Pulls a stack of paper through a feeder and turns it into searchable files in one pass.
also: sheetfed scanner, ADF scanner
The basics
What to know about printers & scanners
Two machines in one
A printer puts marks on paper, a scanner turns paper into a file. Most machines sold for a home do both under one lid. What separates a good buy from a bad one is not the badge on the front, it is what a page costs after you own it. Two figures give you that. Page yield counts the sheets a cartridge, bottle or toner unit prints, measured by an ISO test that covers 5 percent of the sheet, roughly a short letter with no graphics on it. Cost per page divides the supply price by that yield. Do the sum before you compare shelf prices, because a printer that costs a third as much to buy and six times as much to feed has lost the argument by page 3,000.
Inkjet or laser
Two mechanisms cover nearly everything. An inkjet fires liquid ink through nozzles a few micrometers wide, in droplets as small as one picoliter, from a printhead that either sits inside the cartridge or is built permanently into the machine. Dye ink dissolves in liquid and gives bright photo color that runs when the page gets wet. Pigment ink carries solid particles that sit on the fiber, resisting water and fading and holding a sharper edge on plain paper. A laser works nothing like that. A laser beam or a bar of LEDs writes a charge pattern onto a rotating drum, and toner, a fine plastic powder, clings to the charged areas. A roller lifts it onto the sheet, and two hot rollers called the fuser melt it in at roughly 180 to 200 C. Fused powder is why laser text has hard edges, survives a highlighter, and why a laser left idle for six months prints perfectly on the first try.
Count your monthly pages
Match the machine to your monthly page count and to what sits on those pages. Under about 30 sheets a month, nearly all of it text, a Monochrome Laser Printer costs least to own and cannot clog. Between 50 and 300 sheets with color homework, forms and recipes in the mix, an Ink Tank Printer earns back its higher purchase price inside two years. Print work you intend to frame and you want a Photo Printer carrying six or more inks, because four-ink machines band in skies and turn shadows green. Ship more than five parcels a week and a Label Printer pays for itself quickly, since a roll costs a fraction of a sheet of labels and never wastes the half you did not use. If your problem is paper arriving rather than leaving, a Document Scanner with a duplex feeder empties a filing box in an afternoon.
Where the real money goes
Each of those choices bills you somewhere. Cheap cartridge inkjets are sold near or below cost and make it back on ink, so the sticker price is a subscription in disguise. Tank machines invert that and want the money upfront, and their printheads are usually permanent, which means a head you let dry solid is not a spare part, it is the whole printer. Lasers give up photographs, because toner sits on the surface and cannot build smooth tone. That means a color laser print of a holiday photo looks flat however good the paper. Lasers are also heavy, and the fuser pulls 600 to 1,200 W for the first ten to twenty seconds of every warmup. Direct thermal labels need no ink and fade inside a year in a hot van or a sunny window. Supplies increasingly carry authentication chips, so ask whether a model refuses third-party cartridges and whether an ink plan stops printing when the internet drops.
Recommended volume, not duty cycle
Judge the figures that describe real use. Recommended monthly page volume is the one. Duty cycle is a peak rating usually ten times higher, so a 20,000 page duty cycle beside a 2,000 page recommendation means 2,000. First page out time is what you feel daily: 6 to 10 seconds from a warm laser against 10 to 20 from an inkjet. Automatic duplex halves your paper use, so confirm the machine prints both sides without you flipping the stack. Separate color cartridges beat a single tri-color unit you bin the moment one color empties. For scanning, ask for optical resolution and ignore interpolated numbers, which are software guesses. A single-pass duplex feeder uses two sensor bars to read both sides in one pull. Check the Wi-Fi band too, since many printers still join 2.4 GHz networks only, and an Ethernet socket settles the question.
Do not let it sit unused
Staying alive is mostly a matter of not letting it sit. Send a page using every color through an inkjet once a fortnight, because a head left four weeks or longer needs cleaning cycles that can drain 5 to 10 percent of a cartridge each time. Shut down using the printer's own button so the head parks on its rubber cap, and stop killing power at a switched strip. Keep paper flat in its wrapper at moderate humidity, since damp sheets curl, jam and let ink feather at the letter edges. Wipe the scanner glass and the narrow strip the feeder reads through, because one speck there draws a black line down every scanned page. Plan on 5 to 8 years from a home machine, and read what a firmware update changes before accepting it.
Buyer checklist
Before you buy printers & scanners
Electronics combine hardware, software and services. Compatibility and support life matter as much as the headline specification.
01
Map the whole setup
Confirm the ports, operating system, network, accessories, apps and services the product must work with.
02
Check the support period
Look for a clear security and software-update policy, especially on connected products and discounted older models.
03
Separate included from subscription
Find out which recording, storage, analytics, content or remote features need an ongoing payment.
04
Plan for repair and data
Check battery and spare-part service, warranty handling, account controls and how personal data can be exported or deleted.
Measure the footprint with the trays open, not closed. A desktop all-in-one runs about 17 to 20 inches wide and 15 to 18 inches deep shut, then the input and output trays reach 8 to 12 inches forward and a rear feed wants 4 to 6 inches behind. Give it 30 inches of depth.
