HP LaserJet Pro M1212nf MFP

The good:

 The HP LaserJet Pro M1212nf may be a compact mono laser MFP that boasts a cheap price, a compact design, dead-simple installation, and quick print speeds.

The bad: 

To hit its low cost, the HP LaserJet Pro M1212nf leaves off a few features, including autoduplexing, Wi-Fi, and a full-size paper tray.

The bottom line: 

The HP LaserJet Pro M1212nf is the company's least expensive monochrome multifunction laser printer. For the money, it earns our recommendation for its Smart Install feature and wonderful price.

The HP LaserJet Pro M1212nf is an entry-level monochrome multifunction laser printer that cuts only a couple of corners on its way to supplying print, copy, scan, and fax functionality for only $200. Built-in autoduplexing for double-sided printing and Wi-Fi networking are two features that didn't make the cut, however there are plenty of useful features that did, including a 35-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF), and HP's Smart Install application, which makes setup a gentle wind. We also found the LaserJet Pro M1212nf's print speed and quality more than acceptable, even if text isn't quite as deep and rich as the output from the HP LaserJet Pro P1606dn. With its low cost, compact size, and easy setup, the M1212nf is a great choice as a first multifunction laser printer for home offices and small businesses.

Design and features:

The HP LaserJet Pro M1212nf is matte black, lending it a little more of a consumer inkjet look than your typical gray or beige corporate laser printer. It's also compact and light for a laser printer, measuring 12 inches high, 17 inches wide, and 10.5 inches deep and weighing 18 pounds. Two cutouts on the bottom of every side are useful handles, adding to the printer's portability. As is frustratingly common, HP does not include a USB or Ethernet cable within the box.

HP's Smart Install app makes it easy to set up the LaserJet Pro M1212nf. Plug it into a wall, connect it to your PC (via USB), and turn on the printer, and a few mouse clicks later, you're done. Smart Install loads drivers and software stored in the printer's memory. After running our tests on a Windows 7 machine, we tried connecting it to a Mac Book and found Smart Install did not work, which is why HP also throws a CD in the box.

Setting up the printer with an Ethernet cable is almost as easy as setting up a direct connection. As with USB installation, you can use either the included CD or Smart Install. We opted for the latter. First, you must print out a configuration report using the printer's control panel by pressing the setup button, using either of the arrow keys to select "Reports" from the Main menu, and then selecting "Config report." 

The printer will spit out two pages of configuration details, one of which is the printer's IP address. Type the address into the browser of a PC on your network, and on the resulting Web page, click the HP Smart Install tab. From there, click the green Download button to install the software. After a quick download, the printer will print out a test page confirming it’s connected to your network.

After you get the HP LaserJet Pro M1212nf set up, you'll find it's a considerate officemate. Energy Star-qualified, it doesn't waste electricity, and it's fairly quiet during operation.

HP Envy 110 e-All-in-One

The HP Envy 110 e-All-in-One inkjet multifunction printer looks like a classy VCR, acts like a Transformer toy, and prints magnificent photos. It’s also fully equipped for cloud printing. Is all that sufficient to make you forget its costly inks? Aesthetically oriented home and small-office users who don’t print much might be willing to make the trade-off.

Virtually everything on the Envy 110 e-All-in-One is designed with appearance in mind. It forgoes basic black for a dark-mocha casing with copper-colored metal accents. Thanks to it’s extremely low profile--just 4 inches high--it can sit discreetly on a deep shelf. When needed, the motorized control panel tilts upward, and therefore the arm that catches the paper swings outward; otherwise, they tuck neatly into the machine’s smooth chassis.

Another classy touch is the heavy scanner lid, which slowly settles into place rather than slamming when you let it go. Everything on the printer feels rock-solid--an increasingly rare attribute when it involves any printer, let alone a consumer model. The solid construction also makes the Envy 110 quieter than most printers.
HP makes setting up the Envy 110 e-All-in-Ones easy. We chose Wi-Fi; USB is also available. The very attractive HTML-based interface lets you access printer settings across the network using your browser. The software bundle includes Photo Creations and HP Scan, which are both capable and attractive applications.

• See HP Photo smart 7510 e-All-in-One review
• See Brother MFC-J825DW review
• See Canon Pixma MG6250 review

The control panel is wide and flat, with contextually lit controls. The 3.45-inch LCD touch screen offers a crisp picture and smart response, though one might argue that HP tries to fit too much information on every screen.

The Envy e-All-in-One prints, copies, and scans, but doesn't fax. USB/PictBridge, SD Card, and Memory Stick slots are included for printing directly from flash memory. With the focus on looks and a sleek profile, the Envy 110's paper handling is, not surprisingly, low-volume. Although automatic duplex printing is standard, the bottom-mounted input tray holds only 80 sheets, and the output arm holds just 25 sheets. The worst compromise is the nontelescoping lid on the letter/A4 scanner bed. The design doesn't put much of a margin between the glass platen and the edge of the cover, so it allows in more light than usual; it created shadows around our magazine scan. Such shadows are easily cropped, but in our tests they seemed to fool the scanner software's automatic-crop function.

HP was in the vanguard of cloud printing. Web-based printing apps have been available for select HP models for over a year, and the company's ePrint remote-printing feature launched in early 2011. The Envy 110 e-All-in-One offers all of that functionality, as well as support for Apple’s Air Print.

In our tests the Envy 110 e-All-in-One printed very nicely. Images we printed on HP Advanced Photo Paper looked rich. Text was dark and sharp at both the default and best settings. We did notice some slight banding in images printed on plain paper; this effect became more pronounced in draft mode, especially with monochrome graphics. Scans and copies were good overall.

The nice-looking output arrives somewhat slowly, however. Our text pages with scattered monochrome graphics printed at only 5.2 pages per minute on the PC and 5 ppm on the Mac--poky compared with the speeds of other inkjet MFPs we’ve tested. Printing a snapshot-size photo at default settings on plain paper took 22 seconds, or about 2.7 ppm; but it slowed to 56 seconds, or a little better than 1 ppm, when we switched to HP Advanced Photo Paper and better settings. On the Mac, a full-page, high-resolution color photo took a slower-than-average 3 minutes and change to print.

Epson WorkForce 845 All-in-One Printer

The good:
The Epson Workforce 845 is excellent print speeds and quality of output, with overtime work in automatic duplex network hardware, wireless and mobile media through Epson's suite of services to connect mobile printing.

The bad:
Photo print speeds are slightly lower than the average inkjet, and the packaging does not include cables for USB and Ethernet connection attached.

The bottom line:
Although a bit more expensive than the workhorses of inkjet competitors, it is recommended that Epson WorkForce 845 for its refined design and connection of the cloud base Epson printer.

The Epson WorkForce 845 is the latest flagship of the company all in one printer for medium and large offices that need a multifunction device for printing a large volume of documents, photos and presentations.

The 845 serves a lot of features to help with the workload - in addition to the standard array of Epson printing, copying, scanning and faxing, the device packs triple connectivity options via Ethernet, Wi-Fi cable networks, as well as duplexing, automatic document feeder for hands-free scanning, and a 7.8-inch touch panel display with intuitive navigation.

The 845 is also supplied with the new Epson Connection portfolio of mobile printing features that not only work together with Google and Apple cloud services printing, but also include a free application for iPhone and Android application and the ability of print jobs to the 845 e-mail directly from any Web-connected device. With all these impressive features in an attractive package, do not hesitate to take the labor force 845 for the printing needs of high performance.