The so-called “experts” who predicted the rise of the paperless office back in the nineties couldn’t have been more wrong: the world prints more today than at any other time.

If you’d like some figures to back that claim up, head over to Printisbig.com for some in-depth facts and figures about the worldwide printing industry – print is absolutely huge.

You’ll see that even homes aren’t immune to the need for a printer, either for photos or school projects, or to feed the monster that is the home office.

And of course, there are more printers on store shelves now than before as well, so knowing what you need – or what each printer can do versus its advertised claims – can be quite a challenge.

So we rounded up five vastly different printers from five different companies and put them through their paces to see what each could do. Our aim was to gather the necessary data so that we could deliver a verdict on each to tell you what they’re good at, so that you can make up your mind about whether they fit your needs or not.

That means this isn’t a shoot-out; we’re not comparing all models against one another, because it wouldn’t be an apples-to-apples comparison which wouldn’t be fair to any of them. This is simply an informative roundup of some of the printer options open to South Africans, and our experiences with each.

On to the reviews!