Leave 12 to 14 inches of clear air above the machine so the flatbed lid and the document feeder can lift fully. A printer pushed onto a shelf under a cupboard becomes a printer you can no longer scan with.
Weigh it against the surface it will live on. A monochrome laser is 15 to 25 pounds and a color laser 40 to 80, which rules out light shelf brackets. The boxed machine has to clear the narrowest door on the route in.
Give a laser its own wall socket. The fuser draws 600 to 1,200 W during warmup, enough to trip light-duty extension leads and overload a small battery backup, so use surge protection only rather than the battery output. Inkjets stay under about 30 W while printing.
Check the Wi-Fi band before you unbox. Many printers connect on 2.4 GHz only, so a network that hides both bands behind one name, common on the mesh systems covered under Wi-Fi Routers & Mesh Systems, can leave the printer unable to join at all. An Ethernet run avoids the problem entirely.
Size the paper tray to your habit. A 100 sheet tray is fine below 50 pages a month. Above 200 pages a month a 250 sheet cassette saves you opening the machine weekly, and 500 sheets is where you stop thinking about paper.
Care
Caring for printers & scanners
Print a page that uses every color at least twice a month on any inkjet. Idle nozzles skin over, and the automatic cleaning cycle that clears them can spend 5 to 10 percent of a cartridge per run.
Power down with the button on the printer, never a switched socket. The head only parks over its sealing cap during a proper shutdown, and an uncapped head dries within days.
When a toner low warning first appears, take the cartridge out and rock it gently end to end to redistribute the powder. That usually buys another 100 to 300 pages. Clean a spill with a dry brush or a vacuum rated for fine dust, and rinse clothing in cold water, since hot water fuses the plastic into the weave.
Clean the scanner glass and the narrow scanning strip beside the feeder rollers with a lint-free cloth, spraying cleaner onto the cloth rather than the glass. One speck on that strip prints as a black line down every page the feeder pulls.
Store paper flat in its wrapper, away from radiators and damp floors. Sheets that have taken up moisture curl, misfeed and let inkjet ink spread along the fibers so text looks fuzzy.
Read the release notes before installing printer firmware. Some updates add supply authentication that blocks third-party cartridges and cannot be rolled back, though a network printer is also a computer on your home network, so genuine security fixes are worth taking.
Questions
Common questions
Inkjet or laser: which should I buy?
Count your pages. Below 30 a month and mostly text, a monochrome laser costs less to own and never clogs. Above 50 a month with color in the mix, an ink tank inkjet wins on running cost. Photos push you to inkjet at any volume, since toner cannot produce smooth tone. Print under 10 pages a month and a laser saves you from dried nozzles.
Is an ink tank printer worth two to three times the price?
It pays back between roughly 1,500 and 2,500 color pages. Bottle sets claim 4,500 to 7,500 pages and put a color page near one cent against 15 to 30 cents from cartridges. At 100 pages a month you break even during year two. At 20 pages a month you never do, and the head is more likely to dry out than to wear out.
My printer sat unused for two months and now prints stripes. Can I fix it?
Run the built-in nozzle check, then one cleaning cycle, then wait 30 minutes and check again. Two or three cycles clear most blockages. Stop after three, because each one spends ink and repeats rarely help. A deep clean or a fresh cartridge with the head built into it is the next step. A permanently blocked fixed head means service.
Why does a cartridge never print as many pages as the box claims?
Yields come from an ISO test page covering 5 percent of the sheet, about a short letter with no images. Real documents run 10 to 15 percent coverage, and a page carrying a photo can pass 40 percent. Expect roughly half the stated yield for ordinary mixed printing, and less again if the printer runs cleaning cycles between jobs.
Do I need a separate scanner if my all-in-one already scans?
Only above about 50 pages a week. An all-in-one feeder holds 20 to 35 sheets and scans 15 to 25 pages a minute. A dedicated document scanner holds 50 to 100 and runs 25 to 60, with ultrasonic sensors that catch two sheets pulled together. Below that volume, the flatbed and small feeder you already own are enough.
What resolution should I scan at?
Use 300 dots per inch for text you want to search, which is what character recognition software is tuned for. Move to 600 for archival paperwork, small print or pages you may enlarge. Reserve 1200 and above for film and prints you plan to blow up, since a 1200 dpi letter-size color scan runs to several hundred megabytes.
Why will my printer not join my Wi-Fi?
Most often the printer supports 2.4 GHz only while your network name covers both bands, so it never sees a network it can use. Move the phone doing setup onto 2.4 GHz, split the bands into separate names temporarily, or plug in Ethernet. Setup also fails when a phone's private address setting blocks the printer's own temporary network.
Can I use third-party ink and toner?
Often yes, and it costs 40 to 70 percent less, but check three things. Some models reject cartridges without a valid chip. Firmware updates have been used to block supplies that worked the week before. And thin third-party ink can clog a permanent printhead, which costs far more than the ink saved. Prices and availability vary by country.
