-it-all laser MFP.

How to find the best small printer for business

You’re going to be let down if you’re hoping to cram every printing feature into the smallest device around. Compact printers often lack useful features like multiple paper trays, for example.

Similarly, if it’s a small multifunctional peripheral (MFP), then this might not have room for an automatic document feeder (ADF), which enables multi-page scans, copies, and faxes.

We’ve found that smaller consumables also come with added risks, often requiring more frequent maintenance and slightly higher running costs. For a small business working on a tight budget, this presents major challenges.

So, if you’re looking to keep those costs down, perhaps stick to refillable inkjets, which offer roughly the lowest cost of ownership out there.

Size matters with printers

Size is critical, especially for those working in a home office or small business office. The last thing you want is a bulky printer swamping a workstation. When choosing a printer with this in mind, consider whether you can get by with a single-function printer, rather than an MFP.

These offer the ability to create decent photocopies using your phone camera via the manufacturer’s app. It’s worth noting, however, that this won’t help if you need to fax, and it’ll probably become annoying if you make lots of copies.

With that in mind, it's important to plan ahead. You might find it's better to buy a slightly larger and more capable MFP now than, for example, buy a very compact printer that can't cope as your business takes off.

If you can compromise a little on space, you can still get feature-rich small printers. Take the Xerox B315DN in our guide (below): it packs duplex printing and scanning with an ADF into a 0.15m2 footprint – only about twice the very smallest printers.

Some features simply can't be shrunk, though. If you must have an A3-capable printer, you'll just have to find somewhere with the space for it.

Whatever small printer for business you're considering, don't compromise on quality. Focus on something that balances decent speeds with reasonable results, and you won't find yourself wishing you'd spent more – or worse, buying a new printer just a few months down the line. In this list, we've focused on small printers that deliver on the basics, but each has its own special talents.

The best small printers

Canon's MAXIFY GX7150 is about as fully featured as inkjet MFPs get; a four-in-one that combines print, scan, copy, and fax – it is true to the overall MAXIFY range, which offers home users and busy small offices the full works.

It has an automatic document feeder (ADF) that can juggle 50 sheets of paper, and behind it, there's a 100-sheet multipurpose paper tray. What's more, the base houses dual 250-sheet paper cassettes. Both the printer and ADF support duplex operation, so you can make double-sided prints, scans, copies, or faxes, saving paper, reducing hassle, and producing professional-looking results.

The GX7150 connects via a USB, wired Ethernet, or Wi-Fi – though it only supports 2.4GHz. Everything is controlled by the 2,7in (6.9cm) tiltable color touchscreen and a few different buttons.

Price might be the only real stumbling block for the GX7150. It costs a lot – possibly too much if your print needs are lower than a few hundred pages a year. However, if you use up the bundled ink and print far more, then the Canon MAXIFY GX7150 is an exceptional value. Ongoing running costs work out to less than a penny-per-page. And, if you add in the protection of a three-year warranty, you might just recoup the investment.

Putting running costs to one side, the GX7150 is a versatile printer that covers everything a small office needs. It might not be ideal as the bedrock of a creative agency, regularly printing on glossy paper, but for plain paper and general office work, it's great.

For more information, read our full Canon MAXIFY GX7150 review

Epson's EcoTank ET-4965 is an MFP for home workers (with high print needs) and small offices. It's a simple setup and makes life easier with its refillable bottled ink that saves you messing about with short-lived cartridges. That's a real bonus if you're rolling out printers to home workers.

Ease of use is the theme here. The 2,4in color touchscreen control panel is uncluttered and useful. At its base, there's an enclosed 250-sheet paper cassette, while on top, it has a 30-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF). Both this and the printer itself support duplex (double-sided) operation, so you can use them together to make double-sided copies of double-sided originals, or just for duplex prints, scans, or faxes.

The EcoTank ET-4965 will seem expensive on paper, as it isn't really worth it if you print in small volumes. It has higher upfront costs compared to other cartridge-based inkjets. You need several thousand pages to get the true value. Home printers will likely ease through that milestone, and an office printer used by two or more workers might also hit the target.

Get through the bundled ink, and it offers lower running costs than any comparable cartridge-based device. Print more still, and it will prove incredible value. It's fortunate, then, that it doesn't have any real weaknesses; a decent printer, copier, and scanner across the board.

For more information, read our full Epson EcoTankET-4956 review

When it comes to mobile devices that print on normal A4 paper, you're limited to a portable inkjet. And there are few better than the Canon MAXIFY BX110.

Despite being smaller than a ream of paper, this tiny inkjet has many of the features you'd expect from a regular single-function device. On top, there's a small screen with a simple control panel. Lift a flap, and you'll find a couple of squat ink tanks (one contains black, while the other has cyan, magenta, and yellow inks). And you can either connect the MAXIFY BX110 with a USB-C cable or join a Wi-Fi network.

The MAXIFY BX110 also comes with a removable, rechargeable lithium-ion battery, which lets you take it wherever you want and still print a claimed 330 pages. However, if you keep it in the office, you can plug in and recharge in about two hours, or five hours over USB if you're away from a power outlet.

There are other mobile-friendly tweaks, such as an access point (AP) wireless mode, allowing you to connect and print from multiple mobile devices, and covers that fold flat and keep fluff and dust out of the paper path.

Due to its size, the MXIFY is slower than a full-sized injet and also a bit more expensive to run. But these are worthwhile compromises for an excellent small printer. In our review, we said it was our new favorite mobile printer, and we stand by that.

Price when reviewed: £185 exc. VAT

If you want a compact printer with low running costs, there's no better choice than a refillable inkjet. HP's Smart Tank 7005 is a strong example, arriving with enough ink to cover around 12,000 black or 8,000 color pages. That's an incredible value, equating to around 2.3p per page with a free printer thrown in. Once you finish the supplied ink, you'll pay around 0.4p per full-color page, which is almost unbeatable.

It's a good thing, then, that this MFP is competent elsewhere. At 13 pages per minute it's a fast enough text printer for most micro businesses. That's pretty much the story for its color printing, scans, and copies, which are all fast enough for light office use among a few people.

Print and copy quality are generally good, but this MFP's weaknesses in our tests were underwhelming photo prints, and blocky document scans. Still, if you're after a small and smart MFP with ultra-low running costs, and you'll only scan occasionally, the Smart Tank 7005 remains a good choice.

Read our full HP Smart Tank 7005 review for more information.

Canon's MAXIFY GX6550 is a compact and odd-looking MFP with refillable ink tanks. That gives it very low running costs of around 0.5p per page, but its real USP is a scanner with a very unusual portrait orientation. With its ADF accessed from the front, rather than the top or side, the GX6550 is ideal for wedging back into shelving or a tight cubby hole, such as you might find on a reception desk.

This is a fairly strong MFP in most respects, supporting full duplex scans, copies and prints. Its only real omission is a fax modem, which could be an issue if you are buying for reception. One other problem is that the scanner has a small, 5x7" platen, ruling out A4 scans from the glass – you won't be able to open the scanner lid if it's in a confined space, anyway. All in all, the GX6550 could be an excellent choice where you have limited headroom, but if an ultra-small footprint is more important, consider Epson's WorkForce WF-110 (above).

Price when reviewed: £235 exc. VAT

Read our full Canon MAXIFY GX6550 review for more information.

FAQs

It's best to put devices used by other people such as coworkers, housemates or family members in an easily accessible central location, such as a sideboard or end table. If you're going down this route, however, you might want to choose a printer that looks reasonably attractive.

Inkjet printers don't tend to like being left idle for more than a couple of weeks, as it can cause some of their ink nozzles to dry up and become blocked. This reduces their print quality. It's a good idea to print at least a page every month, increasing this frequency if you find the printer still becomes blocked. If it does, check on the display or in the print driver options for print head test patterns and cleaning cycles.

On all printers, you should check regularly for firmware updates, or make sure that automatic updates are enabled. These can be selected via many printer's settings menus, or by running the update program installed with the drivers.

How we test small printers

When testing a printer, there are two key metrics that we measure to assess its performance: speed and image quality. The first of these is measured by running a batch of documents through the machine and timing how long it takes to get through the whole job from the point we hit print, as well as how long it takes to produce the first page.

We use a 25-sheet black-and-white text document to test mono performance, as well as a mixed sheaf of 24 web pages, magazine pages, and presentation slides to test color speed. For inkjet devices, we'll also repeat the mono test at draft quality, and to measure duplex printing, we'll run the first ten pages of the mixed graphics workload, measuring the images per minute.

Image quality, meanwhile, is tested by assessing a series of greyscale pictures, color photos, and mono office documents. For devices with scan functionality, we'll look at the image quality of a scanned office document, color photo, and color input target chart, looking primarily for any evidence of color banding or loss of clarity in both cases.

To measure scan speeds, we time how quickly an MFP can deliver a single photocopy, how quickly it scans at various resolutions, and how quickly preview images appear. In the event that a compact printer includes an ADF, we'll use a ten-page copy job to test its speeds in both mono and color (where we can), and if both it and the printer are duplex, we'll test this with a ten-sheet double-sided batch as well.

If you want to fax, copy or scan, look away now: Epson’s EcoTank ET-1810 didn’t get the multifunction memo. Instead, this single-function inkjet combines a relatively basic printer with the convenience of Wi-Fi, and Epson’s fantastic EcoTank system.

For the money, this may seem a simple device. There’s no display or memory card reader, no Ethernet port, and its minimal control panel is limited to four buttons and some elementary status lights. The ET-1810 doesn’t offer duplex printing, and there’s no enclosed paper cassette – just a simple rear tray that doesn’t do anything to protect the paper stack from dust. That’s not much for almost £190 after tax… until you consider running costs.

Instead of cartridges, Epson’s EcoTank printers use fixed ink tanks, filled by comparatively large bottles of ink. Refills are priced far more cheaply than a typical cartridge, and last for much longer, reducing the hassle involved in keeping an inkjet topped up. A secondary benefit is that there’s much less plastic waste, as you aren’t discarding cartridges every couple of hundred pages.

EcoTank isn’t a new concept. Epson brought it to the UK back in 2014, giving it plenty of time to tweak the details and make it foolproof. The ET-1810 arrives with a bottle each of black, cyan, magenta and yellow ink. You simply remove the cap, place the bottle on the relevant nozzle, and wait a minute while it disgorges its contents into the tank below. The nozzles and bottles are now physically keyed, so you can’t accidentally fill the wrong tank, and we’ve yet to spill a drop when using this revised version of the system.

The ET-1810’s high price begins to make sense when you consider running costs. It comes with enough ink to print 4,500 black pages and 7,500 in colour; that’s more than a lifetime’s work for a lightly used home inkjet. Given that a typical entry-level inkjet might have running costs of 3p per black page and 12p for colour, the ET-1810 will prove hugely cheaper to own; our calculations suggest you need to print 700 black and 1,200 colour pages for an EcoTank to “break even” compared to a typical entry-level inkjet. Even if you do use all the supplied ink, low pricing means ongoing running costs of just 0.16p per black page, and 0.29p in colour.

EcoTank is a great system, but it’s not quite perfect. Epson hasn’t yet worked out how to add a reliable level gauge to its tanks, so you need to visually check their levels and bat away frequent reminders to do so from the driver. Additionally, given that it might take a couple of years for a refillable tank printer to prove better value than a standard one, it’s disappointing that Epson doesn’t protect your investment with a multi-year warranty.

Strip away EcoTank, and the ET-1810 is exactly as it appears: a no-frills inkjet printer. It’s not fast, delivering black text at just 8.8 pages per minute (ppm), although we did double this to 16ppm at draft quality. It compares better for colour speed, but still delivered our taxing graphical test at only 2.9ppm. On plain paper, print quality was solid, but not spectacular. Our early prints suffered from missing horizontal stripes, easily fixed by aligning the print heads from the driver’s Maintenance page. With this fixed, print quality was comfortably good enough for everyday work.

We were pleasantly surprised by the ET-1810’s performance on photo paper. Again, it’s not quick, taking nearly 20 minutes over six postcard-sized photos. It was similarly slow when printing 10 x 8in photos onto A4 paper, taking 12mins 21secs over just two images. The results were as sharp and detailed as we’ve seen from a basic inkjet, though, so it’s a frustration that it will only print borderless photos on 10 x 15cm paper, and not anything larger.

Although it’s basic – and very light – the ET-1810 isn’t the most compact printer. Its tanks jut out at the front, and with the input and output trays extended its footprint is around 60 x 40cm. If you’re sharing a desk with it, the good news is that it’s about as quiet as inkjets get, and it won’t transmit strong vibrations through the desktop.

The EcoTank ET-1810 is a straightforward printer, with decent all-round performance and no particular weaknesses. Though basic, it’s a good everyday inkjet, capable of reasonable results across a range of jobs. Yes, it’s expensive, but in time it’s likely to prove far better value for all but the lightest of users. If you want a no-frills inkjet printer with low running costs, the ET-1810 is a runaway winner.

Epson EcoTank ET-1810 specifications

Anyone setting up an office or a business on a budget has probably found themselves asking "What are the best cheap printers?", along with its inevitable follow up "and are they any good?". The happy news is that many budget printers and multifunctions deliver the features a business needs – we discover plenty of them in our regular testing.

For this list, we've collected six of the best cheap business printers. They're a varied group, ranging from a bargain home MFP through to a fast, refillable color inkjet. They may be suited for different jobs in different businesses, but they share a common ability to deliver a high amount of bang for your buck. With the cheapest squeaking in at less than £60, and the most expensive just a little more than £300, we've got something for every business – find your next cheap office printer here.

How to choose the best cheap office printers

We can't pretend that every cheap printer will tick all your boxes, so it's best to start with an idea of what's essential, and what you can live without. Cheap printers generally compromise on speed, features, or running costs – work out which ones are critical for you.

Single-function printers are always cheaper than their all-in-one equivalents, so if you don't need to scan, copy, or fax, aim for a simple device. Consider, too, whether you need useful features like multiple paper trays, or (on a multifunction) an automatic document feeder (ADF) – going without may leave more budget for other areas. If you're buying for a quieter office, you can probably forgo high-speed prints and scans. But if you need a workhorse for a busy team, don't compromise on speed or running costs.

Whatever your needs, don't be tempted to scrimp on your budget office printer. Going too cheap could land you with a device that simply isn't up to the job, and you'll end up spending more to replace it. And in all cases, it's vital to look at the total cost of ownership – many printers that look expensive have cheap ink or toner, and could cost you far less to own over 3-5 years of daily printing.

Whatever printer you buy, it pays to keep it in business as cheaply as possible. If there's a choice, always buy the highest capacity supplies unless you print extremely rarely – they're more expensive, but they invariably cost less per page. Investigate ink and toner subscriptions, too, particularly if you print a fairly constant and predictable amount each month. We've seen options that, in ideal circumstances, could reduce what you pay by two-thirds or more. You could also consider third-party inks and toners, although in our experience these tend to be inferior to OEM supplies, and they don't always deliver the savings you'd expect.

The best cheap printers

Reasons to buy

• Good specs at this price
• Supports PIXMA Print Plan subscriptions
• Strong quality on plain paper

Reasons to avoid

• Quite slow

We don't generally recommend home devices for business users, but the Canon PIXMA TS5350i is a compact inkjet MFP for under £85 – that's very keen pricing. It's missing an ADF, and it can't send or receive faxes, but if you just need a basic device to make prints, scans, and single-page copies, the TS5350i more than has you covered. Helpfully, it has two paper inputs, so you could load one with plain paper and use the other for headed sheets or photo media.

This isn't the best photo printer, but on plain paper it's surprisingly capable, turning out excellent prints and copies. It's not especially fast, however, so it's definitely not suitable if you have more than a couple of users or you often need to reel off long print jobs. The TS5350i has an excellent scanner, so it's a shame it isn't equipped with an ADF.

Buy your own cartridges, and this MFP works out at more than 11p per full color page, but you can bring this down by subscribing to one of Canon's PIXMA Print Plans. The most generous of these gets costs down to 4.5p per page, although it only allows 200 pages per month. That, and its slow speeds, mean the TS5350i is really only suitable for very light use, but if your priority is a low up-front cost, this attractive MFP is a good choice.

Price when reviewed: £58 exc. VAT

Reasons to buy

• Great performance
• Fair value
• Strong results

Reasons to avoid

• Running costs a touch high

HP has a knack for building good small office inkjets, and the OfficeJet Pro 9135e is the perfect example. This four-in-one doesn't just address the basics: both its printer and 35-sheet automatic document feeder support automatic double-sided (duplex) operation, so you can set up a single or double-sided scan, fax, or copy, then go and make yourself a cup of tea while it finishes.

This MFP has an impressive specification for the price, but what makes it great is the way it performs. It's much faster than you'd expect an affordable printer to be, hitting 22.1 pages per minute (ppm) on black text. Copies and scans were very quick, too. Despite this, the results are excellent – we couldn't fault anything except some over-processed photo scans. The OfficeJet Pro 9135e excels across all the jobs that are important to everyday office life. That makes it a great budget choice.

Price when reviewed: £161 exc. VAT

Read our full HP OfficeJet Pro 9135e review for more information.

Reasons to buy

• Great plain paper prints
• Fantastic low running costs
• A good all-rounder

Reasons to avoid

• Expensive to buy

At more than £400, this color inkjet multifunction peripheral (MFP) doesn't look cheap at all, but don't scroll down. It comes with enough ink in the box to print 6,000 black or 14,000 color pages, a cost per page of 7.3p with a printer thrown in. Ongoing supplies work out at just 0.6p per full-color page – far below what you'd pay to run a cartridge inkjet or laser competitor. That makes the Canon MAXIFY GX7150 cheaper to own than most other business printers, so it's a good thing it's an impressive device.

This MFP has excellent paper handling, with two 250-sheet inputs plus a 100-sheet feed. Its printer and 50-sheet automatic document feeder between them support dual-sided prints, scans, copies, and faxes. It's a fast text printer, reaching 20.8ppm, but its 5.7ppm color speed was a little more relaxed. Prints and scans were generally excellent, although this isn't a great photo printer, and copies were just a touch too dark by default. If you're after an office MFP with low running costs for moderately heavy use, this is a brilliant choice – especially as it comes with a three-year warranty.

Price when reviewed: £439 exc. VAT

Reasons to buy

• Decent specifications and performance
• Cheap to run
• Very compact

Reasons to avoid

• Not the best print quality

The DCP-T780DW is Brother's first stab at a refillable inkjet for the UK market, but you'd be forgiven for thinking it had been making them for years. Aside from a couple spilled drops when first filling up, its ink tank system works well, and keeps running costs down to around 0.5p for a full-color page. That's impressive, particularly when this MFP only costs around £250 to buy.

You can't use this three-in-one to send faxes, and it doesn't quite have a top-line specification elsewhere: the printer has just one paper tray, and while it does support automatic duplex (double-sided) printing, the ADF doesn't. Still, overall it feels exactly like a refillable version of a typical Brother home office inkjet – compact and competent, if not quite excellent. Perhaps the DCP-T780DW isn't the best multifunction we've tested, but its refillable tanks help make it a strong option for home workers or micro offices who want to minimize the cost and hassle of regular printing. If you're looking for low ownership costs over a fleet of home workers, this is a very strong choice.

Price when reviewed: £250 exc. VAT

Read our full Brother DCP-T780DW review for more information.

Reasons to buy

• Good value
• Few extra features
• Compact

Reasons to avoid

• Middling mono speeds
• High quality photo prints
• Underwhelming mixed graphics performance

A3 printing capability doesn't usually come cheap, but Epson's Expression Photo HD XP-15000 is one of the more affordable examples. It's a single-function inkjet and, as the name suggests, it's targeted more at photo and creative prints than at churning out plain-paper reports and letters. This printer's six-ink setup helps it deliver deep blacks and rich, bright colors. It's an accomplished device on coated photo papers, if not quite up to the standards of the best photo inkjets.

Inevitably, the XP-15000 is comparatively disappointing on plain paper. There's not much wrong with the quality, but at 8ppm on black text you wouldn't want to rely on it for long documents. It's a bit more impressive in color, reaching 5ppm on our more challenging test.

However, consider value, and the XP-15000 makes a strong case for itself. It's much cheaper to buy than Canon's (admittedly brilliant) PIXMA Pro-200, and delivers pages of black text at 3.5p – that's not bad for a photo-focused printer. If you need A3 but you can't pay much upfront, the Expression Photo HD XP-15000 is ideal. However, if total cost of ownership is more important, consider Epson's EcoTank ET-18100 instead – it's much more expensive, but it should prove much cheaper to own if you often print in high-quality color.

