What is an all-in-one printer?

What is an all-in-one printer?

An all-in-one printer, also called a multifunction printer or MFP, combines a scanner, copier, and often a fax modem around one print engine, so a single machine handles jobs that used to need three or four separate devices on a desk.

Shopping for a specific model? See the best home printers we tested — 10 models compared on the specs that decide it.

Call it an all-in-one, a multifunction printer, or an MFP, and you're describing the same idea: one machine wearing three or four hats instead of one. The core print engine, whether it's inkjet, laser, or a refillable ink tank, still does the printing. Stacked on top of that is a flatbed or sheet-fed scanner, copier logic that runs the two together without a computer in the loop, and on many models, a fax modem that predates half the buyers who'll ever use it.

The HP OfficeJet Pro 8125e is a clean example of where that combination lands in practice. It pairs its inkjet engine with an automatic document feeder and a 225-sheet input tray, so a stack of receipts or a multi-page contract can go through the scanner or copier without anyone standing there feeding pages one at a time. That's the entire pitch of an all-in-one printer in a sentence: fewer boxes on the desk, and fewer trips to a separate scanner or a copy shop for the occasional multi-page job.

The parts that actually separate one all-in-one from another

The scanner and document feeder, not the print engine, is where all-in-one printers diverge the most: some ship a bare flatbed, others add an ADF sized for a handful of pages, and a few are built to handle a couple hundred sheets at once.

A flatbed scanner is the baseline, and it's still the right tool for anything that needs to lie flat and not get gripped by a roller, a photo, a book page, a fragile document. The Canon PIXMA TR4720 sticks close to that basic layout, built around producing borderless prints up to 8.5 x 11 inches alongside its scan and copy functions rather than chasing feeder capacity.

Step up the lineup and the document feeder becomes the real differentiator. The Brother Work Smart 1360 carries a 20-sheet single-sided automatic document feeder plus a separate 150-sheet paper tray, enough for a stack of school forms without reloading mid-job. The Canon PIXMA TR8620a goes further, splitting 200 sheets of total capacity between a 100-sheet cassette and a 100-sheet rear feed, a setup built around not running out of paper mid-copy job rather than raw print quality. None of that shows up on the front of the box the way a megapixel count does on a camera, but it's the spec that decides whether scanning a stack of paperwork is a five-minute job or a fifteen-minute one.

Inkjet, ink tank, and laser: three engines hiding under one all-in-one label

All-in-one printers split into three underlying print engines, cartridge-based inkjet, refillable ink tank, and laser, and that choice affects running costs and output quality more than any scan or copy feature does.

The HP OfficeJet Pro 8125e runs a standard cartridge-based inkjet engine, the format most people picture when they hear printer, and it layers HP's AI-assisted formatting on top to clean up print jobs pulled straight from web pages and emails. Ink-tank models take a different approach to the same inkjet chemistry: the HP Smart Tank 5000 and the Epson EcoTank ET-2800 both replace disposable cartridges with a refillable reservoir, and both are rated for up to 2 years of included ink before a buyer needs to shop for more.

Laser all-in-ones are a different animal again. The HP LaserJet Pro MFP 3101fdw prints black-and-white pages at up to 35 ppm single-sided and bundles in HP Wolf Pro Security, a combination built for a household or small office pushing a lot of text through the machine rather than photos. That extra hardware shows up on the scale: across the ten models in this comparison, weight runs from about 10.27 lb for the HP Smart Tank Plus 651 up to roughly 23.1485 lb for the LaserJet, with a median around 14.15 lb. A laser engine and a security stack aren't free weight to carry around a small apartment desk, even if the print quality justifies it for the right buyer. Our all-in-one printer comparison lines up all ten models by engine type and paper handling if you want the full side-by-side rather than the summary here.

Fax, cloud upload, and the features that don't show up in the name

Fax and direct cloud scanning aren't universal on all-in-one printers, some skip both, so checking the actual feature list matters more than trusting the label to include everything.

Fax is the clearest example of a feature that varies from one all-in-one printer to the next despite living under the same label. The Canon PIXMA TR8620a and the Canon PIXMA TR4720 both build fax in alongside print, copy, and scan, and the HP LaserJet Pro MFP 3101fdw does the same on the laser side. The HP Smart Tank 5000, by contrast, skips fax entirely and sticks to print, scan, and copy, a reasonable trade for anyone who hasn't sent a fax in years but still wants the label's other conveniences.

Cloud connectivity is its own separate variable. The Brother Work Smart 1360 scans directly to Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, and OneDrive from its own 1.8-inch color display, without needing a phone or laptop in the loop. Canon builds a different kind of convenience into the PIXMA TR8620a: enrolling in Smart Reorders through Alexa is meant to keep ink supplies topped up automatically. Handy if it actually works as advertised, though it's also one more account tied to a printer that used to just plug in and print.

Energy use and duplex printing: the part of the spec sheet nobody reads

Per the EPA, ENERGY STAR-certified imaging equipment uses up to energy than conventional models, largely by managing sleep states and duplex printing rather than by changing the print engine itself.

The US Environmental Protection Agency states that ENERGY STAR-certified imaging equipment, printers, multifunction devices, and scanners among them, can use up to energy than conventional equipment by drawing less power while working and, more importantly, while sitting idle. The certification also requires automatic duplexing capability and specific power-management features rather than leaving efficiency entirely up to the buyer to configure.

The Department of Energy's Federal Energy Management Program puts a number on what that actually means: in its worked example, a certified color multifunction device runs on about 18 kWh a year against 109 kWh for a less efficient comparable model, a gap that adds up to a real difference in electricity cost over the printer's lifetime, even before duplexing is factored in. FEMP's guidance also recommends looking for a duplex speed at least 80% as fast as one-sided printing, since a slow duplex mode is the kind of feature that quietly stops getting used. Several all-in-ones in this lineup build auto-duplex in as standard: the HP OfficeJet Pro 8125e and the Canon PIXMA TR4720 both list automatic 2-sided printing, and the Brother Work Smart 1360 does the same. A duplex setting buried three menus deep in driver software doesn't save anyone's paper budget; one that's on by default does.

Do you actually need an all-in-one printer, or just a printer?

An all-in-one earns its keep for anyone who scans or copies even occasionally; a single-function printer is the lighter, simpler choice if printing is genuinely the only job on the list.

The honest case against an all-in-one printer is the same one that applies to any multi-function device: more parts means more that can eventually need replacing, and a broken scanner unit on an otherwise fine printer is still a broken machine in most households' eyes. If scanning and copying are rare enough that a phone camera already covers it, a single-function printer is lighter, usually simpler to maintain, and one less ink system to think about.

For anyone who does scan report cards, copy IDs, or fax the occasional form, the case flips fast, and the engine choice matters more than the all-in-one label itself. A household leaning toward heavier day-to-day paperwork is usually better served by the office-leaning end of the lineup; our home office printer guide covers the models built around higher-volume feeding and faster duplex output specifically. For a straight comparison across engine types, paper handling, and everything else covered here, our head-to-head home printer comparison ranks the current lineup side by side rather than by feature checklist alone.