Dell Mono Multifunction Printer - B1163w

Pros Prints, scans, copies. Small size. Wi-Fi. Reasonably high-quality output across the board.

Cons No fax. No automatic document feeder. No duplexer (for two-sided printing) even as an option. Low paper capacity. Bottom Line Meant as a personal MFP, the Dell Mono Multifunction Printer - B1163w is also suitable for a micro office for light-duty printing and still lighter-duty scanning and copying.

By M. David Stone

Significantly less expensive than the Dell B1165nfw Mono Laser Multifunction Printer, the Dell Mono Multifunction Printer - B1163w delivers most of the same MFP features, but without faxing or an automatic document feeder (ADF) for scanning. The lack of an ADF limits its copying and scanning to extremely light-duty use. If you don't copy or scan very often, that may be enough.

Much like the B1165nfw, the B1163w is meant primarily as a personal MFP. At 9.8 by 15.3 by 10.8 inches (HWD), it has a smaller footprint than most inkjets, which makes it small enough to share a desk with as a personal printer in any size office. On the other hand, in addition to USB as a connection choice, it also offers Wi-Fi, which makes it easy to use as a shared printer in a micro office for light-duty printing and lighter-duty scanning and copying.

Like more and more printers today, the B1163w also supports an assortment of mobile printing features, including Google Cloud Print for printing over the Internet and both AirPrint and Dell's own app for Android devices for printing over a Wi-Fi connection. It doesn't support Wi-Fi Direct, however, which means you can use the mobile print features only if you have a Wi-Fi access point on your network and you've set the printer up using its Wi-Fi connection.

Paper Handling
One of the key issues that makes the B1163w primarily a personal printer is its limited paper handling, with a 150-sheet capacity and no duplexer available even as an option. The 150-sheet tray, with no upgrades available, means that if you print more than about 30 pages per day, refilling the tray can turn into an annoying chore.

Having a single tray, without even a manual feed to supplement it, also means that to print on a different paper stock you have to swap out the paper in the tray, which can turn into an annoyance as well. That said, the B1163w's capacity and paper handling in general should be sufficient for most personal use as well as for sharing the printer for light-duty use by micro office standards.

For scanning and copying, the printer offers only a letter-size flatbed without an automatic document feeder. As I've already suggested, that limits it to extremely light-duty scanning and copying, even by personal MFP standards.

Setup and Speed
One advantage of the low paper capacity is that it helps keep the size of the printer down, with the small size serving as another feature that helps define the B1163w as a personal printer. Not only is it small enough to sit on your desk without towering over you, it weighs only 14.7 pounds, making it easy for one person to move into place.

Setup is absolutely typical. For my tests, I connected the printer by USB cable, and installed the drivers on a Windows Vista system.

Dell rates the printer engine at 21 pages per minute (ppm), which is the speed you should see when printing text or other files that need little to no processing. On our business applications suite I timed it at 7.6 ppm (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing), which is an acceptable speed for the price, but not fast enough to count as a strong point. It's essentially tied with the B1165nfw and only a tad slower than the Editors' Choice Panasonic KX-MB2000, at 8.0 ppm, but it's significantly slower than the Canon imageClass MF3010, at 10.3 ppm.

Output Quality
The B1163w's output quality is arguably its strongest point, with text, graphics, and photo output all falling at the high end of the range that includes the vast majority of mono lasers. Text and graphics aren't quite suitable for serious desktop publishing applications, but both are good enough for virtually any business need. For graphics, that includes PowerPoint handouts and the like.

Photo quality is roughly equivalent to the high end of what you would expect from a black and white photo in a newspaper. It's certainly more than good enough to print recognizable images from Web pages or similar source material with photos.

If you need an MFP that can scan or copy multipage documents on a regular basis, you'll obviously want to look for one that includes an ADF, with Dell's own B1165nfw Mono Laser Multifunction Printer a good place to start. If you need to copy and scan only short documents, however, and not even many of those, you can probably do without an ADF. If so, the Dell Mono Multifunction Printer - B1163w offers a potentially attractive balance of acceptable speed, high-quality output, and paper handling suitable for either personal use or light-duty use as a shared printer in a micro office.

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Samsung Multifunction ProXpress M3370FD

Pros Prints, scans, faxes, copies, emails. Duplex (two-sided) printing. Automatic document feeder. Ethernet.

Cons Offers only a one-sheet manual feed rather than a multipurpose tray. Bottom Line The Samsung Multifunction ProXpress M3370FD can serve nicely as a light- to medium-duty mono laser MFP, complete with all the MFP features a small office is likely to need.

