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| Jacks Of All Office Trades |
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Heavy Gear January 2010 • Vol.10 Issue 1 Page(s) 22-24 in print issue |
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Jacks Of All Office Trades Printers That Do Everything But Make Toast |
For many of us, it makes sense to spend slightly more for an all-in-one printer than it does to purchase a standard inkjet or laser printer. You have the convenience of a copier, scanner, and, depending on the unit, fax machine in a single unit similar in size to a standard printer. Many new AIO printers include features, such as photo-quality prints, a built-in duplexer for two-sided printing, and Wi-Fi connectivity, that were once limited to high-end models. Some AIOs can even connect with an iPhone or iPod touch to let you print photos, calendars, documents, and contacts via the Wi-Fi or USB connection. Here, we’ll take a look at some of the newest AIO printers from Brother, Canon, Epson, and HP.  How We Test To check the printer’s rated speed, we time our 10-page test document from the moment the document is sent to the printer, which is connected to our PC via USB. To factor in all possible variables, we send the 10-page document while the printer is in sleep mode, so the PPM (pages per minute) rating includes the time it takes for the printer to wake up, process the print job, and produce all 10 pages. We also check to ensure that the printer is delivering the pages at its highest quality. In terms of print quality for text, each page of the test document features 7-, 9-, 10-, 12-, and 14-point fonts. Some of the lines in each font size are italicized and bolded, and a different font style is used on each page. We examine the text for clarity and consistency. For color quality, we insert photo paper and print some colorful images, a few photos with lots of close-up detail, and a black-and-white print with bright whites and dark blacks. Again, we run the photo tests at the printer’s highest quality. The speed, print quality, and features are weighed equally, in comparison to the printer’s price to rate the printer. Brother MFC-9320CW MFC-9320CW $499.99 Brother www.brother-usa.com CPU Rating: 3.5  The MFC-9320CW is a color laser AIO that supports pretty much all types of connectivity. Its built-in 802.11b/g connection can function in ad-hoc mode to let any wireless device connect to the printer, or it can work in infrastructure mode for those looking to secure access to the printer through a wireless access point. If you’d prefer the stability of a wired connection, there’s an Ethernet port, traditional USB printer port, and a USB Direct Interface on the front of the printer. The USB Direct Interface is PictBridge-compatible, and you can scan images to or print content directly from a flash drive. Supported file types for the USB Direct Interface include PDF, JPEG, TIFF, PostScript 3, and XPS 1.0. Setup of the printer is fairly straightforward. The MFC-9320CW’s Quick Startup Guide offers detailed instructions for setting up the printer through the USB, wired network, and wireless connections—for both Windows and Mac users. Wi-Fi setup was particularly easy with routers that support SecureEasySetup, Wi-Fi Protected Setup, or AOSS (AirStation One-Touch Secure System). Brother boasts that the MFC-9320CW produces both color and black-and-white pages at 17ppm, and, excluding startup time, those numbers were accurate. The laser printer took 13 seconds to start up, knocking it down to 12ppm. Those who work with specialty papers, such as envelopes, labels, or thick card stock, will appreciate the manual feed slot at the front. One unique feature is the Secure Function Lock, which lets you block the use of the printer—great for stopping kids or intrusive roommates from copying, scanning, or faxing. Not surprisingly, text from the laser printer was the most crisp of any of the models—the others being ink-jets—in the roundup. In particular, bolded text appeared to jump off the page, while italicized text was clearly readable at all font sizes. The inkjets struggled with the small, thin lines of the 7-point italicized font. The MFC-9320CW also produced some of the highest scan and copy quality in the roundup. Lasers can’t really compete with inkjets when printing photos, but the MFC-9320CW did a great job with charts and other graphics. Canon Pixma MP560 Pixma MP560 $149.99 Canon www.usa.canon.com CPU Rating: 3.5  This Wi-Fi-enabled AIO is easily the smallest printer in our roundup, standing at only 6.3 inches tall. In fact, when the printer is closed up, it’s tough to tell that the MP560 is a printer. The photo-centric Pixma MP560 features five ink cartridges: a pigment black (used when printing text) and dye-based cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. You can connect it via USB or 802.11b/g—no Ethernet port—or directly print content from memory cards (the MP560 supports CF, SD, SDHC, and MS [Memory Stick] formats), your digital camera, or a flash drive. Accessing content without a PC was easy, because Canon includes a scroll wheel (like an iPod) and a circular menu interface that rotates with the scroll wheel. The 2-inch color LCD sits in a pop-up panel that covers the scroll wheel and other controls. Canon includes all the ink cartridges (full-sized), software CD, and a Getting Started guide. Installing the Canon software took around 10 minutes. We liked that Canon doesn’t integrate the print head, so you can replace it without having to send back the entire printer. To set up the wireless connection, we used the WPS’ push-button method, but the Pixma MP560 can also detect