Price when reviewed: £235 exc. VAT

Read our full Epson Photo HD XP-15000 review for more for more information.

FAQs

ARE CHEAP PRINTERS WORTH IT?

Not always, no. If you buy a printer without the features you need, or one that's too slow or expensive to run, you might find yourself paying more later to get something more suitable. However, there are many excellent, very affordable printers -- buy one that's well matched to your priorities, and you should still get many years of good service from it.

ARE CHEAP PRINTERS ANY GOOD?

Some are excellent. While you may need to compromise on your ideal features, speed or running costs, there are plenty of affordable business printers that deliver print quality and value in spades.

ARE MONO PRINTERS CHEAPER THAN COLOR?

Almost all inkjets will print in color, but with lasers there's more of an even split. If you don't need color printing, a mono machine can actually offer some notable savings. Mono printers are often cheaper to buy than equivalent color models, and they're usually cheaper to run, with fewer consumables. That in turn could save space in the consumables cupboard, and save you time in maintenance and servicing.

ARE MANAGED PRINT SERVICES CHEAPER?

Managed print services consolidate your printers, maintenance and supplies under a single contract. That can produce huge savings, but you need to make sure you're with the right provider, and on the best deal. When evaluating against self-management, or against another supplier, conduct a cost analysis. Make sure you consider managed refresh cycles of your equipment against the costs of upgrading your own.

The chances are that the more you print as an organisation, the more you could save via a managed provider. However, small businesses printing just a couple of hundred pages a month may do better to buy their own printers, and look at cost reduction through ink tanks or ink subscription services.

WHAT IS CHEAP FOR A PRINTER?

You can define cheap in one of several ways. In absolute terms, anything below about £100 (£150 for a multifunction) is quite cheap for a printer, with the very cheapest products coming in at around £30-40. If you're going to print a lot, it's best to define cheap as a low total cost of ownership -- you'll usually need to pay a little more up-front for lower ink costs, which will save you money in the long term.

How we test cheap printers

When we review printers, we test a number of elements to measure their technical aptitude. First and foremost is the quality of the prints themselves, which we gauge by analysing a series of photographs and plain paper documents representing a mix of color and black-only printing. Here we're looking for any evidence of fuzzy text, color banding, or other imperfections.

We also test color and mono print speeds; the latter uses a 25-page text batch, while the former is tested with 24 pages of mixed presentation slides, web pages and magazine pages. We time how quickly each batch completes, as well as how long the printer takes to deliver the first page once the job is initialised. Where available, duplex print speeds are measured by running the first 10 pages of the mixed color batch. For inkjet printers, we'll also repeat the mono tests in draft mode.

Where scan functionality is included, we gauge image quality by looking at scans of a color photo, a color input target chart, and an office document. We measure how fast the device can create a single photocopy, as well as measuring the scan speeds at different resolutions, and how quickly preview images are displayed.

The cheapest printers don't tend to have ADFs, but when they do, we'll use a 10-sheet copy operation to test their speeds, in color as well as mono where we can. In the event that both printer and ADF are duplex units, we'll time a 10-page double-sided job as well.

If you’ve seen one Brother inkjet multifunction printer, you’ve seen them all. The DCP-J1140DW is the latest in a longstanding series of squat, blockish MFPs without much in the way of design flair, although the black finish does make at least a little more appealing to the eye than the grey boxy look that often defines MFPs in this category.

Physically, the DCP-J1140DW is easy to set up – you just need to remove some tape and insert four cartridges – but the software presented more of a challenge. There’s no disc in the box, and at the time of our review the driver package wasn’t available on Brother’s UK website; we found it on brother.be. Once installed, you’re prompted to align the heads with the help of the scanner.

As you might expect at this price-range, this device isn’t exactly bristing with extra features. On top there’s a flatbed scanner, but it doesn’t have an automatic document feeder, so you’re limited to scanning documents one side at a time, rather than running large batch jobs. Ther’s no fax, either; this device is unmistakably aimed at general-purpose printing, scanning and copying needs, rather than any specialised use-cases.

With that having been said, it acquits itself admirably at what it sets out to do. This is a sprightly inkjet, coming close to Brother’s claimed 17ppm with 15.6ppm in our mono tests. It managed 7ppm in our more demanding colour graphics test, which is still a strong performance. The DCP-J1140DW has a quick scanner, too, dispatching an A4 sheet at 300dpi in 14 seconds, and taking only 23 seconds over a 6 x 4in postcard at 600dpi. You’ll need to wait only 13 seconds for a mono photocopy, or 16 seconds for colour.

On the other hand, while the DCP-J1140DW is quick, it doesn’t produce especially rewarding results. Its black text was bold, and looked crisp enough to the naked eye, but colour graphics were subdued and lacked impact on the page. Colour photocopies were similarly drab, but this MFP did a good job of preserving detail in mono copies. It also turned out reasonably good photos.

Likewise, the quality of the DCP-J1140DW’s scanner is only adequate, and the focus of our test images seemed a little soft. Dynamic range was more than good enough for office documents, but the scanner couldn’t distinguish the very lightest and darkest shades from our more challenging target.

Overall this is a capable device, particularly for those that mainly want a document workhorse that can handle occasional graphics work, but it doesn’t do enough to stand out. At nearly 3p per black page, or 7.9p for colour, it could also do with slightly lower running costs. However, if you need a printer that’s geared up to meet the printing needs of the average home office, you could do worse than the attractively-priced Brother DCP-J1140DW.

Brother DCP-J1140DW specifications

The best all-in-one printers combine print, scan, copy, and even fax capabilities all in one do-it-all device. They’re a fantastic space saver, multi-tasker, and the quintessential office essential to help businesses stay ahead of the mountain of paperwork they go through each week.

Take an office multifunction peripheral (MFP), for example. These are vital in helping to stay in touch with customers, producing professional reports, and even cutting down on your paper use.

An MFP isn't just a great way to save space. By combining several functions, they make it easier to get things done. This group can tackle any office job with aplomb, offering a combination of speed, flexibility, and decent running costs.

In this feature, we’ve rounded up the best office all-in-ones based on extensive reviews of industry-leading options. We've put every device through our rigorous range of tests which, for an MFP, can cover a daunting range of features.

Similarly, we've done the legwork to find out how fast they go, how well they perform, and what they'll cost you to run. If you want the best business all-in-one, you'll find it here.

How to look for the best all-in-one printers

All-in-one printers combine an array of features, but not necessarily the same ones. Home-focused devices, for example, tend to favor good photo prints over office-friendly paper handling, and they usually aren't built to take the same punishing workloads.

That said, if you’re looking for something cheap and compact for a micro office, a good home MFP can fit the bill.

Conversely, if you’re working out of a bustling office space, or you just want to be covered for everything, there’s truly no better option than an office-focused MFP.

Telltale signs that you’re onto a winner in this regard include features such as an automatic document feeder (ADF), which typically means you’ll also get modern fax capabilities. Even if you don’t need to send a fax, the ADF will still help any time you’ve got a stack of paper to be scanned and copied.

This is a huge time saver and ultimately helps reduce workloads for staff and the broader business. If you use this frequently, we’d also recommend considering a duplex (double-sided) ADF, which can capture both sides of each paper autonomously. Once again, this can be a huge time-saver.

We typically recommend that the printer should also be duplex. Paired with a duplex ADF, this lets you make double-sided prints, scans, faxes, or copies – perfect for professional results, and a great way to save paper.

Talking of which, all-in-ones with more than one paper tray let you keep a stock of plain and headed paper, which helps save you from lots of manual shuffling of pages.

Office-based MFPs are often shared between several people working out of the same workspace, so it’s crucial that you buy one that supports Wi-Fi or a wired Ethernet connection.

Networked models with color touchscreens tend to support more advanced features, such as scanning to, or printing directly from, SharePoint or other cloud-based storage solutions.

When it comes to deciding between inkjet and laser, the choice may not be as straightforward as you think. Office inkjets have always been a bit quicker to wake up and start printing than a laser, which helps if you tend to send multiple short jobs, rather than one or two long ones.

In recent years, inkjet devices have become more robust and cheaper to run, making them much more suited to business use than they were. They also use less electricity than a laser equivalent, so they're a no-brainer for cost-conscious enterprises.

That said, few inkjets can rival a laser printer when it comes to outright pages per minute, while laser-sharp text prints are hard to beat. As a general rule, laser MFPs may be best if you'll print a lot, and you favor speed and text quality over cost. If your priority is low running costs, an inkjet may be better – particularly if it has refillable ink tanks.

On that note, expect to pay around 8-12p per full color page if you buy an affordable inkjet or laser MFP. That's fine for occasional prints, but aim for a lower cost per page if you expect to print in higher volumes. And if you're buying an MFP for a busy office, aim to spend a little more up front in return for lower ongoing costs – you'll make savings overall.

The best all-in-one printers

Brother MFC-J1300DW All in Box

Best printer for instant value

The MFC-J1300DW isn’t exactly the cheapest printer upfront, but it's still extremely good value thanks to the generous quantities of ink that Brother has it shipped with.

There's more than enough for 7,200 full-color prints, which equates to around three years' worth according to the company's estimates. That means you're getting around 4p per page for color sheets, and even less for mono documents.

Better still, when that's completed, the price of XL cartridges means your costs could come down to as little as 2.3p per color page. All that equates to significant long-term cost savings.

There’s more to the printer than just value, however. First and foremost, it’s easy to use, provides decent quality and is capable of delivering 12 pages of black text per minute. Admittedly, the only downside is its lack of duplex scanning, copying or faxing, but if that’s not a deal breaker for you, this is a tremendous all-rounder that’s well worth the cost of entry.

Read our full Brother MFC-J1300DW All in Box review for more information.

HP OfficeJet Pro 9135e

Best all-in-one printer

If you were to envisage the perfect small office inkjet multifunction, we're betting it would probably look a lot like HP's OfficeJet Pro 9135e. This four-in-one covers all the key office requirements, adding handy business features like two generous paper trays and full duplex operation.

Need to make a double-sided copy of a double-sided original? The 9135e can handle it while you put the kettle on or catch up with a colleague. It also has support for wired and wireless networking, as well as a big color touchscreen.

All this would be for nothing if the OfficeJet Pro 9135e couldn't perform though. Luckily, it's a very solid all-rounder. It's very fast for a relatively affordable inkjet, delivering 22.1 pages per minute (ppm) of text, and color graphics at a brilliant 8ppm. Copies and scans were quick, too. Happily, this MFP's quality is mostly a match for its speed – only its high-resolution photo scans were disappointing, and that's not usually an issue for the office.

This MFP would benefit from lower running costs. We also found its installation process a tad annoying. Other than that, it's almost impossible to fault – a superb small office all-rounder.

Read our full HP OfficeJet Pro 9135e review for more information.

Canon MAXIFY GX7150

A solid color printer, but rather pricey

Canon MAXIFY GX7150 is a seriously powerful bit of kit for any small business or home user. While it’s pricey, it more than makes up for it in terms of convenience, capability, and is jam-packed with handy features.

One of the newest refillable inkjet printers from the manufacturer, it’s a four-in-one, combining printing, scanning, copying, and fax capabilities.

You’re also treated to an automatic document feeder (ADF) capable of juggling up to 50 sheets of paper at one time – and that’s in addition to a 100-sheet multipurpose paper tray.

Notably, the printer and ADF offer duplex operation support, meaning you’re able to produce double-sided prints, copies, scans, and faxes. It’s a great feature that will help you save paper in the long run while still delivering professional-looking prints.

The device can be connected via USB, wired Ethernet, or Wi-Fi. However, it’s worth noting that the latter only supports the 2.4GHz band.

In terms of interactivity, the MAXIFY GX7150 has an easy-to-use 2.7” tiltable color touchscreen alongside a few dedicated buttons.

As noted, price might be a hurdle for some – particularly home users or small businesses working on a budget. Elsewhere, it also lacks a USB host port, meaning walkup scans and prints aren’t an option.

Read our full review of the Canon MAXIFY GX7150 for more information.

Canon Pixma TS6250

Best printer for minimal outlay

The cheapest all-in-one printer on this list, the Canon Pixma TS6250 punches well above its weight, with superb print quality and decent speeds of 12.7ppm for mono prints and 3.9ppm for more complex colour graphics.

It uses five inks, with the usual cyan, magenta and yellow cartridges supplemented by two kinds of black ink — one for plain paper, and a dye-based one for photo prints. Despite this extra ink to worry about, using the XXL cartridges means that printing costs come down to as little as 2.8p per mono page, which isn’t bad at all.

There are drawbacks, of course: there’s no fax functionality, and it’s not the quietest with a mildly irritating wheezing noise, but most people will certainly be able to live with both considering the sheer affordability of the thing.

Price when reviewed: £67 exc. VAT

Read our full Canon Pixma TS6250 review for more information.

HP Smart Tank 7005

The cheapest all-in-one printer to own

If you want an all-in-one printer with low running costs, there's no better choice than a refillable inkjet. HP's Smart Tank 7005 is a strong example, arriving with enough ink to cover around 12,000 black, or 8,000 color pages. That's incredible value, equating to around 2.3p per page with a free printer thrown in. Once you finish the supplied ink, you'll pay around 0.4p per full-color page, which is almost unbeatable.

It's a good thing, then, that this MFP is competent elsewhere. At 13 pages per minute it's a fast enough text printer for most micro businesses. That's pretty much the story for its color printing, scans, and copies, which are all fast enough for light office use among a few people.

Print and copy quality are generally good, but this MFP's weaknesses in our tests were underwhelming photo prints, and blocky document scans. Still, if you're after a smart MFP with ultra-low running costs, and you'll only scan occasionally, the Smart Tank 7005 remains a good choice for micro offices.

Read our full HP Smart Tank 7005 review for more information.

Brother DCP-T780DW

An honorary mention for a cheap-to-run option

With the release of the DCP-T780DW, Brother became the last major printer manufacturer to enter the refillable ink tank market – and all things considered it was a strong debut for the manufacturer.

Similar to other Brother inject multifunction peripherals (MFP), it’s a great option for businesses, offering up to 15,000 pages’ printing and a single set of color inks rated for up to 5,000 pages.

In our review of the device, it performed fantastic in terms of speed. The DCP-T780DW certainly is a swift printer, delivering a first page of text in a whopping seven seconds.

It did require a few minutes to clean itself having been left unplugged overnight, but regardless it went on to produce 16 pages of paper per minute of black text.

Color printing wasn’t quite so swift, however, but still performed well given it’s a compact home inkjet.

All told, we rate this as a highly competent and powerful home office MFP. When combined with low printing costs and its bottle-based refillable setup, it certainly takes the hassle out of printing compared to competitors on the market.

Read our full review of the Brother DCP-T780DW for more information.

FAQs

How we test all-in-one printers

All our printer reviews include a series of tests to check various aspects of standard operations. The first set is designed to test overall print quality and identify any issues such as colour banding or fuzzy text output. This involves printing a number of mono documents, greyscale images, and colour pictures.

This is followed by speed tests for black and white text prints, timing how long a machine takes to produce a 25-page job, as well as how quickly the first sheet is delivered after hitting print. We also repeat this test at draft quality when testing inkjet printers. To measure colour print speeds, these tests are repeated with a 24-sheet batch of magazine pages, web pages and presentation slides. The first ten pages of this colour batch is also used to test duplex print speeds, measured in images per minute.

Scan functionality is a key component of all-in-one printers, and scan speeds are tested by timing how quickly it can produce a single photocopy, as well as a ten-page copy job for those models which also feature an ADF. We’ll run this test in both mono and colour where possible, and if both printer and ADF are duplex, then we’ll also time a ten-page double-sided batch.

To assess the image quality of scans, we’ll use a colour input target chart, an office document and a colour photo. Finally, we’ll look at how quickly the scanner produces results at various resolutions, as well as the speed with which it displays a preview image.

Canon’s Pixma G7050 Is another example of the increasingly popular tank-based style of inkjet MFP, where the ink supply comes not in the form of disposable cartridges, but as separate bottles. However, while some printers in this category are relatively stripped back in terms of capabilities, this monster adds in just about every feature you could ever need from an MFP, right up to fax functions.

Consequently, this printer is absolutely massive, dwarfing smaller rivals like the Epson EcoTank ET-3850, and weighing in at a decidedly chunky 9.6kg. Despite its bulk, however, there's barely an inch of free space, and packing in all those features also results in a printer that looks busy. The fax capabilities in particular mean that the control panel needs an entire number keypad built into it so you can dial out to send them.

This function, along with every other one, is controlled using a two-line text-only LCD screen, which sounds woefully inadequate compared to the technicolour marvel of the Canon Pixma TS8350’s screen. Surprisingly though, the display is actually okay in use. A snazzy touchscreen would certainly make life easier than scrolling through one text option at a time as on this model, but at least this tilts up nicely, meaning you can operate it from seated or standing - although you'll be far better off operating the G7050 via an external connection. To that end, this printer supports ethernet, Wi-Fi and USB connections, as well as a range of mobile and cloud printing options.

There are other benefits to buying this larger Canon “MegaTank” printer rather than smaller and cheaper options like the Epson EcoTank ET-2710. For instance it has a 250-sheet plain paper tray built into the base, meaning that you can keep this main tray stocked with plain paper and also print onto speciality media using the rear feeder. There’s also an automatic sheet feeder on the top that can rattle through copying or faxing a 35-page document.

Just don’t expect improvements in printing quality. Its mono prints are solid and dependable, and the colour prints are reasonable – especially when you consider how much they cost, with mono pages working out at 0.2p, and colour sheets at 0.4p. Photos didn’t come out as strong as we’d expect from a Canon printer in our tests, but some compromise is acceptable, given that a full ink refill costs just over £40 after tax.

None of the tank-based printers are particularly fast when compared to other printers in the same bracket, and the Pixma G7050 follows the same path, usually sitting somewhere between the middle and the bottom of the speed charts.

If you need fax capabilities, the G7050 is a great choice; if you don’t, you should consider the Pixma TS6250 for around £70– or the Pixma G5050, which doesn’t include a scanner but is something of a bargain at less than £200.

Canon Pixma G7050 specifications

The HP OfficeJet 8012e is a multi-function printer aimed squarely at the more demanding home office user, though it might also work as a personal printer for the kind of C-suite executive who wants their own dedicated device. The specs are more about all-round competence than high-end printing capabilities or speeds. It claims to print at speeds of up to 20ppm with automatic duplex printing, self-healing Wi-Fi connectivity, a full suite of mobile printing services and integration with HP+ and HP Instant Ink.

The 8012e isn’t a workgroup printer, but HP clearly thinks it’s going to see a lot of action. It has a recommended monthly duty cycle of up to 800 pages – roughly twice what’s expected of most home printers – and not just a 225-page main input tray but also a 25-sheet ADF for the scanner. As far as handling A4 business documents goes, it does it all, though faxing is handled through an online service rather than hardware built into the printer itself.

If you need this kind of printer in your home office, then the OfficeJet 8012e is one of the more stylish options out there. You get a two-tone white and grey body rather than the white and beige of the Envy Inspire line, but it’s a nice enough design with a mix of sharp angles and more gentle curves, even if it’s on the large side. There’s little on the front except two very understated LED indicators and the 5.6cm touchscreen, which controls most of the device’s basic functions. The main paper tray slots into the base at the front, with the 60-page output tray acting as a lid, a flap sliding outwards to give the prints additional support.

Setup couldn’t be much easier. The touchscreen itself asks you to select your language and your region, before prompting you to install the supplied cartridges and fill the paper tray, then running you through the automated print and scan calibration routine. After that you’re sent to HP’s Smart app to find the printer and connect it to your Wi-Fi network. Once that’s done, Windows 11 picks up the printer automatically, or you can install the Smart app on your PC for additional features and controls.

HP’s ahead of some manufacturers with this app-driven approach because it both makes setup easier and adds some genuinely useful features. For instance, you can set up useful shortcuts for scanning and printing to, say, scan in and email a document to yourself or to an office email address. You can also monitor usage, ink levels and perform basic maintenance tasks without firing up your desktop or laptop.

We didn’t see the Officejet 8012e reach HP’s promised headline speeds of 20ppm, but we did see speeds of 14ppm in our 24-page black and white text print tests after the 8.8 seconds it took for the first page to print out. Funnily enough, the page rate didn’t change significantly switching between Normal print mode and the closest thing it has to draft-mode: the ink-saving EconoMode. Print speeds with more complex colour documents were lower, at 6.85ppm after a 22 second wait for the first page. However, the HP proved to be a speedy duplex printer, only dropping to 13.5ppm on double-sided prints.

