A family's review of the latest all-in-one printer for homework

It's January in our house, which means the school books are freshly labelled, the uniforms are being dug out of the wardrobe, and the kitchen bench has been commandeered as a temporary study zone. With two kids in primary school and a third starting high school this year, our old inkjet finally gave up the ghost last week, right in the middle of a Year 4 maths worksheet. We needed a replacement fast, and the January back-to-school rush meant half the printers at our local Officeworks were already sold out.

After a few days of comparing specifications on my phone while the kids argued over a shared lunchbox, we settled on a new multifunction unit that promised to print, scan, copy and even fax. A few weeks in, with the new school year now in full swing, here's how it has coped with homework, art projects, and the occasional recipe for my partner's weekend sourdough obsession.

Setting up in a busy household

The box arrived on a Tuesday afternoon, right in the middle of after-school snack time and a flurry of permission slips. Setup turned out to be refreshingly painless. I plugged it in, loaded the starter ink cartridges, and followed the prompts on the colour touchscreen. The whole thing was ready to print in about ten minutes, which is roughly the same amount of time it takes my youngest to lose one shoe.

Connecting it to our home network was the part I was dreading, mostly because our NBN connection can be temperamental and the previous printer always seemed to drop off the Wi-Fi at the worst possible moment. This time, the WPS button on our router paired it instantly, and it has stayed online ever since. The companion app, which I installed on my phone and my partner's tablet, lets everyone in the family send jobs to the printer without needing to fiddle with drivers on the study desktop.

The homework printing marathon

By far the biggest demand on this machine comes from the kids' schooling. Every week brings a fresh batch of worksheets, reading logs, and project outlines. The printer churns through black-and-white text at a very respectable pace, and the first page emerges in under eight seconds. For double-sided handouts, the automatic duplex feature has saved us a small fortune in paper, which matters when you're printing off a Year 7 geography assignment that runs to twelve pages.

Print quality is crisp enough for maths grids and handwriting practice sheets, though I have noticed some very minor banding on dense pie charts. It is not enough to bother a seven-year-old, but a teacher might raise an eyebrow. The 250-sheet paper tray means I am not refilling it every other day, and the rear feed slot has been handy for the occasional sheet of card when the kids decide they are making a diorama at 9pm.

Scanning, copying and the occasional art project

The flatbed scanner has become my best friend for the seemingly endless stream of school notices that need to be emailed back to teachers. Documents scan quickly and the optical character recognition built into the software does a reasonable job of converting printed handouts into searchable PDFs. There is also a small automatic document feeder on top, which has been a lifesaver for the batch of permission slips that always seem to arrive on the same morning.

Colour printing is where the kids' eyes really light up. Book reports now come with printed cover pages, and my eldest has started designing her own comic strips as a hobby. The colours are vibrant and the photos we printed for a recent family birthday looked surprisingly good on plain paper. Between homework runs, I have even used it to print off a few travel itineraries and packing lists for an upcoming trip, which is how I ended up sharing notes with the team at wanderlust in the city about the best gadgets for working parents on the road.

Ink costs and the family budget

The sticker price of the printer was reasonable, but anyone who has ever owned an inkjet knows the real cost is the consumables. This model uses a four-cartridge system, and standard yield cartridges work out to around 35 cents per page for colour and roughly 8 cents for black-and-white. That is not the cheapest on the market, but it is competitive with the major brands stocked at Australian retailers.

The printer also works with a subscription-style ink delivery service, which has been a game changer for our household. A small sensor monitors ink levels and orders new cartridges automatically before they run out, with a discount on each bottle. Over a typical school term, we have spent about $45 on ink, which feels like a fair trade for never having a kid shout "the printer's out of ink!" at 7:45am on a Monday.

Printing from phones, tablets and laptops

Every member of this family prints from a different device, and the printer has handled them all without complaint. My iPad prints through AirPrint, my partner's Samsung tablet uses Mopria, and the kids' school-issued Chromebooks connect through the cloud printing feature. The companion app also lets me send a file to the printer from anywhere, which has been handy for printing off a forgotten permission slip from the office car park.

There is a small learning curve for the kids, but the on-screen instructions on the printer itself are clear enough that even my eight-year-old managed to print a photo of our dog without any help. Wireless printing from the study desktop has been equally reliable, with no random dropouts so far, which is more than I can say for our last machine.

How it compares to the competition

Before settling on this model, I spent a weekend comparing the main all-in-one printers available in Australia. Here is how the three models we considered compare on the key features that matter for a busy family. Prices are based on listings at major Australian electronics retailers as of early this year.

Feature	Our pick (Model A)	Competitor B	Competitor C
Print speed (mono)	18 ppm	15 ppm	22 ppm
Print speed (colour)	10 ppm	8 ppm	12 ppm
Automatic duplex	Yes	Yes	No
ADF capacity	35 sheets	20 sheets	35 sheets
Wireless connectivity	Wi-Fi, AirPrint, Mopria	Wi-Fi, AirPrint	Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
Ink system	4 cartridges + subscription	2 cartridges	4 cartridges
Approx. cost per page (mono)	8c	10c	7c
Approx. cost per page (colour)	35c	38c	32c
Typical retail price (AUD)	$249	$199	$329

On balance, our pick sits in the middle of the pack for price and speed, but it wins on features that matter for a busy family: the automatic document feeder is larger, the wireless options are broader, and the subscription ink service has genuinely taken the stress out of running out at the wrong moment. Competitor C is faster and slightly cheaper to run, but the lack of duplex printing was a deal-breaker for us.

If you are in the market for a new printer before the next round of project deadlines hits, you can read more honest family-focused reviews over at https://omggoodies.com/. The team there has tested everything from scanners to label makers, and it is well worth a browse before you spend a cent. As for us, this printer is staying on the bench, at least until the dog decides it looks like a chew toy.