Affordable Color MFPs for the Office

Falling prices on laser multifunction printers make it a good time to add color to your business documents.

Eric Butterfield, PC World

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If your office could use a boost in productivity or stand to lose some clutter, a multifunction printer seems attractive. Having one device that prints, copies, and scans (and maybe faxes as well) sounds very convenient, not to mention cost-effective: Many MFPs cost less than if you bought each device separately.

My cluttered home office is begging for an MFP: An inkjet printer teeters atop a desk, a monochrome laser is squeezed into a shelving nook, and the less-fortunate scanner wallows beneath a pile of dirty clothes in the closet. I've been dreaming of the day when I can tell all of them, "You're fired!"

But two inherent limitations of MFPs make me wary. First, if one function breaks down, sending the "all-in-one" out for repair leaves you with an "all-for-nothing." Second, you can't upgrade one of the functions if its quality fails to impress.

Laser Quality--and Color--For Less

Laser MFPs are better suited than inkjet models for most business tasks. They tend to print sharper text and line art, which comes in handy if you have an intricate company logo. They're also much faster: Monochrome laser MFPs print text two to four times faster than inkjet MFPs. But monochrome laser MFPs don't print in color, of course.

Canon Color ImageClass MF8170c

Like color laser printers, color laser MFPs have been dropping in price, putting them within reach of small businesses that traditionally have relied on inkjet printers to put splashes of color on business documents. One of the latest enticements is Canon's Color ImageClass MF8170c, which sells for $1000. It's the least expensive color laser MFP we've seen. Though it's not particularly fast, its print speeds in our most recent lab tests (which haven't been published yet) were the same as the $999 Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 3550n: 10.5 pages per minute for text and 3.9 ppm for color graphics.

The Next Contender

I expect other color laser MFPs under $1000 to be announced soon. But so far, the only model that even comes close to the Canon's price range is the $2999 Xerox WorkCentre C2424DN, a solid-ink MFP introduced on March 30. The device is a single-pass machine, meaning that it applies its three color toners and black toner in one swipe; in contrast, Canon's MF8170c is a four-pass machine that lays down one toner at a time. Xerox's C2424DN is rated to print as quickly in color as it does in black and white: 24 ppm. Though we haven't put this model through its paces yet, in our tests no color laser printer has kicked out color graphics as quickly as it did text documents, even if it was rated to do so.

For example, the Xerox C2424DN uses the same print engine as the company's Phaser 8400N, which is rated to print at 12 ppm in both monochrome and color. In our tests, however, the Phaser 8400N printed text at a somewhat sluggish 9.7 ppm and color graphics at an impressive 5.4 ppm.

Only one person can use an MFP at a time. To appease the impatient, Xerox included an override function: If you need to make copies for a meeting, but someone else is printing too many pages for your short fuse, you can interrupt that job and resume it when you're done.

But what's likely to make or break the deal for businesses is text quality. If you demand that your documents have razor-sharp text, using a color laser MFP could pose a hazard. If sub-$1000 color laser printers are any indication, few MFPs built on their print engines will deliver the crisp text that most monochrome lasers produce.

All five of the monochrome laser MFPs we ranked in October 2004 earned an Outstanding for text quality. If adding color to your printing arsenal takes a back seat to crisp, clean text, your safest bet for now is a monochrome laser MFP.

Take Note

Print Your Own Signs: If you're tired of going to the local copy shop to make large signs, you might consider Avery Sign Kits. The kits include software with templates and clip art for sign creation, as well as sheets of paper that join together seamlessly with adhesive. The banner kit also includes a weather-resistant sleeve to protect your message. You make letter-size prints on your inkjet or laser printer, then assemble them as needed. A kit for making two 18-by-24-inch posters costs $18; a kit for making one 18-by-48-inch weather-resistant banner costs $34.

SOHO MFPs: Brother announced two monochrome laser MFPs in mid-February aimed at the small office/home office market. Both the $300 MFC-7420 and the $350 MFC-7820N have flatbed scanners and built-in fax capability. The MFC-7420 has a 14.4-kilobits-per-second fax modem and 16MB of memory, while the MFC-7820N offers a 33.6-kbps fax modem and 32MB of memory.