Multifunction printers have long been standard equipment in home offices and small businesses: they print, scan and copy — and should cost as little as possible doing it. Exactly there lies the trap: many machines look cheap to buy but drive ink costs through the roof. A major comparison test across every price class measured print quality, speed, features and running costs — nearly 32,000 pages rolled out of the laboratory by the end — and the results separate the genuine bargains from the false economies.
The Short Version
The Canon Maxify GX7150 wins the test for heavy printers at 566 euros, with extremely low running costs. The Canon Pixma TS3750i is the price tip: a surprising amount of printer for 45 euros. The Epson EcoTank ET-8550 rules A3 printing.
Test Winner: Canon Maxify GX7150
For occasional printers the GX7150 is far too expensive — but anyone who prints in volume is exactly right here. It puts text, graphics and photos on paper quickly and extremely cheaply, with generous equipment including twin paper trays and an automatic document feeder. It prints on the loud side; the verdict survives the noise. This is what test winners look like.
Price Tip: Canon Pixma TS3750i
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For 45 euros, the TS3750i offered a surprising package: respectable print quality, good scans, simple operation, Wi-Fi and app printing. Build and speed are acceptable for the class, equipment is pared to the bone, and per-page costs are typical of cheap cartridge machines — not low, but tolerable for occasional documents and photos. For light users, a genuinely good buy.
Best A3 Printer: Epson EcoTank ET-8550
When a vast spreadsheet or a child's wall portrait demands more than A4, a handful of affordable machines print A3 — the tested Brother MFC-J5340DW and Canon Pixma TS9550a among them. The class act is Epson's tank-fed EcoTank ET-8550: fast, high quality and very cheap to run, with two extra inks that lift photo printing to the top of the field. The high purchase price pays off precisely for photo enthusiasts and A3 users.
Drying time, measured
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One overlooked laboratory result deserves its own mention: ink drying time. Text was marker-tested immediately after printing, then at 10, 30 and 60 seconds and after a full hour — and machines differ dramatically in when a printed page survives a highlighter without smearing. Left-handers and stack-scanners learn this the hard way; the test data spares them.
Cartridges vs Ink Tanks
The economics deserve cold numbers. Cartridge machines cost less up front but their small cartridges need frequent replacement: a text page costs an expensive 6.8 cents on the HP Envy Photo 7930, while the Epson WorkForce WF-2960DWF demands a staggering 79 cents per graphics page and around 64 cents per small photo. Frugal cartridge exceptions exist — the Brother MFC-J4550DW manages text from 0.57 cents and the MFC-J5340DW from 0.44 cents — but tank printers invert the principle entirely: more expensive to buy, fed from large refillable reservoirs, and good for thousands of pages per filling at trivial per-page cost. Whoever prints regularly should buy the tank.
What 32,000 pages reveal
Emptying a complete set of cartridges or tanks in every single machine is what separates this comparison from spec-sheet journalism: per-page costs here are measured, not quoted from manufacturers' favourable assumptions.
How the Test Measured
Print speed was clocked across A4 text, A4 colour graphics and photos in two sizes; colour fidelity was measured with an X-Rite instrument against Image Engineering test charts; sharpness, contrast range and greyscale accuracy were assessed, and an electron microscope examined whether letter edges run clean or fringed. Even drying time was tested — marking printed text with a highlighter immediately, then at intervals up to an hour, to see when it smears.
A3 in detail
Affordable A3-capable all-in-ones remain a small club — the Brother MFC-J5340DW doubles as one of the frugal cartridge picks, making it the budget A3 answer, while the Epson ET-8550 is the no-compromise choice.
Features Worth Having
Beyond print-scan-copy, the useful extras are specific: Bluetooth (HP Smart Tank 5105, Canon Pixma TS5350i) sends phone photos without a network; a card reader (Epson EcoTank ET-2850, HP Smart Tank 7605) prints camera shots without a PC; every tested machine prints from USB storage; a large touchscreen (Canon GX7150, Epson ET-5805) makes PC-free work genuinely pleasant, while the HP Smart Tank 7305 does without any display — compensating with an automatic document feeder, the feature that matters most to anyone scanning stacks of documents in one pass.
Displays and PC-free printing
A final practical filter: anyone planning to print photos straight from cards or sticks should insist on a proper touchscreen, where the Canon GX7150 and Epson ET-5805 lead the field with genuinely clear menus.
The Bottom Line
Heavy printers buy the Canon Maxify GX7150 and stop thinking about ink prices. Occasional printers spend 45 euros on the Pixma TS3750i. Photo and A3 enthusiasts pay up for the Epson ET-8550. And everyone checks running costs before purchase price — the test's 32,000 pages prove that is where the real money goes.
