The author of this Q & A at the SF Gate, David “Albert” Einstein, hints at the fact that lower priced multifunction printers might not be the greatest machines ever. We have mentioned the same thing before, so we aren’t going to argue. A lot of times the cheaper all-in-one printers do everything, but they don’t do anything particularly well. Their speeds are pretty slow (therefore the copying is also slow) and their scanning is sometimes subpar. The printer manufacturers believe that if someone buys a $100 all-in-one that they won’t care that the scanner isn’t so great, either because they don’t use it that much or because their expectations aren’t very high. That is probably true a lot of the time, but it doesn’t really help the people who truly want/need a quality all-in-one.

So basically, if you will truly use the features on your all-in-one, you will have to spring for one above the entry level models. David recommends the Canon MP750, which is a pretty good choice. Any Canon model similar to that one should be good.

Multifunction printers are adequate for many users [SF Gate]

HP 57 Ink Cartrdiges at Pacific Ink