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GCN Home > 01/07/08 issue

All things to all documents?

GCN Lab Review: Color multifunction devices can handle many tasks, but each has its strengths and weaknesses

By John Breeden II

IF YOU COULD CONSOLIDATE most of the office machines in your mailroom into a single unit, you probably would. That goes double if doing so could save money.

Studies have shown that it can. Research firm IDC estimates the savings could reach $3,700 per month if you replace printers, scanners, copiers and fax machines with a single multifunction printer (MFP), and that figure does not include productivity savings.

But putting all your eggs in one basket can also be dangerous. If the MFP is not fast enough, lines can form with people waiting to use it. And if print quality is not adequate, it will affect not only documents you print but also every scan you make and each fax you receive.

In other words, you need to make sure you’ve got a good basket.

Six companies sent their newest enterprise MFPs to the lab. We scanned hundreds of documents, received and sent countless faxes, and printed thousands of pages. We then examined each for color matching, overall quality and accuracy. We pitted MFPs against one another, sending extremely complex color and text documents into their memory to see how long each took to crunch the data and spit it out. We also evaluated extra features such as walk-up printing from USB drives and ease of use. Advanced features are no good if you can’t figure out how to use them.

Finally, we assessed value based on price and performance in all other areas, with a focus on initial price and estimated cost per page based on consumables.

There were no real bad eggs this year — the MFP world is growing up. However, there were plenty of surprises: The company whose printer won the review last year got the lowest scores this time because of some serious flaws in its latest model. And another company rose from the lowest tier last time and squeaked out an impressive overall victory.
Brother MFC-9840CDW

WE WERE IMPRESSED WITH the MFC-9840CDW as soon as it came out of the box. More than just a pretty design in dark blue, its brilliantly lit LED buttons directed us to important features, such as changing from fax to copy mode, without the need for any formal training. There is also a large LCD display that tells what mode the MFP is in along with the date and time.

More news on related topics: Communications / Networks, Hardware



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