By M. David Stone

Depending on your point of view, the Samsung Multifunction ProXpress M3370FD is either the next step up in Samsung's current monochrome laser multifunction printer (MFP) line from the Editors' Choice Samsung Multifunction Xpress M2875FW, or the first step on the ladder for the ProXpress MFP line. As a ProXpress model it's built around a bigger, heavier-duty engine than the Xpress M2875FW. That makes its natural home a small office or workgroup with light to medium-duty needs by small office standards, although it can also be a good fit as a heavy-duty workhorse in a micro office.

Part of what makes the M3370FD more definitively a shared printer than the Samsung M2875FW is its larger size. At 17.7 by 16.3 by 16.6 (HWD), it's too large to share a desk with comfortably. However, a better indication of how much more heavy duty it is than the M2875FW is its 50,000-page maximum monthly duty cycle, which dwarfs the 12,000 pages for the M2875FW.

Keep in mind that maximum duty cycles for printers are far higher than recommended maximums. Even so, the higher rating means that the M3370FD is designed to churn through a lot more pages per month than the M2875FW.

Basics
As you would expect, the M3370FD offers a full set of basic MFP features. It can print and fax from, as well as scan to, a PC, including over a network, and it can work as a standalone copier, fax machine, and email sender.

Paper handling features for printing include a 250-sheet drawer, an automatic duplexer (for two-sided printing), and a single-sheet manual tray standard, so you can feed a different paper stock without having to swap out the paper in the main tray. A multipurpose tray would be more useful, but a manual feed tray is typical for mono laser MFPs in this price range. If you need more capacity, you can also add a 520-sheet second drawer ($200 street) for a total of 770 sheets, which is something you can't do with the Samsung M2875FW.

For scanning, the M3370FD offers a letter-size flatbed plus a 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) that can handle up to legal-size pages. The ADF does simplex (one-sided) scans only, but, as a nice touch, there are options in the menus to let you copy single-sided originals to your choice of single- or double-sided copies.

Setup and Speed
Setting up the M3370FD is standard fare, with Ethernet and USB as the only connection choices. For my tests, I connected it to a network and installed the drivers and other software on a system running Windows Vista.

Samsung rates the M3370FD at 35 pages per minute (ppm), which is the speed you'll see when printing unformatted text or other pages that need little to no processing. I clocked it on our business applications suite (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing), at 10.8 ppm. That makes it just a touch faster than the Samsung M2875FW, at 10.0 ppm, and well within the typical range for the engine rating. However, it's well short of impressive. The Editors' Choice Canon imageClass MF4880dw, for example, with a rating of only 26 ppm in simplex mode, managed 12.5 ppm on our tests.

Output Quality
The M3370FD's output quality earns much the same description as its speed. It's good enough to be useful for most business purposes, but not particularly impressive. Text falls in the middle of the range that counts as par quality for a mono laser MFP, making it good enough for virtually any business need, but a little short of what you might want for high-quality desktop publishing.

Graphics and photos both fall at the low end of par for monochrome laser MFPs. For graphics that makes the output good enough for any internal business need. Depending on how critical an eye you have, you may or may not consider it suitable for, say, PowerPoint handouts. For photos it means you can print recognizable images from photos on Web pages or the like, but the quality will be roughly equivalent to what you'd expect to see in a newspaper.

The Samsung Multifunction ProXpress M3370FD doesn't offer any particular feature that might make it a compelling choice, like fast speed or impressive output quality. However, it offers all the basics, including printing, scanning, faxing, copying, and direct email, plus some welcome conveniences, like copying from simplex originals to duplex copies. It also delivers an appropriate level of speed, output quality, and paper handling for a small office. If a workhorse MFP is what you need, that makes the Samsung Multifunction ProXpress M3370FD a potentially good fit.

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Samsung Multifunction ProXpress M4070FR

Pros Prints, scans, faxes, copies, emails. Duplex (two-sided) printing. Duplexing Automatic document feeder. Ethernet.

Cons Output quality at the low end of par across the board. Bottom Line The Samsung Multifunction ProXpress M4070FR mono laser is packed with MFP features and designed for heavy-duty printing by small office standards.

By M. David Stone

Built around the same basic engine design as the Samsung Multifunction ProXpress M3370FD that I recently reviewed, but in a heavier-duty version, the Samsung Multifunction ProXpress M4070FR delivers better paper handling and a few extra niceties, like a duplexing automatic document feeder (ADF). The result is well worth the extra price. It also makes the M4070FR a strong candidate as a mono laser multifunction printer (MFP) for a small office with heavy duty needs.

