HWM+HardwareZone.com Tech Awards 2019: Editor's Choice - Part 2

Best Mono Office Printer

Best Mono Office Printer

While most home users go for color printers, there are still many office users who prefer mono-only machines because all they print is black text. So for this category, we try to answer the question on which is the multi-function printer to get if you care about print speed and cost but couldn't care less about printing in color.

Nominees:

• Canon imageCLASS MF269dw
• Epson EcoTank M2140

And the winner is...

The Canon imageCLASS MF269dw is a very fast mono laser printer with a print speed of up to 28ppm. It also has a 50-sheet duplex auto document feeder (ADF) that we like a lot because it supports automatic duplex scanning (in two passes). To incentivize you to save paper, it also comes with an auto duplexer, which means it will automatically flip the paper when you choose to print or copy on both sides of the paper.

With support for PCL language and network printing (it has built-in wired and wireless connectivity), the MF269dw also comes with a 250-sheet paper drawer and a single-sheet input slot. The operation panel, which has both an LCD screen and tactile buttons for key functions like print and the numpad, can be tilted so users can adjust the angle to have a better view of the controls. We also like that we can create a shortcut key that remembers our favorite scan settings, like save destination and file type. Scans can also be sent over email or saved to a shared folder for easy retrieval later.

We also tested Epson's M2140, an ink tank printer that's specifically designed to rival its laser cousins in the print speed and print quality departments. While we like that the M2140 can print 6,000 B&W pages with one ink bottle, it doesn't support Wi-Fi (USB only) and it has no ADF. Its top print speed of 20ipm is also slower than Canon's printer.

For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed in the References section at the end.