Along with a host of SMB-oriented laptops, HP today announced a scanner and a multifunction printer (MFP) geared to small and mid-sized businesses. The HP LaserJet Pro Multifunction Printer M521 series and the HP Scanjet Pro3000 s2 Sheet-feed Scanner, a color duplexing scanner, are designed for performance and ease of use to help smaller businesses manage their workflow.

HP LaserJet Pro Multifunction Printer M521 is a 4-function MFP: It can print, scan, copy, and fax. It has a print speed of up to 42 ppm black (letter). You can scan documents and send digital files to email, the cloud, network folders, or a USB drive, and you can print from a USB thumb drive.

Paper handling consists of a 100-sheet multipurpose tray plus 500-sheet input tray, with a maximum paper capacity of 1,100 sheets, and an auto-duplexer for printing on both sides of a sheet of paper. A maximum monthly duty cycle of up to 75,000 printed pages puts the M521 squarely in the SMB camp.

The front panel has a 3.5-inch color touch screen. On top is a 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) equipped with a single-pass, dual-headed scanner for scanning, copying, or faxing both sides of a two-sided document unattended.

Standard connectivity includes USB and Ethernet (including Gigabit Ethernet). Customers can easily print to these MFPs from their smartphone or tablet from just about anywhere via HP ePrint, and over a Wi-Fi network with AirPrint and DirectPrint.

The Scanjet Pro3000 s2 Sheet-feed Scanner has a scan speed (for 300 dpi color, gray, or b&w) of up to 20 ppm (pages per minute) or 40 ipm (images per minute), where each side of a two-sided document counts as one image. It has a maximum scan resolution of up to 600 dpi, as is typical of a document scanner. It has a maximum scan size of 8.5 by 34 inches. Connectivity is via USB. It has a maximum daily duty cycle of up to 1,000 pages.

Scanner features include duplex scanning, ultrasonic double feed detection, auto color detection, page size detection, crop, deskew, rotation, blank page removal, scan to Sharepoint and scan to cloud features among many other scan-to destinations. The included Readiris Pro 14 OCR program lets you scan files into editable digital text. It also includes the HP Easy Scan scanning utility, and TWAIN, ISIS, WIA and Mac drivers.

The HP LaserJet Pro Multifunction Printer M521 and Scanjet Pro3000 s2 Sheet-feed Scanner should be available this month; prices have yet to be announced.