The difference in paper handling for printing between the two models is relatively minor, with the M4070FR substituting a 50-sheet multipurpose tray for the M3370FD's one-sheet manual feed. However that's enough to make switching to a different paper stock for a given print job a lot easier, particularly with multi-page documents.

Beyond that, both printers come with a 250-sheet paper drawer and a duplexer (for two-sided printing) as standard. If you need more capacity or need to load more than one kind of paper at a time, both also let you add a 520-sheet second drawer ($200 street). Here again the multipurpose tray gives the M4070FR an advantage, since the 50-sheet capacity may be enough to let you keep two kinds of paper loaded at all times without having to get the optional tray.

More Basics
As you would expect from a printer in this price range, the M4070FR delivers a full set of basic MFP features. It can print and fax from, or scan to, a PC, including over a network, and it can work as a standalone copier, fax machine, and email sender.

For scanning, it offers both a letter-size flatbed and a 50-sheet ADF, which can handle up to legal-size paper. Even better, the ADF can duplex, by scanning one side of a page, turning it over, and then scanning the other side. This approach isn't as fast as with a duplexing scanner, which scans both sides of the page at once, but it can be a welcome convenience if you deal with duplex documents. The duplexing works for scanning, faxing, and copying, with menu options that let you copy either single- or double-sided originals to your choice of single- or double-sided copies.

The M4070FR offers double the maximum monthly duty cycle of the Samsung M3370FD, at 100,000 pages per month. Keep in mind that, with any printer, if you want the printer to last more than a few months, you should print far less than its maximum duty cycle. Even so, the higher-rated maximum for the M4070FR translates to its having been designed to stand up to heavier-duty use than its less expensive cousin.

Setup, Speed, and Output quality
Setting up the M4070FR is standard for this class of printer. For my tests, I connected it to a network using its Ethernet port and ran the tests from a Windows Vista system.

I clocked the printer on our business applications suite  (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing) at 11.3 pages per minute (ppm), which counts as a respectable, but not impressive, speed for the 42-ppm engine rating. On the other hand, it's a bit faster than either the OKI MB471, at 9.5 ppm or the Brother MFC-8950DW, at 10.6 ppm, two Editors' Choice MFPs that bracket it in price. It's tied with the M3370FD, at 10.8 ppm. (A 0.5 ppm difference isn't significant in this speed range.)

Output quality for the printer is best described as good enough, but at the low end of par for a mono laser MFP overall. Text comes in at the middle of the range that includes the vast majority of mono laser MFPs. That makes it a little short of what you'd need for high-quality desktop publishing, but good enough for virtually any business need.

Graphics and photos are both at the low end of par for a mono laser. For graphics, that makes the output good enough for internal business needs. Whether you'll also consider them good enough for, say, PowerPoint handouts will depend on how critical an eye you have. For photos, the quality is roughly equivalent to photos in newspapers, which means you can print recognizable images from photos on Web pages or the like, but nothing more demanding than that.

The Samsung Multifunction ProXpress M4070FR doesn't deliver enough to replace either the OKI MB471 or the Brother MFC-8950DW as Editors' Choice, with the OKI printer delivering better output quality and the Brother printer offering a higher paper capacity. However, it offers enough to be a strong contender, with a full set of basic MFP features and slightly better speed than the OKI or Brother models. If the output quality and paper handling are both good enough for your purposes, the Samsung Multifunction ProXpress M4070FR can be a great choice.

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Dell Color Multifunction Printer - C5765dn

Pros Fast. Very low running costs. Ample standard and optional paper capacity. Slightly above-par graphics. Duplexing ADF. Scans to searchable PDF. PCL and PostScript drivers. Good paper handling capabilities.

Cons Very high purchase price. Sub-par text quality. Fax is not standard. Bottom Line The Dell Color Multifunction Printer - C5765dn, a heavy-duty MFP, is rich in features, and a very low cost per page helps mitigate its hefty sticker price.

By Tony Hoffman

The Dell Color Multifunction Printer - C5765dn is an imposing multifunction printer (MFP) for larger workgroups or other situations requiring a heavy-duty MFP with color capabilities and some nice workflow features. Its 110-page duplexing automatic document feeder scans both sides of a document, and it can scan to searchable PDF. Its hefty purchase price is mitigated by its unusually low running costs, so in the long run a business can recoup the difference and may even save money over lower-priced MFPs.

