Susan Silvius

The $400 (as of May 22, 2012) Brother MFC-9125CN stands out among other low-cost color laser multifunction printers for having decent speed and toner costs. Though this MFP is unremarkable otherwise, it's a legitimate option for a small office seeking an inexpensive print/copy/scan/fax machine.

The MFC-9125CN's engine uses an LED array instead of the more traditional laser, and the MFP comes with 64MB of RAM, expandable to 576MB total. While its monthly duty cycle is a midrange 25,000 pages, the more realistic print volume (per Brother) is 300 to1500 pages per month--a low to moderate figure for a small office.

Dell's 5230dn monochrome laser printer may cost more up front, but its speed and expandability make it an excellent choice for a medium-size workgroup. And with its three-year limited warranty with next-business-day on-site service (not to mention its affordable toner) it's a great buy in the long term.

The 5230dn offers plenty of standard features, plus room to grow. It supports a combined 350 pages of input from the main and multipurpose trays. You can add up to three 550-sheet drawers ($250 each) and a 2000-sheet drawer feeder ($900) for a maximum capacity of 4000 sheets.

The HP LaserJet Pro P1606dn monochrome laser printer aims at small offices and home offices that prize speed. Despite its moderate price ($230 as of August 27, 2010), it delivers plenty of pep, along with good paper handling. Unfortunately, its high toner costs make it a better fit for low-volume users than for high-volume users.

The LaserJet Pro P1606dn’s feature set is a definite step up from what you’d typically find in a low-end printer. It has a 250-sheet main input tray and, above that, a 10-sheet secondary tray for feeding letterhead or envelopes. The top-loading output tray holds 125 sheets. The construction of these parts seems adequate, but the output tray extensions are a bit bendier than we’d like. USB and ethernet connections are standard. The biggest disappointment to us was the control panel: Its two buttons and four LEDs all have icons, but no word labels, so you have to guess what each one means or look it up in the documentation.

The Dell 5230dn monochrome laser printer may cost more up front ($1000 as of August 27, 2010), but its speed and expandability make it an excellent choice for a medium-size workgroup. And with its three-year limited warranty with next-business-day on-site service--not to mention its cheap toner--it's a great buy in the long term.

The 5230dn offers plenty of standard features, plus room to grow. It supports a combined 350 pages of input from the main and multipurpose trays. You can add up to three 550-sheet drawers ($250 each) and a 2000-sheet drawer feeder ($900) for a maximum capacity of 4000 sheets.

The Canon Pixma iP4700 color inkjet printer costs just $100 (as of March 29, 2010), but it offers some impressive features for the price--and reasonable ink costs. It would be a solid choice for a student or a busy family.

Performance is good. The speed in our tests was reasonable: 7.4 pages per minute for text, 3.3 ppm overall with a variety of graphics, and 1.4 ppm printing photos. Using Canon's own glossy paper for photos, the iP4700 excelled in color accuracy and detail. A stop-action shot and a nature scene both looked pleasingly sharp and vivid. Plain paper offered more challenges: The people in our group portrait appeared excessively pink, for instance. Text pages rendered in an appealingly dark black, though with slight fuzziness around the characters and lines.

Lexmark's Platinum Pro905 color inkjet multifunction printer is a well-equipped, competent small-office multifuntion printer (MFP) with a twist: Users can access and view Web-based applications on its large, touchscreen LCD. Though few applications are currently available, the concept has potential. Comparisons to HP's Photosmart Premium Touchsmart Web ( Macworld rated 3 out of 5 mice ) are inevitable, but HP places a greater emphasis on prefabricated apps for consumers, while Lexmark expects its business users to build their own. The Pro905 can also be compared to Epson's Artisan 810 ( Macworld rated 3.5 out of 5 mice ), another MFP with wireless capabilities, but it lacks Web-based applications.

The Web capability is just one aspect of what Lexmark calls SmartSolutions, namely the ability to program a button on the device's 4.3-inch display for walk-up, one-touch execution of a sequence of actions (such as saving scanned PDFs to a specific location on a server). Though the unit includes a few presets, the idea is for you to design sequences for your needs. The SmartSolutions interface for doing so works pretty well, but more hand-holding is needed as you ramped up. In addition, the SmartSolutions documentation could be more thorough, as well as easier to find.

Epson's Artisan 810 color inkjet multifunction printer has speed and versatility to spare. Considering the price, however, we expected better overall output quality.

Though the Artisan 810's text-printing speed was just average at about 7.3 pages per minute, it finished at or near the top in all of our other print, scan, and copy speed tests. The output quality was less stellar. On Epson's own photo paper, flesh tones looked warm and natural. On plain paper, all photos had a filmy look. Plain text looked fuzzy and dim. Scans and copies were acceptable despite some general fuzziness; a photo enlargement looked murky.

The Canon Color ImageClass MF8350Cdn color laser multifunction printer offers a tempting purchase price ($699 as of 12/09/2009) and some good features. Like most low-cost machines we've tested, however, it has trade-offs--including pricey black toner and uneven photo quality.

Paper handling is a strong suit. Automatic duplexing comes standard; even the higher-ranked (and cheaper) Brother MFC-9450CDN lacks that feature. The automatic document feeder (ADF) and multipurpose tray (MPT) both take up to 50 sheets, and the main tray takes up to 250. A second 250-sheet tray costs $199, according to Canon (some third-party prices we found were higher). Legal paper causes the main tray to jut out the front; Canon provides a partial dust cover. The 125-sheet output tray lurks, cavelike and dark, below the scanning unit.

The HP Photosmart Plus color inkjet multifunction printer is well priced for student and home users ($150 as of December 9, 2009). It also pumps out great-looking output quickly--something that few other models in its price class can achieve.

HP makes things easy from the get-go. The installation wizard includes a library of animated instructions for setup and basic operation. The control panel features a 2.3-inch color LCD, surrounded by touch-sensitive LED buttons that light only when needed. Menu items include how-to animations, as well as troubleshooting instructions for clearing paper jams, replacing cartridges, and other everyday tasks.

The Canon Pixma MP560 Wireless Photo All-in-One color inkjet multifunction printer is priced to appeal to students and home users ($150 as of November 24, 2009). Compared with the like-priced Epson Stylus NX515 and HP Photosmart Plus, it offers better paper handling and ink costs--but slower performance.

In our tests, the unit's performance was generally middling, but sometimes better. The unit printed plain text at a rate of 6.4 pages per minute; graphics averaged about 2.6 ppm. Its scanning speeds were the fastest among our test group, while its copying speed was average. On plain paper, black text and copies looked just slightly fuzzy, while line art and halftones looked detailed. Flesh tones appeared artificially pink on plain paper but improved on Canon's own photo stock.

The Epson Artisan 810 color inkjet multifunction printer has speed and versatility to spare. Considering the price ($300 as of November 24, 2009), however, we expected better overall output quality.

Though the Artisan 810's text-printing speed was just average at about 7.3 pages per minute, it finished at or near the top in all of our other print, scan, and copy speed tests. The output quality was less stellar. On Epson's own photo paper, flesh tones looked warm and natural. On plain paper, all photos had a filmy look. Plain text looked fuzzy and dim. Scans and copies were acceptable despite some general fuzziness; a photo enlargement looked murky.

HP's Photosmart A646 compact photo printer offers a few surprising features for its midrange price. Compared with Epson's PictureMate Charm PM 225 ( Macworld rated 3.5 out of 5 mice ), which costs the same, the Photosmart A646 offers more versatility, but it falls slightly short in speed, print quality, and ink costs.

The Photosmart A646 has some impressive features. Most snapshot printers take only one size of media, but the Photosmart A646 accepts three: 4 by 6 inches (the size of our test photos), 4 by 12 inches (panoramic), and 5 by 7 inches. On the inside front panel are two media slots for Memory Stick, SD Card, and XD-Picture Card. The unit also has a PictBridge port and built-in Bluetooth support. Interestingly, the printer chassis is made from more than 30 percent recycled plastic; the carrying case is constructed entirely from recycled plastic bottles. However, while the case design implies portability, HP doesn't offer an optional battery pack.