To put this in perspective, the OfficeJet 8012e is faster than many home office printers, including HP’s own Envy Inspire 7224e, though not quite as speedy in black-and-white as the Epson ET-3850 or Brother MFC-J1010DW, both of which reach speeds of 15ppm or higher. For colour documents and graphics, though, the 8012e is a real contender; nearly 7ppm is good by inkjet standards.

In terms of print quality, the OfficeJet plays to its strengths. Text is sharp, well-defined and black. Colour graphics are cleanly reproduced with subtle gradients and no sign of smearing or banding, and while you’d expect some degradation if you switch to EconoMode, the results aren’t bad at all. True, colour graphics lose a little punch and clarity, but black text still looks great. You really need a pair of strong reading glasses to spot much difference, which is a good indication that it’s not worth worrying about for everyday business use.

One thing the 8012e doesn’t pretend to be is a photo printer. It’s actually quite fast for 8x10 and A4 photo prints, where it took between 90 seconds and just under three minutes to produce the print. On 6x4 prints and A5 photo prints, however, you’re reliant on the guides in the main paper tray, with no dedicated photo paper input, while a 6x4in borderless print took just over 76 seconds to emerge. Many consumer printers will do the job in half that time.

As for the results, they’re fine. Colours are natural and you can pick out smaller details. Definition is reasonably sharp. However, there’s something a bit flat and subdued about the output, especially around reds and pinks, that leaves you feeling vibrant colour and contrast aren’t the 8012e’s thing. It’s one area where it’s beaten by the cheaper Envy Inspire.

The OfficeJet boosts its office credentials by integrating a 25 page ADF on top of the flatbed scanner. It can spit out a black-and-white copy in just 16 seconds or a colour copy in 25, while a full-colour, 300dpi scan takes a mere 22 seconds to come through. It scanned nine colour pages in a minute and a half. Here the Brother and Epson competition is slightly faster, but not to any disastrous extent. The only disappointment is that graphics and photos don’t always come out well, with over-saturation of ink on the page and occasional white lines or even banding effects.

Another area of concern is that paper handling isn’t quite as flawless as you might hope. Twice during testing the printer had to pause midway through for twenty or thirty seconds while rollers spun and the printer rumbled on to no visible effect. This isn’t a huge issue – the prints came out eventually – but it caused us to repeat the tests. The OfficeJet also had issues with our 170gsm photo paper, jamming while loading the sheet on two occasions, and rendering it unusable in one of those.

It's also slightly disappointing that the built-in connectivity doesn’t hit the same level as some of HP’s consumer models. Instead of 801.11ac we get old-school 802.11n, while there’s no Bluetooth for making the initial connection.

For running costs, you’re looking at around £63 for a set of high yield cartridges, with colour print costs of approximately 7.6p per page and black-and-white costs of roughly 3p per page. These aren’t exorbitant, and the use of separate CMYK cartridges means you don’t have to replace all cartridges just because one has run out. All the same, this printer will cost you significantly more to run than Epson’s EcoTank ET-3850, where the ink costs dip well under 1p per page, even for colour.

You could save on your ink costs by signing up for Instant Ink through HP+, and HP includes 6 months in the box. At the time of writing, 300 pages per month would cost you £9.99 inc VAT per month, or £22.49 inc VAT per month for 700.

Overall, the Officejet 8012e comes across as a decent mid-volume home office printer. It’s pretty fast and great for handling text-heavy documents, scanning and copying and, at well under £150 exc VAT, solid value. The problem is that there are other printers out there offering great value, either by beating the HP on performance or by offering much lower running costs without a subscription. The OfficeJet is fast enough and good enough to please its intended audience, but the EcoTank ET-3850 could be a better bet long-term.

HP OfficeJet 8012e specifications

The HP Envy Inspire 7224e forms part of a new generation of home office multi-function printers, with a revamped style, decent specs and a chassis that’s over 45% made from recyclable plastics. It’s a smart printer, built to be setup and run through the HP Smart smartphone app, and designed to be used and supported through the company’s HP+ service, including Instant Ink supplies. Perhaps this explains the surprisingly low price point. This is a lot of printer for under £100, and it’s clear that HP plans to make its money in the long term through the HP+ subscription rather than through sales of the device itself.

With a desktop footprint of 46 x 38cm, even with the output tray folded away, this isn’t a particularly compact printer. It’s substantially bigger than the Canon Pixma TS8350, for example, or even the squarer Epson Ecotank ET-7250. However, HP has done its best to minimise the bulk with rounded corners at the base and an interesting two tone off-white and beige design. It’s going to fit better into a lot of home offices than your average black or dark grey model.

The minimalist front panel is dominated by a 2.65in LCD touchscreen, which can tilt slightly backwards for easier operation when you’re looking at the printer from above. This provides easy access to the most basic copying and scanning operations, plus user-definable shortcuts you can set up through the smartphone app. These cover a range of capabilities including scan and email to a specific email address, or scanning and uploading to cloud storage, with options for most of the major services including Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive and Box.

This app-centric approach turns out to be the norm with the Envy Inspire 7224e. It’s the default option for initial setup, where the app makes a Bluetooth connection to the printer and hooks it up to your Wi-FI network, then holds your hand through cartridge installation and installing paper. It carries through to simple admin and management, including keeping track of ink supplies. It’s an approach that makes setup and basic operations so easy that you barely notice them.

In fact, with Windows 11 picking up the Envy Inspire 7224e automatically, it couldn’t be much less work to get a printer up and running. What’s more, it’s one of a small number of printers to have moved beyond 802.11n wireless connectivity to embrace dual-band 802.11ac, which should help speed things up when you’re printing larger and more complex files.

The Envy Inspire 7224e isn’t what you’d call an office workhorse. There’s no automatic document feeder for the scanner, and HP specifies a recommended workload of around 300 to 400 pages per month. Yet the main paper input tray holds 125 sheets, while the photo paper feed on top can hold up to 15 5x5 to 5x7in photo sheets. That should be fine for basic home and office usage.

Speeds are decent for a printer with only one or two people sharing. The first page of our 24-page black text document took nearly 18 seconds to emerge, but subsequent pages flowed through at a speed of 12.5ppm. Colour documents take a little longer, with 24.4 seconds for the first page and a speed of 6.4ppm after that. That’s slightly off the pace of a printer like the Canon Pixma TS8350, but hardly slow.

What’s more, the HP doesn’t lose too much speed in Duplex printing, where our first black and white page appeared in 17.97 seconds, and our remaining test pages came through at a speed of 11ppm. In fact, the feed mechanism did a fast, flawless job of outputting the first side then sucking the page back in to print the second.

One sure sign that this is a home office printer is that it has a special Quiet mode, which reduces noise levels at the cost of a reduction in speed. The speed reduction is significant, with a 4 page PDF file that took 52 seconds to print originally taking 98 seconds to print in Quiet mode. Sadly, the reduction in noise levels isn’t so impressive. We measured 51dB from 1m away in standard printing and 54dB in Quiet mode; hardly game-changing stuff.

The Envy Inspire 7224e prints good, crisp black text and also copes well with diagrams and business graphics. Colours are bright and any graduations smooth, and there’s no sign of blotchiness or banding. The worst thing you can say about it is that the ink occasionally comes out slightly damp, though even then it doesn’t smear.

What we didn’t expect, however, is for the photo quality to be so good. This is a standard four-colour printer with a fairly normal 4,800 x 1,200dpi print engine, yet it still delivered excellent photos with natural colours, visible shadow tones and highlights, and respectable colour depth. Specialist photo printers will give you more clarity and dynamic range, but the Envy Inspire 7224e holds up well against other non-specialist inkjets, including the Pixma TS8350. It’s just a shame that it takes its time in doing so with the highest quality setting, taking 3 minutes and 27 seconds to output our 8x10in test print and 2 minutes and 5 seconds to print a smaller 6x4in print.

It’s a little faster when it comes to scanning and copying, at 20 seconds for a black-and-white copy, 25 seconds for a colour copy and 20 seconds for a 300dpi full colour scan. Colours in the copy were slightly flatter than those in the original, but fine for office purposes, while scans are detailed and colour accurate to the eye.

The final big question here is running costs. A set of 303XL black and colour cartridges will run for approximately 600 black and white pages and 415 colour pages and cost you roughly £51.66 ex VAT, putting the price per print at 8.61 per black and white page and 12.45p per colour page. That’s more than the Pixma TS8350 and a lot more than the bottle-fed Epson ET-5880. However, with HP+ and Instant Ink it gets more economical, not least because you get 9 months of Instant Ink included. You could opt for 100 pages per month for £4.49 per month or 300 pages for £9.99, and you’d see the price per page drop to 4.49p or 3.33p respectively, for either black and white or colour pages. HP’s pestering to subscribe during and even after setup is annoying, but it actually has a point.

There’s a lot to like about the Envy Inspire 7224e. It’s fast enough and print quality is great for a printer at this price point, whether you’re talking about text and business graphics or printing photos. Rivals are faster or cheaper to run, but providing you’re happy with the HP+ subscription model, it’s a rock solid choice for home office use.

HP Envy Inspire 7224e specifications

Canon’s MAXIFY GX7050 is an inkjet multifunction peripheral (MFP) aimed at home offices, and at small offices and workgroups. On its front panel, clear windows give users a glance of its most important feature: refillable ink tanks that maximise service intervals and keep running costs to a minimum.

While Canon’s ‘Megatank’ system is the highlight, this MFP literally ticks all the boxes when it comes to features. Its paper handling is particularly impressive, with its two 250-sheet plain paper cassettes supplemented by a 100-sheet rear tray that supports a wide range of media. The printer, and the scanner’s 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF), both support duplex (double-sided) operation. You can, for example, make double-sided copies of a double-sided original.

Canon hasn’t overlooked connectivity, meanwhile, with both Wi-Fi and wired Ethernet support. A front-panel USB host port supports walk up scanning and printing, controlled by a reasonably clear and responsive colour touchscreen. Capable of prints, scans, copies and faxes, the GX7050 has the potential to be a perfect small office workhorse. Does it live up to it in practice?

Canon Maxify GX7050 review: Setting up

The key draw of ink tank printers is that they require less maintenance and cost less to run than an equivalent cartridge-based inkjet, or indeed most laser printers. The MAXIFY GX7050 arrives with enough ink for 6,000 black pages, or 14,000 in colour, which helps to explain its high initial purchase price.

The GX7050 is about 60% more expensive than a comparable colour laser MFP such as Xerox’s C235dw, but that arrives with 500-page inbox toners only. Buy the C235dw and enough toner to match the GX7050’s initial yield, and you’ll likely spend more than £1,000 on top of your initial outlay. And when the GX7050 has used all its supplied ink, its ongoing running costs should be less than 0.7p excluding VAT per full-colour page, not the 7-11p typical of competing lasers.

If you’ve set up an ink tank printer before, you’ll know it’s a little more involved than simply shoving in a few cartridges. Our review sample had been used previously, so we didn’t have the pleasure of emptying the big bottles of supplied ink into its tanks, but the process usually takes a few minutes, and is followed by a one-off ink priming session that lasts several minutes more. Canon has refined its Megatank system, adding physical keying to prevent you accidentally mis-filling with the wrong colours. It’s better, but still seems a little less foolproof than Epson’s competing EcoTank design.

While bigger than a typical inkjet MFP, the GX7050 is on the compact side compared to the small colour laser MFPs that it’s gunning for. At 13kg it’s lighter, too. Its final advantage is that, with a peak power consumption of 27W, it’s likely to use less electricity and generate less heat than a laser equivalent.

Canon Maxify GX7050 review: Printing, scanning and copying

Of course, all this is for nought if the results are slow or poor, but happily Canon hasn’t dropped the ball. This is a swift text printer, delivering a first page in just eight seconds, and going on to complete a 25-page job at a rate of 21.4 pages per minute (ppm). Tested over a 50-page document, the GX7050 reached 25.4ppm - more than a match for many affordable laser devices. Speeds were almost identical in Economy mode, which Canon says uses 50% less ink.

Predictably, the GX7050 was much slower to print complex colour graphics, dropping to 6.1ppm on our 24-page test. While still rapid for an inkjet, here a laser would be much faster - the Xerox C235dw managed 13.1ppm on the same test. Using its rear tray, the GX7050 will print photos with borders on A4 or postcard sized paper. Each print took less than a minute, and the results were generally decent.

This printer’s pigment-based inks won’t deliver a high-gloss finish on photo papers, but they’re ideal for authoritative prints on plain paper. Sure enough, black text was suitably bold, and duplex prints had little bleed through on thinnish 80gsm media. Graphics were generally punchy, but in lighter shades it was surprisingly easy to pick out grain. We also noticed some subtle banding across large colour blocks.

The MAXIFY GX7050 packs a better scanner than you might expect for an office-focused device. Though limited to ‘only’ 1,200dpi, it proved adept at capturing a wide range of shade detail in both light and dark regions of an original. Impressively, duplex scanning via the ADF is achieved via two sensors - much faster and less prone to jamming than mechanically flipping each page over.

Connected via Wi-Fi, preview images took eight seconds, while a 150 dots per inch (dpi) A4 scan completed in 13 seconds. Upping the resolution to 300dpi meant a wait of 21 seconds. Where many office devices struggle to scan photos, the GX7050 was equally at home, completing a 600dpi scan of a 10x15cm print in 29 seconds. We appreciated the lip-less front edge of the scanner plate, which makes it easy to reclaim an original document without scrabbling against a raised plastic edge.

With no warm-up time, the MAXIFY GX7050 completed a single mono copy in 14 seconds, while colour copies took only a further second. Using the ADF we timed a 10-page copy at a minute in black only, and two minutes in colour. We made a colour duplex copy of a 10-page, 20-sided document in five minutes.

Canon Maxify GX7050 review: Verdict

While its colour print quality wasn’t perfect, it’s otherwise hard to fault the MAXIFY GX7050. It’s relatively compact, yet comes with a full array of features to automate and streamline common office tasks. These go beyond the basics, with assets like multiple paper inputs, a USB host port and duplex scanning enabling faster and more flexible work. Considering the target market, the only potential omissions we noticed were the lack of PostScript printing, or a hold print function - though you could always print confidential material directly from a USB stick.

The GX7050 won’t keep pace with a colour laser over colour print or copy jobs, and ultimately its prints lack the crispness of the best laser output. However, factor in running costs and it’s in a league of its own. If you’re not set on a laser, Canon’s MAXIFY GX7050 is a strong performing and flexible office MFP with brilliantly low running costs.

Canon Maxify GX7050 specifications

If you’re looking for a home-office MFP, you’re unlikely to find one much cheaper than Epson’s affordable Expression Home XP-4100. It’s not just the price that’s miniature, either; its footprint is barely larger than the flatbed A4 scanner that sits on top of it.

Don’t be fooled, though; this unassuming little MFP may lack some of the bells and whistles of more expensive counterparts, but we’re still flabbergasted that Epson has crammed so much into such a small box.

Its features are hidden under flaps that unfold to reveal its functions, such as the 100-sheet paper tray at the back, the 2.4in tilt-out control panel and the (slightly flimsy) paper output tray that slides out from the front. It’s got both USB and wireless connectivity, which is about all you can expect for the price, and it can even do some fancy tricks that pricier printers can’t, such as print on both sides of a sheet.

The printer uses four cartridges, which is a better option than the HP Envy Pro 6432 and its inefficient method of combining three colours in a single cartridge. However, the cost of printing comes in at 5.2p per page for black and 12.8p for colour, and it quickly ramps up.

Those prices apply if you travel down the road of buying your own ink cartridges, which is why the Epson Expression Home XP-4100 is a prime contender for Epson’s cartridge subscription – we wouldn’t consider this printer without it. It should bring the cost of printing down to between 3.3p and 4.3p per page, depending on how much you print. Ideally you should print close to your contract’s target page number, but even if you’re a bit out it should still work out cheaper than buying cartridges yourself.

Don’t expect stunning prints in standard mode – we saw faint lines across almost everything. It clearly wasn’t a problem with the printhead alignment, though, because printing in high quality mode eliminated it.

As well as eliminating these lines, the high quality setting also produced good-looking photo prints. The four-colour cartridge system can’t compete with the prints produced on the Canon Pixma TS8350, but they compared well with HP’s pricier inkjet models.

We didn’t expect to see a printer of this price top any of the performance charts, but Epson knows how to get a single page into the output tray at top speed, and this printer equaled the Epson ET-2750’s speed record of ten seconds. It surprised us by producing copies at speed too, managing a mono copy in 13 seconds which puts it close to the top of the table.

Despite the name, then, this capable all-in-one printer makes an excellent option for remote workers with modest day-to-day business printing needs. It can deliver speedy black and white documents at a perfectly reasonable quality, and you can crank the output quality up for when you really need to impress. The high cost of consumables would be our biggest concern, but that’s easily addressed with Epson’s subscription service. If you’re short on either space or cash, the XP-4100 is an attractive buy.

Epson Expression Home XP-4100 specifications

Canon’s Pixma TS6250 is a three-in-one inkjet multifunction aimed at both general and more creative uses. While it doesn’t have business features such as a fax or automatic document feeder, it can duplex print, which is handy for saving paper or producing more professional-looking multipage documents. The TS6250’s wireless connection makes it easy to share with multiple devices, and it enables a wide range of mobile and cloud-based applications. Control comes via a useful 7.5cm colour touchscreen, although there’s no front-facing USB or SD card slot for direct photo prints.

Made from classy-looking black plastic, the TS6250 is smart enough to install in public-facing areas. It’s fairly compact, although pushing it back against a wall will block the rear paper feed, which you can otherwise use for up to 100 pages of plain or 20 sheets of photo paper. In the base, the regular tray handles up to 100 sheets of plain paper only. Loading paper is simple, but be aware that the printer won’t feed from the rear if you’ve forgotten to push down the guide rollers.

This printer uses Canon’s five-ink system, which combines the usual cyan, magenta and yellow with both a pigment black ink for plain paper and a dye-based black for photos. The former allows for bold black text and graphics, while the latter means photos print with a true black, rather than one composed of cyan, magenta and yellow.

The consumable range is available in three sizes – standard, XL and XXL – with a page of mixed text and graphics costing about 8.6p when using the largest and best-value supplies. Mono prints come in at 2.8p per page, and both are a touch more expensive than would be ideal, but not dramatically so.

The Pixma TS6250 is slightly less sophisticated than its sleek looks suggest, however. When printing, there’s a faint but persistent wheezing noise, as though the heads are gently scraping the paper as it passes through. It’s not the fastest, but at 12.7ppm for black text and 3.9ppm in our complex colour graphics test, it won’t keep you waiting for too long. While it took nearly 11 minutes to print two 10 x 8in photos on A4 paper, each borderless 10 x 15cm print shot out in about 40 seconds.

Canon’s venerable scan interface has barely changed in a decade, but it’s our favourite, offering a basic mode for quick work and an advanced mode for more precise control. The latter offers a full range of useful features such as descreening and dust and scratch removal, but remains intuitive and easy. An A4 preview completed in just seven seconds, while a scan at 300dpi needed 16 seconds. Both times are competitive, if not the fastest, but it took us 31 seconds to scan a 10 x 15cm photo at 600dpi, and a minute and 40 seconds to do the same at 1,200dpi – many competitors are quicker.

This MFP’s touchscreen isn’t the sharpest or the most responsive, but its menu system generally lets you get the job done without frustration. Photocopies are easy to manage and quick, with a mono A4 copy needing just 12 seconds and a colour page 22 seconds. Cloud support includes printing photos from a Facebook or Instagram account, or scanning documents to (and printing them from) file services including OneDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox.

This MFP’s true strength lies in the quality of its results. On plain paper, black text was crisp and dark, while graphics were bright and punchy, without any inkjet bugbears such as grain or banding. That’s less true for duplex prints, however – by default they’re printed with less ink to prevent smearing and are thus more faint, but you can adjust the setting. Photocopies exhibited reasonable colour accuracy and preserved plenty of detail.

The TS6250’s sharp and detailed photos were generally excellent, but their warm colour bias suited certain subjects better than others. Scans were sharply focused with accurate colours, and their high dynamic range preserved details across the full range of light and dark shades.

