HP Envy 5530 e-All-in-One review: Home printer has print quality and cheaper inks in its favor

The $130 HP Envy 5530 e-All-in-One color inkjet multifunction (copy/print/scan), will cover a low volume of home use nicely. It's exceptionally easy to use, surprisingly capable, and produces impressive output. On the downside are its lack of speed and pricey inks, but HP’s new Instant Ink program might help that somewhat.

The HP Envy 5530 is rather compact for a multifunction printer. The scanner lid is so thin that at first glance, you might not recognize it as such. However, there’s an A4/letter-sized scanner on-board, and it produces good-looking copies and scans. You can even push-scan to a PC across the network—not a feature you see in every printer at this price point.

The Envy 5530 offers automatic duplexing, which isn’t a guarantee in this price range. Everything else about the paper handling is pretty modest: just 100 sheets (input) and 30 sheets (output)—if having printed pages fall right on top of blank pages counts as an output area. If you print any more than 200 pages per month, you should be looking at a more robust machine.

Setting up the HP Envy 5530 is easy whether you use USB or Wi-Fi, and thanks to a 2.65-inch touchscreen and exceptionally well thought out menus, so is operation. The display and all the controls are on the top left of the unit, and intuitively arranged. The only other feature worth mentioning is the SD card slot for direct printing and off-loading scans.

HP doesn't bundle a lot of software with the Envy 5530, but what's there is easy and capable. The driver and scanning utilities are nicely rendered and offer all the features most users need. There's also the now usual suite of remote printing options, including HP ePrint via email and Apple AirPrint.

While the assumption is that this printer isn’t going to be used much, it still bears mentioning that the Envy 5530 is pretty slow. It managed an anemic 5.9 pages per minute (ppm) printing plain text and a few simple, monochrome graphics on both the PC and Mac platforms. Snapshot-sized, 4-by-6-inch photos printed at about 2.5 ppm to plain paper, but to glossy paper that slowed to 0.8 ppm. Full-sized photos printed at about 0.4 ppm on glossy paper, while copies exited at about 3 ppm. Scan times are bearable, albeit two to three times longer than what you'll see from top-shelf units.

Along with minimal paper capacity and slow performance, the Envy 5530 suffers (as most low-cost printers do) from expensive ink. At least if you buy on your own: The standard 61 series black and tri-color cartridges cost $15 and $21 respectively, yet last for only 199 and 165 pages. That's 7.5 cents per page for the black and 12.75 cent per page for the colors, or a daunting 20.15 cents per four-color page. You can reduce those costs considerably with the $30 black and $32 tri-color 61XL cartridges, to about 16 cents per four-color page, but black still comprises a high 6.25 cents of that amount.

As to that "buy on your own" comment, the Envy 5530 is eligible for HP's new Instant Ink service. With Instant Ink, HP sells you massively capacious ink cartridges, then doles the ink out on a monthly basis. You can print 50 pages of anything—a bit of text, or a heavy-coverage photo for a flat fee of $3 a month (6 cents per page), while 100 pages costs $5 a month (5 cents per page), and 300 pages are $10 (3.3 cents per page). That's a whole lot cheaper than manual user replacement, but only if you print fairly close to the number of pages in the plan. If you barely print 100 pages a year, then just buying the cartridges on your own might be a better deal. Also, the whole Instant Ink deal depends on your printer having an Internet connection, and your being comfortable with HP’s managing your printer in the background.

Along with ease of use, the Envy 5530's other major strength is its output quality. Text is clear and sharp, even in draft mode, and color graphics are also surprisingly accurate. You might want to tweak the photo settings a bit for a warmer color temperature on glossy photos, but other than that it's all good.

The HP Envy 5530 is in many ways a typical home printer: It’s somewhat slow, with adequate features, and its low purchase price is balanced out by higher-priced inks. However, its Instant Ink program is intriguing for its savings potential, and its output quality and ease of use are distinctly better than usual for this price class. It’s well worth considering for a home user.

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Dell C2665dnf Color Multifunction Printer review: It's fast and easy to use, but oh, those toner prices

Everything about the Dell C2665dnf color laser multifunction is top-notch: capacity, speed, output quality, and features. It's even got a classy new interface for its 4.3-inch touchscreen. At $630 it seems like a dream come true for any small workgroup. But if your office frequently prints in color, the toner prices will wake you up out of a sound sleep. The costs for black toner are somewhat better.

The C2665dnf is tall, straight-angled and dark gray, but not so much ominous as handsome. The colorful touchscreen display features a brand-spanking new interface, with the 2D, flat look to its icons that's in vogue at the moment. It's easy to navigate, however, the scroll bars are thin and a hard to spot. Beyond that, the menu structure and controls are very well thought-out.

The C2665dnf is easy to set up and supports USB, Wi-Fi, and Ethernet. The software is minimal, and the driver is as well. Some of the Windows software has acquired the Windows 8 look, some has not, but it looks as if Dell is headed in that direction.

Paper handling features on the C2665dnf are top-notch, with a large 250-sheet input tray, a 150-sheet multi-purpose tray, automatic two-side printing (duplexing), as well as a 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) for the letter/A4-size scanner. There's an optional $186, 550-sheet, bottom-mounted cassette to expand capacity. The scanner will automatically scan two-sided documents and push-scan to PCs.

Secure printing is supported, as well as email and Wi-Fi printing. Dell's Document Hub lets you print documents directly from Skydrive, Dropbox, Google Drive, and other online storage services with the surprising omission of iCloud. Drivers are available for the Mac, but that's about it. The C2665dnf also supports NFC printing, a new and still unusual way to pair a phone with a printer for direct sending of jobs. Owners of iOS devices should know that the C2665dnf is AirPrint compatible.

The C2665dnf is fast and then some. It blew through our monochrome pages in short order, spitting them out at 16.6 pages per minute on the PC and 16.1 ppm on the Mac. Snapshot-size (4-by-6-inch) photos printed at 4 per minute to plain paper and 3 per minute on glossy laser stock. Full-sized photos printed from the Mac took only 43 seconds apiece. Copies emerged at a lively 6.3 per minute. Scan speeds were middling, taking almost a minute to scan a full-page photo at 600 dpi and 24 seconds to scan a smaller, cropped section at 1200 dpi. On the other hand, the scans were better in quality than most we’ve seen.

The C2665dnf's output is impressive for a color laser printer. You expect the text to be crisp and sharp, but color graphics also excelled, seeming remarkably inkjet-like (that’s a good thing). The color temps are a bit warm, but there's little graininess and no banding defects. The C2665dnf will allow you to forgo a color inkjet as an adjunct unless you're heavily into photography.

Don't buy the C2665dnf unless you're going to print a lot, and you have the money to invest in the large capacity supplies. Even then, you're getting no bargain. The regular 1,200-page cartridges cost $77 per color (CMY) and $68 for black. That's a massive 19.2 cents per page total for the colors, and 5.7 cents for black. Nearly 25 cents for a four-color page puts the C2665dnf among the most expensively supplied printers we've reviewed, including $50 inkjets.

Fortunately, when you use the $141, 4,000-page color and $100, 3000-page black, this drops to 3.33 cents for black per page and 11.25 for the colors. A 14.5 cent four-color page is bearable, though hardly cheap. You can knock another cent off both those numbers if you opt for the $136, 6,000-page black cartridge. Every 60,000 pages or so you'll need a new set of drums to the tune of $150, or an additional 0.2 cents per page.

The c2665dnf is rated for a 50,000 sheet duty cycle, with real-world usage between 700 and 4000 sheets a month. The unit is warrantied for a single year, which is short for an office product. Optional support packages are available for up to five years at $360.

The Dell C2665dnf is feature-complete, fast, and a flat out pleasure to use. However, there will be no joy in Toner-ville when you strike out for new supplies.

Editor's note: Updated at 7:30 p.m. PT to note that the C2665dnf is AirPrint compatible.

Jon L. Jacobi has worked with computers since you flipped switches and punched cards to program them. He studied music at Juilliard, and now he power-mods his car for kicks.
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Review: HP's Envy 120 e-All-in-One is a motorized luxury inkjet multifunction printer

Connoisseurs of cool tools will appreciate HP's $250 Envy 120 e-All-in-one inkjet MFP not only for its style, but its gadgetry: its motorized control panel that automatically raises and lowers, its see-through scanner platen. However, it is not about economy or efficiency. Capacity is limited, ink prices are rather hefty, and there's no automatic document feeder for the scanner. That said, it handles the basics well and is a conversation-starter for sure.

