Multifunction printers: A place for everything

Wave good-bye to that printer down the hall — and to the fax machine, copier, and scanner that sit nearby. MFPs (multifunction printers) combine the functionalities of these four machines into one, promising to save space, money, and maintenance hassles while providing sophisticated document management and workflow features.

But do they deliver? To find out, we tested the performance and output quality of eight MFPs from eight major vendors. We also evaluated feature depth and ease-of-use, paying particular attention to control panels. The best of the bunch — Ricoh’s Aficio 2035eSP — managed to do everything quickly and well, whereas the rest stumbled in one or more areas.

More than paper pushers

All the MFPs we tested had 33-, 35-, or 40-ppm (pages per minute) monochrome-laser engines and came ready to print, copy, and scan to network volumes (most came fax-ready, but we didn’t test that function). Each had a tabloid-size document feeder, duplexer, scanner glass, paper tray, and an internal hard drive to store files locally. We tested most units with their standard output tray. Each vendor offers finisher options that stack, staple, drill holes, or even saddle-stitch and fold booklets. The Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 9040mfp and the Xerox WorkCentre Pro 35 require an external finisher to operate.

The latest MFPs offer useful document-production tricks. In job building, for instance, the machine combines multiple scanned or copied documents into one output job. Job interrupt allows a user to stop a job in progress, run another job, and then resume the interrupted job — useful for rush situations, as is the ability to manually reorder jobs in the queue.

To account for all those capabilities, MFPs demand additional resources. Make sure you allot enough space for the main unit and any finishing options. Most importantly, check your electrical resources: All the MFPs we tested draw anywhere from 1.1kW (kilowatts) to 1.5kW, and most require or prefer to have a single line to themselves. Because MFPs can hook into your network’s print, fax, and e-mail systems, a vendor or reseller technician typically assists with installation.

One additional caution is in order. Each system we tested has features for users and features for administrators, with separate, password-protected areas for the latter. None, however, provides adequately granular tools for administrators to control access to specific features. An errant or curious user could, as we did, suddenly change the control-panel language to kanji (Japanese); even the Undo button became incomprehensible, forcing a service call to restore the panel. Click for larger view.

IS departments accustomed to buying equipment outright at fixed prices are in for an unhappy surprise. MFPs are priced based on the copier business model, where lease-to-own contracts and service agreements are the norm, and everything — equipment pricing, supplies, cost per page, lease terms, financing — is unpublished and negotiable. That’s why we provide only list prices. For a crash course on what you’re up against, see “Multifunction Printers, Multifunction Pricing,” page 45.

Canon imageRunner 3320i

The Canon imageRunner 3320i’s many smart features are very easy to use. Its dawdling print speeds might frustrate a busy office, however.

The imageRunner 3320i boasts a touch-sensitive, 1,024-pixel-by-768-pixel color LCD in its control panel. With the highest resolution screen in the roundup, it’s very easy to read, whether navigating menus or displaying scanned documents. You can even zoom in on a scanned image. The screen offers generous UI space for developers who use Canon’s new set of APIs — aka MEAP (multifunctional embedded application platform) — to add capabilities to the imageRunner 3320i.

Canon populates the screen with feature-packed, easy-to-use menus. Adding page numbers to copies is simple, as is designating the starting page number and printing page numbers white on a dark document — the only system we tested with that “reverse-type” feature. The printer easily switches trays automatically when one runs out of paper; it will even skip designated trays such as letterhead.

The imageRunner 3320i’s copious security features aid adherence to federal mandates. For instance, it can’t reprint the last job, but it can recapitulate recent settings to make a quick extra copy from the originals. Also, it caches secure jobs — those requiring a PIN to complete — in RAM instead of on the hard drive.

The model we tested had plenty of paper-handling capacity: three 500-sheet tabloid-size trays, a 500-sheet legal-size tray, and an auxiliary or bypass feeder. Canon’s long list of add-ons includes a 50-envelope feeder ($105) and a 2,500-sheet external paper subsystem ($2,200).

Our test system’s internal finisher could offset or staple collated jobs; the $3,400 saddle-stitch component staples, folds, and accommodates a $670 add-on hole puncher that drills two holes across the top of the page or three holes across the side without reconfiguration. (The Xerox WorkCentre Pro 35 requires swapping parts between two- and three-hole drills.)

Image quality was good overall; both printed and copied text looked crisp and clean. Printed graphics, however, looked grainy or dotty; scanned text suffered from jagged edges; and scanned graphics had patchy, rough textures.

The imageRunner 3320i falls short in one key area: speed. We never expected its 33-ppm engine to beat out the better-endowed competition in this roundup, but despite copying text handily at 30.8 ppm, it printed plain-text pages at a sluggish 16.7 ppm and graphics pages at an abysmal 4.4 ppm.

Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 9040mfp

Hewlett-Packard’s LaserJet 9040mfp is unique among the MFPs we tested in three ways: It can be purchased outright; it comes with a one-year warranty (upgradable to three years for $2,899); and it is designed to be user-installable (we had few problems unpacking and setting it up, making just a couple of quick calls to HP’s tech support). Some offices will welcome this less-complex MFP, especially given its fast performance and many useful features. A few design and image quality issues marred this otherwise strong contender.

As does Xerox’s WorkCentre Pro 35, the LaserJet 9040mfp requires an external finisher. We tested HP’s c8088b finisher, which offsets, stacks, and staples collated jobs and saddle-stitches and folds booklets. Other finishers are also available.

The LaserJet 9040mfp is generally sturdy and well designed. Its paper trays operate smoothly and autosense paper size. Dual scanners capture both sides of a page in one pass, saving time and wear on the feeder. Unique among the MFPs we tested, its scanner can capture in color. And the controller has a slot for a cable lock. The front-located main power button, however, is surprisingly unprotected; we bumped it several times during testing.

We had trouble navigating the LaserJet 9040mfp’s control panel. For example, we hit on how to paginate booklet jobs by dumb luck, and the place to enter the IP address is hidden deep within the menus (you can perform that task from the JetAdmin software, as well). The job-interrupt feature uses a buried on-screen menu command instead of a dedicated button, which the Konica Minolta and Toshiba systems provide.

The LaserJet 9040mfp’s speed and output quality varied. It copied text documents at 38.1 ppm, just behind the pace-setting Kyocera KM-4035. Text documents printed at a competent 23.1 ppm; graphics at a milder 6.3 ppm. Text quality disappointed us: Letters of all sizes and fonts were surrounded by a faint halo of toner, creating a slightly soft-focus effect. We saw the same phenomenon on two different units. Printed graphics looked much cleaner. The LaserJet 9040mfp’s copy quality was a little light but good overall. Scan quality was a mixed bag: Text and line-art samples looked fairly crisp, but graphics looked grayish, lacked detail, and displayed bad moiré patterns.

Konica Minolta bizhub Di3510f

Konica Minolta’s bizhub Di3510f boasts copious features, especially for faxing, and it impressed us with good output quality. But its interface takes time to master.

The bizhub Di3510f offers some unusual features. It’s the only system we tested that can number each set in a multiset copy job, but it can’t add normal page numbers. It can reduce or enlarge a scanned image’s height and width by separate amounts, which is handy for copying onto a preprinted page. The Book Erase feature cleans up gutters and edges on two-page spreads. The system can scan to PC using persistent setups created on the bizhub Di3510f’s control panel or one-touch buttons managed from the IP Scanner Utility. A welcome extra: You can turn off the control panel momentarily to wipe it clean without activating anything.

Advanced fax capabilities include support for F-codes: variables that deliver faxes to specific addresses, manage documents in the polling queue, and other tasks. Chain dialing allows you to store fax numbers separately from area codes and then combine them when sending. The system can also store incoming faxes in memory temporarily to avoid pileups.

The bizhub Di3510f suffers from some design weaknesses, however. Worst are confusing control-panel menus that might stymie untrained users. For example, the prompt to back out of a menu without saving changes is sometimes Enter instead of Cancel; the scan-to-PC function lives under the fax menus; and you have to create Index buttons as destinations for scans and then embed them in Program buttons to set up a reusable scan — and the button types look the same on screen. The toner bottle doesn’t reseal itself, risking a big mess when it’s removed. The machine goes offline when you point a Web browser at the embedded HTML server and then stays offline if you close the browser without logging out of the session; no other machine we tested had a similar hitch.

The bizhub Di3510f produced good-looking output but at varying rates. It copied speedily at 38.1 ppm, but it printed text and graphics at the pedestrian speeds of 23 ppm and 4.8 ppm, respectively. Printed text looked sharp and clean; printed graphics looked smooth and detailed. Scanned text and line-art looked good, but grayscale photos looked flat and monotone. Text copies looked fine; copied graphics looked pale, albeit detailed.

Kyocera KM-4035

Remember the saying, “Built for comfort, not for speed”? Well, Kyocera built the KM-4035 for speed over comfort. Its design is clunky, and the printer and scanner components require separate Ethernet ports, but it’s very fast. Too bad its output quality and ease-of-use were less thrilling.

We clocked the KM-4035 at 39.8 ppm for copying text and 27.8 ppm for printing text, both of which were the top scores in this roundup. Its 10.5-ppm graphics-printing speed was second to that of Ricoh’s Aficio 2035eSP.