While it’s not the fastest device, the TS6250 is quick enough across all its functions. It’s also smart to look at and easy to use, whether from a PC, mobile device or its touchscreen. With great results and acceptable running costs, it’s an easy MFP to recommend.

Canon Pixma TS6250 specifications

If you're running a small business, you've got enough on your plate without worrying about printers that can't keep up with your workflow. We've gathered together the six best small business printers – each of them has something to offer every small and medium business.

Whether you're looking to spend tens or hundreds of pounds on your next small business printer, these devices all provide the essentials. We've hand-picked the best single-function business printers, added some multifunction peripherals (MFPs), and rounded everything off with a choice of photo printers for business.

We've subjected every printer in this list to a battery of tests, assessing their speed, quality, running costs, and general ease-of-use. In every case, we'll let you know how fast they performed, how good the results were, and headline features such as their paper handling and technology. If you want to find out more, check out the links to our full small business printer reviews.

How to choose a small business printer

When it comes to printing, a small business has different needs to home users. Business users are usually most interested in speed and reliability -- and if you're buying for remote users, easy deployment and long-lasting consumables are a bonus, too. It's therefore important to really consider what type of printer your business needs.

For starters, small businesses need a printer that can service multiple users, which means network connectivity is a must – most of today's business printers have Ethernet or Wi-Fi, and often both. Support for cloud printing and scanning will also be handy.

If you're looking for a single printer to do everything, a multifunction peripheral (MFP) offers printing, scanning, and copying in a single compact device. It's unlikely you'll need a fax these days, but many business MFPs still have one, and it adds little to the price. We recommend it for certain industries, including hospitality and medicine.

Small businesses can ask a lot of a printer, especially if it's their only one, so it's good to choose a well-featured device. We generally recommend duplex (double-sided) printing and, on MFPs, a scanner with a duplex automatic document feeder (ADF). That setup lets you make double-sided prints, scans, faxes, or copies. It's also good to have more than one paper input.

Business printers will see greater print volumes over a longer period of time, so running costs are particularly relevant. If you're printing in high volumes and speed is important, a laser printer can offer a good balance between fast prints and a moderate cost per page. If low page costs are the priority, choose a refillable ink tank business printer.

Serviceability may also be worth considering, depending on the structure of your internal IT operations. Organisations with a robust IT department will likely want printers that can be centrally managed and monitored, as well as something that makes it easy to troubleshoot printer problems and start repairs. Organisations that rely more on MSPs and third-party technicians may not need this as much.

Finally, if your print needs include customer-facing marketing and promotional materials, you may want to invest in a machine that can also handle tasks like larger A3 documents and good-quality photo printing. This will allow you to quickly generate impressive-looking marketing documents without needing to outsource them to a third party.

FAQs for the best small business printers

Do I need a colour printer for my small business?

It may seem like getting a color printer for your business is a no-brainer – after all, a color printer can handle black and white documents while still giving you the option of color prints when you need them – but there are actually some good reasons to choose mono only.

For starters, you tend to get more for your money, as there's a dedicated focus on one thing. You're likely to get higher quality and faster print speeds than you would from an equivalently priced color machine, and it can also mean more features like duplexing and ADF that you may not get at a similar price point. Mono printers can offer lower running costs, particularly as some color printers will use a small amount of their color consumables when printing in greyscale.

While having the capability to print color documents is useful for a business, if most of your documents are intended for internal use, consider using mono printers for most of your fleet, with one or two color machines as backup.

How many printers does my small business need?

Digital documents may rule the roost these days, but paper still has a place even in a modern office. Some people simply prefer working with hard-copy documents, but there are also instances where you may need to physically sign and send off a form, or attach a tracking slip to a package. Every workplace should have at least one printer just in case of emergencies, but depending on the size of your organisation, you may need more than one.

How many you’ll need depends on a number of factors, of course, including the number of employees you have and how often they need to print, but you should also think about the physical space they’ll be occupying. If your office includes multiple floors, you may want to have a printer on each one, to minimise the time employees spend travelling to and fro.

Should I buy a laser printer for my small business?

Historically, laser printers have been the go-to machines for businesses wanting a sturdy and reliable option, thanks to lower running costs, faster speeds, and excellent performance with mono documents. Lasers are no longer the unseatable emperors of business printing, thanks to the increasing sophistication of mid-range inkjet devices, but a laser printer may still be the best option for your small business.

Lasers are usually designed for high-volume document printing, so if you're likely to be processing stacks of reports on a regular basis, this will be a faster option. Fewer moving parts can also mean better reliability, although this isn't a given. Historically, laser printers were cheaper to run than an inkjet, but the arrival of inkjet business printers with refillable ink tanks has turned this assumption on its head – a business laser is cheaper to run than a home inkjet, but ink tanks are cheaper still.

The downsides to small business laser printers are that they're generally (although not always) larger, more expensive, and less feature-packed than their inkjet cousins, and aren't as versatile for things like photo or graphics jobs. They also use more power than inkjets, although only when they're actually printing.

The best printers for small business

HP OfficeJet Pro 9135e

Best small business multifunction printer

HP has a knack for building good small office inkjets, and the OfficeJet Pro 9135e is a brilliant example. A four-in-one combining printing, scanning, copying, and fax, the 9135e has some impressive features, including a 35-sheet ADF, and duplex (double-sided) everything. There's also plenty of paper storage, along with a large color touchscreen for control.

We experienced a couple of setup frustrations, but soon forgot about them thanks to this MFP's satisfying all-around performance. It's an excellent text printer, but it does a very decent job of graphics and photos, too. We were also happy with its scan and photocopy quality, while speeds were very strong for this class. That makes it a great overall package, perfect for home and small businesses – although heavy users should consider ink tank alternatives for their lower running costs.

Price when reviewed: £161 exc. VAT

Read our full HP OfficeJet Pro 9135e review for more information.

Epson EcoTank ET-4850

Best small business multifunction printer for overall TCO

This compact inkjet multifunction from Epson offers a decent set of features for a do-everything small inkjet printer. It can print, scan, fax, and copy, and connect to wired or wireless networks. The printer will turn out double-sided prints, although its single-sided ADF rules out automatic double-sided copying.

The ET-4850 has refillable ink tanks, and costs about three times what we'd expect for the equivalent cartridge device. It comes with enough ink for 5,200 black or 14,000 color pages, though, so it's better value out of the box provided you'll print in those kinds of volumes. Print more, and additional ink works out at less than 0.5p per full-color page – you really will struggle to find lower running costs.

Happily, this is quite a decent MFP, too. It produces excellent scans, and surprisingly good color photos on coated papers. The flip-side of its dye inks, however, is that its plain paper prints aren't as authoritative as we'd want – a bit of a shame in an office. This, and slightly slow performance aside, it's hard to criticise this MFP. If you want a single device for a small office, shop, or home office, it offers excellent value, but it's not ideal for bigger or busier scenarios.

Price when reviewed: £311 exc. VAT

Read our full Epson EcoTank ET-4850 review for more information.

Canon MAXIFY GX5550

Best small business color inkjet printer

Canon's MAXIFY GX5550 takes aim at the office color laser printer, and it pretty much finds its mark. It's a refillable inkjet printer, arriving with 6,000 black and 14,000 color pages' worth of ink. Blow through that and you'll pay only around 0.6p per full color page to buy more – that's at least 10 times less to run than an equivalent color laser.

This isn't some flimsy home printer, either. It's engineered with two 250-sheet paper cassettes plus a 100-sheet tray at the rear. It's rated for a maximum 45,000 pages per month, and comes backed up by a three-year warranty. It offers automatic duplex printing, USB, Ethernet, and wireless networking, and control via a user-friendly 6.7cm color touchscreen.

The GX5550 isn't great at photo printing, but it produces excellent text and graphics on plain paper. That said, it's one real weakness is that it's just not as fast as a laser. If you can live with that, this is a highly versatile color printer with long maintenance intervals and ridiculously low running costs. It's ideal if you need a cheap way to print in moderate volumes.

Price when reviewed: £383 exc. VAT

Read our full Canon MAXIFY GX5550 review for more information.

OKI B432DN

Best small business mono laser printer

The Oki B432dn may be a boxy, unassuming-looking printer, but if you're looking for fast, high-volume document printing then this diamond in the rough has you covered. A great example of a printer which does one thing incredibly well, the B432dn is a mono laser that chewed through our speed tests at a rate of knots. There's no color option, but it managed our black-and-white test document at 31.3ppm, and even managed a duplex graphics test at 14 images per minute.

It's undeniably barebones in terms of additional features, with no scanner or fax capacity, but its functionality can be boosted with a £40 network adapter for Wi-Fi if you're unhappy with its gigabit Ethernet connectivity, and with a 530-sheet paper tray if the default 250-sheet tray isn't enough for you. Plus, we found that with the 12,000-page ultra-high capacity toner, running costs came to just 1.2p per page once the initial supply has been exhausted. To cap it all off, print quality is all but perfect.

Price when reviewed: £200 exc. VAT

Read our full OKI B432dn review for more information.

Canon i-SENSYS LBP732Cdw

Best small business color laser printer

Inkjets and small lasers are all very well, but if you'll print off reams of paper and you need them in a hurry, accept no substitute for a big laser printer. Canon's i-SENSYS LBP732Cdw is a great example, aimed at moderate use in small offices and workgroups. This is a big laser, full of useful office features such as a 550-sheet input cassette and a further 100-sheet multipurpose feed. Duplex (double-sided) printing is standard, as is Wi-Fi and gigabit Ethernet support.

The LBP732Cdw is strong on security, offering features including user management, IPSec, and IP and MAC address filtering. Canon is providing security support until January 2031, helping make this printer a good long-term choice. There's also support for Canon's iW Enterprise Management Console, allowing for centralized management of a fleet of printers.

Happily, this is a high-performing printer, with highlights on our tests including a 33 pages per minute (ppm) top speed for text, and 24.8ppm for complex graphics. Print quality was superb all-round, with the exception that some photographs had a slight blue bias. This high quality, along with the standard Wi-Fi interface, gives the LBP732Cdw a slight edge over the Brother HL9430CDN, which is otherwise a similarly strong alternative.

Price when reviewed: £401 exc. VAT

Read our full Canon i-SENSYS LBP732Cdw review for more information.

Epson EcoTank ET-18100

Best small business printer for cheap photos

Epson's EcoTank ET-18100 offers a cheaper alternative for businesses that need to print their own photos and graphics. Yes, it's expensive to buy, but it'll soon make up for it with much lower running costs than competing devices such as the Canon PIXMA Pro-200 (see above). That's because it combines six-ink, A3+ photo printing with refillable ink tanks. You get about 7,200 pages' worth of ink in the box, and when they run out new bottles are less than £9 each.

This isn't an all-rounder. There's no scanner or display, and it's not really optimised for everyday document printing. It does make sense alongside a more everyday office all-rounder, as a second printer for cheap photo prints. We calculated that each borderless postcard-sized photo will cost about 2.4p (excluding paper), rising to 10p for A4 and 25p for A3+. That's a fraction of what you'd pay in a lab, or from rivals like the PIXMA Pro-200.

The flipside is that this is a good, rather than brilliant, photo printer. It did a good job on landscape prints and group photos, with balanced exposures and an impressive amount of detail. However, it tended to lose fine details in light areas such as cloud and sun-bleached wood. It's a great choice if you need cheap and capable photo prints, but if quality is more important, the PIXMA Pro-200 has it well beaten.

Price when reviewed: £542 exc. VAT

Read our full Epson EcoTank ET-18100 review for more information.

How we test small business printers

Like any hardware that we review, printers are put through a number of standardised tests to ensure comparable results across different products. We test black and white print speeds by running a 25-page document through the unit, timing how quickly it produces the first page after hitting print, and how long it takes to deliver the full job. These tests are also repeated at draft quality for inkjets.

For colour machines, we’ll also repeat these tests with 24 sheets of magazine pages, web pages and presentation slides, running the first ten pages again to test duplex printing where available. To test image quality, we look for any evidence of colour banding or fuzzy text in a series of colour photos, greyscale images and mono text documents.

Where printers also include the ability to scan documents, we’ll also test the quality by looking at the results from scanning an office document, a color photo, and a color input target chart. To test the speed of its scanning operations, we’ll time a single photocopy, the speed with which it produces preview images, and how quickly it delivers scans at varying resolutions.

For models with an ADF as well, we’ll copy a ten-page document in both mono and colour (if possible) to test its speeds, and if both printer and ADF functions are duplex-enabled, we’ll time how long it takes to process a ten-page double-sided document batch.

There is a reason the Canon Pixma TS8350 is a stalwart of the mid-range multifunction market of printers and that's simply due to it being the best of its kind. This doesn't mean it's a flawless machine or the best printer around, but it does produce fantastic-looking prints for the price.

Canon Pixma TS8350 review: Setup

Canon's setup process is a simple thing; you start by navigating to ij.start.canon, where you'll enter the printer's name – Pixma TS series – and from there you pick the relevant model from the drop-down list.

You'll be guided through each step of the process with options to increase how detailed the instructions get, such as removing the packing tape that stops the components rattling around in transit. You can skip through it if you've got the experience, but there are lots of effective explainer videos and animations for those who need them.

For the hardware itself, the Pixma TS8350 is a stylish black box with a textured finish that has a classy sheen. The front is comprised of a 4.25in color touchscreen, which is embedded in a panel that tilts. This is very handy as it ensures you can see it whether you're sitting in front or standing above.

The rest of the unit is, sadly, a little flimsy with fold-out trays that feel very fragile. If your office is a peaceful place with gentle employees then the Pixma TS8350 is sturdy enough – but we would question its suitability for more livelier places of business.

Aside from build quality, however, the Canon Pixma TS8350 is an inkjet we recommend, largely due to the prints it produces. With its six cartridges – which include "photo blue" and a larger secondary black cartridge – it shoots out glorious finishes. Photos that are rich and bold, with deep blacks and crisp text.

Admittedly, we found it lost some of its depth when printing on both sides of a sheet, but beyond that the Pixma TS8350 is a true multifunctional workhorse that more than copes with any task you can chuck at it.

Canon Pixma TS8350 review: Is it worth it?

The overall cost of running the printer is surprisingly reasonable – as long as you opt for Canon's XXL cartridges. With these, the main color ink cartridges should print around 800 pages, with the black lasting 600. This works out to 3.4p per page for mono prints and 6.2p for color. It's pricier than ink tank printers like Epson's EcoTank ET-5880, but it isn't far off what you'd get from Epson or HP's subscription services; note you don't get the ecological benefit of recycling your cartridge, though. While Canon did offer a recycling service previously, it's currently suspended.

FAQs

The printer is relatively nippy. It takes 11 seconds to print its first page from the moment the Print button is pressed, which is among the fastest we’ve seen. Standard printing tasks were more middling, but it was incredibly quick at printing our batch of 6 x 4in photos (while also producing some outstanding-looking prints). It was similarly quick off the blocks when producing copies from its scanner, both in mono and colour.

With its superb colour prints and stylish curves, the Pixma TS8350 is clearly aimed at creative types, and it works with a good range of Canon’s interesting media consumables, from CD covers to vinyl nail art. Don’t be fooled, however, because this printer can cope as admirably with boring office jobs as it can with photos and entertaining craft projects. You need to look elsewhere if an automatic sheet feeder is essential to your copying jobs, but for a mid-priced printer this model is the pick of a colourful bunch.

Canon Pixma TS8350 specifications

HP has always had a good selection of printers, ranging from casual home use to industrial scale, so it was well positioned when the world of work changed at the start of the pandemic. The OfficeJet Pro 9012e slots nicely between traditional small or home office (SOHO) and larger business-focused machines, with an eye on the ballooning work-from-home market. However, in an increasingly crowded marketplace for such MFPs, this isn’t without its issues.

HP OfficeJet Pro 9012e review: Design

Visually, the 9012e is virtually identical to other HP MFPs in its class, including last year’s OfficeJet Pro 8022. That’s a reflection of the striking two-tone colour scheme, with the paper tray and ADF in gunmetal grey, contrasted by a vibrant white band across the middle. It boasts a single paper tray capable of holding 250 sheets, with an extendable capture tray.

There are no physical buttons, save for a single illuminated on/off, with HP opting instead for a 6.75cm colour touchscreen display, which is one of the slickest and most ergonomic we’ve seen. It can be kept flush to the vertical, or angled to make it even easier to use, whilst offering a slick, lagless and intuitive UI that feels more like navigating a tablet.

HP OfficeJet Pro 9012e review: Features

HP has worked hard on making its printers ‘smart’. It was the first company to offer “ink as a service” in the form of HP Instant Ink, whereby the printer sends a message to the servers when cartridges begin to run low, and by the time they’re needed, replacements have arrived on the doormat. HP claims that this can save users up to 70% on ink, and with the first six months of your subscription free of charge, it’s an appealing feature, especially to home users.

Instant Ink now forms a part of HP+, a cloud-based membership scheme which combines ink refills, an extended warranty and a glut of cloud services aimed at remote and mobile printing. Among the more unusual for a SOHO machine, after a bit of setup you can print directly from a network folder or NAS, and even save scans to services such as Sharepoint and Google Drive, all with just a few taps at the touchscreen. Cloud-based services involve signing up for an HP+ account, which also allows you to manage your instant ink account, but you can assign rights to additional users. We wouldn’t want to use this in a large office though.

Physically, features include a USB 3.0 port on the left-hand side, ideal for printing direct from a memory stick. There’s two RJ11 ports on the back, for rigging up the ‘nice to have’ fax facility, as well as an ethernet port, an extra USB 2.0 port, and a figure-8 power supply port. There’s support for Bluetooth Smart and Wifi Direct too, as well as 802.11a/b/g/n Wifi.

HP OfficeJet Pro 9012e review: Setup

Setting up the 9012e is a breeze and can be done directly from the touchscreen, though you’ll probably find it easier by using the HP Smart package on your computer or mobile. You’ll be strongly encouraged to sign up for HP+, a necessity for claiming your free ink, but if you prefer to go it alone, a full set of cartridges will cost you £90 (inc VAT) and last around 700 pages (colour) and 2000 pages (black). XL cartridges are listed by HP, but we were unable to find any UK stock or pricing at time of writing.

HP offers a business tariff for Instant Ink, costing £22.49 (inc VAT) per month for up to 700 pages per month, with overages charged at £1 per 10 sheets. Whilst this may well be ample for a small operation, it further illustrates that the 9012e is not aimed at large scale deployments, where running costs would soon spiral, especially as each printer requires a separate subscription.

The Instant Ink offering makes it difficult to do a side-by-side cost per page, but we’ve worked out on the assumptions of an Instant Ink subscription at the Business tariff of £22.49 per month, versus buying a full set of cartridges for £89.99. In these two scenarios, the cost per page is 12.8p per page if you buy cartridges, or a mere 3.2p per page with Instant Ink.

However, there’s a major caveat. The black cartridge lasts for 1000 pages instead of 700. Instant Ink cartridges are always sent in complete sets, but a black cartridge can be bought outright for £29.99 - which works out at 2.9p per page. As such, if you do very little colour printing, it could be marginally cheaper to go down that route, but the difference is so negligible, it’s probably easier to stick to the Instant Ink option.

So that leaves us with a machine that can be either extremely expensive, or extremely cheap to run. The Brother MFC-J4540DW, which has no ink subscription offer and works out at 3.3p per page makes the HP ‘standalone’ option of 12.8p seem exceptionally expensive. Go for the subscription, and the HP is slightly cheaper (3.2p per page) and gives you the peace of mind that you’ll always have enough ink.

HP OfficeJet Pro 9012e review: Performance

The 9012e is capable of printing and scanning at 1200x1200 DPI, an impressive boast, but high resolution always comes at a price. In draft mode, HP claims it will print at up to 32 pages per minute, even in full colour. Unfortunately, we achieved nowhere near this. We clocked 3 and-a-bit full colour pages, or 7 monochrome text-only pages.

But worse than that, the average time between hitting print and the first page printing was a woeful 40 seconds, during which there’s a mixture of worrying silence and loud whirring and clicking. That consistently long gap is extremely off putting, which is a shame, because even in draft mode, the print quality is excellent.

We found that lag disappears if you print a single page document at a time, suggesting that the delay is in preparing and spooling larger documents. Understandable in a sense, but we’ve used the same multi-page document in other reviews and found little or no lag whatsoever, so we can only hope that software updates will improve this.