The Envy 120 installs easily via either its Wi-Fi or USB 2.0 interface. The software bundle, which includes photo manipulation, scanning tools, and remote printing, is more than competent. The driver dialog, while basic, does have the important options, and it's exceptionally easy to use. The well thought-out control panel is completely touch-based, right down to the power switch. There are no physical buttons of any kind to break up the clean lines.

Paper handling features include an 80-sheet input tray. The 25-sheet output device is no typical tray, but rather an arm that rotates out automatically from underneath the control panel whenever you print. The Envy 120 automatically duplexes—that is, it prints on both sides of the paper by pulling it back in and flipping it over without user intervention.

There's no automatic document feeder, however, the Envy 120's flatbed scanner is still notable for operating upside-down from the norm. Instead of laying a document face-down, you lay it face-up, and the scanning element passes over it. And because the top of the unit is made of transparent glass (replacing the mirrored and opaque surfaces of prior models), you can actually watch the scanner head glide across your document.

Nearly everything on the Envy 120 is motorized: the control panel swings up automatically to get out of the way when you print, the output catch swings out automatically, and even the paper cassette injection is motorized. That last one's a rarity, and overenthusiastic users could come close to breaking it before they realize that they don't need to physically push in the cassette. The only thing not motorized besides the scanner lid is the small, innocuous panel on the right front of the unit, which rotates forward 45 degrees to expose PictBridge/USB and Secure Digital/Memory Stick Duo slots.

The HP Envy 120's output is easy on the eye. The color palette of photos is on the cool side, but that matches the overall air of the machine nicely. Black pages are dark and sharp, and even draft mode documents look decent--a tad blurry, but quite legible. Speed is so-so, but who cares with a printer that's so fun to watch? Monochrome pages (text and mono graphics) print at about 5 per minute (ppm) on both the Mac and PC; 4-by-6-inch photos print at 4 ppm to plain paper and 1 ppm to glossy stock. Full-page glossy photos take about three minutes at best quality.

Alas, pages printed on the Envy 120 are expensive, no matter which size cartridge you choose. In addition to the typical standard-size and high-capacity cartridges, an “economy” cartridge set comes with slightly lower capacities and lower costs per page, and dowdier packaging. For black ink, the standard 60 cartridge costs almost 7.5 cents per page (cpp); the economy cartridge is 6.7 cpp; and the high-capacity 60XL works out to 6.2 cpp. The cyan, magenta, and yellow inks reside in a single tri-color cartridge which costs 12.7 cpp in standard size, 11 cpp in the economy size, and 9.8 cpp with the 60XL.

By the numbers, the Envy 120 seems like a non-starter. But in terms of user experience and style, it leaves the competition in the dust. It's a perfectly viable option for low-volume printing, and it will turn more than a few heads while it’s working—and blend in nicely when it’s not.

Jon L. Jacobi has worked with computers since you flipped switches and punched cards to program them. He studied music at Juilliard, and now he power-mods his car for kicks.
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Review: Brother's HL-3170CDW color laser-class printer is inexpensive, but graphics are mediocre

You want a color laser printer, but you don't have a lot of cash. How does $280 sound? That’s the price of the Brother HL-3170CDW, and in exchange it delivers reasonably good prints. Not pristine, evocative color graphics—move on to another printer for that. But good text and decent spot color, it can do, and the toner costs are tolerable as well.

Here’s the real decision: Do you pick this all-around-average machine, or do you pick this other, like-priced color laser, the Dell C1760nw, which has much better color quality—but also much more expensive toner? Or do you think a bit outside of the box and consider a business inkjet, such as the Epson WorkForce WP-4020, which competes head-to-head with both of these lasers on speed, print quality, and features, and whomps them both on cost of consumables? By our reckoning the latter is the best deal, but some people just can’t get laser out of their heads, and they will have to think harder about the tradeoffs.

Measuring 16.1 inches wide by 18.3 inches deep by 9.4 inches wide and weighing 39 pounds, the HL-3170CDW is fairly large and beefy for an entry-level, laser-class printer (it uses LED technology to produce basically identical results). The height is due more to the stacked toner/drum system than the bottom-mounted, 250-sheet paper cassette. There's also a 100-sheet output tray integrated into the top of the unit, and a single-sheet manual feed for envelopes and glossy photo paper. The unit prints automatically in duplex.

When some color printers run low on one color, they will complain, but keep printing. Not so with the HL-3170CDW: It will not print when you run out of any of the four colors. This can be a problem if you really, really need to print something and haven't any spare toner. Better a warning and a less-than-optimal printout, than no printout at all. Brother needs to rethink this.

There's no reason to make a big deal about control panels on single-function printers, as most people rarely use them after setup is over. (Multifunctions are another story.) But the HL-3170CDW's control panel could definitely use a dedicated menu button. Employing the OK button for this purpose is unintuitive and awkward, an unnecessary corner cut. Otherwise, the single-line monochrome LCD display and controls are easy enough. The HL-3170CDW's setup was a breeze. The unit sports USB, ethernet, and Wi-Fi connectivity. There's a full array of wireless and email printing features, including AirPrint, and both the PC and Mac driver dialogs offer a bevy of options.

After enjoying its initial purchase price, your ongoing costs for the HL-3170CDW will be, if not actually cheap, at least better than expected. Most low-cost color lasers hit you with high toner costs down the road. The HL-3170CDW’s prices hover comfortably around the average—and are better than those of many of its competitors, though not as good as the above-mentioned Epson WorkForce WF-4020, whose inks are amazingly cheap. The unit ships with starter cartridges rated for a scant 1000 pages. Brother’s price for the standard-size, 2500-page black is $85, or a midrange 3.4 cents per page (cpp). We found it online for closer to $70, or 2.8 cpp.

The standard-size, 1400-page cyan, magenta, and yellow supplies cost about $70 apiece per Brother—a middling 5 cents per color, per page. Our shopping found prices closer to $57 apiece, or just over 4 cents per color, per page. A page with all four colors (using the lower prices) would cost about 15 cents. Higher-capacity, 2200-page color cartridges are available, but they offer just a small savings in cost per page over their standard-size cousins.

Speed is good compared to other entry-level color lasers and business inkjets. The Brother HL-3170CDW spits out text and mixed monochrome pages at a lively 12.2 ppm on the PC and 11.2 ppm on the Mac. Snapshot-sized (4-inch by 6-inch) color photos printed onto letter-size paper at a brisk pace of 2.9 ppm, and full-page photos arrive at a spirited 1.4 ppm.

Fast means nothing if quality is inferior, and unfortunately, that describes the HL-3170CDW's graphics. Both monochrome and color artwork exhibited mild horizontal striations and vertical banding that were visible under light scrutiny. Worse, the color palette is overly light, and human faces look jaundiced. For a dab of color, a small picture, or the occasional, simple graphic, the HL-3170CDW's color quality will suffice, but not for much else. On the other hand, text is top-notch, and that's generally the larger part of the equation for the small or home offices that would consider this model.

To its credit, Brother offers a little more than most competitors do. The warranty lasts only one year, but there's free phone support for as long as you own the product. Speed is excellent, and for text and spot color the HL-3170CDW's print quality is fine. Toner costs are around average. At this price point, it offers a decent color-laser experience without gouging you later. But if you want the best possible deal in this price range, a business inkjet delivers far more.

Jon L. Jacobi has worked with computers since you flipped switches and punched cards to program them. He studied music at Juilliard, and now he power-mods his car for kicks.
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The daughter of a mechanical engineer, Melissa grew up playing with machine parts and still loves getting into the nuts and bolts of how things work. She is never happier than when she is on a factory tour.
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Review: Dell C1760nw color printer has great output quality but pricey toner

We’ve spent a lot of electronic ink telling you to avoid low-cost color laser printers, because they’re all slow, with sparse features, and worst of all, really expensive toner. We’d almost advise the same about the $280 (as of March 25, 2013) Dell C1760nw color laser-class printer (it uses LED technology), but it has one thing going for it: impressive graphics quality, which is challenging to find on any office color laser printer at any price point. Choose this one above the rest, if you must, but you might also want to check out the faster, far more economical, office-class inkjets that we’ve seen from Epson and HP.

The C1760nw's two-line LCD display and control buttons are minimal, but effective. The menu structure is nicely laid out, making options easy to find. A blue light directly above the controls indicates the status of Wi-Fi connections. You can also manage the printer via Wi-Fi or Ethernet using the unit's HTML configuration interface. In addition to the PC and Mac drivers, the C1760nw offers remote-printing features, including printing from mobile devices and via email.

