Multifunction printers are often ideal for small businesses where there just isn't room for a separate printer, copier, scanner and fax. One of the latest is from Konica Minolta, whose PagePro 1380MF is a compact multifunction device with a USB 2.0 interface.

This unit has a monochrome, 600dpi (dots per inch) laser printer engine, based on the popular PagePro 1300 (with a duty cycle of 15,000 pages per month), combined with a 1,200dpi colour scanner. If you need a built-in fax then the 1380MF's bigger brother, the 1390MF (£249.99 inc. VAT) is the one to go for, but otherwise the two units are pretty much identical.

As with most multifunction devices based on laser printers there's no disguising what it is: it looks like a laser printer with a scanner bolted on the top. But setting its looks aside, the PagePro 1380MF performs well and is quick, whichever mode you use.

Konica Minolta has used a very basic print driver for the 1380MF. There's no guide on how to set up the manual duplex printing nor a preview of how the multi-up option (printing multiple pages in miniature on a single page) will appear. But this does mean that if all you want to do is just print, you don't have to wade through a multitude of options to do it. The TWAIN scanner interface is equally basic but again is easy to use and understand.

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The quoted engine speed of the 1380MF is 20ppm, and unlike the wild claims for many inkjet engine speeds, this one proved to be bang on the money; in our tests the PagePro 1380MF had an engine speed of 19ppm. And it doesn't slow down much when it comes to actually printing text. When tested it gave 18ppm for printing both text and PDF documents, dropping to 16ppm when printing mixed text and graphics.

When it comes to scanning the 1380MF is quick at low resolutions; an A4 magazine cover took 18 seconds to scan. But at higher resolutions it does slow down a fair bit; the same cover at 1,200dpi took a full five minutes to scan.

Fitting and removing both the toner cartridge and the toner drum pose no problems. The printer comes with a 1,500-page toner cartridge, but higher capacities are available. The standard replacement cartridge is rated at 3,000 pages (£57.56 inc. VAT) while there is a high capacity cartridge rated at 6,000 pages (£93.31 inc. VAT). The drum is rated at 20,000 pages. There is a 250-sheet paper input tray while the output tray has a 100 page capacity.

The 1380MF is an ideal multifunction printer for the small office, combining good all-round printing, scanning and copying speeds with a reasonable price.