Pragmatic printers for the smartphone age

WE TEST SEVEN ALL-IN-ONE MULTIFUNCTION PRINTERS FOR HOME OR SMALL OFFICE, PRICED AT UNDER $200 AND UNDER $400.

PRINTERS ARE PROBABLY one of the last things you’d consider as having been affected by the smartphone revolution. But if you consider the convenience of having an always-connected screen in your pocket that you can use for instantly calling up all manner of information — from emails to web pages, movie/concert tickets to holiday reservations — you can see how the need to produce paper printouts has lessened.

Still, there are still plenty of instances where a hard copy is required — especially in the context of a school or work environment. Multifunction centres (MFCs) — sometimes referred to as multifunction printers — combine combine a printer, scanner, photocopier and sometimes a fax machine into a single device, and have continued to be popular for this reason.

While MFCs are available in both inkjet and laser variants, the latter isn’t as common for home and SMB usage — especially as they’re typically priced at the higher-end of the spectrum. One thing to be wary of with inkjets is that they don’t reproduce text with the same crisp legibility as a laser printer, so if you’re looking to print documents for professional purposes, a laser printer may be the better option.

Wi-Fi support is now considered standard on modern printers (indeed, many don’t even bother including a USB cable in the box), making it easy for any computer or mobile device on the network to connect to it wirelessly. The latest models also offer a variety of other connection options, including USB ports for plugging in thumb drives, SD card slots and integrated support for popular cloud services such as Dropbox, Google Drive and Evernote.