The 5250 is a compact unit that combines a good quality scanner with an average printer, efficient photocopy function and basic fax, all controlled from a simple to use software control centre.

It’s one of the few to include a fax machine and the ADF could be useful, but we expected far better print quality and faster speed at this price.

The best home-office choice with an ADF and fax, plus good text speeds and quality. Those looking for a photo printer should look elsewhere, though.

Digital photography is gaining in popularity, and the features offered by the HP PhotoSmart 2710 are designed to cater to this: PictBridge, a large colour screen and on-printer photo editing. The HP is the most expensive machine here, but isn't geared to one particular market or another.

Superb print quality at consistently high speeds, and it’s packed with useful features too.

Cheap to buy and run, the X5470 is great for mono printing, but less so for photos and images.

Mobile phones have become powerful and flexible office tools, but there's still one area that's dated - the screen. Trium's Eclipse aims to remedy this, by combining the usual spread of phone features with a 120 x143 pixel 256-colour screen. But do you really need it?

This is one of the most complete office multifunction printers we've ever seen. but the MFC-885CW can’t overcome its price or quality issues.

The MultiPASS C100 is a matured version of the C75 yet still manages to keep its price low. Many of the features in the C75 have been kicked up a notch, and the improvements make the C100 more productive and better value for money.

Interesting design and plenty of features, but it takes an age to produce mediocre results

It doesn't seem likely that one device could be all things to all people, but the Canon PIXMA MP780 is the closest thing we've seen yet. It has a feature set that would leave few wanting, and is capable of professional results. Not only that, but this is by far the quickest inkjet in this roundup.

It wasn't too long ago that mono-lasers by themselves cost over $500, but now that colour lasers have dropped in price, mono-lasers, too, have shuffled down a peg. Samsung has delivered a laser printer with a decent scanner for a very low price. It's a SOHO device, but without some of the features associated with that, such as faxing and document feeders.  

A Lexmark multi-function device, the P6250, won our last photo printer roundup, so the expectations were high for its big brother, the X7170. Unlike our Labs Winner, this machine is definitely targeted at the business market. For an extra $100 premium, the machine adds office-oriented functions such as faxing, a copy feeder and a better scanner. It's also noticeably larger than its brethren.

Epson has gone all-out on their digital photo flagship -- it has eliminated all office-centric features to deliver an enthusiast's juggernaut with film scanning, a six colour ink-tank, and plenty of memory card slots.

With a performance reflecting its relatively lower price, the Brother didn't score as well in most printing tests. The photo print in particular took over four times longer than many of the other printers, and its quality was inferior in comparison. Text quality was also poor, particularly on the smaller 6pt font where visible banding occurred.

Another contender for an award this month, this model narrowly missed out, with a marginally below average value rating

Youll have to excuse the pun, but the MFC-9200c is far and away the big brother to the MFC-4600. There is no comparison in terms of size, and it efficiently uses that space to provide more features than its competition.

Quality, speed and a huge array of features go some way to justifying the price

A great scanner, but the poor printer and lack of networking limit its appeal.

The HP K80 takes our Quality Award this month, nudging ahead of the competition in all our speed, quality and features tests. Alongside the HP PSC750, the K80s highly specified 2,400 x 1,200 inkjet printer produced noticeably top-quality colour prints.