The KM-4035 offers a range of sophisticated capabilities. You can scan several documents to its internal hard drive and link them to print as a group — useful, for example, when tying together a set of related forms. The job queue allows anyone to leapfrog a job over other pending jobs. While setting up a copy job, you can save and assign the settings to a button for reuse; other MFPs require a separate programming mode. When scanning to a PC, you can provide a batch filename, and the system will automatically append a serial number for each document in the batch.

The KM-4035’s fax component is capable of encrypting faxes exchanged with other Kyocera devices. It also relays faxes — that is, it faxes to a machine with instructions to forward the fax to another machine. During a blackout, an internal UPS preserves the fax stream for approximately one hour.

The KM-4035’s output quality favored text over graphics. It printed text quite well at normal reading sizes, but larger sizes showed somewhat choppy edges. Grayscale graphics looked flat and had streaks. Scanned text looked clean and readable, but scanned graphics looked dirty and dark. Copied text looked clean, but copied graphics picked up moiré patterns and some random streaking.

The KM-4035 could be easier to use. Its control-panel prompts often use odd terminology such as Close where a user would expect to see Enter, and Back or Stop instead of Cancel. Also, the KM-4035 flashes the scanner light in your eyes every time you start to close the lid — only the Xerox WorkCentre Pro 35 was as persistently annoying in that way.

Our test system offered good capacity: two 500-sheet paper trays and a 200-sheet auxiliary tray built completely inside the machine. The bottom storage drawer can be swapped for dual 500-sheet feeders. A wide range of high-capacity feeders, finishers, and other paper-handling add-ons are available.

Lexmark’s X830e scored well on ease-of-use, and its design and software make it easy to customize. On the other hand, its output quality and speed were middling.

Most settings and controls operate through “soft” buttons on the X830e’s 6.25-inch-by-5.75-inch LCD. Out of the box, the default control panel is very easy to use. When entering text on-screen, you can move the cursor without tedious erasure, as with other MFPs we tested. The reduce/enlarge setup offers a list of paper sizes instead of less intuitive percentages. You can view documents stored on the X830e’s internal hard drive, as well as the onboard fax cover page. Developers can reshape the interface with Lexmark’s APIs.

Some aspects of the X830e disappointed us. The scan-to-PC function requires creating profiles or templates in software and then sending the one you want to use — when you want to use it — to the X830e, where it appears on the LCD as a button that evaporates as soon as the scan is captured. The X830e can’t number copied pages; it can’t job-build; and its fax component can’t poll or forward.

The X830e’s 35-ppm engine copied text at a respectable 33.4 ppm, but its print speeds — 19.1 ppm for text, 5.9 ppm for graphics — trailed the average. Printed text looked slightly dark but clean; graphics looked somewhat grainy and displayed moiré patterns. With its 8-bit grayscale scanner set to capture in black-and-white, we saw pale spots or dropouts on large letters, but text was legible. Graphics scans showed moiré patterns.

The printer, scanner, and paper feeder stack up inside a boxy, steel exoskeleton. The design is ungainly but operates smoothly. The doors, panels, and paper trays all feel sturdy.

Our test system came with two internal, 500-sheet feeders and a 35-sheet auxiliary feed. It sat on a three-tray, 2,500-sheet feeder. Lexmark sells many finishing options, but the X830e’s main output tray can offset collated copies.

Lexmark’s service contracts exclude supplies, so you’ll pay an extra 0.69 cents per click — based on 5 percent coverage — for the integrated toner cartridge/imaging drum. Fortunately, the unit lasts for 30,000 pages.

Ricoh Aficio 2035eSP

Ricoh’s compact Aficio 2035eSP rated highest overall in our roundup. It combined high speed with very good image quality, plus its copious features were generally easy to use. If the Aficio 2035eSP matches your needs and you can score a good price, we see little reason to look elsewhere.

The Aficio 2035eSP impressed us with its useful, accessible features. A device in the document feeder stamps a red dot on outgoing faxes, an oldfangled technique for identifying sent pages that none of the other systems offers. To copy or make collated sets of a document longer than the 80-page feeder can accommodate, you can add additional pages after the feeder empties out. The Aficio 2035eSP beeps at you if you leave an original on the glass, and status lights alert you to other problems so you don’t need to study the LCD. Also, this is the only MFP we tested that supports as many as three fax lines; a one-line fax board lists for $1095, and each additional line for $650.

Ricoh’s control panel has clearly labeled mechanical and on-screen buttons, a logical menu structure, and informative prompts. The copy function’s Generation feature cleans up degraded copies. When you reduce and copy more than one page onto a sheet, you can number either each sheet or each reduced page. The Interrupt button puts a copy or scan job on hold to run another job, and then the Aficio 2035eSP resumes the held job where it left off. Another button displays all the settings you’ve picked before launching a complex copy job.