Other functions fare better - scanning can also handle a generous 1200x1200 DPI and the results are everything you would hope for in terms of colour reproduction and legibility. The copy facility supports up to 99 duplicates in a single print run, and like an actual photocopier, you can shrink and blow up images directly, without the need to manipulate them on the computer. We weren’t able to try the fax facility, but we like that you can send a fax directly from your device, without putting a paper copy on the scanner bed.

HP’s documentation gives assurances that it will work seamlessly with Windows 8.x, 10 and 11, Linux, Chrome OS, MacOS, Android and iOS. In fact the only omissions are the EOL Windows XP and Vista. Having said that, however, we originally did our tests in Windows 11 and found the performance so poor that we had to reevaluate it in a more stable Windows 10 environment in order to gain an accurate picture of its capabilities. We trust that Windows 11 support will improve, but do bear this in mind if you’re planning to upgrade in the near future.

HP OfficeJet Pro 9012e review: Verdict

There’s nothing to make the OfficeJet Pro 9012e a bad MFP, but there’s not enough to make it a great one. The problem is that HP seems to have thrown the kitchen sink at this model without being entirely clear why. SOHO users will find it overpowered and overpriced for occasional jobs, while office users will find the single 250-sheet paper tray and 700-sheet cartridges very limiting. Moreover, the extra bells and whistles such as mobile printing may be less relevant for larger organisations seeking to use them for small workgroups.

What it does, it does well, but slowly and noisily. The touchscreen menu system is superb, but offers a mind boggling array of options, many of which you won’t want anyone else fiddling with anyway. Not only are there better options for an MFP right now (like the Brother MFC-j4540DW we reviewed recently), there are actually better value and better performing HP MFPs out there, and at nearly £140 before VAT, we expected more. A lower price with fewer features and better core performance would have made this model far more of a contender, but as it is, it’s a jack of all trades, but master of none.

HP OfficeJet Pro 9012e specifications

Brother would be the first to admit that its new range of printers, which includes the new MFC-J4540, is a product of the pandemic, designed to appeal to remote workers who want office quality printing in their own home. But is this luxurious 4-in-1 MFP the answer, or even a necessary upgrade? The answer to that isn’t exactly straight forward, but there’s a lot to like.

The unit itself is fairly compact for its functionality, fitting into a 43x35cm footprint on your desk. Its 25cm height allows room for a second paper tray, a relatively rare feature on SOHO printers. Its appearance betrays its hybrid nature, and it looks like a cross between a modest domestic MFP and a fuller, bulkier office device. The white finish guarantees it will never disappear into the background, but with its sleek angles and foldaway output trays, as well as the 6.8cm colour touchscreen display, it also looks smart wherever it ends up.

Although it can be attached directly to your computer via a USB 2.0 connection, additional connectivity is offered via wireless 802.11b/g/n connections or wired Ethernet cable. There’s even NFC capability, which lets you send a document from your mobile device to the printer with a single tap - though it currently only works with Android devices. As well as the copy and scan functions, it can also be used as a fax machine by attaching it to the phone line with an RJ45 cable.

Other features include a 20 sheet automatic document feeder and a 400 sheet total paper capacity, split across two paper trays which can take multiple paper sizes up to and including A4.

Setup proved to be largely hassle-free. The Brother Connect app allowed us to breeze through the process of installing the four cartridges and adding it to our Wi-Fi network with just a few clicks, once it had our username and password, and we were online and ready to print in around ten minutes from unboxing.

The app may feel a little underpowered for some; the print functions it offers are rather basic, but for the vast majority, this is as much as you need from mobile printing. There’s also a comprehensive maintenance section as well as the ability to check ink levels and if necessary, order more. The option to print remotely from another network is available too, but for security reasons, this has to be configured separately.

For more robust print management, the J4540DW uses Brother’s iPrint&Scan software suite for Windows. Rather confusingly, there is an app with the same name for mobile devices, but it’s not compatible with this range. The Windows version offers a few “nice to haves”, including workflows for automating tasks such as printing documents and publishing them to Sharepoint or even printing to all devices on a given domain. There are also integrations with Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive.

Perhaps the best way to control your printer is the display, which can be angled for easier viewing, and offers a clean, responsive touch interface to control all aspects of setup, everyday use and maintenance. These are bolstered by hardware buttons for power, home, back and cancel functions, plus the aforementioned NFC pad for direct connection to your mobile.

That mention of Sharepoint is a clue to one of this device’s secret weapons which allow it to bridge the gap between home and the office. As well as working autonomously, IT Admins are given everything they need to deploy this printer from a remote network or domain. It can even be deployed to a virtual desktop. Full details for SysAdmins are on the Brother support pages.

When it comes to actually printing, the 1200x2400 dpi resolution (both monochrome and colour) should produce sharp results, and it does, but sadly the colours feel washed out and faded, particularly in the blue/green part of the spectrum. We printed a photo taken on one of the sunniest days of 2021, and it looked almost autumnal.

We should note that Brother recommends its own “Innobella” brand for both printer and ink, warning (as most printer manufacturers do) that using anything else will degrade results. Brother didn’t supply any Innobella paper for this review, which could be the cause of our banding issues, but we can’t definitively confirm that using Brother’s special paper would fix it - nor should it be necessary to use a specific kind of paper, especially in a device made for home workers. On the other hand, both spot colour and monochrome prints fared better, with crisp, clean text, clear charts and defined tables.

Brother claims print speeds of up to 20 pages per minute. Our real world test, using a 20 page magazine, mixing text and graphics, was significantly slower, however, yielding 16ppm in black and white, but a mere 3.7 ppm in full colour. Even with plain black and white text, we couldn’t reproduce 20ppm - the fastest we could get was 16.

Scanning was incredibly impressive though, taking just 11 seconds for a full colour A4 scan at 1200x1200dpi. The results were clear, accurate and without any trace artifacts on the result.

This brings us onto running costs, and a set of standard capacity cartridges is included with the printer. The black cartridge is capable of up to 3,000 pages and, retailing at £21.99 (exc VAT), it makes monochrome printing a very reasonable 0.7p per page. Add in the three color cartridges (Magenta, Cyan and Yellow) with a 1,500 page capacity at £16.99 (exc VAT) and that brings the cost of a colour print to 3.3p per page.

However, if you’re willing to accept the initial outlay, you can bring those prices down significantly with XL cartridges. An XL black cartridge with a 6,000-page yield costs £39.99 (exc VAT), and while the cost per page is unchanged from the standard capacity, adding the three colour XL cartridges, priced at £43.79 each for a 5,000 page yield, works out at a significantly more reasonable 2.6p for a colour print. Even after adding back the VAT, you’re left with a much cheaper offering, both compared to standard cartridges and indeed most other inkjet printers.

There’s little doubt that this is a powerful workhorse, but it does come with some serious caveats. The large initial outlay compared to a domestic MFP, and emphasis on fast monochrome prints over quality photo reproduction suggests that this is an MFP designed for deployment by companies for their home workers. The main downside to this is that if it doesn’t meet all your needs for home and work, you’re likely to end up with not one but two MFPs in your home office, and that takes up a significant amount of desk space.

Alternatively, if you’re buying it for yourself, the initial outlay for new cartridges is on the high side compared to, for example HP’s Instant Ink scheme, and although the resulting cost per page is attractive, there are better ways of self-financing your printing needs from better all-rounder MFPs for both work and play. In what is almost a new category of MFP, this is a promising start, but it’s definitely at its best when supplied by companies to remote workers, rather than one for SOHO purchasers.

Brother MFC-J4540DW specifications

The days of overpriced ink cartridges are over. This clever A4 colour MFP uses Epson’s ink bottle system to deliver ultra-economical running costs, working out to just 0.2p per mono page and 0.8p for colour.

The idea of refilling the reservoirs yourself might sound fiddly, but it really couldn’t be easier. The bottles have leak-free valves in their nozzles, and are keyed so they will only fit the correct port in the front-mounted ink tanks. Just slot each one in and let gravity do the rest: they will stop pouring when the tanks are full.

The ET-5880 isn’t short on features, either. It’s easy to use, with a large 10.9cm colour touchscreen. It combines print, copy, scan and fax functions, and it can connect over USB, Ethernet or 802.11n wireless, with support for both Wi-Fi Direct and AirPrint. Two 250-sheet paper cassettes and a large 50-page rear feeder also mean you won’t be constantly reloading it with paper, while the colour flatbed scanner provides a 50-page duplex ADF.

Installation proved swift. Epson’s setup utility for Windows discovered the ET-5880 on our network, installed the latest firmware and downloaded the appropriate desktop drivers. It also loads a network status monitor, a fax utility and Epson’s ScanSmart tool for pulling in scans over the network, which can be saved locally or plonked into a Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive or OneDrive account.

The install routine also invites you to register the ET-5880 with Epson’s Connect cloud portal. This enables remote workers to print documents over the internet using a standard Windows driver, or by emailing attachments to a custom address. The portal can also connect to cloud services – we added our Dropbox and Google Drive accounts, which then popped up on the touchscreen as quick-access scan destinations.

Mobile users aren’t forgotten, with Epson’s free iPrint app offering all the key features. After installing it on an iPad, we were able to directly print local photos and documents, print from and scan to five cloud providers and take quick snaps of documents to store locally or print.

If you want to control who can do what from the touchscreen, you can create up to ten user accounts in the web console and decide which functions each one is allowed to access. The Windows driver isn’t so versatile, but it does let you protect confidential jobs by assigning a four-digit PIN to them, which must be entered at the touchscreen before the pages are printed.

Print speeds depend on your quality setting. In standard mode, our Word document emerged at 25ppm, just as Epson promises, but in high-quality mode this tumbled to 6.3ppm. Colour graphics slowed things down too: our 24-page DTP-style document was printed at an average of 22ppm in standard mode and 5.2ppm at top quality.

In both modes, the Epson made a respectable fist of printing on cheap 75gsm copy paper, producing detailed mono photos and clean, dust-free fonts at sizes down to 6pt. Switching to heavier 100gsm paper produced slightly sharper text, however, and frankly with running costs this low you can easily absorb this extra expense.

We were particularly impressed by the quality of the ET-5880’s colour graphic output. It turned out bright, bold reports with no hint of banding even in large single-colour areas. It was the same with photos; we loaded up a sheet of 160gsm glossy paper and were rewarded with rich, sharp and detailed images with no edge bleeding.

If you don’t need the absolute fastest printer in town, the EcoTank ET-5880 is a great office all-in-one. It has plenty of features, good output quality and top-notch cloud support. The initial outlay may seem high, but thanks to Epson’s phenomenally low running costs, most businesses will recoup this in no time at all.

Epson EcoTank ET-5880 specifications

Technology is usually about all the whistles and bells, but sometimes, it pays to find something that does one job brilliantly. Canon’s latest PIXMA printer is aimed at high-yield, monochrome printing, with simple maintenance and Wi-Fi connectivity, making it a perfect workhorse for a small or medium office.

Even within the usual excellent realms of Canon’s venerable PIXMA range, there’s a lot to love about the diminutive GM2050. It’s a workhorse of a printer, designed for basic printing at a low price per page (pp), yet measures a modest 403x369x166mm, making it suitable even for the cosiest of offices. In fact, it’s small enough to sit comfortably on a desk.

Canon claims that the three supplied bottles of ink can produce 18,000 pages, which is impressive. On the other hand, the paper cassette holds 250 sheets, with the option for a further 100 sheets via the rear input, so if you’re serious about using it for a huge print job, you’ll need someone popping back to refill paper and ink.

Bizarrely, Canon’s description of this device as a “monochrome” printer is belied by the fact that it comes with instructions on installing a colour cartridge. In reality, we wouldn’t recommend buying the GM2050 on the strength of this, however, as it involves draining the tank of ink before and afterward, like you’ve accidentally put diesel in a petrol car. It’s definitely a feature of last resort, and although it’s nice to know it’s an option if you’re in a pinch, we’ve focused on the monochrome functionality for this review.

Canon PIXMA GM2050 Inkjet Monochrome Printer review: Setup

Setting up the GM2050 was incredibly simple. We used an Android phone, but the process for Wi-Fi connection is the same across all clients - press the ‘connection’ button on the front panel and set the Canon Print software to start searching. Alternatively, the gigabit Ethernet port lets you add a wired connection. Our network was found almost immediately, and from there, the app takes you through loading paper and ink. We were up and running within 10 minutes of unboxing. It’s worth noting that the supplied software isn’t available for MacOS, but once you’ve set it up, you’ll be able to add it to your Apple machine through the macOS printer menu. Additionally, if you prefer, you can connect it directly via the USB port and use the printer share function of your operating system.

Canon PIXMA GM2050 Inkjet Monochrome Printer review: Performance

As this isn’t a multi-function printer, the most important question to ask is how well it can actually print. We undertook a 200 page print job for a local charity to put it through its paces and found it produced consistently crisp, properly aligned documents without smudges or artefacts. Although our test prints were largely text-based, where there were pictures or diagrams, the grayscale printing was clear and smudge-free, with ample contrast to make images clear and legible. We had no paper misfeeds, and alas, that’s not always the given it should be, so it’s reassuring to know that for a job of this size, it’s safe to go off and do something else, without the risk of coming back to a paper jam - subject to our earlier mention of the limitations of the cassette and ink reservoir, of course.

Refilling the ink with one of the three supplied bottles is simplicity itself. When the ink runs low, simply empty a bottle into the nozzle under the printer hood. Further bottles of ink, with a 6,000 page yield, cost around £10.60 (exc VAT), so the 0.2p price per page remains consistent after the bundled supply dries up. Incidentally, there’s a ink window on the front side of the printer, so you can see how your supplies are lasting at a glance. Auto-duplexing also means that you can set the GM2050 to print on both sides of each page as it goes, saving paper, money and the environment.

Canon PIXMA GM2050 Inkjet Monochrome Printer review: Features

The on-device controls, such as they are, all have a dedicated button - power control, connectivity on/off, wireless direct (for wireless printing without a router), Wi-Fi/LAN toggle, Network Information Print, and Pause/Resume, so there’s no squinting at menus on tiny LCD screens and no flimsy rocker switches to navigate them. In fact, we found that operation is so straightforward that we didn’t need to press a single button during our time with the GM2050, apart from during set-up.

One feature that we were particularly impressed with is the decision to include support for Canon’s mobile apps, allowing print jobs to be sent straight from your phone or tablet. Whilst more common in domestic printers, the mobile and Wi-Fi support make the GM2050 particularly appealing for small businesses, home offices and community groups - and indeed anyone who uses freelancers, temps or volunteers, as there’s less red tape on getting new users set up. The app can also be linked to cloud storage services including Google Workspace and Dropbox.

Beyond that, this is not a printer of whistles and bells in terms of additional functionality, Indeed, many of the features included in Canon’s software don’t apply to this model - but that’s kind of the point. It’s been designed to do one thing very well, and given the excellent job it does with large-batch monochrome print jobs, it’s very difficult to fault.

Canon PIXMA GM2050 Inkjet Monochrome Printer review: Verdict

The GM2050 lives up to all that Canon claims it to be, but may lack some of the flexibility required for the needs of a modern office. Having said that, if you’re currently using a colour printer for everything, it’s worth considering it as an additional printer to handle the bulk of your everyday jobs, saving more expensive colour ink and fancy paper for when it’s really needed. Equally, if your requirements are fairly basic and you don’t need all the bells and whistles that come with more expensive machines, its simplicity will be right up your street. The GM2050 may not be fancy, but it’s been built to do one job, and it does it effortlessly.

Canon PIXMA GM2050 Inkjet Monochrome Printer specifications

Cost-conscious SMBs may be wary of inkjets that are constantly running out of ink and demanding expensive refills – but Epson’s WorkForce Pro WF-C5210DW hits all the right notes, promising some of the largest ink yields in the business along with low running costs. Invest in Epson’s capacious XL 5,000-page cartridges and you’re looking at just 1.3p per mono page, and 5.7p for colour.

Even the supplied cartridges are good value. Rather than fobbing you off with half-empty starter supplies, Epson throws in a set of standard T902 3,000-page cartridges, which should last you a fair while before you need to start shopping for replacements.

There’s a good set of paper options too: the built-in 250-sheet paper cassette can be supplemented with a lower 500-sheet cassette for a very reasonable £130, while the 80-page tray at the rear handles stock of up to 256gsm. Ethernet, 802.11n wireless and USB 2 connections are all supported, along with AirPrint and Wi-Fi Direct, plus an NFC sensor for tap-to-print services.

Installation is a piece of cake. Epson’s simple setup utility spotted the printer on our network right away, and automatically went off and downloaded the latest drivers for it, along with the latest firmware.

Next, a desktop status monitor is installed, which allows you to keep an eye on ink and maintenance status. You can also check these from the printer’s web console, and register the printer with Epson’s Connect remote print service. This sets up a dedicated, customisable email address just for your printer, enabling remote users to print documents by sending them as attachments. Even neater, Epson’s printer driver links up with your Connect account to send jobs directly from desktop apps to the remote printer, and access can be secured with a custom passkey.

Print performance is fine for a medium-sized office. We found that Epson’s claimed maximum speed of 34ppm wasn’t attainable in the real world, but the printer’s 24ppm ISO rating proved more or less achievable. We had to wait seven seconds for our 24-page Word document to start printing, but it was then delivered in one minute flat at standard quality. The high-quality print mode is far slower, turning out the same document at barely over 6ppm, but you won’t normally need to use this, as standard mode is perfectly sharp enough for general office use, with only a hint of dusting around smaller fonts.

You should note that printing in colour slows things down as well: our 24-page DTP-style document came out at 20.6ppm in standard mode and 5.8ppm in high quality. It’s worth the wait, though, as colour quality is excellent. Our graphics and photos looked sharp and detailed without a hint of banding – even in large single-colour areas.

Access controls aren’t the most extensive we’ve seen, but you can password-protect the printer’s control panel, enable or disable the NFC sensor and create up to ten user accounts with custom restrictions. Confidential documents can be protected with a four-digit PIN for walk-up-and-print operations too, although entering the code is a little fiddly as the LCD panel isn’t a touchscreen.

Mobile users, meanwhile, get to play with Epson’s iPrint app. No setup is required – as long as you’re on the same network as the printer, it will be detected – and as well as printing directly from your device, you can use the app to connect to Box, Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive accounts, and search and print cloud documents.

In all, the WF-C5210DW is a top choice for small businesses. High-resolution printing is slow, but running costs are far lower than you’ll get from typical lasers in this price range, and output quality is beyond reproach. Dave Mitchell

Epson WorkForce Pro WF-C5210DW specifications

If your business is a moderate user of printers and you’re worried about the costs of consumables and maintenance, a managed print service could be just the ticket. Epson’s Print 365 scheme charges a flat monthly fee to cover the cost of all hardware, consumables, service and delivery – so all you need to buy is the paper.

There’s a fair spread of printers to choose from, but the WF-C529RDTW is one of our favourites. It doesn’t have an NFC sensor and its LCD panel isn’t touch-enabled – but it’s rated for a serious 4,500-page monthly duty cycle, and comes with 750-sheet and 500-sheet paper trays, plus an 80-page multipurpose tray at the rear.

It can also pump out a lot of pages before running out of ink, thanks to Epson’s high-volume Replaceable Ink Pack System (RIPS). The XL ink packs claim to last for 10,000 mono and 5,000 colour pages, while the XXL ramps this up to a massive 50,000 and 20,000 pages respectively.

A range of subscription options is available: the Start option costs £49 per month for a three-year contract, dropping to £37 for five years. That allows you to print up to 300 mono and 200 colour pages per month, with additional pages costing a very reasonable 0.49p per mono page and 3.25p for colour.

Initial installation takes around ten minutes, as you load the four ink bags into their pop-out trays at the front and wait while the printer fills its reservoirs. Epson’s install routine then discovers the printer (both wired and 802.11n wireless networking are supported), loads the drivers and updates the printer’s firmware.

The installer also registers the printer with your Epson Connect cloud account, and assigns it a customisable address, to which you can send documents to have them remotely printed. Alternatively, you can achieve the same effect by using Epson’s remote driver, which links up with the printer over the internet via your Connect account.

Printer fleet management is taken care of by Epson’s Device Admin utility for Windows, which discovered our printer as soon as it was installed. From its main console, we could view the status of the printer and consumables, check mono and colour page counts and run firmware updates.

Reporting and alerting services are also provided: you can create custom usage reports for selected device groups and have them sent to multiple email recipients at regular intervals, as well as receive warnings when issues such as paper jams or low ink are recorded.

