Each family or home office has unique print and copy volume needs. Since we're focusing on cheap single-function and AIO printers here, this roundup assumes you won't be printing or copying more than a couple hundred pages monthly. This is plenty for most families and homebound office workers, but demand is rising as we're seeing more printing from home.

We scrutinized all of the printers PC Labs has tested in the last few years that are still on the market, focusing on home-office or business models (both laser and inkjet) and photo-centric models (all inkjets among desktop printers). Usually, you'll see significant differences in features between machines tweaked for office use and photo printing. Low-cost office inkjets, for example, often include automatic document feeders, while their photo-centric counterparts don't.

Meanwhile, photo-minded inkjets offer better photo quality, with some higher-priced models employing five or six ink colors instead of the standard four (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, often called CMYK). The extra inks don't guarantee better photo quality, but they make designing a printer with better color accuracy easier. By contrast, the cheapest inkjets sometimes use old-school dual-cartridge (black and tricolor) designs, which work fine but are more wasteful as you must throw away the color cartridge once one of its three hues runs dry.

We've also included two niche classes of printers widely available for under $200: label printers (both for hobbyists and for folks shipping lots of items from home) and portable photo printers (for quick snapshots from your smartphone). The very smallest of the latter use an inkless technology known as Zero Ink (Zink) that applies heat to specially treated paper. However, their output quality falls short of inkjet and dye-sublimation photo printers.

Finally, we can't recommend any color laser printers for less than $200 (or anything close to it). The laser machines in this price class are monochrome.

It's important to note that you can find some very cheap printers nowadays—some under $50—at the bottom of most manufacturers' product lines. But it rarely makes sense to buy a slow printer with scanty features and replacement cartridges that typically cost as much or more than the printer. It's smarter to look for printers that will save you money in the long run and check your possible choices against reviews that assess features and cost of ownership, as ours do.

Depending on what you do, the answer can be a resounding "yes" or a firm "no." To start figuring where your print needs stand relative to the cheap models on the market, you first need to think about whether you need a single-function or a multifunction printer.

Single-function models do just one thing—print, naturally—while all-in-ones (AIOs, also known as multifunction printers or MFPs) can also copy, scan, and sometimes send and receive faxes. In terms of design, most AIOs are printers with a flatbed scanner sitting on top.

Sometimes all you need is a device that prints, either because you don't need to copy or scan or because your scanning needs are heavy-duty enough that you need a dedicated scanner that can do the job better than any inexpensive AIO. That said, most home offices will benefit from at least occasional copying and scanning, making an AIO the better bet. Even if you don't make a lot of copies, spending a little extra for a part-time copier can reduce the need to run local errands.

An important distinguishing characteristic of an AIO is whether its flatbed scanner is teamed with an automatic document feeder (ADF) for handling multipage documents without user intervention. When copying or scanning a stack of pages, the simplest and cheapest AIOs oblige you to place each page on the scanning glass or platen one at a time. With an ADF, you put the stack in the feeder, press Copy or Scan, and walk away. That's an obvious time-saver if you work with lengthy documents more than occasionally.

Besides having different capacities (30 versus 50 sheets, for instance), automatic document feeders come in two main varieties: strictly simplex (one-sided) and duplex-capable (two-sided scanning, either manually or automatically). You'll ideally want a higher capacity than the longest documents you scan, but most AIOs will pause after scanning a batch to let you add another stack. Duplexing is an absolute must if you need to scan two-sided originals.

Manual duplexing lets you duplex using a simplex ADF by scanning one side, then flipping the stack over to scan the other, and letting software or firmware interfile the pages in the right order. Auto duplexing scans both sides automatically; you just load the stack, give the command, and wait for the scanning to finish. There are two types of auto-duplexing ADFs, one of which is faster and more expensive than the other, but few AIOs that qualify as cheap offer either kind, aside from models that are heavily discounted or discontinued. If you find one in the sub-$200 price range, it will almost certainly have the slower, less expensive version of auto duplexing.

Most of today's lower-end machines come with Wi-Fi and USB connectivity. Ethernet, if you can find it, is the fastest and most secure option; Wi-Fi, which is more or less today's standard, is highly convenient and plenty fast enough for printing. Most modern printers also provide free downloadable apps for iOS and Android phones. What you get doesn't always correspond to the printer price, so check the individual details of any model you are looking at with care.

Most printers come ready to connect to most handheld devices (smartphones and tablets) wirelessly either via Wi-Fi Direct (a peer-to-peer protocol) or Wi-Fi (with both the printer and mobile device connected to the same network). The printing is handled through manufacturer-specific apps. The standard wired interfaces for use with desktop and laptop computers are a USB port for connection to a single PC and an RJ-45 Ethernet jack for joining an office network. The latter is more of a business-centric protocol and is relatively rare on low-cost printers, but well worth using if you have it available. Connecting a printer to a network with Ethernet is usually far easier than with Wi-Fi, rarely requiring anything beyond plugging in a cable.