The simple A4 printer is dead - long live the multifunction!  For just a little more room on your desk, all-in-one printer-copier-scanners can offer you a whole lot more than simply printing documents.  Using the same basic components and often accepting the same cartridges, many multifunction printers also allow you to digitise documents as well as copy them in your choice of black and white or colour.  Digitisation is a great bonus as it allows you to e-mail copies of your important documents, or keep a permanent record of your written correspondence without having to file mountains of paper - store it all on your computer and recycle the originals!  More advanced models feature built-in memory card readers, allowing you to print your photos straight from your digital camera without first copying them onto your computer.  Equally, many work as fax machines too, scanning in outgoing documents and printing out incoming documents.  None of this is new technology, but it's certainly great to see more and more these advanced features on a wide range of products.

Trends for 2010: WiFi, touchscreen interfaces and double-sided printing

More than half of all computers in use in the world today is now a laptop, and the trend for living life wirelessly shows no signs of slowing down.  Lexmark was amongst the first to suggest ditching USB cables for printing over WiFi, and was probably ahead of the game.  Now, though, WiFi is so ubiquitous that most of the medium and high-end models we test offere effortless printing without requiring any kind of physical connection at all.

The next big trend is double-sided printing.  It's not just an option found only on professional printers: home users too can save paper, which is the main advantage.  The downside, though, is that printing is much slower, and often louder, because the motor has to flip the page over.

Finally, touchscreen interfaces are beginning to sweep away the sea of buttons that control the advanced functions on high-end printers.  They make them easier to use--you don't need to hunt out the right button, as the default option is highlighted right in the centre of the screen--and has also opened the door to new features, like those on Lexmark's S605.

What's new?

The most recent printers produce better quality documents, create less noise and work more quickly than their predecessors--ignore what you read in the specs: in practice, speeds have doubled over the past two or three years.  Lexmark, for instance, has halved the size of the ink drops, meaning they're no longer visible in photos.  Running costs are also falling, and manufacturers often provide a choice of two different types of cartridge: standard (cheaper to buy but more expensive overall) or XL (more economical; you sometimes print twice as many pages for a lower price).

So, if you have a printer that's beginning to show its age and with pricey cartridges, then--without wanting to attract accusations of encouraging over-consumption--we do think it's a good idea to consider going for a new printer rather than relying on the old one.  Not only will you save money on the cartridges (and you can check out the cost per page in all of our tests), you'll also often get a free set with the printer.  Compared to buying a complete set of cartridges for an out-of-date printer, that can already represent a big saving.  And don't give your old printer away, it won't make a very good present: recycle it instead.

One last thing: in the past, we used to compare printers with a fixed print head ink with those that had included a disposable print head in the same unit as the cartridge.  Lexmark and HP, who used to favour the latter system, have joined Canon, Epson and Brother who always preferred the former.  That has brought running costs down, but with two unwanted side effects:
1: the printer can run unnecessary cleaning cycles which can waste 10-20% of the total ink capacity of a cartridge
2: if you don't print anything for a long time--often a few months but a couple of weeks can be enough--the ink can dry up and block the print head.  You can run a cleaning cycle to dry and get rid of the dried up ink, but it isn't always possible.