As usual with inkjets, print speeds are a mixed bag. Epson advertises that the WF-C529RDTW can print 24ppm, but we only achieved this when printing from Word in the driver’s Standard mode. Our 24-page colour DTP document was slightly slower, at 20.6ppm – and switching to high-quality print mode saw speeds drop to just 6.2ppm and 5.9ppm respectively.

Still, text quality is very good. Even in standard mode we could see no evidence of dusting on cheap 75gsm paper. Mono photos did exhibit some vertical banding on Standard mode, but heavier 100gsm paper produced cleaner results, and when we switched to high-quality mode the issue vanished completely.

Colour quality for graphics and photos was excellent, even on cheap paper. Our reports looked bold and punchy, with silky smooth backgrounds in large single-colour areas. Photo printing on 160gsm semi-gloss paper produced sharp, detailed and clean results with no edge bleeding.

The managed print model won’t make sense for everyone – and if you’re on the fence about signing up, Epson’s minimum contract length of three years could be discouraging. For many businesses, though, the promise of perfectly consistent costs will certainly appeal. While the WorkForce Pro WF-C529RDTW isn’t as fast or snazzy as some rivals, it’s a flexible business-class printer that can’t be faulted for output quality and manageability.

Epson WorkForce Pro WF-C529RDTW specifications

The MFC-J1300DW is a small-ish colour multifunction peripheral aimed at the home or micro office. While Brother’s inkjets aren’t always the most exciting, this one distinguishes itself by arriving with enough ink for a claimed 7,200 full-colour prints. Brother says that’s enough to last three years – perhaps more pertinently it works out at just 4p per page.

Happily, this MFP isn’t a bust elsewhere. It’s well specified, with support for wired and wireless networks, and a medium-sized colour touchscreen control panel. On top there’s a scanner with a 20-sheet ADF. However, while the printer supports automatic double-sided (duplex) printing, its ADF can’t duplex scan, fax or copy.

This MFP’s ink arrives in a laudably small amount of packaging, and each chunky cartridge is visibly full. When they’re empty, there are “XL” replacements rated at 6,000 black or 5,000 cyan, magenta or yellow pages. Using these, ongoing running costs should be around 2.3p for a full-colour page – commendably low.

This is an easy MFP to use, and the results are generally not bad. It’s no slouch, delivering 12 pages of black text every minute (12ppm), and complex colour graphics at a fair 5.2ppm. Single photocopies were dispatched in under 15 seconds, while we made ten copies of a mono page in just a minute and a half. Scans, too, were fast, with a 300dpi A4 capture needing only 14 seconds, and even a 1,200dpi photo scan completing in less than a minute.

If this printer has a weakness, it’s the quality of its results. While nothing is poor, scans, copies and prints are all average at best. On plain paper, graphics lacked punch compared to the best inkjets, and black text was a little less crisp. Duplex prints were noticeably more faint than single-sided ones, and skin tones in colour photocopies looked slightly bilious. While scans initially appeared strong, detail was lost among the darkest shades.

Overall this is a solid MFP. While it appears expensive, don’t dismiss it: once you factor in its generous ink supplies and low ongoing running costs, it’s a good choice where value outweighs outright quality.

Brother MFC-J1300DW All in Box specifications

The OfficeJet Pro 8022 looks every inch the small office printer. It’s made from muted grey and off-white plastics, and proudly wears its ADF like a hat. There’s little clutter. The 225-sheet paper tray juts out slightly from the front, but the eye is drawn by the tilted, touch-sensitive control panel above it.

This MFP has most of the features you’re likely to need in a micro or home office. There’s copy, scan and fax support, along with both wired and wireless network connections. The printer can automatically print on both sides of a page, but the 35-sheet ADF is simplex only, ruling out unattended double-sided scans, copies or faxes.

HP has mastered touchscreen controls, and the example here is a case in point. The menu responds predictably to drag-and-tap gestures, making it a pleasure to use. There’s support for cloud services including Google Drive and Dropbox, but no USB or memory card slot for direct prints or scans.

HP has ditched the humble setup disc for an online installer that can be frustrating, and which seems overly eager for you to install the HP Smart app. We sat through several minutes of entertainingly corporate messages including “finishing software solution discovery” before getting to download conventional driver software.

In use, we began to discover other frustrations. With no second paper tray, you have to dig out the contents of the main cassette if you want to print on headed or photo paper. HP’s driver also seemed very slow to spool our colour graphics job – we timed almost a minute between clicking Print and the printer becoming active.

Plain paper print quality was superb, with jet-black, sharp text, and exceedingly bright and bold colour graphics. The only letdown was slight banding in some presentation slides. Scans were also very good, although our 600dpi photo looked as though it had been sharpened in software. Speeds were decent all-round, with the printer reaching 3.9ppm on our graphics test even including the long initial spool time. The only exception was our 1,200dpi photo scan, which took almost two minutes.

Stick with the largest supplies and the OfficeJet Pro 8022 should print a colour page for about 8.1p. That’s okay for a light daily workload, making this a good – if not outstanding – small or home office MFP.

HP OfficeJet Pro 8022 specifications

Brother’s X-Series MFC-J6947DW is a multifunction printer that thinks big. It combines large-format printing with an A3 colour flatbed scanner, a duplex automatic document feeder, integrated fax and three A3-sized 250-page trays.

Connection options abound: both Ethernet and 802.11n Wi-Fi are built-in – although you can’t use both together – along with USB 2, Wi-Fi Direct and AirPrint. An NFC reader is ready for tap-to–print manoeuvres, and Brother’s mobile apps extend print and scan functions to a variety of cloud storage providers.

There’s one aspect of the MFC-J6947DW that’s small, however, and that’s the price. At £412, the hardware is eminently affordable and it comes with high-yield ink cartridges, rather than the half-empty starters supplied by certain vendors. Even better, once you have exhausted these, you can replace them with super high-yield versions for costs as low as 0.8p per mono A4 page and 3.5p for colour.

Although this is a very economical printer, it’s not the fastest around, with quoted print speeds of 22ppm for mono and 20ppm for colour. We found that, in Normal quality mode, our 22-page Word document did indeed appear in exactly one minute – but speeds fell to 5ppm in Fine mode and only 2.3ppm in Best mode. Our 24-page colour DTP test print was delivered at 17ppm in Normal, but again Best mode was far slower at a mere 2ppm.

For everyday office printing, this isn’t a disaster. Normal mode gives perfectly acceptable results on 75gsm paper, producing sharp, clear 12pt text with only a hint of dusting. But quality drops off slightly at smaller sizes, so for maximum readability, you might need to use either Fine or Best mode, or consider switching to heavier paper.

Colour results are excellent. Our test charts exhibited beautifully smooth transitions across complex colour fades, and grey shades were impeccably balanced. Colour photos printed on 100gsm paper had plenty of detail with no banding, while switching to 160gsm semi-gloss paper gave us sharp definition without any edge bleeding. The rich colour quality from Brother’s Innobella ink made our sample A3 posters look vibrant and eye-catching, and these took a very reasonable 23 seconds to emerge in Normal mode – although the wait was a lengthy six minutes in Best mode.

As usual, double-sided operations are slower. Our 22-page Word document emerged at 13ppm in duplex mode, while a ten-page copy job completed at 13ppm single-sided and 5ppm in duplex-to-duplex modes.

The printer comes with all the software you’re likely to need, including Brother’s ControlCenter4 scan management and OCR utility, the iPrint&Scan workflow app for Windows and Nuance’s PaperPort 14 SE document management tool. A free iPrint&Scan app is also available for Android and iOS: we tried this out on our iPad and had no problem pulling in scans over the network, browsing our cloud storage accounts and printing selected files.

Access controls are taken care of by Brother’s Secure Function Lock 3 feature. You can create up to 100 function profiles, set page limits for individual users and restrict access to colour, scan, copy and fax functions. You can also decide who’s allowed to access Brother’s Secure Cloud Print portal, which allows users to print PDFs, images and Office documents directly from a browser. Touchscreen operations, meanwhile, include scanning to email and PIN-protected access to Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, OneNote, Evernote and Box accounts for cloud printing and scanning.

If your top priority is speed, the Brother MFC-J6947DW is certainly not the ideal choice, but for small businesses on a budget it’s a superb MFP. It offers a wealth of features with good colour quality at a great price – and the running costs are hard to beat.

Brother X-Series MFC-J6947DW specifications

The old wisdom would have you believe that only laser printers are suitable for business use. That hasn’t been true for many years, though – and Epson’s WorkForce Pro WF-C5710DWF makes a compelling argument for inkjets in the workplace. Along with a low acquisition cost, this small-footprint MFP offers a speedy 24ppm print rate, every imaginable connection option and laser-busting running costs.

That’s down to Epson’s replaceable ink pack system, which delivers mono pages for just 1.1p and colour for 4.8p. Notably, that works out the same whether you opt for the 3,000-page or 5,000-page capacity refills, so you can choose whichever you find more convenient.

While the WF-C5710DWF is a great-value MFP, it doesn’t skimp on features. It serves up print, copy, scan and fax functions, and supports direct USB connections plus both wired and wireless networking, NFC, AirPrint and Wi-Fi Direct. Despite the compact design, it can handle big workloads: although the standard paper tray has an unremarkable 250-sheet capacity, that can be tripled with the addition of a 500-page feeder tray that fits underneath the base.

The setup process went smoothly for us. Epson’s software installer for Windows automatically located the MFP on our network, updated the firmware and loaded the appropriate drivers ready for action. The rest of the software bundle includes a network status monitor, fax software, browser plugin and Epson’s Scan 2 and Document Capture Pro scan-management tools. These offer plenty of remote scan controls, and can be used to create and save scan job definitions for fast one-click access. The iPrint iOS and Android apps, meanwhile, provide plenty of remote print and scan tools for mobile users.

With all this installed, the routine passed us over to Epson’s Connect cloud portal, where we registered the MFP and set up a custom email address to which users could send attachments for printing. Off-site users can alternatively install a remote print driver, which lets them print directly over the internet.

The cloud portal is also where you set up Epson’s scan-to-cloud service. There’s very little to this process: once we’d entered our Dropbox credentials, the service immediately appeared in the printer’s big touchscreen panel as a scan destination.

Print performance is as fast as Epson claims – but only at standard quality. In this mode, our 24-page Word document printed in precisely 60 seconds, but switching to high quality sent speeds tumbling to 6.4ppm. It was the same story with our 24-page colour DTP document, which averaged 24ppm in standard mode but just 5.3ppm at high quality.

Another potential grumble is that the print head carriage and paper handling mechanisms are somewhat on the noisy side: we measured a peak of 69dB from one metre away when printing in standard mode. That applies to copying too, which means the WF-C5710DWF isn’t ideal for a small, quiet office.

Still, we’ve no complaints about copy speed – the scanner’s duplex ADF made light work of a ten-page single-sided copy, digitising it at an average rate of 15ppm. And print quality is perfectly good for office use, with the standard print mode producing clear, dust-free text at 12pt and plenty of detail in mono photos. Moving up from cheap 75gsm paper to thicker 100gsm stock resulted in cleaner prints, but will naturally increase running costs.

Colour output is a particular strength. The WF-C5710DWF turned out bright, bold reports with no hint of banding, and it’s a great choice for photo printing: we found that snaps reproduced on 160gsm semi-gloss paper came out looking beautifully sharp and detailed with no edge bleeding.

Small businesses seeking a cloud-friendly MFP on a budget will find a lot to like about Epson’s WF-C5710DWF. It’s user-friendly and packed with features, and its running costs are far lower than you’ll get from a similarly priced laser.

Epson WorkForce Pro WF-C5710DWF specifications

If you’re looking to minimise your environmental impact, an inkjet is the way to go – and you won’t do much better than Epson’s WorkForce Pro WF-C5290DW. Throughout our tests, this small workgroup printer never consumed more than 27W, which is around 2% of the peak draw of an equivalent business laser.

It’s cheap to run, too. With XXL black and XL colour ink cartridges, typical mono and colour pages work out to just 1.2p and 5p respectively. Be warned, though, that the printer is supplied with small starter ink bags; Epson doesn’t quote a page life, but our testing suggests that they’re only good for around 500 pages.

Despite all of this, there’s very little in the way of technical trade-off. The WF-C5290DW comes with Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11n wireless and USB 2, along with AirPrint, Wi-Fi Direct and an integrated NFC sensor: for £175, it’s a remarkable specification.

Initial installation takes a while, as once you’ve loaded the four ink bags in the lower tray, the printer has to spend around ten minutes priming its reservoirs. Things get slicker from here on, though, as Epson’s installer software discovers the printer, loads the drivers and automatically updates the printer’s firmware.

The installer also gives you a network status monitor and an E-Web browser plugin for printing web pages. Remote printing by email has to be set up separately, but this doesn’t take long: a wizard registered the printer with our Epson Connect cloud account and instantly assigned it a customisable email address.

For an even more seamless experience, you can install Epson’s free remote print driver, which appears as a regular printer in the Windows print dialog. Behind the scenes, it links up with the printer via your Connect account, allowing you to dispatch print jobs over the internet from anywhere in the world. Remote access can be secured with a global key, although if you have already installed the driver in unrestricted mode, you’ll need to run the routine again after enabling this feature.

There are plenty of additional access security features, too: we were able to browse usage logs from the Connect web portal, choose who was allowed to print email attachments and optionally block photo printing altogether. You can also configure up to ten users and decide whether or not they’re allowed to print from a PC and use colour. And for sensitive prints, the driver offers a walk-up-and-print option, which requires a four-digit PIN to be entered at the printer’s control pad to release protected print jobs.

Although the WF-C5290DW claims a maximum print speed of 34ppm, this isn’t achievable in the real world. The quoted ISO rating of 24ppm is a lot more realistic: our 34-page Word document emerged at 23.5ppm at Standard quality, which tumbled to 6.2ppm when we switched to High quality. Our 24-page colour DTP document was slower still, with Standard and High modes averaging 20.5ppm and 6ppm.

For a sub-£200 inkjet, output quality is really very good. Both driver modes produced sharp text with almost imperceptible dusting on cheap 75gsm paper, and colour reproduction was impressive, too: our test charts revealed super-smooth transitions across complex colour fades, while grey shades using equal mixes of C, Y and M ink were perfectly reproduced. Photos printed on heavier 100gsm paper showed plenty of detail, with no banding at all, and moving up to 160gsm semi-gloss paper yielded excellent results with not a hint of edge bleeding.

All of this makes the WorkForce Pro WF-C5290DW a superb choice for small workgroups with a keen eye on the environment. The starter ink bags aren’t very generous, but Epson makes up for that with a low purchase price and running costs that no laser can match.

Epson's EcoTank ET-2710 is the least expensive MFP with refillable ink tanks that we've reviewed. Typically of such devices, it's basic: while it has wireless networking, its lack of a screen rules out more advanced functions. Instead, there's a smattering of icons and indicator LEDs to control simple tasks such as single-page photocopying - there's no counter to dial up multiple copies. Paper handling is limited to a simple 100-sheet input and a 30-sheet output and, if you want to print double-sided, you will need to do it manually.

The EcoTank ET-2710's lack of screen rules out advanced cloud functions such as scanning to or printing from an online file service, but the ET-2710 does support Google Cloud Print. This allows you to print from any device in any internet-connected location, although the price is that your document passes through Google servers.

Epson's revised, leak-proof ink bottles make the ET-2710 easy to set up - simply remove the lid, invert the bottle and place it over the relevant tank. Ingenious keying makes it impossible to mis-fill, while the tanks are spaced so that you can line up the black and magenta bottles at the same time, then swap for the blue and yellow. There's no squeezing, and the bottles take only a minute or so to disgorge. Once loaded with ink, there is a longer delay while the system primes, after which the tanks have room to accept the last few drops from the bottles.

A typical home user probably won't have to think about ink again for another couple of years, as the ET-2710 arrives with enough for 3,600 mono pages or 6,500 in colour. While you could buy a similarly basic MFP for 50 or less, you would need to spend a couple of hundred pounds on ink to match what's included here, making the ET-2710 excellent value overall. Helpfully, Epson includes a three-year extended warranty, so the MFP should last long enough for you to realise the savings.

Even once you run out of the included ink, replacement bottles work out at less than 0.5p per page of mixed text and graphics, giving the EcoTank ET-2710 comfortably the lowest running costs we've seen from a printer in this class. You shouldn't be fooled into thinking it's a high-volume printer, however - it's not built for demanding office environments.

We've never spilled a drop from the revised version of Epson's EcoTank system, but the ET-2710 won't make a splash once it's up and running. It's a bit slow, delivering colour graphics at 2.9ppm and black text at just 9.6ppm - although this shot up to 16.1ppm in draft mode. Each borderless 10 x 15cm photo took more than two-and-a-half minutes, while two 10 x 8in shots took 18 minutes and 26 seconds that we're never getting back.

Scan speeds were similarly relaxed, with previews needing 11 seconds, a 300dpi A4 scan taking 25 seconds, and a 1,200dpi photo scan completing in just under a minute. We copied a mono page in 14 seconds and a colour one in 35 seconds.

Our results were generally good. Plain paper text and graphics were crisp and bold, although draft text was quite faint. Photocopies were faithful to the originals, while scans were excellent both for archiving documents and capturing photos at medium to high detail. The scanner did well in our tests to retain shade details among the lightest and darkest regions. By Epson's typically high standards, photo prints themselves were disappointing and lacked the company's characteristic accuracy in colour reproduction.

The ET-2710 isn't especially cultured. Its paper feed mechanism is noisy, making it tiring to share space with during longer print jobs, particularly faster ones such as text printing. Its paper input and output trays are basic, but although the latter is alarmingly flexible and lacks a paper stop at the end, printed pages remained tidy. The scan head moves with a classy and quiet whirr, but as the lid's basic hinges don't extend, you can't close it flat on a thick original such as a book.

Compare the ET-2710 to other 170 devices and you'll be disappointed, but it trounces entry-level MFPs and even high-volume laser printers for running costs. If you want a basic home MFP, don't need great photos and want to make the most of your money, it's worth its initial premium.

Verdict

This A4 MPF’s slow speeds and lack of advanced features make it an imperfect fit for busy office workgroups, but for SOHOs or sole traders, its rock-bottom running costs make it an excellent investment.

Despite living in the age of the paperless office, inkjet and laser printers are still the centre of a big office debate that has no easy answer.

Which one you use in the office is dependent on a number of factors, such as the initial cost, price per page, speed, longevity, and so on. There's a lot to get wrong, so it needs to be thoroughly considered before making the final call.

Back in the day, inkjet was often recommended for home use, while laser printers were more popular in enterprises and offices, but this isn't necessarily the case anymore. Laser printers used to be known for being faster and more durable, but inkjet technology has slowly narrowed that gap. However, laser printers are still known for being much quieter and with a smoother finish, with no warm-up time required before printing.

Are laser printers better?

If your decision is based on speed, there isn't much of a difference between inkjet printers and laser printers. The former used to max out at around 30ppm in black and white, and 10ppm for colour, while most laser printers could hit 40ppm in both colour or black and white.

Even now, with modern laser printers capable of 60ppm or even 70ppm, there isn't a significant gulf. A newer generation of office-ready inkjet printers, with A4-spanning print heads that can reach speeds of up to 75ppm. The only real advantage for lasers, in this area, is speed of the first printed page, which is around 7.5 seconds. Although inkjets are not much slower, printing the first page in around 9.5 seconds.

Where laser printers do have an edge is the finished product - the print quality. Lasers tend to produce clean, crisp black text and colour graphics, making them good for external uses such as marketing. Inkjets have improved dramatically when it comes to text, to the point where they're almost a match for laser printers. They certainly produce more natural results, particularly when it comes to photos, hence why the majority of inkjets are professional photo printers. An office inkjet probably won't offer the same photo quality, but it should be more than enough for everything else.

The workload is also an area that laser printers have an advantage over inkjets. Lasers are capable of anywhere between 2,000 and 20,000 pages in a monthly duty cycle. Inkjet users can only dream of such efficiency, typically churning out between 1,500 and 5,000 pages within the same time. That will be adequate for most small businesses, but if you are heavy printers and have a much larger organisation, then it's likely that a laser printer is better suited.

When it comes to the best printers for businesses, you can find both inkjets and lasers making the cut, but the lower asking price for inkjets makes them an attractive option for most deployments.

Laser printers vs inkjet cost per page

Again, conventional wisdom states that lasers are expensive to buy but cheap to run, while inkjets are cheap upfront but cost you more long-term. What's more, where a laser toner cartridge will see you through thousands of prints, an inkjet will need its cartridges replaced far more frequently.

