If you have a school-age kid or do work that requires a lot of copying and scanning, an all-in-one might make sense—and several months’ worth of testing has convinced us that the HP OfficeJet Pro 9015e is your best option. It’s easy to set up and cheap to run, it works with all kinds of devices, it produces beautiful prints and scans, and it has a long two-year warranty for added peace of mind.

If your work finds you printing and scanning all day, every day, you should be willing to upgrade to a business-oriented color laser AIO like the HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M479fdw. It prints and scans faster, sharper, and more reliably than inkjet alternatives, and it includes robust admin and security settings designed for situations that may involve sensitive data. We don’t think it’s necessary for most homes or even the average home office. But if you run a business with modest printing and paper-handling needs, or if you’ve grown exasperated with your inkjet AIO’s failings, the M479fdw should hit the sweet spot.

How we picked

We set out to find a printer with all the essential features for home and home-office use that won’t cost you an arm and a leg. Here’s what we looked at to find the best of the best.

• Printer type: The perfect AIO is probably an inkjet, as laser printers are still too expensive for most people. However, we did test color laser all-in-ones so that we could recommend a machine for more demanding small-business owners and home users who just don’t want to deal with the frustrations that can come with inkjet ownership.

• Automatic document feeder: A great AIO should feature an automatic document feeder (ADF), because it can automate big scanning and copying jobs to save you time.

• Duplex printing, scanning, and copying: Two-sided (duplex) printing is a must-have, and if an AIO can print both sides in a single pass, all the better. Printers that offer single-pass duplex print, scan, and copy are the holy grail.

• Low operating cost: Ink or toner for black-and-white prints shouldn’t cost more than a few cents per page, and color prints shouldn’t be more than three or four times as much. If manufacturers offer a subscription ink plan, we take that into account as well.

• Excellent print and scan quality: Although we think most modern printers produce good-quality results, some generate slightly sharper text, more accurate colors, or better-looking photos. All else being equal, we’ll take the printer with the best print quality. And the same goes for scanners, where we consider both overall scan quality and how straight the ADFs manage to keep bulk scanning jobs.

• Support for mobile print standards: Any printer being offered today should support smartphone and tablet printing protocols like Google Cloud Print, Apple AirPrint, and Mopria.

• Convenient, usable apps: The best printers offer full-featured apps that make it easy to print from and scan to just about any kind of device, including smartphones and tablets.

• High printing and scanning speed: While printer makers like to trumpet their models’ blazing-fast print speeds, we think speed is one of the least important traits for home use. That’s not to say that speed isn’t important—it’s just not as crucial as the stuff we’ve listed above.

• Good looks: This may sound silly on the surface, but we prefer nice-looking printers. Obviously, function matters way more than form for office machines, but unless you’re squirreling your printer away under your desk, you’re going to be looking at it every day for years to come. It might as well be pleasant to view.