Canon imageClass LBP6000

The Canon image Class LBP6000 ($140 street) is a tiny, single-function monochrome laser printer that is limited to direct USB connectivity to a computer. This makes it most appropriate as a personal printer in any size office. To that role, it brings laser speed and text quality, albeit with a sparse feature set.

In a word, the LBP6000 is very cute. It's white, with rounded corners and a somewhat bowed top, with a lid that folds outward to become the paper output tray. The front folds out to reveal the input tray, which fits 150 sheets of up to legal-size paper. The printer measures just 7.8 by 14.2 by 9 inches, and weighs 12 pounds with the toner cartridge in place.

Not only is the LBP6000 tiny, it's also minimalistic, with a grand total of 2 controls: the on/off switch and a paper-feed button. It doesn't have a display, and the only port is a sole USB port, used strictly for connecting to a computer. We tested it over this connection using a PC running Windows Vista.
Its 150-sheet paper capacity should be sufficient for light-duty use as a personal printer. It lacks an auto-duplexer, and Canon offers no additional paper-handling options.

Print Speed and Output Quality:

On the new version of our business applications suite, the LBP6000 came in at an effective 10.6 pages per minute (ppm), a decent speed that should easily meet if not exceed its 19 ppm engine rating. It's a tad slower than two Editors' Choice Brother Printers, the HL-2270DW ($150 street, 4 stars), which was timed at 11.7 ppm and the Brother HL-2240 ($120 street, 4 stars), which came in at 11.4 ppm, the same speed as the LaserJet Pro P1102w ($149 direct, 3.5 stars).

Text quality was typical of lasers, not good enough for desktop publishing but fine for nearly any other business use.

Photo quality was on a par with mono lasers, good enough to print recognizable photos from files or from Web pages, or to output a company newsletter.

Graphics quality was below par. The most significant issue is that it was unable to render certain backgrounds in PowerPoint documents. Also, thin white lines against a black background in one document didn't show up at all, and many images showed some dithering, the breakdown of solid areas into fine dot patterns. I would avoid using the LBP6000 for printing PowerPoint presentations or other graphics-heavy documents for distribution to colleagues or prospective clients.

Like the LBP6000, the Brother HL-2240 only offers USB connectivity, yet it costs $20 less. Both it and the Brother HL-2270DW, which adds both Ethernet and Wi-Fi connectivity, trump the LBP6000's 150-sheet paper capacity with a 250-sheet tray plus 1-sheet bypass. The two Brother printers also have slightly lower claimed running costs, at 3.5 cents, than the LBP6000's 4.1 cents. Not a huge difference in itself, but it adds up over the life of the printer, particularly if you print a lot.

HP Photosmart Plus e All in One

 Most lower-priced multifunction printers (MFPs) can fill a dual role as a household and home-office printer, but tend to lean towards either the home or business side. The HP Photo smart Plus e-All-in-One ($149 direct) leans noticeably towards the home side, although it could also be used in a home office if need be. If you're looking mostly to print photos, it should be on your short list as a household MFP.

The Photo smart Plus E-All-in-One can print, copy, fax, and scan. It can scan to a computer or to a memory card, though not to e-mail, and it lacks a port for a USB thumb drive. Under the scan menu, there's also a Reprint function, which lets you scan a photo and print out a copy on 4-by-6, 5-by-7, or 8.5-by-11 photo paper.

Design and Features:

A black box with rounded corners, the Plus eAIO measures 7.8 by 17.8 by 15.8 inches (HWD) and weighs 16.4 pounds. The lid has a tasteful honeycomb pattern etched into it. The dual paper tray (125-sheet regular plus a 20-sheet photo-paper compartment) seem to jut out in front. The paper capacity is adequate for light home-office as well as personal use, and the photo tray is a nice extra. It lacks an automatic duplexer, a feature we're seeing as standard on many sub-$200 MFPs these days, both home and business models.

The front panel is dominated by a 3.4-inch touch screen that allows you to access, with the touch of a finger, icons for Scan, Copy, Photo, Apps, and Snipefish. 

The Photo smart plus can print selected content directly from the Web as a standalone device using HP's Web apps. You can output business forms, daily newsletters, coupons, recipes, even coloring book pages with Disney and Nickelodeon characters, and much more. Additional free apps are available for download from HP's ePrintCenter.

The ePrint function lets you e-mail an attached image to the printer for it to automatically print out. The printer is assigned an e-mail address when you register at the ePrintCenter. From a single e-mail it can print out up to 10 attached files with a total size of up to 5MB, printing out first the cover e-mail and then the attachments.

Even better, the Plus eAIO is one of a select group of printers, all HP models, that supports wireless printing directly from an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch using the Air Print feature in Apple's iOS 4.2. You simply open a document on your "i-thing"—say, an e-mail, or a photo—press Print, and then select Printer. The I-device should recognize the Photo smart Plus eAIO (if they're both on the same WiFi network) and let you print to it.

The Photo smart plus eAIO offers both USB and 802.11b/g/n WiFi connectivity. I tested it over a USB connection to a PC running Windows Vista.

Epson PictureMate Printer PM 300

The Picture Mate Show is a snapshot printer and more: Epson has integrated a digital frame into its design. Getting two products in one makes the Picture Mate Show's relatively high price more pleasant.

Insert a memory card or key drive, or upload photos to the printer's 270MB of internal memory, and the Picture Mate demonstrate can display them on its 7-inch, WVGA (480-by-800-pixel), 15:9-aspect-ratio color LCD. A dozen slideshow formats let you incorporate a clock, a calendar, simple animation, and other effects.

You can also print, of course, and the Picture Mate Show does a great job of that. In our tests, it printed color photos as fast as 1.4 pages per minute (ppm), with natural flesh tones, stunning landscapes, and attractive objects; black-and-white photos showed smooth grayscales. Its less-expensive cousin, the Picture Mate Charm, is slower but produces equally outstanding photos. An infrared remote that comes with a CR2025 lithium button battery controls the printer and frame; menus appear on the LCD.

The remote worked well from many angles but not from the frame where it rests on top of the printer; Epson claims that it has a range of 16 feet, though we didn't test this. If you lose the remote, you can buy a replacement from Epson for $30.

The Picture Mate Show is considered to work independently of any computer. But in standalone mode, it has a few quirks. The cropping tool requires a lot of tedious zooming and shifting. For layouts smaller than 4 by 6 inches, you can't choose photos at random; instead, you have to print a single photo, all photos taken within a certain date or month, or all photos on the media. For greater flexibility, you must install the printer on your PC or Mac and use Epson's bundled Easy Photo Print or another application.

About Canon Pixma MX870

The good: Large 2.5-inch LCD; built-in memory card reader; stylish design; robust software suite; fast output.

The bad: Output speed prone to intermittent lags.

The bottom line: Like Canon's other printers in its Pixma MX-series, the stylish MX870 has versatile features, including a handy scroll wheel and an ample 2.5-inch LCD, to help you get the job done. We recommend the Canon Pixma MX870 as a do-it-all device with an affordable price tag; just be ready to stomach its intermittent print lag.

Design:

The Pixma MX870 is the similar shape as the Canon Pixma MX860 is, measuring 18.1 inches wide by 16.2 inches deep by 7.8 inches tall with grooved handles on its bottom that makes it easy to move around. Its curved boundaries and integrated control panel both exude a very sleek, attractive appeal that works just as well in an office as it does at home.

Its large 2.5-inch LCD screen is fixed inside the smartly organized control panel; the left side houses the power button as well as shortcuts for copy, fax, and scanning, and you also get a convenient run dial to the right that lets you quickly scroll through the onscreen menus. The rest of the right side contains the general fare of menu, settings, numerical keys, and navigation buttons. 

Canon also includes a dedicated "Memory Card" button for copying and printing images directly from the reader at the bottom and some smaller keys that automatically dial your preset fax numbers.

Canon offers three different options for paper input; the easiest method is throughout the 150-sheet tray that pulls out from underneath the folding output bay. You can throw another 150 sheets into the rear-loading tape, and both trays have small plastic guides to fit a variety of sizes from four inch by six inch all the way up to legal sized media and No. 10 envelopes.