As with most low-cost color lasers, paper-handling features on the C1760nw are sparse. The front face folds down to create a 150-sheet, open-faced input tray on the bottom of the unit. A 10-page, removable bypass tray sits directly on top of it. The bypass tray allows you to print envelopes and other one-offs without unloading and reloading that main tray, as required with the single-tray C1660w. The output bin integrated into the top of the unit holds 100 sheets. The C1760nw lacks automatic two-side printing (duplexing), however, onscreen prompts walk you through the manual process. You can easily reach most of the paper path for clearing paper jams by folding down the panel on the back of the unit, and the toner cartridges are accessed via a panel on the right side of the unit.

Though cheaper than the C1660w's, the C1760nw's toner is still no bargain. The 3.5 cents you'll pay per black page is around the average for entry-level inkjets, but the additional 5 cents for each additional color is high. Black toner is sold in $70, 2000-page units and the 1400-page cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridges cost $70 each as well. Those are the high-capacity supplies. Dell also sells the 700-page cartridges the C1760nw ships with, but unless you want to pay over 7 cents per page (cpp) for black pages and over 8 cents per color, we recommend against them.

Melissa Riofrio

While adding color to a C1760nw page is expensive, it's definitely worth it. Color graphics and photos look far better than what we’ve normally seen from an inexpensive, laser-class printer. Text is outstandingly sharp, and black areas are smooth and uniform, if a tad lighter than we'd like.

The C1760nw posted average to slow time in our speed tests, using the ethernet connection. Full-page (letter-size) photos print to laser glossy paper at 1.5 pages per minute (ppm). Smaller, snapshot-sized (4- by-6-inch) photos print at 1.8 ppm to plain paper and just under 1.46 ppm to glossy laser stock. Black text and mixed pages of black text and monochrome graphics print at an aggregate 8 on the PC and 8.2 on the Mac.

The C1760w carries a one-year warranty with easy exchange. You can pump that up to five years with exchange for $80, and on-site service is also available. The drum/fuser is a lifetime unit, and those support options are reassuring when no replacement is readily available. Dell quotes a 30,000-page duty cycle, but in real life this is about a 500-page-a-month unit. Even if the unit can handle heavier use, print more than 500 pages and the price of the toner will start catching up to you.

Color laser devotees, we know you’re out there. If you must buy a low-cost color laser, the Dell C1760nw is one we’re willing to recommend--albeit with many reservations--because of its unusually good graphics quality.

Jon L. Jacobi has worked with computers since you flipped switches and punched cards to program them. He studied music at Julliard, and now he power mods his car for kicks.
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The daughter of a mechanical engineer, Melissa grew up playing with machine parts and still loves getting into the nuts and bolts of how things work. She is never happier than when she is on a factory tour.
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Review: HP LaserJet Pro 200 color Printer M251nw

Low-cost color lasers like the $329 (as of 03/20/2013) HP LaserJet Pro 200 color Printer M251nw are tempting for small-office users who see laser technology as familiar and reliable (never mind that in this price range, a small-office inkjet is a much better deal). Unfortunately, color laser models in this price range tend to be slow and sparsely featured, with expensive toner. The M251nw sticks to that trend, but it also offers some innovative features and better-than-usual image quality. Still not cheap enough for you? The Dell c1660w has an even lower price tag and even better output quality, but it's a lot slower and has pricier toner.

On looks alone, the M251nw could win a lot of fans. With a faux brushed-black-metal exterior (it's plastic, but convincing), and a flip-up, 3.5-inch touchscreen control panel, it's one of the handsomest small office laser printers to come down the pike in a while.

The M251nw features all of the three major connection technologies: Wi-Fi, Ethernet, and USB. We installed using Wi-Fi with minimum fuss. There's both Wi-Fi Protected Setup and the standard setup wizard. HP’s ePrint cloud-printing services are another bonus, including features like remote printing via e-mail and access to Web-based apps and services.

Paper handling features consist of a 150-sheet paper tray on the bottom of the unit, and an integrated 125-sheet output bin on the top--the classic small laser setup. Duplexing is manual, with step-by-step, onscreen prompts.

The cost per page for consumables with the M251nw is unfortunately quite high, even compared to most entry-level inkjets. The standard 1600-page black cartridge costs $67, for a per-page cost of about 4.2 cents. The cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridges last for 1800 pages and cost $85 apiece (4.7 cents per color, per page), so add 14.1 cents for them. A total of 18.1 cents per four-color page is not a bargain. You can reduce that slightly with the 2400-page, $86 XL black cartridge to 3.6 cents per black page and 17.5 cents per four-color page. There are no high-yield color toners. The printer ships with 700-page, starter-size supplies of all four colors.

Its pages may cost a lot, but the M251nw will give your SOHO correspondence a more professional look than an inkjet. Text is super-sharp, and monochrome graphics are smooth and even. Color graphics are also very good for a laser, though slightly on the cool and dark side. There were noticeable defects in the more difficult areas of our brightly lit group photo, mostly in dark patterns and faces. Non-human subjects generally looked quite nice.

The M251nw printed text and mixed-text and monochrome graphics pages at an aggregate 9.2 pages per minute (ppm) on the PC and 8.6 on the Mac. That's decently fast considering the unit's small volume design and low price. It was fast with 4-by-6-inch snapshots, printing them to plain paper in 20 seconds (3 ppm) and glossy paper in about double the time. A full-page photo printed on the Mac took 70 seconds, or 0.8 pages per minute.

The M251nw carries a one-year warranty and is recommended for light-volume use of 250 to 1500 pages a month. That's a real-life rating, not the fantastic duty-cycle numbers that vendors often provide. We'd love to steer you to a version of this printer that has automatic duplexing, but you seemingly can't get that until you shop the LaserJet Pro 400 models.

Expensive toner and the lack of two-sided printing are typical deficiencies among low-priced color laser printers. While they can add to the cost of ownership, our tests with inkjets show that light-volume users may not feel the ink or toner pinch for some time. Given all that, the HP LaserJet Pro 200 color Printer M251nw is one of the best choices in its class, because of its good output quality, connectivity, and ease of use.

Jon L. Jacobi has worked with computers since you flipped switches and punched cards to program them. He studied music at Julliard, and now he power mods his car for kicks.
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The daughter of a mechanical engineer, Melissa grew up playing with machine parts and still loves getting into the nuts and bolts of how things work. She is never happier than when she is on a factory tour.
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Review: Dell C1660w color printer

The superlow $200 price (as of February 21, 2013) for the Dell C1660w makes color-laser-class printing (using laserlike LED technology) tantalizingly accessible. Its text output looks great, and the color graphics are very nice indeed. Because the toner is expensive, however, the C1660w would be a good deal only if you didn’t print much (as we discovered when we compared inkjet pricing last year). The printer’s modest speed and features reflect the intended, light-volume audience.

Setting up the C1660w couldn't be easier. The small footprint means it can be used virtually anywhere. USB and Wi-Fi connectivity are standard. We used the manual Wi-Fi setup, but there's support for WPS as well. A blue Wi-Fi indicator notifies you that the unit is connected wirelessly. The tiny two-line LCD display and control buttons are minimal, but effective. The software is spare, but you can surf from anywhere on your network to the printer's configuration pages to check status and see if you need more toner. There's also the full gamut of remote printing features, including printing from mobile devices and via email.

Paper handling features on the C1660w are minimal. A front panel flips out onto your work surface to make the bottom of the 150-sheet input tray; a cover piece is included. The classic, indented output bin on the top holds 100 sheets. There's no automatic two-side printing (duplexing), but there is manual support for the process in the form of dialogs telling you how to reinsert the paper. Having an open-faced paper tray makes this process significantly easier. You can easily reach most of the paper path by folding down the panel on the back of the unit. Toner cartridges are accessed via a panel on the right side of the unit.

Probably the least appealing aspect of the C1660w is its pricey toner. The unit ships with 500-page starter cartridges. The 4 cents you'll pay per black page is a little higher than the average for entry-level inkjets, and the additional 16.8 cents that adding color to the average page costs is pricey indeed. Black toner is sold in $50, 1250-page units; the 1000-page cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridges cost $56 each. There are, unfortunately, no high-capacity supplies.

Melissa Riofrio

It's a bit pricey per page with color, but the C1660w's output quality matches that of laser-class printers costing considerably more. Text is outstandingly sharp, and black areas are smooth and uniform, if a tad lighter than we'd like. Color graphics and photos look outstanding. You'd have to spend six times as much on something such as Lexmark's c748de to see a significant improvement in photo output.

You wouldn't want to wait while the C1660w prints out War and Peace, but speed is fine for light use. Black text and mixed pages of black text and monochrome graphics print at an aggregate 7.2 pages per minute (ppm) on the PC and 7.5 on the Mac. Full-page (letter-size) photos print to laser glossy paper at a swift 1.5 ppm. Smaller snapshot-sized (4- by-6-inch) photos print at 2.7 ppm to plain paper and just under 2.1 ppm to glossy laser stock.

The C1660w carries a one-year warranty. You can up that to five years for $80; exchange and on-site services are also available. The drum/fuser is a lifetime unit, and those support options are reassuring when no replacement is readily available. Dell quotes a 30,000-page duty cycle, but in real life this is about a 500-page-a-month unit. Even if the unit can handle heavier use, print more than that and the pricey toner will start catching up to you. In that case you should look for a cheaper-to-operate unit.

The Dell C1660w’s expensive toner and light-duty capabilities make it best for small or home offices. Before you reach automatically for a laser, however, it’s worth noting that office-minded inkjets such as the $100 Epson Workforce Pro WP-4020 offer better speed, competitive print quality, and much cheaper inks—and their multifunction cousins add more capabilities.

Jon L. Jacobi has worked with computers since you flipped switches and punched cards to program them. He studied music at Julliard, and now he power mods his car for kicks.
More by Jon L. Jacobi

The daughter of a mechanical engineer, Melissa grew up playing with machine parts and still loves getting into the nuts and bolts of how things work. She is never happier than when she is on a factory tour.
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Review: Epson WorkForce WF-3540 All-in-One Printer

Jon L. Jacobi has worked with computers since you flipped switches and punched cards to program them. He studied music at Julliard, and now he power mods his car for kicks.
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If you're looking for a small office inkjet MFP with a comprehensive feature set that will handle more than minimal volume printing, the $200 (as of 2/1/2013) Epson WorkForce WF-3540 is a good place to begin. It's quick, and the output looks nice. Equipped with automatic duplex printing and scanning, 500 sheets of capacity, relatively affordable ink, and easy controls, it's quite the bargain. It also connects via USB, Ethernet, or Wi-Fi so you can use it in virtually any computing environment.

Installing the WorkForce WF-3540 is a mere matter of a few dialogs and about 5 minutes. As mentioned, you can connect to it wirelessly, via Ethernet, or directly using USB. The software bundle includes the trusty Epson Scan and Abbyy Finereader Sprint 9.5 for OCR. The control panel features a 3.5-inch LCD with contextually lit touch buttons on the panel surrounding it. The menu structure is quite easy to navigate--far easier to use than its WorkForce WF-2540 cousin we recently reviewed.

Paper handling on the WorkForce WF-3540 is top-notch. In addition to two bottom-mounted, 250-sheet paper cassettes, there's a single-sheet rear feed for photo paper, envelopes and the like. Tip: Push the paper down into the rear feeder until you feel it grab; the paper sits farther down than with most printers.

The scanner features an automatic document feeder (ADF) which scans both sides automatically (by re-feed). The lid to the letter/A4-sized platen doesn't telescope to accommodate thicker materials, but that's the only issue, and a minor one for an office-oriented MFP.

The output from the WorkForce WF-3540 is quite nice. Color graphics printed on plain paper show reasonably good color accuracy. Images printed on glossy photo stock, while a tad brights are as nice as anything you'll see this side of a dedicated photo printer. Text is sharp and black, and even draft-mode documents are easily readable. Scans tended to be dark, though copies suffered no such issue.

The WorkForce WF-3540's speed is quite good for this price point. Monochrome pages print at approximately 11.5 per minute (ppm) on the PC, and 11.4 on the Mac. Snapshot-sized (4-by-6-inch) photos print at 4.8 ppm to plain paper, and 0.5 ppm to glossy photo stock. A full, 8.5-inch by 11-inch photo printed on the Mac, takes about two and a half minutes.

Scan speeds are average or better. Previews take about 10 seconds. A full-page color scan at 600 dpi takes about 35 seconds, while a 1200-dpi scan of a 4-by-6-inch area takes about a minute and half.

Ink costs for the WorkForce WF-3540 are decent, if you opt for the extra high-capacity (large) cartridges: 3.2 cents per page (cpp) for black and 2.7 cpp per color, or 11.3 cents per four-color page. The high-capacity cartridges are less of a deal: At almost 5 cpp for black, 3.6 cpp for each color, and 14.4 cents per four-color page, they’re priced more like standard-size cartridges.

Melissa Riofrio

There is one complaint we'd like to register about Epson's recent habit of providing documentation only online. Installing a link to online documentation is all well and good, but there's room on the installation CD. Do your users a favor and provide a local copy of the user's guide.

The WorkForce WF-3540 is the only $200 MFP we’ve reviewed recently that isn't missing one feature or another. It's not as cheap per page as the Brother MFC-J4510DW, but it automatically scans in duplex and doesn't striate color output in normal mode as the Brother does. The WF-3540 is also significantly faster and cheaper to operate than Canon's Pixma MX-892. If you're not printing in massive amounts where ink costs will catch up to you, it's the best thing going at this price point.

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Review: Epson WorkForce WF-2540 All-in-One Printer

Jon L. Jacobi has worked with computers since you flipped switches and punched cards to program them. He studied music at Julliard, and now he power mods his car for kicks.
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The $130 (as of 12/24/2012) Epson Workforce WF-2540 All-in-One Printer (copy/fax/print/scan) has a 30-page automatic document feeder, it outputs nice text and graphics, and it has triple-threat USB, Ethernet, and Wi-Fi connectivity. Those are attractive features on any color inkjet multifunction, but there's bad news: Ink costs are high, and glossy photos print at some of the slowest times we've ever seen. Scan speed is nothing to write home about, either.

Setting up the WF-2540 is a breeze. With USB, Ethernet, and Wi-Fi all on board, you're free to attach it to a PC or network in any location you wish. The WF-2540's smallish non-operational footprint: 15.4 inches wide, by 14.8 inches deep, by 8.7-inch high also aids in the versatile placement. However, those numbers (shown in a photo on Epson's Web site), are a tad misleading. When you extend the guide for the 100-sheet rear vertical feed (there is no flat input tray), the height climbs to 11 or so inches. With both the guide and control panel in operating position, the depth is more like 17 inches. That's still relatively compact, but not as small as it would be with a bottom-mounted tray.

The WF-2540's software bundle is basic, but capable. The Epson Scan program is intuitive and mature, and it will handle any scanning task you throw at it. That would be everything except automatic two-sided scanning, which the WF-2540 does not support. Abbyy FineReader Sprint 9.5 is on hand to take care of OCR chores and there's also the full gamut of Web and local wireless printing options.

I didn't find using the WF-2540 quite as intuitive as many printers. The 2.5-inch LCD display, buttons, and keypad are fine; there's just something a little off in the implementation. You're forced to hit the OK button at times when the menu/home button would normally function, and there are just enough other little oddities to make the experience less than top-shelf. You'll get used to it, but it could be done better.

Manual duplexing is never intuitive. For the WorkForce WF-2540, onscreen prompts help--for PC users. Unfortunately you'll get no such assistance if you're using a Mac.

I also had some issues replacing the ink cartridges. Perhaps it was my ham-handedness, but several times I received "invalid" cartridge messages. Re-seating (several times) cured this, but the unit can be finicky about the replacement operation. Talk to it nicer than I did, and you might do better with it.

While the WF-2540 gets you into an inkjet multifunction for a relatively small initial investment, ongoing costs will hit you hard if you print in any sort of volume. That's a roundabout way of saying that per-page ink costs are very high. The standard $17/175-page black is a whopping 7.4 cents per page (cpp) and the $9/165-page cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridges are 5.45 cpp apiece. A 23.75 cent four-color page is not a bargain. The $30/500-page XL black, and $13/450-page color cartridges reduce that to 6 cents per black page and 17.3 per four-color page--still well above average.

Melissa Riofrio

Performance-wise, the Workforce WF-2540 also proved a disappointment. Normal documents and copies exit quickly enough for home use, but scans are pokey, and the unit is very slow with glossy photos. Monochrome pages output on the PC at 6.7 pages per minute (ppm) and 6.5 ppm on the Mac. Snapshot-sized (4-inch by 6-inch) photos print at almost 4 ppm to plain paper.

The problem with glossy prints varies by settings. When using photo paper we normally test in the highest-quality mode, but this slowed the pace of the WF-2540's output drastically. Snapshot photos printed in the mode to glossy paper took over 2 minutes, and full-page photos printed on the Mac an incredible 10 minutes. The full-page photo’s print time improved to approximately 6 minutes by stepping down one grade to High-Quality mode, and to about 3 minutes going down yet one more grade to Quality mode. There was no perceptible loss of fidelity in High-Quality mode compared to Best mode, and only a modest one when we used Quality mode, so stick with those on the WF-2540 unless you're looking to kill time.

On the plus side, though you'll have plenty of time to go to the store for more expensive ink during some of its operations, the WF-2540 produces very nice output. Virtually everything that comes out of it is top-notch. Text is sharp and black, and color prints are nice. Shadows are a bit dark, and the colors colder than originals, but overall the output sports a classy feel for a four-color (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) system.

The Epson WorkForce WF-2540 All-in-One Printer is attractively priced, and the triple USB/Ethernet/Wi-Fi connectivity is appealing, but taken as a whole--Epson missed the mark with this one. Ink costs are high, and photo output is slothful and then some. Look instead to the Dell V525w or HP Officejet 6600 e-All-in-One Printer . Both units have cheaper ink and comparable features at roughly the same price. Better yet, spend another $50 and get something more feature-complete.

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HP Photosmart 6520 e-All-in-One Printer Review: Midpriced MFP for Home or Student Use

The HP Photosmart 6520 e-All-in-One Printer is a midpriced ($150 as of 08/13/2012) consumer-level color inkjet multifunction printer with a good set of features for light-volume home or student use. If you’re trying to decide between this model and its slightly lower-priced cousin, the HP Photosmart 5520, note that the Photosmart 6520 has a bigger touchscreen control panel and a dedicated photo tray.

The Photosmart 6520 connects via USB or Wi-Fi and has media-card slots for MMC, MS, and SD cards. It comes with an 80-sheet, bottom-mounted, slide-out main input tray. Duplexing is automatic for prints and copies from this tray. The tray takes both letter- and legal-size media. Piggybacked onto the main tray is a 20-sheet feeder for 4-by-6-inch or 5-by-7-inch photo paper. Up to 20 printed or copied pages may come to rest on the lid over these trays. A fairly flimsy extension pivots and flips out from the lid to finish the output area.

HP’s new style of documentation is heavy on pictures and animations, and sometimes lacking in useful details such as paper capacities. And though legal-size media isn't commonly used, I was surprised that HP would support it but not tell you how to load it. (Hint: Flip down the front panel of the tray; the sheets will hang out the front a bit.)

Above the printer sits the scanner, which has basic specs: a letter/A4-size platen, a lid that doesn't telescope to accommodate thicker materials, and no automatic document feeder for scanning multipage documents. (In this price range, look for an ADF on small-office models such as the Canon Pixma MX512. A thicker lid beneath the slender scanner lid provides access to the ink cartridges and to the internal paper path.

A 3.45-inch color touchscreen and peripheral controls that light when needed dominate the easy-to-use control panel. I especially liked being able to preview a scan on the screen. Note that the touchscreen requires slight pressure to register a touch--a bit surprising at first, if you’re used to more-sensitive touchscreens, but not difficult to adjust to.

The Photosmart 6520’s print, copy, and scan speeds hover above and below the average. Text and monochrome graphics exit at a peppy 8.5 pages per minute on the PC and 8 ppm on the Mac. The printing speed for snapshot-size photo prints is about 3 ppm on plain paper at default settings (a little faster than average) or just of 1 ppm on glossy photo paper (slightly below average). Single-page copies come out slightly slower than average at 2.9 ppm. Full-page photos printed on the Mac arrive at about 0.4 ppm--slightly slower than average.

The output quality of pages from the Photosmart 6520 is quite good. At standard settings, text is nice, though it falls short of perfectly black and crisp. Color graphics tend to be slightly yellow, with an evenly grainy look on plain paper and a smoother effect on glossy photo paper.

The Photosmart 6520’s ink costs are average. The standard black cartridge costs $12 and lasts for 250 pages (4.8 cents per page), while the standard cyan, magenta, and yellow color cartridges cost $10 each and last for 300 pages (3.3 cents per page). That works out to about 15 cents for a four-color page. You can reduce your color ink costs appreciably by using the high-yield XL cartridges, priced at $18 for a 750-page cartridge, yielding a figure of 2.4 cents per page per color--almost a cent per page cheaper for each color. However, the $23 XL black lasts for only 550 pages (4.2 cents per page), making it only slightly more economcal than the standard black. A four-color page would cost 14.8 cents with the standard inks and 11.4 cents with the high-yield inks.

Offering better-than-basic features and speed, the Photosmart 6520 e-All-in-One would be a reasonable choice for a home or student user who prints nomore than a few dozen pages per week. For the same price, you can get more paper handling and a few other bonuses in the Canon Pixma MG5320.

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HP Officejet 6600 e-All-in-One Printer Review: No Duplexing, No Dice

The HP Officejet 6600 e-All-in-One Printer color inkjet multifunction (copy/scan/print/fax) is a puzzler, and a huge disappointment. Priced at $150 (as of June 11, 2012), it's handsome, it has an easy-to-use LCD control panel, and it offers excellent performance as well as decent output. However, for some bizarre reason HP has removed manual duplexing support--a simple software feature that allows relatively easy two-sided printing on printers that lack an automatic duplexer--from the printer driver.

HP has also removed multi-up (thumbnail pages) and every other kind of layout from the print driver. Such features are so commonplace that many consumers just assume that they are available. Put simply: $150 for a multifunction that won't help you print two-sided to save paper? I think not. For the same amount, you can buy a unit with automatic duplexing.

Still reading? The Officejet 6600 would be a nice midvolume office unit if not for the stunted driver. It has a 250-sheet input tray, a 75-sheet output tray, and a 35-sheet automatic document feeder for the A4/letter-size scanner. Despite the ADF, though, I found no option in the control panel to scan or copy in duplex.

The Officejet 6600's LCD is an odd duck, but ultimately it is satisfying. It's not a touchscreen, but a press-screen (resistive): You must depress the covering lightly, as you would with a membrane keyboard, to register selections. Once you get used to it, the tactile feedback is pleasing.

Other than the hobbled driver, the HP-provided software is quite good. It supports push-scanning (scanning from the control panel to a PC), as well as printing across the Internet via the company's ePrint service.

In our tests, text output from the Officejet 6600 was very nice--black and sharp. Photos printed to plain paper had a washed-out appearance. Glossy-paper photos exhibited a high level of contrast, which applied a slightly unrealistic cast to human faces; however, at least for nonhuman subjects, the high contrast evoked a sense of impact.

The Officejet 6600 is a good performer. In our tests, monochrome pages printed at 10 pages per minute on the PC and 9.6 ppm on the Mac. Snapshot-size (4-by-6-inch) photos printed to plain paper at 3.4 ppm and to glossy paper at about 1 ppm. Full page photos printed at 0.4 ppm, and copies exited quickly at 5.1 ppm.

As for consumables, the Officejet 6600 uses a four-cartridge ink system (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) that's basically average in cost with the regular-capacity supplies, but cheaper than most printers in this class when using the high-capacity cartridges. The regular, $20 black cartridge lasts for 400 pages, for a slightly below-average cost of 5 cents per page. The $11 cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridges each last for 330 pages, working out to 3.3 cents per page, per color. Add all of that up, and you get a slightly pricey 15 cents for a four-color page. The $32 XL black, on the other hand, lasts for 1000 pages (3.2 cents per page), and the $16 XL color cartridges each last for 825 pages (1.9 cents per page, per color). Nine cents for a four-color page is quite inexpensive. The unit ships with starter-size cartridges, which are the regular-size cartridges with some extra ink slated for use during the initialization process.

Despite good performance and cheap high-capacity supplies, a $150 multifunction without any sort of duplexing support should be avoided (unless you actually want to double your paper usage, mailing costs, storage space, and such). Instead, choose a like-priced competitor, such as the Canon Pixma MX512 or the Brother MFC-J825DW.

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Have $400 for a Small-Office Printer? Choose an Inkjet

Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4540I know I’m going to hear about it from the laser printer’s many fans, but here goes: If you have $400 to spend on a new color printer for your small office of five to ten people, you should buy an inkjet model. Business inkjets available now beat similarly priced color lasers, feature for feature and speed for speed--and they're especially superior in consumables costs.

High-end, business-oriented inkjets have evolved from a niche to a trend. HP has produced its Officejet line of inkjet models for years, the latest iterations being the $300 HP Officejet Pro 8600 Plus e-All-in-One Printer multifunction and the $150 HP OfficeJet Pro 8100 ePrinter single-function printer. Recently, other vendors have joined HP and made business inkjets a real category: Epson launched its WorkForce Pro line (the $150 Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4020 Color Inkjet Wireless Printer is one example), and Lexmark introduced its OfficeEdge line (including the $399 Lexmark OfficeEdge Pro5500 MFP). All of these models defy inkjet stereotypes with their fast print times, great output quality, and very low costs per page.

Meanwhile, mainstream color laser vendors have been racing to the bottom, selling products with lower and lower prices. You can get a color laser for a few hundred bucks now--but it’ll be very slow, with minimal features, mediocre image quality, and exorbitantly priced toner. The $230 Dell 1250c single-function color laser printer, for instance, accepts high-yield toner cartridges that cost 3.5 cents per page for black and 5 cents per color, per page. A four-color page would cost 18.5 cents. These costs are no better than the current average for a color inkjet. The costs for the 1250c's standard-size toner are even higher.

Your Better Bet for $400

For this face-off, I compared the $400 Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4540 All-in-One Printer, a color inkjet MFP, with the $400 Brother MFC-9125CN color LED (a laser relative) MFP. To show how the comparison applies to more than one product, I also included data on two other color laser MFPs: the $350 HP LaserJet Pro 100 Color MFP M175nw and the LED-based, $420 Dell 1355cnw.

Let’s start with speed. The WorkForce Pro WP-4540 color inkjet MFP was very fast with plain paper at default settings in our tests, producing text at 12.4 pages per minute on the PC platform. Printing the same documents, the MFC-9125CN color LED MFP trailed slightly with a rate of 12.2 ppm. The 1355cnw color LED MFP managed a rate of 11.1 ppm, and the LaserJet Pro 100 Color MFP M175nw had a rate of just 10.8 ppm. (Note: Our test times for the Mac platform were nearly identical.)

The Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4540 and its inkjet cohort also have more and better features than their color laser competition. Consider the most important feature set for any printer or MFP: paper handling. The Epson inkjet and the Brother, Dell, and HP color LED/laser products all have letter/A4-size scanner platens and automatic document feeders for handling multipage documents. In all other respects, however, the Epson inkjet offers more than the Brother, Dell, and HP color laser products do.

PRINTER FEATURESEpson WorkForce Pro WP-4540 (color inkjet)Brother MFC-9125CN (color LED)Dell 1355cnw (color LED)HP LaserJet Pro 100 Color MFP M175nw (color laser)Number of standard input trays

If the Epson's paper-handling features aren't good enough for you, note that two other color inkjets, the HP Officejet Pro 8600 Plus e-All-in-One Printer and the Lexmark OfficeEdge Pro5500, have legal-size scanner platens. No color laser we’ve tested in this price range fully supports legal-size documents.

The inkjet team wins easily in a comparison of the cost of consumables, as well. The Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4540 costs just 1.6 cents per page for black and a total of 7.6 cents for each page with all four colors. In contrast, the Brother MFC-9125CN costs 3.4 cents for black-text pages and 18.4 cents for pages with all four colors. The Dell 1355cnw and HP LaserJet Pro 100 Color MFP M175nw are even pricier.

Color Lasers Stumble on Image Quality

If you’re looking at a color laser, I assume it’s because you want more than just the perfectly crisp text that a monochrome laser printer would provide. You must also want to be able to print your logo in color, or add pie charts or color blocks to a brochure, perhaps even a photo. For any of these additional printing needs, a business inkjet such as the Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4540 is, yet again, the better choice compared with the Brother MFC-9125CN or another like-priced laser product.

In our print-quality judging, using Hammermill Laser Print as our plain paper, the Epson inkjet’s text appeared black, smooth, and precise, even with closely spaced fonts. Color images looked slightly dull and grainy on plain paper, but still realistic--and on Epson’s own photo paper, the same images looked nearly flawless.

We had no complaints about the Brother MFC-9125CN’s text quality, but we found the color quality of prints from this laser printer disappointing. Colors tended to look yellowish and grainy, whether the object was a simple color block or a piece of fruit. Flesh tones appeared especially unnatural. Areas of shadow tended to print quite dark, giving images a murky look.

Print quality is subjective. It’s entirely possible that you’ll find a color laser’s image quality acceptable for your purposes. Also, lasers still don’t care much about the paper, whereas lower-quality papers will affect even a business inkjet’s print quality. What’s clear, though, from our tests of the Epson and Brother products, and other inkjet and laser printers in this price range, is that the color lasers are no better than the inkjets on print quality--and in some cases, they are noticeably worse.

Reliability Is the One Unknown

The only wild card in this comparison is reliability over time. I've heard lots of stories about laser printers that sit in a room and churn out pages for years on end. I've also heard complaints about inkjets whose printheads clog, or whose input trays stop feeding. Beyond anecdotes, though, I don't have any hard evidence about whether a $400 laser will last longer than a $400 inkjet. Nevertheless, keep in mind that an inkjet used regularly should not suffer any printhead-clogging issues; and while high-end, corporate laser printers may be built like tanks, lower-end color lasers are built more like economy sedans.

Laser and LED printers remain the business standard, and for good reason: The midrange and high-end models are built to be fast, reliable, and economical. When the price of a laser printer dips below $500, however, they generally print more slowly, offer fewer features, and use pricey toner. In the same price range, high-end inkjets can meet or exceed the performance of lasers, particularly when it comes to cost of consumables. That’s why, if you're faced with the choice of a $400 inkjet printer versus a $400 color laser/LED printer, the inkjet is the better deal.

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Kodak Hero 3.1 All-in-One Printer Review: Bargain Price, Cheap Ink, Great Photos

The Kodak Hero 3.1 color inkjet multifunction printer offers a lot of bang for the buck. At only $100 (as of April 2, 2012) this copying/printing/scanning device produces exceptionally nice photos, and its inexpensive inks make it cheaper to operate than other MFPs in its price range. Kodak also provides some elegant software, though it suffered from a glitch in our testing.

We miss the Kodak-gold highlighting of older models, but the Hero 3.1 is a competent-looking unit that appears to be reasonably well built. Its paper-handling features are strictly low-volume: a 100-sheet rear vertical feed, manual-only duplexing, and no automatic document feeder. Disappointingly, for a unit that lacks an ADF, the scanner lid (for letter/A4-size paper) doesn't telescope to accommodate thicker documents.

The Hero 3.1's controls, on the other hand, seem more upscale because of the 2.4-inch color LCD display, which you navigate by means of a four-way rocker and a select button. A single Start button initiates all operations; you choose between black and color printing by selecting from the appropriate menus prior to the operation, which adds steps. But that's a minor fault in an otherwise easy-to-operate machine.

The software glitch we encountered occurred in Microsoft Word 2007: The print properties dialog box took some 20 seconds or so to open. Kodak confirmed our suspicion of poor interaction between Word and the printer monitoring software. After we closed the monitor, the print properties dialog box popped open almost immediately.

Back to the good news: The Hero 3.1 surpasses the least-expensive tier of MFPs on the market with its excellent photo quality and very good (though slightly soft-edged) text quality. Color graphics on plain paper are quite nice, too, offering a more accurate palette than most other units in its price range.

Though the Hero 3.1's output is very nice, it arrives slowly. Text pages printed at a slothful 3.3 pages per minute in both our PC test and our Mac test. Draft mode is at least twice as fast, but output from that mode can suffer the soft-edge defect. Graphics print speeds were more in line with those of competing machines: 4-by-6-inch photos printed at 2.3 ppm on plain paper and at 1.3 ppm on glossy photo paper--slower than average, but not by much. A full-page photo printed on glossy paper took about 4 minutes. Scans and copies were slower than average, too, but the waiting time shouldn't torment you in small doses. We noticed minor alignment issues on some documents printed in draft mode.

No other vendor prices the inks for its cheaper MFPs as low as Kodak does. Black pages from the 335-page low-capacity black cartridge (priced at $13) cost 3.9 cents per page; the 670-page XL cartridge ($20) reduces that figure to just 3 cents per page. Color costs are equally appealing. The regular $20 cartridge lasts for 275 pages or 7.3 cents per page (2.43 cents per page per color) and that drops to 6.5 cents per page with the 550-page XL cartridge ($36). Bear in mind that this is a unified, tricolor cartridge; if you don't use the colors evenly, color cost per page can be higher. Still a four-color page for as little as 9.5 cents per page is a major attraction.

Aside from the software glitch, the Hero 3.1 appears to be quite a bargain for a color inkjet MFP. But it still pays to compare it to similar rivals such as the Epson Stylus NX430 and the HP Photosmart 5510.

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HP LaserJet Pro 400 Color Printer M451dn Review: Great Output, Pricey Toner

The $500 (as of April 2, 2012) HP LaserJet Pro 400 M451dn color laser printer produces extremely nice output--including photos--and is very speedy for a model in this price range. It also has an automatic duplexer, a feature missing from the $450 LaserJet Pro 400 M451nw that we recently reviewed. It sounds great--until you examine the toner costs, which are steep for a relatively high-volume printer.

The controls on the M451dn are minimal but adequate. A two-way rocker button lets you navigate the two-line LED; the panel also has a warning light, along with the usual OK, cancel, and back buttons. Software installation is easy via either USB or ethernet, and the printer dialog procedure is well thought-out.

Paper-handling features include a 250-sheet bottom main tray, an automatic duplexer, a 150-sheet output tray, and an optional ($143) bottom-mounted, 250-sheet auxiliary paper feeder. With a monthly duty cycle of 40,000 pages and a recommended actual monthly print volume of up to 2000 pages, the M451dn can handle a fair amount of printing.

In terms of access, the M451dn is extremely well designed. From the front you can fold out a small part of the panel to reveal the 50-sheet front multipurpose tray, or you can move a larger part of the panel to access the paper path and the slide-out toner tray. A pop-off panel on the right side of the printer makes it easy to upgrade the standard 128MB of memory to 384MB. Note: As of this writing, HP's website sells a 256MB DDR2 DIMM memory upgrade for $599. That exorbitant price comes with HP’s guarantee that the memory will work in the printer, but third-party memory is available for less than $30.

That brings me to the Achilles' heel of this printer: toner costs. The standard black toner cartridge costs $79 and lasts 2200 pages, or 3.6 cents per page. A high-yield black cartridge, available for $102, lasts for 4000 pages, reducing black costs to 2.5 cents per page. The costs are a little higher than average compared with those of other color lasers we’ve tested--and incidentally, some business inkjets have significantly cheaper consumables.

HP offers no high-yield option for the M451dn's cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridges, so if you print a lot of color pages, this is not the printer for you. The standard sizes cost $114 each and last for 2600 pages, working out to just under 4.4 cents per page per color. Next to other standard-size cartridges, these costs are a little cheaper than average, but compared with high-yield toners, they are far more expensive than average. The starter-size cartridges that ship with the printer last approximately 1400 pages.

If you can hack the toner costs, the output of the M451dn is impressive and arrives quickly. Text is dark and sharp, and color photos are very good for a color laser at this price. Our full-page test photo showed a cool color palette and nice details. Text pages rendered at 11.4 pages per minute on the PC and 11.0 ppm on the Mac. Normal-size photos printed at 3.2 ppm to plain paper and 1.5 ppm on glossy paper. Full-page photos printed at about 0.8 ppm.

Output quality and speed are the HP LaserJet Pro 400 Color Printer M451dn's strong suits. If you need the Wi-Fi connectivity that it lacks, its otherwise identical cousin, the M451dw, is only $50 more, at $550. However, if you print in any sort of volume, the ongoing costs for any model in the M451 product line will hurt you eventually--especially if you print lots of color. Alternatives in this price range include the Dell 2150cdn and Brother HL-4570CDW; the latter's high-yield supplies are much less expensive than the M451dn's.

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The Best Deals on Printer Ink

If you buy a cheap inkjet printer, you're going to pay a small fortune for the ink to run it (assuming that you use the ink that its manufacturer specially designed for it). Even so, the size of the bill depends to a great extent on which brand of printer you buy. Some printer makers, like Kodak, work hard to keep their ink prices reasonable, while others, like Dell, consistently charge top dollar.

When you look at as many inkjet printers and multifunction printers as I do--about 40 per year, representing about half of the total number of models currently available from major vendors--you start to see trends in ink pricing. I maintain a dynamic average of ink costs that shifts as I add new printers to the list and retire old ones. The averages have remained fairly stable over the past few years: For standard-size ink cartridges, which generally yield about 250 pages or less, the average price per page is about 4.8 cents for pages that use only black ink, and it's about 13.8 cents for prints that use all four colors. High-yield cartridges have more ink and print more pages--in some cases, thousands more pages--and like most bulk purchases, they cost less in the long run. The average costs for large, high-yield cartridges are about 3.4 cents per page for black and 10.4 cents for a page with all four colors.

Kodak's Inks Remain the Cheapest

Kodak's ink is one of the best deals on the market, regardless of the particular model you buy. For the $100 Kodak ESP C310 multifunction printer, for example, the cost of black ink works out to a very reasonable 3 cents per page, whether you're using the printer's standard-size or high-yield ink cartridges. Add in cyan, magenta, and yellow, and the cost rises to 9.5 cents per page for a standard-size cartridge, but that's still more than 4 cents per page below the average ink price per four-color page. For high-yield color cartridges, Kodak's price is 9.2 to 9.5 cents per four-color page--still well below the average.

Cheap ink isn't everything, of course. We've encountered problems with the speed, features, and print quality of Kodak printers in the past. The company has improved its most recent models somewhat on those variables--just in time for its bankruptcy filing.

Brother, HP Costs Are Average

Inks from Brother and HP aren't close to Kodak's prices, but they do tend to be about average. The Brother MFC-J430w MFP, which costs just $100, offers high-yield inks that ultimately cost 4.2 cents per page for black and 11.7 cents for all four colors; both of those figures are slightly above average. For the same printer price, the HP Photosmart 5510 MFP matches the MDC-J430w's 4.2 cents per page for high-yield black and costs 11.4 cents per page for four-color pages.

Epson's ink prices are a slightly different case. You'll find reasonable pricing in its creativity-oriented Artisan and business-minded WorkForce product lines: The Epson Artisan 837 MFP, for instance, costs just 3.3 cents per page for black and 9.2 cents per page for four-color printing, while the Epson WorkForce 845 all-in-one charges 3 cents for black and 10.2 cents for all four colors. The home-oriented Stylus product line is an exception. Standard-size ink cartridges for the Epson Stylus NX430 MFP have higher-than-average costs of 5.8 cents per page for black and 15.7 cents per page for all four colors. The Stylus product line also gives users the option of buying what Epson calls "moderate" cartridges, with page yields lower than those of the standard-size cartridges: just 200 pages or so. Those inks are even pricier: 6.2 cents per page for black and almost 18 cents for a page with all four colors.

Dells and Some Canons Are Pricey

Dell's multifunction inkjet printers historically have some of the priciest inks around. The Dell V715w MFP has standard-size cartridges that currently cost 8.9 cents per page for black pages and 20.6 cents per page for four-color pages. The high-yield cartridges drop those figures to a more palatable 6 cents per page for black and 13 cents per page for all four colors. The company's newly announced V525w and V725w models have standard-size cartridges that cost a slightly above-average 5 cents per page of plain black text, but an atrocious 27.5 cents per page for all four colors. The extra-high-yield black is an affordable 2.4 cents per page, but the four-color cost remains high at 14.4 cents.

Canon printers priced at $200 and above tend to have reasonable ink costs. Among the company's sub-$200 models, however, such as the Canon Pixma MG4120 MFP, you'll find black-ink costs of 7 to 7.3 cents per page. The color inks are more reasonably priced, with a four-color page coming in at a middling 13.8 cents. Canon's only inexpensive printer with reasonably priced inks is the $150 Canon Pixma MG5320 MFP. At 4.7 cents per page for black and 12.9 cents per page for four-color, the MG5320's cartridges are cheaper than average.

Lexmark's Polarized Ink Pricing

Recent inkjet printers from Lexmark have improved noticeably in overall quality, but the company's ink prices remain a mixed bag. Lexmark's high-yield cartridges often have startlingly low costs per page. But the prices go up sharply for standard-yield cartridges.

If you use high-yield cartridges for the Lexmark OfficeEdge Pro5500 all-in-one, for instance, the prices are just 1.5 cents per page for black and 7.9 cents per page for all four colors--both figures being way below average. The standard-size cartridge prices, though, are significantly higher. The 4.2 cents per page for black is about average, while 17.4 cents per page for all four colors is a hefty 7 cents per page higher than average.

Among other Lexmark inkjets we've tested, two MFPs--the small-office Lexmark Pinnacle Pro901 and the Lexmark Platinum Pro905--use standout high-yield inks: a special 510-page black cartridge (the 105XL) costs $5, or a scant 1 cent per page. With that black and the high-yield colors, you'll currently pay 11.5 cents for a four-color page, which is about average. Unfortunately, the prices for the standard-size ink cartridges are outrageous: 11.2 cents per page for standard-size black and 29.2 cents for all four colors

How to Find the Best Deal

Of course, many more printers are available than I've mentioned here. So how do you figure out whether the ink for a particular printer will break your budget? The math is actually pretty easy.

For any printer you're considering, look at each ink cartridge and divide its price by the vendor's stated page yield. This computation will give you a simple cost per page, just for the ink. Most vendors use an industry-standard yield test that makes comparison much easier than it used to be. If the manufacturer offers high- or low-yield cartridges in addition to standard-size versions, figure out those costs as well.

