Recently Tom’s Hardware had an excellent and exhaustive review of five multifunction machines currently out on the market. They review and compare the Canon PIXMA MP500, Dell All-in-One 944, Epson Stylus Photo RX700, HP Photosmart 3210 and the Lexmark P6350.

They compare the machines based on their photo printing, their speed and the cost of owning and operating them. Some findings:

-the Lexmark P6350 prints text the fastest in Normal mode
-the Epson RX700 prints a standard photo the fastest, barely edging out the Photosmart
-the HP and Canon seem to perform the best in the photo print quality test
-the PIXMA MP500 is the cheapest to operate over the life of the machine; the RX700 the most expensive

Not to spoil things, but they don’t declare one one winner. Instead, they note that the HP Photosmart 3210 and the Canon PIXMA MP500 stand out above the others. They had a favorable opinion of all the machines except the Dell, which they were “disappointed” with. Regardless, their analysis is definitely worth a read. It is very rare that you will find this much hard data showing the performance of different printers anywhere else. You can read all the reviews you want and get people’s opinions on these machines, but it is nice to see some numbers to put things in perspective.

Multifunction printers call the tune [Tom’s Hardware]