Gone are the days when there were different devices for office work. It was a headache to use scanner for scanning things, separate printer for printing work, photocopier for making Xerox of original documents, and Fax machine for receiving fax. Moreover, it filled the computer table with wires and looked clumsy. Thus, need was felt to get rid of wires and to manage all things efficiently. Multifunction printers evolved as an answer to this need.

A Multifunction printer can be defined as an office machine having the functionality of many devices in one device. A single device caters to all needs of printing, scanning, fax, and copy. From the time multifunction printers came into existence, there is praise as well as criticism for them.

Advantages of multifunction printers

• Multifunction printers occupy less space when compared to space occupied by individual devices. At home or in small offices, you don’t have much space to put individual components. Thus, multifunction printers are only option left with you.
• Multifunction printers cater to the need of small business (SOHO).
• Multifunction printers provide centralized document management.
• Multifunction printers minimize the number of power plug-ins required. The reason for this being number of wires reduces drastically in case of multifunction printers which saves power and hence proves cost-effective. While in case of individual devices, you need a separate power socket for each device.
• Multifunction printers are cheaper when compared to the total price of individual components including printer ink cartridges they encompasses.

Disadvantages of multifunction printers

• Multifunction printers lack the efficiency and the quality which individual devices can provide. The main reason behind this is as everything is packed into one thing, quality and efficiency has to be sacrificed.
• Multifunction printers are not targeted for large business and can’t deliver the quality and precision which a large business seeks.
• Multifunction printers lack robustness. If a fault develops in a multifunction printer you have no idea where it occurred. Moreover, all the functions cease to occur. Till the time problem is resolved, you can’t do any printing, scanning, copying, or fax.
• Multifunction printers are not in favor of multitasking. Consider a situation where you are printing a long batch of prints and you need to receive or send some urgent fax. For this to occur, either you need to wait for the current job to get over or have to halt the current job.

Multifunction printers vs Normal Printers! Which are better?

The answer for this depends on your needs as well as the situation. If you are at home or owning a small business having space problems with you, multifunction printers are your answer. But if you are running a large business where accuracy, precision, and precision matters; you should go with normal printers.

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