Of course, conventional wisdom is no longer reliable. Look at real laser vs inkjet costs, and you may be surprised. On the one hand, lasers are getting cheaper, and the budget models are coming with smaller starter cartridges that run out fairly quickly, though the standard or super-sized cartridges will still have impressive lifespans. In toner alone, expect the cost per page to come in at around 2p for a black-and-white page and 5p to 10p for a colour page. On the other hand, business inkjets are getting their own costs per page right down, to the extent that some models can now produce prints for around 1p per page for black-and-white to 5p per page for colour. Meanwhile, the extra-large cartridges are able to print over 9000 pages (black) or 6,500 pages (colour).

There are other costs to consider, though. Laser printers deliver excellent results even on plain paper, so there's no need to splash out on speciality media. On the inkjet's side, inkjet-ready office paper is no longer much more expensive, and inkjets usually consume less power in operation than their laser brethren. As a result, running costs can be lower for some inkjets than for comparable lasers. Combine that with a lower purchase cost, and there's definite scope to save your business money.

Is a laser printer better than an inkjet?

Historically, lasers have been the mainstay of workgroup printing, and you'll still find that enterprise-grade laser printers offer more management tools plus support for more high-end technologies such as Gigabit Ethernet and IPSec, not to mention upgrade options like expandable memory or a secure, plug-in hard disk.

All the same, an increasing number of office inkjet printers have the same embedded management features as their laser cousins, plus features like secure pull-printing, where jobs are held in a queue until released at the printer with a PIN code, or wireless, touch-to-print and cloud-printing features that enable the printer to work with a wider range of devices or take print jobs from remote locations. While a laser might offer more management and security features, a business inkjet can still give you all the tools you need.

Today, there is no catch-all answer to the question of inkjet vs laser for the office. It's more a question of scale, workloads and the kind of tasks you need your printer to handle.

Lasers definitely win through when it comes to heavy workloads, networking and management features, professional quality prints and the ability to scale up to serve large teams, but office-focused inkjets aren't far behind in many of these areas and can beat lasers on purchase cost, running costs and everyday performance. Be realistic about your needs, and you should be able to make the right choice.

Nearly everything about Epson's mighty WorkForce Pro WF-C8690DTWF is big. From its desktop bending 57.4kg to multiple A3+ paper inputs and huge 75,000 page maximum monthly duty cycle, this 4-in-1 colour inkjet MFP is geared up for print-hungry workgroups.

The review model has 250-page and 500-page A3+ paper trays, plus an 80-sheet rear MPT supporting A3+ sizes and 256gsm paper. You can add two more 500-sheet trays and bring the whole thing up to eye level with a wheeled floor cabinet.

The printer is small where it counts though, as the high-capacity DuraBrite Pro ink tanks deliver running costs that beat most lasers in this price range. Choose the Epson XXL cartridges and you'll be paying only 0.9p for a mono A4 page and 5.1p for a colour one.

Epson didn't include a setup disc with the demo printer so we had to download all drivers and software from its support site. Usefully, the update utility upgraded the printer's firmware, loaded the latest drivers and added fax driver, OCR and desktop scan utilities, as well as the Document Capture Pro tool which provides smart scan automation features.

On first contact with the printer's web console we found that the colour ink tanks were empty so these had to be replenished with new ones. A print quality test also showed the black nozzles were partially blocked and required a cleaning cycle to clear them.

Epson claims a top A4 speed of 24ppm but we could only achieve this in Standard mode with our 24-page Word document dropping to 7.5ppm in High mode. Speed dropped further for our 24-page colour DTP document, which averaged 20ppm and 6.6ppm for Standard and High modes.

Our A3 test poster took 22 seconds to print on plain paper and 130 seconds on photo paper while an A4 glossy photo took 80 seconds. Duplexing our 24-page Word document mustered 16ppm and copies of 10-pages using the scanner's DADF were timed at 16.2ppm and 7.3ppm for single-sided and duplex-to-duplex operations.

The copy tests produced the most noise as we recorded peak levels of 68dB from one metre. On the plus side, we measured the printer consuming no more than 45W whilst printing.

Text quality is variable: the Standard mode produced the best results with High mode introducing a slight dusting on smaller fonts. Epson scores higher for marketing material with both mono and colour photos revealing high levels of detail, no edge bleeding and none of the banding that often afflicts lasers.

Cheap 75gsm paper won't do for photos as it'll wrinkle but 100gsm paper produces far better results. A3 posters are also pleasing to the eye with the DuraBrite Pro ink delivering rich, vibrant colours that really make them stand out.

The printer's colour touchscreen makes light work of copy, scan and fax tasks. Scans can be sent to email addresses, SMB and FTP network locations or pushed to desktops running Document Capture Pro where we could browse them and remotely select their local scan automation jobs.

Along with allowing remote users to email print jobs to the printer, Epson's Connect cloud service makes scanning even more interesting. Cloud destinations such as Dropbox, Google Drive and Box can be created from the portal, pushed to the printer and selected directly from its touchscreen.

Its low print speeds don't justify the high price tag but Epson's WorkForce Pro WF-C8690DTWF makes up for this with impressively low running costs and a huge duty cycle. Good output quality makes it a fine choice for producing marketing material and Epson offers extensive cloud support and a great scan software bundle.

Verdict

Its low print speeds don’t justify the high price tag but Epson’s WorkForce Pro WF-C8690DTWF makes up for this with impressively low running costs and a huge duty cycle. Good output quality makes it a fine choice for producing marketing material and Epson offers extensive cloud support and a great scan software bundle.

4800 x 1200dpi A3+ colour inkjet printer

600dpi flatbed colour scanner

24ppm A4 mono/colour

12.7cm colour touchscreen

Gigabit

11ac wireless

NFC

33.6Kbps fax/modem

USB 3 host, USB 2

Duplex

250/500-page A3+ paper trays

85-page A3+ rear MPT, 50-page DADF

Rec monthly duty cycle, 5,000 pages

613‎ x 755 x 620mm (WDH)

57.4kg

3yr on-site warranty

RUNNING COSTS

XXL ink: K (11.5K pages), £82

C, Y, M (8K pages), £112 each

Maintenance box (20K pages), £29

Overall cost per A4 page:

Mono, 0.9p;

Colour, 5.1p

Brother's DCP-J774DW is a compact inkjet multifunction peripheral (MFP) aimed at general-purpose use in the home. At this price, though, its specification is a little disappointing. While office users get useful features like automatic double-sided (duplex) printing, there's no fax modem, USB host port or automatic document feeder (ADF). Creative users are similarly short-changed: while it's nice to see a dedicated photo paper tray, there's no SD card slot for direct photo printing.

The DCP-J774DW uses a capillary ink system, where the heads are fed via tubes from stationary ink cartridges. It's a shame that Brother hasn't keyed the tanks to prevent them fitting in the wrong slots. Replacements aren't especially keenly priced, either: we calculated running costs of 11.7p per A4 colour page, of which black ink makes up a whopping 3.6p.

Tested over Wi-Fi, this printer delivered our 25-page mono letter test at a leisurely 8.3 pages per minute (ppm), although switching to draft quality literally doubled the speed. Colour prints were comparatively quick, however, with our complex graphics test arriving at a creditable 5.4ppm. Photocopies were swift, with a single A4 page needing 17 seconds in black or 21 seconds in colour. Scan speeds were a little slow, with a 150 dots-per-inch A4 scan needing 29 seconds, although at 80 seconds our 1,200dpi 6 x 4in photo test was quite competitive.

We were broadly happy with prints and photocopies on plain paper. Text and graphics were strong, and free of obvious inkjet artefacts such as grain, but colours were generally a touch drab. Although fine for occasional use, photo quality wasn't a strong point, with colours again looking a little under-saturated.

We encountered problems with this release of Brother's TWAIN scan interface, which wouldn't return a scanned image to the host application - we used the bundled iPrint&Scan app instead. The results weren't that impressive, looking dark regardless of whether we specified a "Document" or "Photo" original. We couldn't distinguish the eight darkest shades on the Q60 target we use to test dynamic range - one of the poorer results we've seen.

It's hard to avoid the impression that the DCP-J774DW is a bit too generalised. Lacking any stand-out features, and with mixed results and fairly high running costs, it's not great value.

Verdict

It’s hard to avoid the impression that the DCP-J774DW is a bit too generalised. Lacking any stand-out features, and with mixed results and fairly high running costs, it’s not great value.

HP's PageWide Pro 477dw is one of the most expensive inkjets in its category, but it's quite unlike any other you've used. The clue's in the name: while the print heads in a normal inkjet whizz back and forth across the paper, which has to wait for them to cross, in HP's PageWide system there's a single set of heads spanning the full width of the page. Freed from the need to wait for moving print heads, the paper can get a shift on. For the 477dw, HP quotes a maximum speed of 55 pages per minute - the realm of high-end workgroup laser printers - although at the default quality it's a more modest 40ppm.

The PageWide Pro 477dw isn't really out to get small office inkjets; it's positioned as a genuine rival to laser devices. Considering this, HP has wisely avoided small ink cartridges in favour of genuinely heavy duty supplies: the 477dw arrives with about 3,000 pages worth of black ink and 1,500 of colour, and replacement supplies are rated at 10,000 black pages and 7,000 for each of cyan, magenta and yellow. That cuts down on maintenance and waste, but it also means low running costs: each page of text and graphics will cost about 4.7p, of which the black component is less than a penny.

Several years after the debut of PageWide technology, there's still a sense of surprise that an inkjet can print this quickly. Send a print job, wait for the dust cover to motor open, then watch as pages cascade into the swoopy output tray. This was comfortably one of the quickest colour printers we've tested, dispatching 25 pages of black text at 34.9ppm, and extending this to 44.8ppm over a 100-page job when we dropped the quality to the lowest "General Office" setting. It delivered our complex colour graphics test at an impressive 21.2ppm, and reached 12.2 images per minute (ipm) on our graphics duplex test. Kyocera's Ecosys M2640idw was about 25% faster on the latter two, but it's a mono laser costing significantly more.

We're not that keen on HP's overly prescriptive TWAIN scan interface, but it's hard to fault the 477dw's scan performance. Tested over wired Ethernet it could deliver A4 scans at either 150dpi or 300dpi in just eight seconds. A 600dpi 6 x 4in photo scan was just as fast, and at 1,200dpi the capture completed in 27 seconds. Perhaps not surprisingly, photocopies were also brisk, with a single page needing just 11 seconds. A 10-page ADF copy took 34 seconds in black, or 44 seconds in colour. With the ADF handling duplex scans in a single pass, double-sided copying is also very quick.

As with any inkjet, there's a trade-off between speed and quality, but even at the fastest setting prints were far better than a typical inkjet's draft mode. The default "Professional" setting produced strong black text and punchy colour graphics free from banding, grain or other inkjet artefacts. Photos were about as good as we'd expect from a colour laser, although the colour balance of both photo and graphical prints proved sensitive to paper quality, with the best results coming on thicker, whiter stock. Both also missed the waxy sheen typical of a good colour laser print.

With the same caveats, photocopies were excellent, with unusually good colour and shade reproduction. Scans were also more than good enough for office purposes, although high-resolution photo scans appeared to have been sharpened, making them seem artificial at 100% zoom.

Broadly, the 477dw matches the quality of a colour laser, but it's much faster and quieter than any laser in the same price range, and costs less than half as much to run. It has some other key advantages: with no fuser to heat, its power consumption is far lower - we measured a peak of 58 Watts, compared to 1,079W for the Xerox WorkCentre 6515. Finally, it's quicker to get going: from standby the 477dw spat out a first page in just seven seconds, although after an hour sitting idle this did rise to a more laser-like 17 seconds.

In truth, it's hard to argue against the PageWide 477dw for a busy small office. Yes it's sensitive to paper quality, but any extra cost there is more than offset by savings on ink. Otherwise it's fast, comparatively stylish, and produces great results. We can't see a compelling reason not to choose it over a laser.

Epson's WorkForce Pro family of inkjet A4 MFPs pile the pressure on lasers by claiming substantially lower printing costs and a more planet-friendly outlook. On review is the top-dog WF-C5790DWF which delivers print, copy, fax and scan functions, teams them up with wired, wireless and NFC support and offers a 24ppm print speed.

It employs Epson's replaceable ink pack system (RIPS) where the ink bags slot into receptacles in the printer's base. We can't argue with Epson's cost claims as the high-capacity bags deliver a mono page for 1.1p and colour one for 4.9p - easily half that of similarly-priced lasers.

Epson offers three black ink capacities of 3K, 5K and 10K pages plus 3K and 5K pages for colour. There's hardly any difference between them for printing costs so it's more a matter of convenience as the larger ones won't need changing so often.

It's easy on the utility supply as we measured it consuming a mere 22W when printing. We find most lasers suck up between 500W and 750W when printing so Epson will have a positive impact on your energy bill.

The WF-C5790DWF is easy to deploy, too; Epson's installation routine spotted it on our network and installed all Windows 10 drivers. A firmware update utility ensured it was running the latest version and then proceeded to load desktop fax and scan utilities plus a browser plug-in.

For network connectivity, you must choose between wired and wireless as they can't both be active. The modes are easily selected in the MFP's tidy web interface and we had no issues printing from our iPad over AirPrint and WiFi Direct either.

We used Epson's iPrint iOS app on our iPad to remotely pull in scans and print files and photos. It provides a status view of consumables and allowed us to send files to the printer straight from our Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive accounts.

Epson's Connect service assigns an email address to the MFP allowing remote users to email print jobs to it as attachments. The Connect portal offers a range of access controls such as blocking photo paper usage or approved sender lists and after we used it create a scan to Dropbox destination, it appeared in the MFP's control panel for local selection.

The MFP meets the quoted speeds for draft and standard driver modes with our 24-page Word document despatched in 60 seconds but in high mode, speed fell drastically to 6.2ppm. It was the same story for our 24-page DTP-style colour document which returned 24ppm and 6ppm for standard and high modes.

Duplexing the 24-page Word document returned 16ppm but it's a noisy affair with the SPLnFFT iOS app measuring between 65-69dB from one metre away. The flatbed scanner delivers great output quality while its 50-age ADF returned 14.6ppm for a single-sided copy of 10 pages. Speed for our double-sided copy test dropped markedly to 5ppm but the scanner is a true duplex model and scans both sides of a page in one pass.

Epson makes a good fist of general office documents. Fonts down to 6pts are clean and sharp with no hint of dusting around characters. Likewise, we found mono photos exhibited good levels of detail even in darker areas - although the best results were achieved with heavier (and more expensive) 100gsm paper.

Colour photos using the high mode were also very detailed with no hint of banding in backgrounds, although they lacked the characteristic vibrancy lasers are capable of. Our colour performance chart confirmed this as C, Y and M solid colour blocks on plain and semi-gloss photo paper looked slightly pallid.

Colour quality is underwhelming but the WorkForce Pro WF-C5790DWF is still a great choice for small businesses that want a well-featured inkjet MFP at a low price. It's easy to deploy and use, cloud support is top-notch and it costs a lot less to run than a laser.

Verdict

Colour quality is underwhelming but the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-C5790DWF is still a great choice for small businesses that want a well-featured inkjet MFP at a low price. It’s easy to deploy and use, cloud support is top-notch and it costs a lot less to run than a laser.

4,800 x 1,200dpi A4 inkjet MFP, 1,200 x 2,400dpi colour flatbed A4 scanner

24ppm mono/colour

10.9cms colour touchscreen

2 x USB 2

Gigabit

11n wireless

NFC

33.6Kbps fax/modem

2 x RJ-11

Duplex

250-sheet input tray

80-sheet MPT

50-page ADF

Rec. monthly duty cycle, 2,500 pages

425 x 535 x 357mm (WDH)

18.4kg

1yr on-site service warranty

Options: 500-sheet paper tray, £118 ex VAT

RUNNING COSTS

Mono (XXL) (10K pages), £109

C, Y, M (XL) (5K pages), £63 each

Maintenance box (50K pages), £21

Overall cost per A4 page: mono, 1.1p/colour, 5p

Prices for A3 colour printers are at an all-time low - so now's the perfect time to move your marketing, brochure and poster production in-house.

That's not to say that commercial print shops no longer have a role; they can still be the right answer for high-volume, one-off runs of specialist prints. But outsourcing means dealing with lead times, shipping costs and the temptation to pay for copies you don't need to get volume discounts. In-house printing gives you more control over your processes, and reduces costs in the medium term. You can cut wastage by printing only what you need, when you want it - and have it ready for distribution immediately.

That being the case, it's no surprise that A3 printers are fast becoming commodity items. Intense competition keeps driving printing costs down, while print technologies are constantly improving: many printers are capable of producing stunning results that look just as good as anything you'd get from a professional print bureau.

Pump up the volume

It's important to remember that the cost of the printer itself may be almost insignificant compared to your ongoing costs. Cheap printers often require more expensive consumables; for high print volumes this can hugely increase your total cost of ownership.

A case in point: we've tested big departmental lasers that produces mono and colour pages for 0.32p and 2.33p, alongside much cheaper LED printers that'll do them for 1.3p and 7.4p. If your workforce prints two quires of A4 colour pages every day for a year, the LED printers will end up costing you 1,350 in consumables - whereas the lasers will do them for 425. Scale up to an A4 ream per day and yearly colour running costs for the LED printers hit 13,505, versus 4,252 for the lasers. That's almost the total cost of the lasers recouped in a year.

Clearly, before you spend a penny, it's vital to calculate your page counts and colour usage requirements. Remember though that average running costs are calculated using 5% coverage on A4 paper. If you're printing a lot of A3 colour posters and brochures, consumable usage will be much higher.

Good technology

Conventional laser printers are a great choice for business printing, as they're fast, unfussy about paper quality and very reliable. They're affordable, too: A3 models are quite a bit more expensive than their A4 counterparts, but still well within reach of even the smallest business.

LED printers aren't that different to lasers, but have fewer moving parts and cost less to manufacture. They require more consumables than lasers, so printing costs can be higher, but speed and colour quality are just as good.

There are still good reasons to go the inkjet route. The latest business models combine high-capacity ink tanks with big duty cycles, and are a natural choice for high resolution photo printing. Be wary of the print speeds quoted by inkjet manufacturers, however: these are often based on low-resolution draft prints. Printing at the highest resolution is often markedly slower - we've seen some models that, in high-quality mode, deliver less than one tenth of the quoted top speeds.

Printer or MFP?

Aside from regular printing duties, a multi-function printer (MFP) comes with additional useful capabilities. Some are even endowed with big A3 colour flatbed scanners, teamed up with automatic document feeders (ADFs) for copy and scan functions.

If you don't already have a scanner, this can open up new ways to handle documents, and cut down on wastage by allowing you to digitise documents for archival and send scanned documents as emails. Some units come with fax capabilities as well - a technology that still, even in 2017, has a place in many industries.

MFPs may also come with cloud-enabled features, allowing them to link up with services such as Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive. This allows users to print documents stored in the cloud, and scan documents directly to their accounts.

All business-grade A3 printers and MFPs come with built-in Ethernet, but it's worth looking for wireless capabilities as well. Even if the printer itself can be conveniently hooked up to a physical connection, features such as AirPrint and WiFi Direct make it easy for users to print documents directly over the network from mobile devices. Consider NFC too, to enable "tap-to-print" services.

Curb their enthusiasm

One potential risk of installing a high-quality colour printer in your office is that employees may be tempted to use it for personal prints. If you don't want your business paying for this, then look for a printer with proper access-control features. For example, Brother's Secure Function Lock can restrict colour printing, enforce per-user page limits and require NFC ID tags for local authentication. Kyocera's ColourControl HyPAS app can require users to enter a PIN at the printer's control panel to unlock colour usage.

You can also reduce costs by using cheap 75gsm paper for draft documents, and print in duplex (double-sided) by default. We've yet to see a printer that can enforce duplex printing, but encouraging users to do this can slash your paper usage, which saves you money and is better for the environment.

A final thing to think about is security. If you're storing personally identifiable information on the printer, this will come under the remit of the GDPR in May 2018. Internet-connected printers can be easily hacked, so make sure you change all default passwords immediately, and if you're choosing a printer with internal storage, make sure it can be encrypted.

A good A3 printer can make insourcing for SMEs a reality; many are capable of producing high-quality marketing material on demand. Whether you choose laser, LED or inkjet, they can often offer an impressive range of features. Shop around, and see which one will bring out your inner designer.