The Dell C5765dn prints, copies, and scans. (An optional fax kit is available for $249.) You can print from or scan to a USB thumb drive; scan to e-mail, a PC or network folder or an FTP site. A nice touch is that it has built-in OCR so it can scan to searchable PDF format.

The Dell C5765dn measures 24.8 by 22 by 21.1 inches (HWD) and weighs 123 pounds, so you'll need at least two (and preferably 3) people to move it into place. That front panel houses a 7-inch color touch LCD, an alphanumeric keypad for both faxing and password-protected printing, and a handful of other buttons. The 110-sheet ADF is a duplexing model, capable of scanning two-sided documents.

The C5765dn has a standard paper capacity of 700 sheets, split between a 550-sheet main tray and a 150-sheet multipurpose tray. It has an automatic duplexer for printing on both sides of a sheet of paper. Its 110,000-page maximum duty cycle pegs it for high-volume printing.

Optional 550-sheet ($199.99) and 1,100-sheet ($379.99) trays are available; the maximum paper capacity is 2,350 sheets. A finisher tray costs $899.99. The C5765dn can print on paper at up to legal size; if you need tabloid-size color printing, Dell offers the otherwise similar C7765dn ($7,499 list).

The printer ships with PCL and PostScript drivers. The PCL driver installs by default; PostScript, which comes on a separate disk, needs to be installed separately. It has an automatic duplexer for printing on both sides of a sheet of paper; the machine, as we have seen with several other recent Dell printers (as well as printers from Canon and Xerox), comes with duplex printing as the default.

USB and Ethernet (including Gigabit Ethernet) connectivity are standard. I tested the machine on a wired network with drivers installed on a PC running Windows Vista.

Printing Speed
On our business applications suite, as timed with QualityLogic's hardware and software, the Dell C5765dn—rated at 47 ppm for both monochrome and color printing—tested at an effective 11 pages per minute (ppm) in its default (duplex) mode, which we use for its official timing. That's a good speed for a color laser and in line with its rated speed, which is based on printing text documents without graphics or photos—our test suite includes text pages, graphics pages, and pages with mixed content. We timed the Editors' Choice Dell C3765dnf Color Laser Printer, rated at 23 pages per minute for both monochrome and color printing, at 8.2 ppm, and the HP LaserJet Enterprise color flow MFP M575c , rated at 31 pages per minute, at 8.3 ppm. When I switched to simplex mode, the C5765dn was a bit faster still, at 11.8 ppm.

Output Quality
Overall output quality was average for a color laser, with below-par text, slightly above-par graphics, and average photo quality. For a laser, even sub-par text quality is good enough for typical business uses.

With graphics, colors were for the most part bright and well saturated. Some illustrations showed mild banding, and in others, dithering in the form of graininess was apparent. Quality is good enough for PowerPoint handouts.

Several photos showed traces of banding. Dithering (graininess) was apparent in some prints. Though detail was generally good, one print showed significant loss of detail in dark areas. Whether the photo quality is good enough for use in client newsletters depends on how picky you are.

Running Cost
There is generally an inverse relationship between the price of a printer and its running costs, and the Dell C5765dn is a prime example of that. Its stratospheric sticker price is offset by very low costs of 1 cent per monochrome page and 6.6 cents per color page. The HP M575c's running costs are considerably higher at 1.8 and 13 cents for black and white and color, respectively, while the Editors' Choice Dell C3765dnf's costs per page are 1.5 and 10 cents. The HP Officejet Pro X576dw MFP , an inkjet with laser-like capabilities, has running costs of 1.3 and 6.8 cents for monochrome and color.

The HP M575c includes similar workflow features to the C5765dn, including a duplexing ADF and embedded OCR, which lets you scan to various document formats including searchable PDF. It has much higher running costs than the C5765dn, but a considerably lower sticker price (though it's still expensive compared with most color laser MFPs).

The C5765dn prints at higher volume and a lower cost per page than the Editors' Choice Dell C3765dnf Color Laser Printer, which has a good set of MFP features though it can't match those of its larger sibling. It does, however, come with fax as a standard feature.

For businesses able to make the massive investment that its price commands, the Dell C5765dn Color Laser Printer offers good speed, decent output quality, and a good set of MFP and workflow features. It's capable of heavy-duty printing, and has good standard and optional paper capacity. Its very low running costs allow businesses with high print volumes to recoup the price difference between it and most lower-priced MFPs over time, and even save money in the long run. The C5765dn has most any MFP feature a busy workgroup would want—except for fax capabilities, for which you have to pay extra.

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Samsung Multifunction Xpress M2875FW

Pros Prints, scans, faxes, copies. Duplex (two-sided) printing. Automatic document feeder. Ethernet. Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi Direct.

Cons No additional paper handling options available. Bottom Line The Samsung Multifunction Xpress M2875FW can be a good fit as either a heavy-duty personal MFP or a shared printer in a micro or small office or workgroup.

By M. David Stone

Small enough to serve as a personal multifunction printer (MFP), but capable enough to fill the shared printer slot in most micro and small offices, the Samsung Multifunction Xpress M2875FW delivers everything most small offices need in a mono laser MFP. It's not as fast as the Editors' Choice Canon imageClass MF4880dw, but it offers better output quality plus some features the Canon printer lacks. This makes it a highly attractive MFP, and an Editors' Choice as well.

Like the Canon MF4880dw, the M2875FW offers Ethernet and Wi-Fi as connection choices. However, the M2875FW also adds Wi-Fi Direct, which lets you use Wi-Fi to connect directly to the printer from a smartphone, tablet, or laptop that offers Wi-Fi. You don't need an access point on your network, and you don't even need to connect the printer to the network. This can be particularly useful if want to connect the M2875FW to your computer by USB cable as a personal printer, and still want to print to it from your mobile device.

In addition to letting you print from an iOS, Android, or Windows smartphone or tablet over Wi-Fi, the M2875FW will also let you scan to and fax from your mobile device. And if the printer's connected to a network that's connected to the Internet, you can also print through the cloud.

Not so incidentally, if you don't need Wi-Fi, you can save a little money by getting the Samsung Multifunction Xpress M2875FD ($250 street). According to Samsung, it's the identical printer, but without Wi-Fi. Samsung also says that if you connect it by Ethernet to a network that has a Wi-Fi access point, it will it support the same mobile print features. All the comments in this review about print quality, speed, and features should apply to it as well.

Basics and Setup
Basic MFP features in the M2875FW include the ability to print and fax from, as well as scan to, a PC, including over a network, and the ability to work as a standalone copier and fax machine. For scanning, the letter-size flatbed is supplemented by a 40-page automatic document feeder (ADF), which can scan up to legal-size pages. The ADF is limited to simplex (one-sided) scans, but menu options let you take advantage of the automatic print duplexer (for two-sided printing) to scan single-sided originals to two-sided copies.

Paper handling for printing is limited to a single 250-sheet tray plus a manual feed, which lets you print on different paper stock without having to swap out the paper in the tray. This should be enough for most micro- and small-office use, not to mention personal use, with the duplexer a particularly nice extra. If you need more input capacity, however, you'll have to look elsewhere, since Samsung doesn't offer any upgrade options.

Setup is standard. The M2875FW is a little large to share a desk with, at 14.4 by 15.8 by 14.3 inches (HWD), but it's small enough so you shouldn't have much trouble finding enough room for it. For my tests I connected it using its Ethernet port, and ran the tests from a system running Windows Vista.

Speed and Output Quality
Samsung rates the M2875FW at 29 pages per minute (ppm), which is the speed you should see when printing a simple text file with little to no formatting. I timed it on our business applications suite (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing), at 10.0 ppm. That counts as reasonably fast, but not impressive for the price. The Canon imageClass MF4770n, for example, came in at 12.3 ppm. The MF4880dw's official speed on our tests is only 9.6 ppm, but that's in its default duplex mode. In simplex mode, it hit 12.5 ppm.

Output quality for the M2875FW is easily good enough for most business use, with text at the high end of the range that includes most mono laser MFPs, graphics dead on par, and photos at the low end of par.

For text, that translates to the printer being suitable for anything short of high-quality desktop publishing. For graphics the output is good enough for any internal business need. Depending on how much of a perfectionist you are, you may or may not consider it suitable for PowerPoint handouts and the like. Photos are good enough to print recognizable images from photos on Web pages, and potentially good enough for photos in newsletters and handouts, if you don't mind roughly newspaper-level photo quality.

The Samsung Multifunction Xpress M2875FW does an unusually good job of offering lots of strong points and no real weaknesses. Its particular balance of speed, output quality, paper handing, MFP basics, and small conveniences—like Wi-Fi Direct and the ability to copy single-sided originals to double-sided copies—adds up to the proverbial more than the sum of its parts. That's enough to make it an excellent fit for a micro or small office and also an Editors' Choice.

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