If you’re looking for an all-in-one (AIO) for your small or home office, or to serve as a personal AIO in a larger office, the Brother MFC-5440CN ($130 street) is bound to catch your eye. Not only is the price right for those on a tight budget, the printer also offers all the right functions for an office. It’s also suitably compact, at 10.6 by 18.1 by 17.0 inches—easy to squeeze onto crowded desks.

Here are some impressions from Pcmag’s review: The MFC-5440CN’s long list of features includes a network connector, a flatbed scanner, a 35-page automatic document feeder (ADF) for handling multipage documents easily, and a fax modem so it can work as a standalone fax machine. Besides being a standalone copier, this device can also print (of course), scan, fax from your PC, and scan directly to e-mail documents over a network. Unfortunately, at this price you can’t have everything. The tradeoff for all these features is slow speed, slightly below-par output quality, and an extremely small paper capacity—just 100 sheets.

Setup is typical for an ink jet AIO. You just load in paper, connect the power cord and cables, and install the ink cartridges, then run the automated installation routine. One key difference from most ink jets is that the Brother MFC-5440CN uses a separate cartridge for each color (cyan, yellow, magenta, and black). Separate cartridges help keep the running costs down, since you don’t have to throw out unused ink when one color runs out.

The best I can say about the MFC-5440CN’s speed is that it isn’t the slowest AIO I’ve ever seen. I clocked it at a total 49 minutes 31 seconds on our business applications suite (timed with QualityLogic’s hardware and software; www.qualitylogic.com). In comparison, the $180 Editors’ Choice Canon Pixma MP500 took only 15:17. And the speed isn’t any better for photos; the MFC-5440CN averaged 4:49 for each 4-by-6 print and 12:06 for each 8-by-10.