Printer Quest

All-in-one printers: print, scan and copy from one box

An all-in-one is a printer with a scanner on top. The print engine is either a laser or an inkjet and behaves exactly as it would alone; the part that makes it an all-in-one is the scanner, and that is the part the listing tends to describe least.

What the category is

All-in-one, multifunction, MFP, MFC and AIO all mean the same thing: a printer that also scans and copies, and sometimes faxes. The print side is a laser or an inkjet and every consideration on the laser and inkjet hubs applies to it unchanged. What you are paying extra for is the scanner, so that is where a review of an all-in-one should spend its attention.

How to read the spec sheet

Flatbed or ADF. Every all-in-one has a flatbed glass. Only some have an automatic document feeder, which is the tray on top that pulls a stack through. If you ever scan or copy more than one page at a time, the ADF is the specification that decides whether the machine is a tool or an irritation. Its capacity is quoted in sheets — 20, 35, 50 — and that is the largest job it will do unattended.

Single-pass duplex scanning. An ADF that scans both sides of a page in one pass has two sensors; a reversing ADF scans one side, flips the sheet, and scans the other. The manufacturer’s sheet says which. Reversing ADFs are slower and jam more, and the difference is not in the price so much as in the model line.

Copy speed and first-copy-out. Copy speed is usually close to print speed; first-copy-out time is the one that matters for the single page you walk over to copy, and laser all-in-ones generally win it.

Scan resolution. Optical resolution — 600, 1,200 dpi — is the sensor’s real figure. “Enhanced” or “interpolated” resolution is software and can be ignored. For documents, 300 dpi is plenty and the ADF matters more; for photographs, the flatbed’s optical figure and colour depth matter.

Fax. If the model number ends in a letter that means fax (Brother’s MFC, HP’s “f” suffix), it has a modem and a phone jack. If you do not fax, this costs nothing but is not a reason to choose the model.

The print engine’s own figures — pages per minute, duty cycle, tray capacity, toner or ink yield — are read exactly as they would be on a single-function printer, and the two hubs linked above say how.

Who it suits

A home office or small team that prints and scans in roughly equal measure, and has one place to put a machine. Sharing one network connection between printing and scan-to-email or scan-to-folder is the practical win.

Who should skip it

Anyone who scans twice a year: a phone camera and a single-function printer cost less and take less space. And anyone whose printing is mostly photographs — the scanner is dead weight, and a photo printer is a different product.

Where to start

Six of the 138 all-in-one printers reviewed on this site, one per model, across manufacturers. Every review is written from the manufacturer’s published specifications — how, and what that leaves out.

All 138 all-in-one printer reviews

Newest first. Consumables, accessories and parts that were once filed here are excluded.