All-in-one or Multi-function Printers - AIO Printer Features, Benefits, Advantages and More

All-in-one or Multi-function Printers - AIO Printer Features, Benefits, Advantages and More
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Features

An All-in-one (AIO) printer, also known as a multi-function peripheral (Fps) offers both savings for cost and space, and is a best solution for any office or home that needs all – a printer, scanner, copier, digital sender and fax machine.

Anyone needing to buy all of the above products might also want to pick the right mix of these. It can be difficult for him or her to find each product with the best brand and price. Also, imagine the space that would be required to accommodate all these.

Consider an all-in-one (AIO) printer will save us from the difficulty of finding the best of each of these products. An AIO printer comes with many features, which makes life easier for those who use printer, fax, scanner or copier functions many times a day, by putting all these functions in one place.

AIO Printer

Some AIO’s come with many features, functions that certainly make them even more attractive, such as:

ADF (Automatic document feeder)

This feature takes several pages and feeds one at a time into the scanner, without you manually feeding papers. The ADF feature is great for unattended faxing, copying, printing and e-mailing scanned documents. Some AIO printers offer an additional feature, called duplexing ADF, which scans both sides of the page in one pass.

Digital sending

Scanning a document to e-mail is called digital sending. Some AIOs let you scan a document and send it to any other PC on the network, which opens a new e-mail message with the scanned document attached. An even better thing some AIO printers can do is send an e-mail with a scanned document from the AIO itself, which saves you going over to the PC to do this.

Sharing

Some AIOs will allow you to easily share it with other member on a network. An AIO printer can be shared over a network the same way any conventional printer is shared. In addition to having the bundle of AIO printer features in one place, now we can share those set of features with many other people on the same network, without needing to buy any extra hardware.

Forward to e-mail

A few AIOs have a not very much common but greatly useful feature, which converts incoming faxes to a PDF file or another image format, then forward it to one or more email in-boxes as an attachment.

Some things to keep in mind

Many AIOs in offices are often designed strictly for medium-quality scanning and printing. If you need high-quality output, check the scan and print features before buying one. Read user reviews. AIO products can differ widely in capabilities, quality, and reliability- and are priced to reflect this.

AIOs can come with OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software, so be sure you don’t buy the software separately, if you need it. You might also get design software, which can be good enough for doing image editing.

Wireless AIO printers are also available, which allow working in a more flexible and convenient manner. An AIO printer can be the best solution for home and office users, if you need the functions. It not only lets you print, fax, copy, and scan from one device but also has the benefit of saving your money, space and time.

Some of the best AIOs available for home and office users are:

  1. MFC9420CN color laser, which is in the lead when it comes to speed and best for office users. It is currently available for around $900.

  2. Dell 968w wireless AIO is one of the best choices for home users. Prices range between $170 and $210.

Check out reviews of some AIOs on Bright Hub: