People have talked about the paperless office for decades, but our offices are as paper-full as ever. Fortunately, Amazon, Best Buy, Office Depot, and Staples are more printer-full than ever, with choices guaranteed to satisfy the busiest home office worker. It's sorting through those choices that is the problem.
As with other kinds of technology, sometimes it seems as if printers for home offices are hidden among those strictly for homes (inexpensive, focused on family photos) and those intended for corporate offices (expensive and bulky, with stacks of high-capacity paper drawers and other enterprise features). To find a happy medium, you have to know your needs.
Know Your Needs, Know Your Options
First off, you almost certainly need more than a printer; you need a device that can serve as a copier and scanner, and often, as a fax machine as well. Such a desk space-saving combo is called a multifunction (MFP) printer. It's sometimes called an all-in-one (AIO) though that term often confuses shoppers since it can refer to a one-piece desktop computer such as Apple's iMac.Second, you need to choose the proper printing technology, which will be dictated by the type of document you produce most often: text, photos, or a combination. For straight text quality—especially with very small or large fonts—laser printers still have an edge over inkjets, to such an extent that the best solution for some users may be two printers. One can even be an under-$100, printer-only monochrome laser to crank out correspondence and other text.
For photos, there's no contest as inkjet printers are superior. Even the cheap ones can match drugstore prints, while more costly models surpass them. You should ignore the cheap ones anyway; a $50 or $70 inkjet may seem like a bargain at first glance but it won't when you spend more than that for its first set of replacement ink cartridges. Throwing it out and buying another printer is bad for the environment, just as placing copy or scan jobs one page at a time on a unit's glass without an automatic document feeder (ADF) is bad for your patience. Budget at least $150 for an inkjet MFP.
What if your documents mix text and photos or illustrations (such as charts)? Then you should check out color laser MFPs. While their photos are fine for newsletters or flyers if not for framing, today's crop of upscale, "laser-class" inkjets print excellent text as well—at all but the smallest font sizes.
If you can spare $300 to $500, you'll be in the sweet spot for office MFP printing. You can choose between an entry-level color laser like the Dell Color Cloud Multifunction Printer or a top-of-the-line inkjet like the Epson WorkForce ET-4550 EcoTank All-in-One Printer. The latter combines Epson's two prize technologies: a PrecisionCore print engine for extra speed and quality, and an EcoTank design that cuts ink costs by using jumbo bottles instead of small cartridges (it comes with enough ink for 11,000 monochrome or 8,500 color pages).
HP's answer to EcoTank is Instant Ink, a subscription service for printers that "phone home" over the internet when about to run out of ink; its replacement cartridges show up on your doorstep automatically. The HP OfficeJet 8040 combines Instant Ink with the Neat system for scanning and managing receipts, business cards, and other documents mentioned in my column on the home office from hell.
Alas, PageWide, HP's coolest and fastest technology (which uses a stationary printhead spanning the width of the page instead of a smaller one that flies back and forth) is priced out of reach for nearly all home offices. The PageWide Pro 477dn, the most affordable PageWide MFP, is $700.
Running the Numbers
More important than your MFP's purchase price or its advertised print speed (usually higher than the real-world results of PCMag's tests, and rarely an issue unless your print jobs run to hundreds of pages instead of a few) is its cost per page (CPP). Its CPP is how much you'll spend to keep the printer supplied with ink, toner, and other necessities. Manufacturer estimates based on International Standards Organization (ISO) cartridge yields are fairly believable, while independent assessments in reviews like ours are more credible still.A medium to high CPP—say, three or four cents per page for black and white, and 12 to 15 cents per page for color—may not bother you much if you print only a few pages daily. But it'll be a major drain on your finances if you print a lot more than that. By contrast, Brother claims the INKvestment cartridges in its new Business Smart Plus MFC-J5920DW will set you back less than a penny for monochrome, and less than a nickel for color pages.
Checking out a printer's duty cycle can also be a valuable gauge of practical pricing, measuring how many pages per month the manufacturer says it can print without strain—just a couple thousand for flimsy inkjets, and tens of thousands for office lasers. You should cut this number in half to get a realistic idea of how the MFP's hardware and CPP stack up to your needs.
These are, to my mind, the most important steps in choosing a home office MFP. PCMag's buying guides can help you delve even deeper into printer specs and capabilities, beyond typically desirable features such as Wi-Fi connectivity (which has become almost universal).
I will, however, throw in two more points I've encountered in my own shopping. One, look for a USB port and SD card slot so you can print from or scan to flash media. And two, consider where you're going to put the device. The most compact MPFs can share a desk with your PC but most require a separate table or stand. Some printers that look attractive on a shelf when closed won't fit when their scanning lids or paper input and output trays are open.
There are other, more specialized printers for particular needs—portable printers for carrying to a client's office, dedicated photo printers for churning out 4-by-6 or 5-by-7 prints, and even monochrome inkjets (how retro!). But a mainstream MFP is the hub of a modern home office; resist the temptation to skimp on the purchase price and you'll enjoy reasonable operating costs and quality output for years to come.
Do you rely on an MFP or on multiple peripherals? Are you an inkjet fan or a laser lover? Sound off in the comments or at homeoffice.eric@gmail.com.
Source → Let's Jam: A Guide to Your Home Office Printer Options