It's also important to think about how much you'll likely be printing. High-yield cartridges are relatively cheap, but if you print infrequently, you'll end up with more ink than you need and risk having the print head dry out. If you buy low-yield cartridges but end up printing a lot, you'll be replacing cartridges constantly--and shelling out serious bucks for them.

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HP Officejet 6700 Premium e-All-in-one Printer Review: Fast, Affordable Color

The HP Officejet 6700 Premium e-All-in-One color inkjet multifunction (print/scan/copy/fax) offers many impressive capabilities, especially considering its affordable price of just $170 (as of March 28, 2012). Geared toward the needs of a midvolume home or small office (printing dozens, not hundreds, of pages per week), the Officejet 6700 Premium performs quickly and produces decent text and photos. Its inks, especially colors, are affordable in their high-yield versions.

The OfficeJet 6700 Premium is a triple treat, interface-wise: USB, ethernet, and Wi-Fi are all present. Setup is easy, and the software is the usual competent but easy-to-use HP suite, including optical character recognition.

The control panel is a 2.65-inch touchscreen color LCD with additional touch controls to each side. The only nontouch control is the power button. A USB port on the OfficeJet 6700 Premium's front allows you to offload scans or perform direct printing.

Highlights in paper handling include a roomy 250-sheet bottom-mounted paper tray (most of its competitors have 100- or 150-sheet trays) and a 75-sheet output tray, plus automatic duplexing. The flatbed scanner platen is your typical letter/A4-size offering, but the 35-sheet automatic document feeder above it can scan legal-size media and capture both sides of a two-sided document (one side at a time). Telescoping hinges for the scanner cover/ADF are the only things we missed.

The OfficeJet 6700 Premium's speed is peppy for the price range: In our tests the OfficeJet 6700 Premium reached a medium-fast rate of 10 pages per minute printing plain text on the PC and Mac platforms, and it posted average or faster speeds printing photos and color graphics. Only its scanning was significantly more sluggish than average.

Though the scans are slow, at least they look good: fairly accurate in color, not too choppy or dark. Print quality disappoints at default settings on plain paper, as text appears dark charcoal rather than black and slightly soft around the edges, while color images look orangey and fuzzy. Switching to a finer quality mode for text and photo paper for color improves matters considerably (and uses more ink). The draft mode is both faster and more readable than most.

The Officejet 6700 Premium uses a four-cartridge ink system that's costlier than average with the standard-capacity supplies, but considerably cheaper than average with the high-capacity cartridges. The normal $20 black that lasts for 400 pages works out to a rather pricey 5 cents per page. The $11 cyan, magenta, and yellow last for 330 pages, or 3.3 cents per page. That's a slightly above-average 15 cents per four-color page.

The high-yield cartridges include a 1000-page black for $32, or 3.2 cents per page, and 825–page colors for $16 each, which works out to 1.9 cents per page. That makes for a far more affordable, 9-cent four-color page. Text pages still cost about twice what you’ll pay with fancier models such as the HP Officejet Pro 8600 Plus.

Though the HP Officejet 6700 Premium falls a bit short in scanning capabilities and ink costs, it's otherwise a capable midpriced inkjet MFP. A similarly priced competitor, the Brother MFC-J825DW, offers CD/DVD printing and a two-year warranty (compared to the HP's one), but it also has a lower paper capacity and some higher ink prices.

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HP LaserJet Pro 400 Color M451nw Review: Nice Laser Printer Is Duplex-Deprived

The $450 (as of March 9, 2012) HP LaserJet Pro 400 Color M451nw color laser printer has nice output and is relatively speedy considering the price. However, it suffers from the same pricey toner of most entry-level color laser printers, and it lacks the automatic duplexing found in HP's slightly more expensive 'dn' and 'dw' variants.

Our test M451nw was decently constructed. You can easily access the slide-out toner tray and paper path through a fold-down front panel. A pop-off panel on the right side makes it simple to upgrade the unit's standard 128MB of memory to 384MB. The one slightly bothersome component is the bottom-mounted, letter/legal standard paper tray. The tray itself is sturdy enough, but the latch holding it inside the printer offers barely any resistance. HP says it designed the tray to be easy to open, but instead the company managed to make it feel insecure.

The M451nw's controls are adequate for what is really a simple device. You get a two-way rocker button for navigating the two-line LED. That's fine for general operation, but not for manual Wi-Fi setup: You need to attach the printer via USB or ethernet to set up the wireless, unless your router offers WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup).

Paper-handling features are sufficient for a small office or workgroup--if the users aren't too far from the printer. Otherwise, this model's lack of an automatic duplexer will wear on those who must constantly run to the printer to reinsert documents for two-sided printing. The 250-sheet input tray, 50-sheet multipurpose tray, and 150-sheet output tray are satisfactory given the unit's roughly 2000-sheet recommended monthly cycle. If not, a bottom-mounted, $143, 250-sheet auxiliary paper feeder is available.

Compared with similarly priced color laser printers, the M451nw's per-page costs are decent. Next to business inkjet printers or inkjet MFPs in the same price range, however, they're exorbitant. The standard black toner cartridge costs $79 and lasts 2200 pages, or 3.6 cents per page. The cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridges cost $114 and last for 2600 pages, or 4.4 cents per page per color. That makes a four-color page cost 16.7 cents, a hair below the average for color lasers. A high-yield black cartridge available for $102 lasts for 4000 pages, reducing black costs to 2.5 cents per page and four-color to 15.6 cents per page. The cartridges that ship with the unit last approximately 1400 pages.

The text the M451nw produces is outstanding--dark and sharp. Color photos are also quite good for a color laser at this price point, though as with most HP printers, human faces have an orange cast. Our full-page photo showed a cool color palette, and nice rendering of fine details.

The M451nw offers an economy mode to save toner. Output in this mode is legible, but only just. If you're going to spend any time perusing the document, or if it's for public consumption, you'll want to print at regular quality.

The HP LaserJet Pro 400 Color M451nw's lack of an automatic duplexer is an issue that you can overcome by opting for the $500 M451dn (no Wi-Fi) or the $550 M451dw (with Wi-Fi and, despite the absence of the letter n in the name, ethernet). Alas, neither of those models can solve the problem of high per-page costs. Consider a high-end business inkjet MFP instead, which could save you a bundle on supplies over time. Alternative lasers in this price range include the Dell 2150cdn and the Brother HL-4570CDW.

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Samsung ML-2955DW Review: Cheap Laser Printer, Pricey Toner

The Samsung ML-2955DW monochrome laser printer is notable for its very low street price ($150 as of February 8, 2012) and its full network connectivity, namely USB, ethernet, and Wi-Fi. Unfortunately, the expensive toner restricts it to low-volume use.

It’s the same old story: cheap printer, pricey toner. The ML-2955DW ships with a starter-size toner cartridge with a 1000-page yield. Replacements include a 1500-page cartridge for $63, which works out to 4.2 cents per page--steep compared with the current average of 2.6 cents per page for all the monochrome lasers we’ve tested. The higher-yield cartridge costs $75 and lasts for 2500 pages, or 3 cents per page, versus an average of 1.8 cents per page for other high-yield cartridges we’ve priced. If you take a year or more to get through a cartridge, you probably won’t care. If you have to replace the cartridges several times a year, however, you will definitely start to feel the pinch. For higher-volume use, step up to a model such as the Dell 2350dn, which has reasonably priced consumables.

The ML-2955DW is otherwise a decent printer. Equipped with a 533MHz CPU and 64MB of memory, it printed plain text in our tests at a middling rate of 18.3 pages per minute. It comes with a 250-sheet input tray and a 150-sheet output tray; the latter has a flip-out plastic panel that catches paper or covers the output area. The printer also has a front manual-feed slot, which you can access by pressing on a small front panel. On my test unit, however, the bendy panel required a pretty hard push to open.

The top control panel is spare to a fault. It has power and cancel buttons, plus buttons to enable Wi-Fi Protected Setup and ‘Eco’ mode (explained below). A few indicator lights are present as well, but they suffer from inscrutable icon labels and color/blink patterns that mean nothing unless you consult the documentation.

Samsung tries to make it easier to save paper and toner with its ‘Eco’ mode, which automatically combines duplexing, 2-up printing (fitting two reduced-size pages onto one sheet), and a lighter application of toner. These settings are adequate for drafts and internal reference documents, though the lighter toner means that text might be slightly harder to read. If you delve into the ‘Eco’ tab in the printer driver, you can see estimates of the resources you are conserving with each choice.

The Samsung ML-2955DW is priced to fit the budget of small or home offices--at least initially. The toner costs over time will be dear. If you plan to print more than a few dozen pages per week, move up a hundred dollars or so in purchase price to buy a machine with cheaper consumables.

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