How to Buy: All-in-One Home Printers

Are you tired of dad complaining he can't print out his racing scores, or mom wishing she could just print that one adorable family picture? Or maybe you're mulling over the perfect gift for the soon-to-be graduate in your life. Whichever it is, an all-in-one printer can satisfy all your gift needs.

The first thing to consider when you're shopping for an AIO is which functions you need. The lowest price models are usually limited to printing, scanning, and copying, but there are lots of other possibilities. The most important other functions are faxing and emailing. Some AIOs can also scan film (slides and negatives) by way of a transparency adaptor in the scanner lid.

A few high-price home AIOs double as standalone photo labs to let you print high-quality photos from memory cards, PictBridge-enabled cameras, photographic prints, and transparencies--most often 35mm slides and negatives. Some also let you print directly from other sources, like USB keys. These photo lab AIOs (for lack of a better term) typically offer a reasonably large color LCD--often 3.5 inches--for previewing photos before printing, and they pair it with an array of buttons and a photo kiosk style menu.

One thing to remember: If you already have a fax software and a fax modem in your PC, you can generally count on using that to control the AIO's scanner, so you can scan and fax, even if the AIO itself can't. Similarly, if you tend to scan a lot of photos to send to friends and relatives, look for an AIO with an e-mail button or software option, so it will scan and then automatically open a message for you with the scan attached as a file.

Most home AIOs--particularly inexpensive models--will connect only to a single computer, and only by USB cable. One warning if there is more than one printer to be networked: Make sure that all the functions actually work over the network. It's not unusual for network features to be limited to printing, so you can't scan or fax, for example, unless you're connected by USB cable.

One last bit of advice: You'll find that there are no home AIOs that offer both an ADF (automatic document feeder) and a slide scan feature. So be prepared to choose one or the other. Even with an all-in-one you can't always have it all—though you can certainly have a lot.

Now that you're armed with the information, we have a few suggestions of our favorite all-in-one printers, below. You can also check them out in this side-by-side printer comparison table.