The Product: Printer - All In One

Small businesses, home offices and general productivity gurus generally need scanning, copying and faxing capabilities. When tight on space and budget, your best option is to go for an all-in-one unit that can handle any of these features.

Recommendation: Canon PIXMA MP380

This is by far the best printer I have ever owned and is perfect for the small or home office. What I really like about the MP830 is how it performs multiple tasks well. As a copier, I have been impressed with its ability to copy double sided and store over 30 pages in its memory bank. Additionally, all of the features of your copy can be adjusted such as size, ratio and quality. The scanner is fast and like the copier, can be used with the flatbed or document feeder. It also lets you save documents/images either in JPEG or PDF format. Once you get used to scanning and sending PDF’s, you will probably never send a fax again. On that note, when using it as a fax machine I have found the MP830 to be much faster than my old unit, particularity when sending/receiving black and white pages. The color pages however are not quite as fast and usually take about a minute each.

The MP830 also features an LCD display that allows you to review and crop photos before printing. The speed is also very fast, it does 30 ppm B&W and 24 ppm in color. It also features dual sided printing, which is especially useful for cutting down on paper costs and waste.

Devil's Advocate:

With a unit that can do so much, be prepared to buy a lot of ink. The MP830 is well priced for the features it offers, but it does not go light on ink. I noticed especially when printing photos that I needed to change the cartridge sooner that I would normally expect. Wireless networking would also be a nice addition.