your wireless network and let you enter your authentication information from the printer. Either way, we prefer this to hardwiring the printer to our PC and going through a setup wizard. The Pixma MP560 was the fastest of the inkjet printers in our 10-page test document, at 10ppm. We particularly liked that it awoke from sleep mode in less than five seconds. It was also great with photos. For example, in our Golden Gate Bridge test photo, the cable suspensions appear distinctive and crisp; other printers had trouble with this detail. Color was vibrant and true, and in our black-and-white photo, the MP560 displayed the greatest contrast between brights and darks. Text was less impressive, often leaving specks of color around even large fonts. Still, if you’re not using the printer for business purposes, the quality should be fine. Epson Artisan 810 Artisan 810 $299.99 Epson www.epson.com CPU Rating: 4  An AIO with a 7.8-inch touch panel and a 3.5-inch LCD? You better believe it. The Artisan 810’s touch interface made it easy to utilize the built-in editing features, from basic changes—such as crop and rotate—to the Artisan’s coloring book and personalized notepaper edits. Epson also includes a number of uncommon features in the Artisan 810. Topping the rare features list is the printer’s powered USB port, so you can charge your portable USB devices while sitting at your desk. If you have an iPhone or iPod touch with an e-Printing application, you can print to the Artisan 810 when connected via the powered USB port or Wi-Fi. To print from other mobile devices, you can purchase an optional Bluetooth adapter ($39). For printing to CD or DVDs, you’ll no longer need to deal with a cumbersome disc holder because Epson has integrated a disc loading tray into the printer. We simply had to click the CD tray button, and the Artisan 810 ejects the tray. There’s also a dedicated photo tray that can hold 4x6 or 5x7 prints. Epson smartly designed the printer so that all of these features are easily accessible from the front panel. In terms of AIO features, it offers a built-in duplexer, a 30-page automatic document feeder, and a fax machine that can receive color and black-and-white faxes. For network connectivity, you can connect via the USB port, Ethernet port, or 802.11b/g. The Artisan’s scan quality rivaled Brother’s MFC-9320CW as tops in our roundup. In the 10-page document test, we were impressed by the Artisan 810’s quality down to 9-point fonts. However, its 22-second wake-up time from sleep mode seriously slowed its speed; it registered 9ppm. At first, we were slightly disappointed by the Epson’s photo quality, because shadows and other dark highlights appeared much darker than our on-screen image. By default, Epson turns on its photo correction, and when we turned it off, the Artisan 810 produced accurate, vivid color. The Artisan 810 also showed good detail and color degradation. And when combined with its high-quality text, it delivered the most well-rounded performance of the AIOs. HP Officejet 6500 Wireless All-In-One Printer $199.99 HP www.hp.com CPU Rating: 3  The Officejet 6500 Wireless All-In-One offers 802.11b/g network connectivity, a built-in duplexer, and flash memory for retaining faxes, even if there’s a power outage. It features a scanner with an optical resolution of 2,400dpi (dots per inch) and can copy material (at the lowest quality setting) in color at up to 31ppm. The scanner flatbed supports up to 8.5 x 11 paper, but you can also feed content to the scanner through the automatic document feeder, which supports up to 35 sheets of legal paper. We like that the duplexer can handle envelopes, great for if you want to add your business logo or event information to mail. There are built-in memory card slots for SD (supports SDHC), MMC, xD-Picture Card, and the various MS formats. The four ink cartridges (full-sized), USB cable, and telephone cord are all included. HP’s setup software took us step-by-step through the setup process. The software took around 10 minutes to install, but once we got started, we were happy with how thorough and intuitive the wizard program was. Make sure you check the printouts from the alignment process. We had to clean the print heads so colors and black levels would appear correctly. HP also boasts that the printer can output 32ppm in black-and-white or 31ppm in color after the first page is sent and on the lowest quality settings. Of course, we tested the Officejet 6500 Wireless at its high-quality settings, and it produced around 8ppm, partially because it was hindered by a 35-second wake time from sleep mode. Text in our 10-page test document was darker than the other printers in our roundup, so much so that it was difficult to tell the difference between bolded and nonbolded text. Still, the Officejet 6500 produced the most speckle-free text quality of the inkjets tested, and the dark text may come in handy with office work. The color quality of photos, which we printed at the Maximum DPI setting, showed exceptional gradation, but the AIO suffered from muddled details, such as the peaks of ocean waves and grass. Final Thoughts If you’re looking for a printer that can handle everything you throw at it, you can’t go wrong with Epson’s Artisan 810, which offers a blend of high-quality performance and design ingenuity. That being said, business workers may prefer the snappy Brother MFC-9320CW or the value of HP’s feature-filled Officejet 6500 Wireless All-in-One Printer. And with great photo quality and an affordable price, photo enthusiasts looking for a quality AIO should check out Canon’s Pixma MP560.  by Nathan Lake
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