Printers: Small Office, Shoestring Budget

Having a thriving small business is nothing to complain about, but rapid growth brings with it some pretty hefty demands on office infrastructure. Mike Scully should know. As the business director for MR Architecture, a small New York design firm, he has seen his company grow from 6 to 16 employees over the past year, and IT resources are stretched thin. "Now we've got to add new computers and new printers," he says, "but who's got the time, or the money, to install and administer them?"

To help small businesses like Mike's, we resolved to find out how much printer power today's dollar could buy. So we asked vendors to send us their least expensive small-business printers. For this story, PC Magazine Labs tested eight monochrome lasers that sell for $300 or less and five color lasers for $750 or less. Thrifty buyers will also appreciate the four $500 multifunction models we tested, which also handle fax, scanning, and copying.

What about $50 ink jet models, you might ask? After all, the laser printers we tested aren't quite as cheap as the average ink jet. There's definitely a place for ink. Despite the almost scarily high cost of replacing ink cartridges, a laser printer probably doesn't make sense for everyday home use. And multifunction ink jet printers, which can print terrific color photos, sell for as little as $80. "Home users want color photo printing," says Jennifer Thorwart, an analyst with research firm IDC who closely follows the laser market. "Although the price of color lasers has come down into the $500 to $600 range, you can't expect home users to pay that."

For anyone running a home office or small business, however, a $200 monochrome or $500 multifunction laser is nearly irresistible. And sub-$750 color lasers are a godsend to small graphics houses—or home users who want to print like small graphics houses. As prices have dropped, color lasers have experienced a particularly sharp rise in popularity. They now account for 12 percent of the U.S. laser printer market, and sales are expected to increase at a rate of 20 percent a year beginning in 2004, according to IDC. "Most of this is being driven by the sub-$1,000 color laser segment," says Thorwart.

Naturally, you'll have to make a few sacrifices with the low-cost models. Of the 17 printers we reviewed, not one includes a stacker or a sorter for managing your output. Only three offer duplexers for automatically printing pages on two sides. And only one model, the $750 Oki C5100n, has a network card.