If you’re looking to equip a small office with a printer, there’s only one type of device that you should be looking after, a multifunction printer. This type of device includes more functions in one and can generally offer copying, scanning, printing and faxing all-in-one.




The reasons why you’d want to go ahead and get a multifunction are numerous. You save money buying only one device instead of four.

You also save money replacing consumables for only one device as well as space in the office and time (no more going back and forth between the fax machine In one office and the printer in the other). To choose out of a huge selection of multifunction printers currently available on the market its important to establish what you need. This ‘what you need’ business is being mentioned all over the Internet and in magazines but it’s very true. Buying a printer for business requires a bit of thought.

First of all you’ll need to understand what features you need. Everyone needs printing and copying, but does your office really need faxing or scanning? Also important is what volume of printing you need a month, how many users will be using the printer and whether you can stick to a monochrome or you need color as well. Secondly you need to evaluate the potential cost of ownership. Doesn’t matter that you saved a couple of hundred $ when choosing a cheaper yet still high quality printer if you end up paying three times as much on consumables as you would have on slightly more expensive competitors.

This is where laser printers prove to be a much better choice than inkjets generally. Lasers also do better at printing faster than inkjets so also consider that. Some cheaper multifunction printers can be amazingly slow at printing. If you work in a fast paced environment and you find yourself often fighting against time, do your best to avoid sluggish printers even if it might mean spending more money.

Since several people who might not be trained will be using the printer its also important that the printer is easy to use. The user interface has to be intuitive. Finally the print quality doesn’t necessarily have to be top of the line. If you mostly need documents and graphics that show and don’t care exactly how crisp the text is, this would be a very good area to save money, since printers with not so amazing quality, while fast and capable, are a bit cheaper.

Finally buying a printer for business also means that you might want some office specific features such as an automatic document feeder and duplexer. Having to manually feed every single sheet out of a 30 page set will definitely ruin the day of whoever is responsible for the task. An ADF will get the job done with no hassle at all.

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