The Aficio 2035eSP’s speed and image quality also impressed us. It copied text at 34.9 ppm — closer to its maximum engine speed (35 ppm) than any other MFP we tested. It printed graphics at 12.1 ppm and text at 27.3 ppm, besting MFPs with equal or faster engines. The Aficio 2035 printed near-perfect text and clean, accurate graphics, and it copied text nicely as well. Only scanned and copied graphics fell short, looking dark, dirty, and patchy.

Even the highly rated Aficio 2035eSP has its quirks, however. We were warned not to press hard on the scanner’s platen, lest the chassis bend. Other MFPs we tested had a similar design, so we appreciated Ricoh’s forthrightness as much as we wondered at the mechanical risk. The paper trays require a lot of manual adjustment — you turn a dial inside the tray to tell the machine what size paper is installed and then stick single-use labels on the outside. The Aficio 2035 cannot count the total pages for a paginated copy job (for instance, “1 of 6”); you have to tell it how many there are.

Toshiba e-Studio 350

Similar to the Ricoh and Konica Minolta systems, Toshiba’s e-Studio 350 is relatively small and self-contained. Although it offered good speed and features, the e-Studio 350 suffered middling output quality and ease-of-use.

The e-Studio 350’s control panel requires a lot of button pushing, but the procedures usually make sense. Trim and Mask is one example: You indicate the area you wish to copy or scan by keying in the area as shown on rulers that surround the scanner glass. No other MFP we tested does this.

The e-Studio 350 also simplifies many functions. You can send ad hoc scans to a PC by typing in a path and directory name on the control panel to create a new folder on a client. Some offices might consider that a security risk, but it’s more convenient than programming a template. You can also modify and rename templates to avoid creating new ones from scratch. The job-build feature is a bit more complicated, requiring that you store each scan on the internal hard drive.

The e-Studio 350’s performance was acceptable. It logged midpack print and copy speeds. Unfortunately, its printed text came out consistently pale. Smaller type sizes looked wavy, and larger type sizes had jagged edges. Scanned text and copied text looked grayish and imprecise, and scanned photos and copied photos were dark, blocky, and dotty.

Two wish-list items: autosense paper trays — you have to tell it what size each tray holds — and better security. Toshiba is developing a data-overwrite dongle that inserts into a USB port on the e-Studio 350. Such modular functionality is common for MFPs, but we think the modules should be locked inside the machine.

Xerox WorkCentre Pro 35

Xerox’s WorkCentre Pro 35 offers a long list of features and good overall output quality. Some features could be easier to use, however, and its speed was lackluster.

For the most part, the copy features impressed us. When copying from a bound original, you can capture a single page of the spread. The Image Shift feature allows you to move scanned images away from the binding edge. Background Suppression makes legible scans from documents on dark or colored paper. When you’re programming a complex job, you can change settings on the fly; other MFPs we tested make you start over. On the other hand, you can’t build a job that includes hand-placed documents; all components must be run through the document feeder. The same is true for “two-up” copying.

Other features simplify operation. For example, adjusting paper guides inside a tray automatically relays size information to the system and changes the size label outside the tray. When the WorkCentre Pro 35 can’t complete a job (if, say, it lacks a particular paper), it sidelines the problem job and continues with others in the queue. All other systems we tested would grind to a halt.

Several ease-of-use problems annoyed us. When faxing, you can’t add an ad hoc comment to the cover page; you have to type your comment in a window, save it, and then add it to the cover page. You can’t move the cursor when typing with the on-screen keyboard; you must backtrack and retype. And as did the Kyocera KM-4035’s, the WorkCentre Pro 35’s scanner flashed annoyingly in our eyes when we started to close the lid.

Testing the WorkCentre Pro 35 involved one glitch: It required a Microsoft hotfix to print consistently in our test environment, which included a server test bed running Windows 2000 Server. Obtaining the hotfix usually involves calling Microsoft directly, but Xerox says it is working with Microsoft on an agreement to distribute the hotfix to customers who encounter similar issues. The agreement should be finalized by press time; meanwhile, customers who need the hotfix may obtain it from their Xerox service providers.

The WorkCentre Pro 35 produced mixed results on image quality and speed. Text at all sizes looked very clean and black, although smaller type looked a little pale. Scanned text was sometimes spiky but legible; scanned graphics showed good detail and looked three-dimensional, thanks to smooth, well-balanced shading. Copied text looked good, but copied graphics were too dark. Text documents copied at an above-average speed of 35.7 ppm, but printed text and graphics fell short of the average at 19.9 ppm and 5.6 ppm, respectively.

As does HP’s LaserJet 9040mfp, the WorkCentre Pro 35 requires an external finisher. Our test system came with a 2,000-page stapler/stacker device that can take an optional hole punch. But unlike the Canon imageRunner 3320i’s versatile hole-punch add-on, Xerox offers separate two-hole and three-hole options — and swapping them requires a service call.