Brother's MFC-J6930DW is a business inkjet with connections. This A3 MFP comes as standard with Fast Ethernet, 11n wireless, NFC and USB 2, it supports WiFi Direct plus AirPrint, and works happily with more cloud and mobile services than you can shake a stick at.

It also dispels the myth that business inkjets are more expensive to run than lasers. Once you've used up the standard ink cartridges, opt for the high-yield versions and you'll get an A4 mono page for only 0.8p and a colour one for 4.2p.

At 23kgs, this inkjet is no lightweight and offers two 250-sheet input trays that can both handle A3 paper. The rear 100-sheet multipurpose tray provides a flatter paper path through the printer and along with A3 sizes, it accepts heavy 260gms paper.

The A3 flatbed scanner has a high 1200 x 4800dpi optical resolution and is teamed up with a 50-page ADF that has its own sensor for one-pass duplex scans. The colour LCD touchscreen rounds the picture out nicely, and we found it provides easy access to all print, scan, copy and fax functions.

It also makes light work of connecting to cloud services, with quick access options for box, Google Drive, Evernote, Dropbox, Facebook, Flickr, OneNote and OneDrive services. We selected Google Drive, loaded Brother's registration web portal on a logged in desktop, entered the unique code at the printer and enabled PIN protected access - simple.

Wireless access can be set up from the printer's panel but you can't have the wired connection active simultaneously. NFC provides tap to print and scan options for Android devices only but with AirPrint enabled, we could print directly from our iPad.

Using Brother's iPrint&Scan iOS app, we scanned documents to our iPad and browsed our Google, Dropbox, Evernote, OneDrive and iCloud accounts and chose files to print. We also used the Windows Phone version to network connect to the printer for scan and print operations.

So far, the picture looks rosy - but the bad news is the quoted print speeds are only possible on the driver's draft Fast mode. Even these aren't achievable in the real world, and our 35-page Word document with a full page text spread took 75 seconds for 28ppm.

Stepping up to Normal mode returned 18ppm while the Best setting took nearly 16 minutes for a sluggardly 2.2ppm. Similarly, our 24-page colour DTP print returned a pedestrian 1.9ppm in Best mode while a colour A3 poster on glossy paper took over 6 minutes to emerge.

Duplexing our 35-page print in Normal mode returned a noisy 10.4ppm. The scanner's top resolution delivers excellent quality but its ADF is slow, with a 10-page single-sided copy returning 12.2ppm and a duplex-to-duplex copy mustering only 5.3ppm.

Brother rewarded our patience as print quality is very good. Text at 12pts is clean and sharp with only smaller fonts exhibiting a slight dusting while mono photos revealed good levels of detail in Best mode.

The edge bleeding and print head scuffing we saw with Brother's old inkjet MFPs was mercifully missing, and the MFC-J6930DW delivered excellent detail, good contrast and bright colours for A4 photos and A3 posters. High resolution A3 prints have an unhealthy appetite for ink, but you can enable the Secure Function Lock from the web interface and restrict its usage to specific users.

Print speeds are entirely dependent on the chosen resolution but there's no denying this is one of the best connected MFPs. Print and scan quality are good enough for design work, running costs are commendably low and at only 177, the MFC-J6930DW represents great value for budget-conscious small businesses.

Epson's WorkForce Pro WF-8010DW is ready for hard hitting workgroups as this A3+ inkjet has an enormous 65,000 page maximum monthly duty cycle. It teams this up with impressively low running costs and also claims a speedy 34ppm top speed for both A4 mono and colour prints.

It's aimed at businesses that want plenty of paper choices to hand, as the single 250-sheet A3+ base cassette can be augmented with three more 500-sheet trays. The large rear MPT has room for 80-sheets up to A3+ sizes and it can handle 256gms heavyweight paper as well.

The WF-8010DW uses the same PrecisionCore print head technology as Epson's commercial printers while its high-capacity DuraBrite Pro ink tanks deliver laser-matching print costs. Go for the high-yield XL cartridges and you'll pay a penny for a mono A4 page and 4.3p for a colour one.

Deployment got off to a poor start as the setup disk wasn't included, so we had to download all the drivers and software from Epson's support site. The Windows drivers and software update tool loaded without any problems but Epson's Easy Photo Print utility failed to work until we had located and installed the separate Easy Print module.

Our first test print also showed the black ink nozzles were partially blocked so we had to run a wasteful cleaning cycle and nozzle pattern test to remedy this. With its nose wiped clean, the printer then proceeded to produce an impressive print quality.

The driver's Standard mode delivered the sharpest text, as we found the High setting left a slight dusting around smaller fonts. The latter produced superior mono photos though, with good levels of detail and lacking the banding evident in Standard mode prints.

Stay on the High road for colour, as you'll be greeted with bold, punchy reports and sharp, glossy photos with no banding or edge bleeding. The rich colour quality from the DuraBrite Pro ink really made our test A3 posters look good and we found them vibrant and eye-catching.

You won't have to wait long either; A3 posters on 100gms paper at the High setting took 16 seconds to produce. Even on premium glossy photo paper, the printer delivered an A3 colour poster in 129 seconds and an A4 photo in 75 seconds.

Alas, for general office printing, we couldn't get close to Epson's claimed speeds as even on the driver's Economy setting, our 34-page Word document returned a noisy 22ppm. Best mode dropped this to 12.5ppm whilst duplexing the document in Standard mode returned a cacophonous 16ppm.

The printer is well connected, although you can't have wired and wireless connection active together. We printed directly from our iPad over AirPrint and WiFi Direct and used Epson's iPrint iOS app to print files straight from our Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, Evernote and OneDrive accounts.

The Epson Connect cloud service allows remote users to email print jobs as attachments to the printer. After registering, we received a unique email address for the printer and used our account portal to create approved sender lists and decide which features they could access.

Businesses with a fleet of Epson printers will find the Device Admin tool useful as it allows them all to be managed from one interface. Along with scheduled usage reports, it can also apply device templates to maintain settings consistency.

With its huge duty cycle, the WF-8010DW has the staying power to keep up with print hungry workgroups. Real world print speeds are well down on those quoted, but for a sub-300 A3 printer, colour quality is very good - and it's cheap to run as well.

This review originally appeared in PC Pro issue 274

Verdict

With its huge duty cycle, the WF-8010DW has the staying power to keep up with print hungry workgroups. Real world print speeds are well down on those quoted, but for a sub-£300 A3 printer, colour quality is very good - and it’s cheap to run as well.

4800 x 1200dpi A3+ colour inkjet printer

512MB RAM

34ppm A4 mono/colour

Gigabit

11n wireless

WiFi Direct

AirPrint

USB 2

Duplex

250-sheet A3+ paper tray

80-sheet A3+ rear MPT, max monthly duty cycle, 65,000 pages

567‎ x 570 x 378 mm WDH

26kgs

1yr on-site warranty

As Canon's latest home colour MFP, the PIXMA TS5050 touts an attractive squat design with print, scan and copy features that can be connected and shared across any home Wi-Fi network.

Canon Pixma TS5050 review: Features

One of our favourite things about the PIXMA TS5050 is that Canon has employed its five-ink system, occupying both a pigment-based black for bold text on plain paper, and a dye black for better contrast in photos.

Another great feature is that the TS5050 has an SD card slot, which lets you print photos directly from a memory card. And you can also use Canon's Android or iOS apps to print wirelessly from a tablet or phone if needed.

In terms of operation, the PIXMA TS5050 is much easier to use than Canon's previous devices. While the combination of a colour 3in display and redesigned controls are a welcome improvement, we're delighted that the firm has decided to ditch its confusing mix of separate selection buttons and direction rocker. Instead we now have a simple cursor key with a button in the centre to confirm choices. These make navigating the menu much easier.

For paper feeding, the PIXMA TS5050 has a 100-sheet rear paper tray and front output feed. This generally works fine, but sometimes we found the feed slot cover would have to be manually closed after re-stocking with paper. Another annoyance is the lack of automatic duplex (double-sided) printing. It's something we would have expected as standard with this price tag.

Canon Pixma TS5050 review: Running costs, Performance and speed

Overall printing costs work out at about 7.4p per page for the PIXMA TS5050, which we believe to be a little on the high side, but this is because of Canon's two-black-ink setup. The dye black ink is barely used for plain paper work. Canon estimates this to last for around 4,000 pages.

Where the Canon PIXMA TS5050 really shines however is in performance. In our 25 page test, it managed to deliver black text at 12.3 pages per minute (ppm). While switching to draft saved ink, there was no other noticeable drop off in quality nor speed. Colour graphics performance was pretty rapid at 3.7ppm, reaching 4.8ppm in draft mode for only a slight loss of quality, and it took just seven minutes to print two 10x8" photos at the highest possible detail.

Print quality was uniformly very good. Text was crisp, while photos were sharp and detailed, although those looking for perfect quality prints may need to do a little tweaking in Photoshop before printing to achieve the right tones, as colours did seem to be printed a little warmer than previewed.

Overall scanning results on the PIXMA TS5050 were decent. Scanning over USB is relatively fast, especially when doing so at up to 1,200 dots per inch (dpi). A postcard photo at this depth, for instance, took about a minute and a half to complete. Scanning quality was particularly sharp with a high dynamic range that maintained both very light and very dark shade detail.

In terms of photocopying, the PIXMA TS5050 was slightly slower than we'd have liked, with a single A4 paper copy taking around 20 seconds in black and 21 seconds in full colour.

Canon Pixma TS5050 review: Verdict

The Canon PIXMA TS5050 is attractively-designed, with excellent performance and output. It's slight more expensive than some of its rivals and per-page printing costs can get a little pricey, but if you can stomach this then it's a highly capable and tempting SMB all-in-one printer.

HP's hulking OfficeJet Pro 8720 is one of the biggest A4 inkjet multifunction peripherals (MFPs) we've reviewed. That's largely down to an unusual printer design where paper is ejected away from you into a 150-sheet tray (most inkjets print towards you). The top portion contains a flatbed scanner with a 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF).

The OfficeJet Pro 8720 is perfectly specified for a busy small office, with support for wired and wireless networking, and a USB host port for walk-up print and scan jobs. Speeds are high, with HP claiming up to 24 pages per minute (ppm) for black A4 printing, and 20ppm for colour. The paper tray holds 250-sheets, but if you need to expand you can add another paper tray for a 500-page total. Both printer and scanner support automatic duplexing, so you can print, scan, copy or fax double-sided documents. Also, with this being 2016, there's a big colour touchscreen for control, and NFC for quick and easy pairing with mobile devices.

This MFP's touchscreen is intuitive, but not as responsive as HP's' best. We were disappointed to find a few simple office features were missing: there's no option to secure a print job, and from an inserted USB stick you can only print photos, not PDF or other document files. It's also a shame to find no bypass feed for special media.

These relatively minor grumbles aside, there's a lot to like about the OfficeJet Pro 8720. It's a particularly fast printer, delivering our black text test at 21.4 pages per minute (ppm), and at draft quality reaching 25.4ppm - faster than HP's claimed speed. Colour prints were impressively fast, too: its 8.6ppm on our graphics-heavy test is well above average. Fortunately, this speed doesn't come at the cost of quality: black text was crisp and dark, and graphics were strong and free of obvious grain or streaking - although we did spot a small amount of bleed through on our 80gsm test paper.

Photocopy quality was also very high, with single copies taking about 14 seconds, and a 10-page mono copy just 65 seconds. The same job in colour needed 90 seconds, which is still quite quick. Scan performance was a bit less impressive: while a 300 dots-per-inch (dpi) A4 scan took just nine seconds, there was a 46-second wait for a 600dpi photo scan. We're not fans of HP's over-simplified TWAIN scan interface, in which 150dpi scans aren't usually available. This MFP also failed to scan at 1,200dpi unless we completed a preview first and, as usual, scans at 600dpi and above appeared to have been digitally sharpened, with no opt-out.

While it's not perfect, this is generally a very good MFP. It's helped by reasonable ink costs of about a penny per black A4 page, or 4.3p in full colour - calculated for the 953XL colour and 957XL black cartridges. At this price, if you can live without a PCL driver, we'd recommend Epson's WorkForce Pro WF-5620DWF. If not, the OfficeJet Pro 8720 is a decent alternative.

Verdict

The HP OfficeJet Pro 8720 is a solid all-rounder, with reasonable printing costs and good print quality. There are a few unfortunate niggles that hold it back, but overall, it's a very solid small business printer.

Canon's PIXMA MG5750 is the latest in a long line of inkjet multifunction peripherals (MFPs) designed for the home. It's a squat, smart looking device, made from high quality black plastics. It's quite well specified: it can print, scan and copy, print automatically on both sides of a sheet of paper (duplex printing), and you can connect and share it on a wireless network. There's no fax modem, however. As you might expect, there's support for printing from or scanning to cloud services including Google Drive, but signing the printer up is far more involved than it is for products from rival manufacturers such as HP.

As a mid-range device, this PIXMA gets Canon's unusual five-ink print engine, which combines dye-based black, cyan, magenta and yellow inks with a bigger, pigment black tank for better text printing. While that's a good thing, we're disappointed that the MG5750 is lumbered with a clunky control system. Rather than touch input, its menus are navigated with a four-way rocker switch paired with three dedicated buttons below the screen - we've long criticised this setup, which can be inconsistent and confusing.

The MG5750 inherits another feature we've criticised before. Its ink cartridges are reached by raising up the cantilevered control panel, but the access is a bit restricted at the rear of each slot. Also, although the slots are clearly marked, it is physically possible to insert the dye-based cartridges in the wrong slot - we're not sure why there's no keying to prevent this. The printer's paper trays have an unusual layout where printed pages spill onto a stop that pivots out of the input tray - it looks basic, but the neat design does keep everything tidy.

Fortunately, these fairly minor grumbles couldn't spoil another great mid-range home MFP. While it isn't exactly fast, it delivered standard quality text at 11.5 pages per minute (ppm), and produced our complex colour graphics test at 3.6ppm, which is fine at this price. The scanner was quick enough at low resolutions, with a 300 dots per inch (dpi) A4 scan needing just 19 seconds, but even using a USB connection, we needed 103 seconds to capture a postcard-sized photo at 1,200dpi. Making a black photocopy of an A4 page took just 13 seconds, but in colour this rose to 30 seconds.

Undoubtedly, this MFP's best feature is the all-round high quality of its results. Text and graphics printed on plain paper were bold and crisp, while its photo prints were as good as you'll get from a mid-range inkjet - free of grain, and impressively sharp. Photocopies were faithful to the original, while scans were also sharp, with accurate colours and a high dynamic range.

Stick to Canon's XL ink cartridges and this MFP will print each A4 page of mixed text and graphics for about 6.3p, which is competitive. While we've a couple of minor reservations about its design, the MG5750 is affordable to buy and run, has decent speeds and delivers great quality results. It's a great all-rounder for a home office, and wins our Editor's Choice award.

Verdict

The design isn't perfect, but a cheap cost and competitive running speeds coupled with good speeds and sharp results make this an excellent printer for home or small office use.

Over the last three years HP's PageWide technology has become a revolutionary force in the A4 office printer market, giving businesses a real alternative to the office laser printer with higher speeds and lower costs. Yet HP's ambitions never ended there. One of PageWide's key strengths has always been its ability to scale, as proven by its adoption for the large-format production printers in HP's PageWide XL range, and for full-sized commercial printers in the HP PageWide Web Press line. Now PageWide is ready to transform one of printing's biggest, most competitive markets the $55 billion A3 office printer market as part of HP's new sixteen-strong line-up of A3 Multifunction Printers (MFPs).

The PageWide difference

PageWide is an inkjet-based technology, but one that takes a different path from the inkjet printers you might see in smaller businesses or the home. Where they have a single, narrow printhead that has to move across the page while the paper rolls through the feed mechanism underneath, PageWide printers use an array of printheads spanning the whole width of the page. With over 40,000 nozzles depositing tiny droplets of ink across the A4 page at once, PageWide is a more efficient way to print.

Let's break that down. When only the paper moves underneath the printhead you can reach much higher speeds, allowing PageWide printers to match and even beat laser printers on performance. The technology is also more energy efficient, while running costs drop, particularly when it comes to colour. What's more, with fewer moving parts there's less to go wrong. As a result, HP's PageWide printers are amongst the most reliable in their class.

With its new line of A3 MFPs, HP set its sights on transforming the business A3 market, including not just laser printers and MFPs but copiers too. From the start, it saw PageWide as a crucial part of this vision, because the factors that make PageWide such a strong technology for A4 printing make it even stronger for A3. And as HP's PageWide MFPs feature the same advanced management and security features as their laser equivalents, you're not making any compromises when you take the PageWide route.

Performance

With a PageWide print array covering the whole width of the A3 page, the major factor limiting print speed becomes how fast you can, with consistency and accuracy, move an A3 sheet of paper through the feed. Here HP has done some impressive work with the new A3 line-up, enabling even the entry-level PageWide Pro MFP printers to reach speeds of 40ppm (or 60ppm in General Office Mode). Move up to the higher-end PageWide Pro MFO and PageWide Enterprise MFP products and you could be looking at 60ppm or 80ppm in General Office mode.

To put that into perspective, these are printers competing in the same price class as 25ppm to 45ppm laser printers. With that kind of performance you can tackle the heaviest jobs without causing a queue at the output tray, get a proposal printed ready for a last-minute meeting, or even reduce the number of printers in your office. That's a huge advantage. Combine it with high-performance scanning, and you get an MFP that could make your copier obsolete.

Affordable colour

In the A4 space, PageWide has consistently come out on top for cost per page, both in monochrome and in colour, by up to 50% per colour page. That makes colour affordable for everyday business printing, so that it's no longer reserved for client-side materials or board-level reports. If there are documents where a splash of colour can bring a point into focus or help make key data in a chart stand out, it's a no-brainer. Your teams can use colour where they need to, for legibility or impact, and you don't need to worry about busting budgets.

Security and Management

Printer security is vital. As enterprises have learnt to toughen up their networks, hackers are looking for less obvious but still useful vulnerabilities, and any device with a connection, a microprocessor, firmware, BIOS and storage is fair game. Luckily, HP has invested millions in developing security features both at the hardware and software level, protecting against intrusion over the network and attempts to meddle with the firmware or the BIOS.

The same HP JetAdvantage tools and features you'll find in the latest HP LaserJet Pro and Enterprise MFP printers can be found in the PageWide Pro and Enterprise lines. These are designed to be the world's most secure A3 printers, and the PageWide models are no less secure than their LaserJet cousins. When it comes to protecting your documents, your network and your data, rival print solutions can't compete.

It's a similar story with management features, with all the centralised management, reporting and configuration features you'd find in HP's Enterprise lasers replicated in the PageWide Pro and Enterprise lines. In effect, managing a PageWide A3 printer is no different to managing an A3 laser printer; you can still set and enforce policies, control access, track usage and monitor supplies, with enterprise-grade tools that make handling a fleet of printers much less of a burden. What's more, these printers have been designed from the ground-up to work as part of a Managed Print Services solution. You can trust your chosen partner or provider to cover your printing needs while you focus on the real business objectives that could help your organisation grow.

More uptime

PageWide is now established as a tried, trusted and reliable technology, and HP designed the new A3 models to be even more robust. With fewer components inside the printer there are only three that might realistically need replacing, while the PageWide head itself is designed to be self-cleaning and work intelligently around clogged nozzles or alignment problems. These are printers that work for years with the bare minimum of user intervention. That's good news for MPS providers and even better news for the businesses they serve.

Perhaps most importantly, these are next-generation smart printers, complete with pro-active, sensor-based systems that can report back to IT managers or MPS partners to alert them should any concerns bubble up. If a component can't perform at the right level or gets too hot, you'll find out before things go wrong, not after a breakdown. Plus, when it's easier to pinpoint the problem it's easier and faster to get a fix, even on the initial call. That means printers that stay up and running every hour, every day for longer, and that won't let you down.

Paper handling and Finishing Options

If you think that PageWide can't cover the needs of the most demanding office, you might be surprised. Even the base-level A3 models can handle 30,000 page recommended monthly duty cycles, while the higher-end models reach 50,000 pages. Feeders and stands take you up from a standard 650 sheet input tray capacity to 1,200 sheets, 1,750 sheets or even 2,650 sheets, while a Stapler-Stacker/Hole Punch unit adds enterprise-grade finishing options to the mix.

You might not know PageWide technology, but it's perfect for A3 printing, primed for enterprise and fully-prepared to cover all your office printing and copying needs. And if you've already seen what it can do for A4 office printing, well, you haven't seen anything yet.