Although I liked the HP device better, I have to give Lexmark a lot of credit for coming up with an affordable machine that gets the job done well. Considering the price, the Lexmark is a tempting purchase for anyone needing a light-duty copier, printer and scanner. The HP, which is faster and somewhat more rugged, is a better bet for slightly busier offices. If you want fax capability, HP offers the $799 G85, which comes with an automatic document feeder.

Neither of these machines is designed for heavy use. The HP model has a "duty cycle" of no more than 5,000 printed pages (or copies) a month. Lexmark rates its unit for only 3,000 pages a month. Though that might not satisfy the demands of many businesses, it's a lot for most home offices and even some small businesses that do a minimal amount of printing and copying.

HP rates its copier function at 12 pages per minute in fast mode and Lexmark rates its copier at up to four pages a minute, but you probably won't get these speeds in real life situations. Typically, people use machines like these to copy one or two pages. In my tests, the HP copied one full 8-by-11 page of text in 12 seconds. The Lexmark copied the same page in 22 seconds.