Stories by: Lisa Cekan

The HP LaserJet 3380 is a large, full-featured multifunction printer with an automatic document feeder. Scan, copy and fax buttons sit on the console, along with speed-dial and number pads.

HP's Color LaserJet 2840 has a stylish, grey-and-black design. It also has a few nice features and networking capabilities, but otherwise it's a mediocre performer in most respects.

The HP LaserJet 3030 is a sleek-looking monochrome laser MFP with HP's signature black-and-grey colour scheme. It's fairly lightweight (12kg), and compact enough to fit neatly onto a desk. The well-designed front panel has discrete sections for faxing, scanning and copying, as well as for controlling the LCD menu. Unfortunately the unit's performance leaves much to be desired.

The Canon imageCLASS MF5750 looms 17.4" high and 19.1" wide. I liked the layout of the front panel, which includes three large buttons for copy, fax, and scan, flanked by fax settings and copy settings and a good-size LCD menu in the middle.

Fuji Xerox designed the WorkCentre C2424 as a multifunction printer that could handle the heavy work flow of a large office. It's very expensive, but for the money you get more features, more flexibility and more network functionality than most competing colour laser MFPs offer.

Dell's Photo All-in-One Printer 922 uses the same engine, drivers and case as the Lexmark X5270, and not surprisingly the two models perform almost identically.

The X7170 looks and feels like it belongs in an office environment, and its features are appropriate for a small office that requires printing, scanning, photocopying and faxing capabilities. It's solidly built, with a curved paper path for the front loading paper tray, and it relies on a two-cartridge ink system to produce its output. It also has a PictBridge port, which enables photos to be printed directly from a camera that supports this interface.

The Fuji Xerox Phaser 7300N performed well almost across the board, delivering fast speeds and generally good print quality in our tests.

The Lexmark C762n is fairly inexpensive for a colour laser designed to serve a high-output office with a wide variety of printing needs. This model has truly extensive paper-handling options that turn it from a simple colour laser into a one-machine printing station.

The Lexmark X2250 is a simple and very inexpensive multifunction printer. The most obvious sacrifice it makes to achieve that price: the control panel on the dark, plain case has no LCD. In addition to the power button, it has buttons for scanning, copying in greyscale and colour, and setting the number of copies.

The Lexmark X422 has both an Ethernet and an integrated automatic duplexer. In addition to faxing, it allows you to send and receive email messages with attachments or Web links.