The Lexmark Pro915

It’s not the most stylish printer we have ever seen, either – it’s so rigidly rectangular that the corners of the unit are actually quite sharp. However, it includes all the main features that you’re likely to need from an office printer, including scanner, copier and fax machine, plus a 50-page document feeder, and automatic two-sided printing.

The Pro915 supports both Ethernet and Wi-Fi networking, so it’ll fit simply into your existing office setup. The 150-sheet input tray must be fine for most small businesses, and there’s an option to buy a second tray that holds 550 sheets if required. 

We like the way that the LCD screen displays a countdown of the pages as they print out, however it’s annoying that the printer asks you to confirm the paper size every time you put more paper into the tray.

Print quality is very good – text may be a particular strength, producing very smooth, delicate text characters. The Pro915 also produces sensible photo output even on plain paper. However, its speed is disappointing for a printer costing over £250. Lexmark quotes speeds of 10ppm for black and white printing using the Pro915’s ‘laser-quality’ mode, and 6ppm for color. We have a tendency to use its standard-quality mode in our tests, but still only got 8ppm and 4.5ppm respectively.

Lexmark’s Pro915 produces admirable print quality, but isn’t very fast or particularly cost effective
Running price is also something of a mixed bag. Lexmark boasts about the low cost of black printing – at just 1.9p per page – but omits to mention the high cost of its colored ink cartridges.

HP Photosmart D110a e-All-in-One Printer

The HP Photo smart e-All-in-One D110a's was at 17.4 inches wide, 15.9 inches deep, and just 7.1 inches tall, the HP Photo smart D110a takes up so little real estate on your desktop that others might mistake it for a single-function inkjet. In fact, the printer includes a copier and a flatbed scanner that tucks neatly into the top of the unit, and also the rest of the front panel is limited to a paper tray, a memory card reader, and a 2.3-inch color touch screen LCD on the left with virtual buttons surrounding it that control the typical menu functions.

In terms of general printing functionality, the D110a is limited in two ways that you must consider before buying it: first, the media reader just underneath the display can only read Secure Digital (SD) and Multimedia Card (MMC) storage cards and there's no available USB port for direct camera connections. That means Sony Memory Stick and Compact Flash card users are forced to use a computer to transfer photos for printing.

Second, the D110a works best for low-output work stations, because the printer has an 80-sheet paper input tray and a maximum monthly output capacity (also called a "duty cycle") of 1,000 pages. If you recognize you'll be printing a high volume of documents, you'll find yourself wishing for competing printers like the Lexmark S405 that hold up to 135 sheets of paper and may print over 5,000 pages a month.

We also wish you might adjust the angle of the touch screen, which instead is fixed in place, but we'll let that slide. The home screen includes a set of scrollable icons for your favorite applications as well as four shortcut buttons at the bottom to bring up controls for photo printing, copy, scan, and fax. You can drag your finger across the list of apps to select one, delete ones you do not use, or download any apps from the growing list within the ePrintCenter.

The good:

The HP Photo smart e-All-in-One D110a's interactive touch screen adds Web connectivity to the quality print, copy, and scan functions, at a lower price than other HP ePrint-connected devices.

The bad:

Print speeds are languid and the smaller paper input capacity makes it a hassle to refill for bigger households. You also should have a wireless connection to use the D110 to its fullest potential.

The bottom line:

We wouldn't suggest it for high-output households or large offices, but the HP Photo smart D110a provides inexpensive access to HP's clever new ePrint and Web-connected apps.