What kind of AIO printer do you get for under AU$200? ZDNet Australia investigates Dell's low-cost printer offering.

It's been a while getting here, but Dell's first entry into the local printer market, the A940, is a solid but ultimately unsurprising all-in-one printer. Dell launched its own branded printers in the US back in March, but up until the local release, it sold Lexmark's range of printers. In a way, nothing's changed; the A940 is simply the Lexmark X5150 with a Dell badge and a Dell software package, albeit at a lower retail price of AU$199. Actually, that sub-AU$200 price is a tad misleading; you'll have to pony up an extra AU$20 for delivery, as you can't purchase the A940 anywhere but from Dell, and you'll also have to factor in purchasing a USB cable, as like far too many printer vendors, Dell's gone down the route of not supplying one. The one All-In-One feature that the A940 omits is a hardware faxing option, although presumably Dell is planning to primarily sell the printer to its PC customers, who would be getting fax modems within their systems, so this isn't a terrible omission.

The setup information for the A940 is comprehensive and easy to follow, especially if you happen to be installing on a Dell PC; the instruction manual notes that you'll probably already have the drivers in place if you do. Hardware installation is the usual business of removing bits of sticky tape that hold various parts in place, as well as installing colour and black cartridges. One unusual bit of design pops its head up here; unlike most AIO's that have a latch or locked position for holding up the scanner while cartridges are inserted, the A940 uses a plastic prop, in the manner of a car hood. It's of somewhat cheap design, and indeed the whole AIO unit doesn't have the greatest build quality, but these are the kinds of tradeoffs you've got to accept in this kind of extreme budget space.

The unit itself is easy enough to control from within any Windows PC or via the control panel on the right hand side of the A940, and you may be initially confused to see a fax button included amongst the selection options. This is something of a bolted-on function; the A940 has no included faxing hardware, and is instead reliant on the end-user having a fax modem in their PC for the actual sending portion of faxing. If your faxing needs are only moderate -- and you've got a suitable modem -- then it's not a bad option, but if you need to fax more frequently it's a bit of a kludge, and you'd be better served with an AIO with dedicated faxing hardware built in, or indeed a dedicated fax machine.

At its price point we weren't expecting miracles from the A940 when it came to print quality, but if you're after mostly text printing with the occasional bit of colour, it's perfectly serviceable. While it can handle photo prints, the resulting output was less than satisfactory, and at this price point we'd suggest you invest in an additional small photo printer to handle that kind of chore. Dell rates the A940 at being capable of up to 17ppm draft printing, but in our tests it managed just over 5ppm for a regular full-page text document, essentially identical to its Lexmark sibling. In our tests we also noticed that the speed of the 'quick print' setting also tended to result in the printer picking up additional pages that were spat out inbetween prints, which is a minor annoyance. As with most draft prints, quality was only middling on most paper types, and this became more pronounced with colour and especially any kind of photo print.

The kicker with buying any cheap printer is always in the replacement cartridge cost, and the A940 is no real exception. At AU$49 for black cartridges and AU$59 for colour, it sits around the industry norm for replacements, but at the same time you've only got to buy four replacment black cartridges to cover the cost of a complete replacement printer -- which itself comes with one black and one colour cartridge.

Ultimately you really do get what you pay for with the A940; it's not a truly spectacular printer, scanner or copier, but it's quite serviceable if your printing needs are essentially modest, and as long as you're not doing any photo work with it beyond its scanning capabilities.

Dell Personal All-In-One A940 Printer
Company: Dell Australia
Price: AU$199 (plus delivery)
Phone: 1800 812 393

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