5 Best Multifunction Printers for Tight Budgets

With time, multifunction printers have successfully replaced printers, copiers, scanners and fax machines in your homes and offices. Using an MFP instead of separate machines makes significant savings in time, space and money. Consequently, the multifunction market is growing and there are models available for every budget. A budget model, even if it's slow and has costly ink cartridges, could actually be a decent deal if you don't print or scan much.

HP Hotspot LaserJet Pro MFP-1218nfs

The innovative thing about this MFP is a built-in wireless router, which apart from allowing wireless printing also doubles up as an Internet hot spot. Up to 8 PCs and mobile devices can connect to it at a time. At 8.3 Kgs, the

MFP is pretty lightweight. Besides WiFi, the MFP also has USB and Ethernet connectivity. It has an uncluttered and easy to use control panel. While testing the performance, we got 17 documents printed within a minute,

with the first page coming out in 9 secs. The results for copying were also similar. You can get a maximum of 99 copies alongwith a resize option of 25 to 400%. The scanner clocked 7 and 3 secs for scanning an A4 page in B/W & color modes respectively. The print quality is excellent.

Price: Rs.18,306

Key Specs: All-in-one (print, copy, scan, fax), Internet hotspot, Mobile & cloud printing, memory-64MB, Processor Speed- 400 Mhz, Connectivity- Hi-Speed USB 2.0 port, Ethernet, Wireless, 2-line LCD Display panel, ADF-35 sheet, Input Paper Capacity- 150 sheet, Output Paper Capacity- 100 sheet, Duty Cycle- 8000 pages, Dimension- 435 x 365 x 306 mm, Weight- 8.3 Kg.

Xerox WorkCentre 3045

WorkCentre 3045 multifunction printer saves space due to its light and compact form factor and fits easily on a small table. Its handling is easy and intuitive, thanks to the bright LCD panel. A front-side USB port allows scanning to USB drives straight away. It has manual duplex printing which allows for both side printing, only that the sheet has to be fed manually. With a print resolution of up to 1200 x 1200 dpi, text looks sharp with a

print speed of 23ppm and a first page print time of 13 secs. Scanning can be done at 1200 x 1200 dpi in PDF, JPEG or TIFF file formats. Moreover, the scanned page can be edited on a PC. Also the device can look into the email inbox and document repository folder for scanned files. It takes around 16 seconds to scan an object and also to copy the first page.

Unfortunately, multiple copies are not available and only one copy can be taken out at a time.

Price: Rs.16,500

Key Specs: All-in-one (print, copy, scan, fax), memory-64MB, Hi-Speed USB 2.0 port, LCD Display panel, Input Paper Capacity- 160 sheet, Output Paper Capacity- 100 sheet, Duty Cycle- 30,000 pages, Dimensions- 409 x 389 x 300mm

Epson M200

Epson M200 is a monochrome inkjet MFP with a separate ink tank, which means you don't need to replace the cartridge all the time. Simply open the cap of the ink tank and pour in the ink. Another important feature of this MFP is its price per page cost which can be as low as 12p/page. In our  tests the device took 9 sec to print the first page and overall 14 pages in a minute. In draft mode, the ppm increases to 30 pages. Prints are of good quality with crisp outputs. Copying performance and quality is exactly similar to that of printing. The scanner took 16 seconds to scan an A4 B/W page and 33 seconds to scan a full graphics color A4 page. Amongst

other features, you will find Ethernet and cloud printing but there is no USB wake-up printing or WiFi support.

Price: Rs.10,995

Key Specs: Inkjet printer, copier, scanner, USB 2.0, manual duplexing, Input capacity-100 pages, Output capacity-30 pages, Weight-6Kgs.

Samsung SCX-4321

A multi-function printer with color scanning and copying features in the budget MFP category. It is very attractively priced at Rs 12k, which is a reasonable deal for small offices and homes. It allows efficient use of office space as it offers professional level printing, color scanning and flatbed copying. Samsung SCX-4321 is a decent performer with a print speed of 18 ppm with a first page print time of 14 seconds. The quality of prints is ordinary with satisfactory text prints at 600x600 dpi. Scanning, just like other MFDs, is available in color with ADF and it takes 46 seconds to scan an object at 600x600dpi. The copy speed is above average with 20 cpm and a first copy time of 9 seconds. The MFD is a little noisy though.

Price: Rs.12,000

Key Specs: All-in-one (print, copy, scan), memory-16MB, Connectivity- Hi-Speed USB 2.0 port, Ethernet, 2-line LCD Display panel, Input Paper Capacity- 150 sheet, Output Paper Capacity- 50 sheet, Duty Cycle- 4000 pages, Dimension- 438 x 374 x 368mm, Weight- 10.4 Kgs.

Canon imageclass MF3010

A compact monochrome all-in-one laser printer with the ability to print, copy and scan for small offices and homes. It is a decent performer where the print speed can go upto 18 ppm at a print resolution of 600x600dpi, with first print time at 8 seconds. Copy performance is identical to that of printing. The scanning takes place at a resolution of 600x600 dpi. It doesn't have the ability to be shared amongst the work group as there is no Ethernet or WiFi available. But at this price you cannot expect much from a laser MFP.

Price: Rs.10,995

Key Specs: All-in-one (print, copy, scan), memory-128MB, Processor- 300MHz, Hi-Speed USB 2.0 port, LCD Display panel, Input Paper Capacity- 150 sheet, Output Paper Capacity- 100 sheet, Duty Cycle-8,000 pages,  Dimensions- 409 x 389 x 300mm.