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As much as we’d all love to live in a paperless world, that reality is still far away. It doesn’t matter whether you have your own home business, occasionally work from home, or just need to print school assignments and day-to-day paperwork—the need to own some kind of printer that’s linked to your computer(s) and mobile device(s) is probably unavoidable. The best home printer is the one that quickly handles your routine printing tasks—whether that’s a two-sided document or a photo print you want to frame for mom and dad—easily and affordably.
The best printer for you is the one that can handle your particular print needs, affordably.
In recent years, home printers have gotten cheaper, faster, quieter, print higher quality documents and photos, and offer more features than ever before. Most also support wireless printing from your computers and mobile devices. (Keep in mind, if you’re an Apple Mac, iPhone or iPad user, for wireless printing, you’ll need to use a printer that’s AirPrint-compatible. A list of these printers can be found at Apple’s website.)
To save space in your home (especially your home office), and gain a bunch of extra functionality from your computer, consider investing in a multifunction (or all-in-one) printer. These combine the benefits of a printer, scanner, copier and in some cases a fax machine, all in one unit.
Best of all, some of the newer “ecotank” printers reduce the cost of ink dramatically, because instead of using traditional ink cartridges, they contain ink tanks that hold enough ink to last an average household up to two years before a refill is needed. For a typically family, this type of inkjet printer is the most economical way to go, while still having the versatility to print pages (or photos) in black-and-white or full-color.
No matter what functionality you need from a home printer, we’ve rounded up 14 of the best printers you can buy right now in 2022. There’s something here to satisfy your printing needs, whatever they are.
Amazon
As an “all-in-one” inkjet printer, the HP Envy 7855 is capable of printing in full-color or black-and-white. It easily handles printing documents as well as close to professional photo lab quality prints. It supports both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi for wireless connectivity, as well as Ethernet and USB cable connectivity. For functionality beyond printing, the HP Envy 7855 has a built-in copier, scanner and fax machine.
For ink cartridges, it’s compatible with HP 64 Black and Tri-Color cartridges (both are required). Optional high-yield ink cartridges are also available. Print features include two-sided and borderless printing, as well as the ability to print wirelessly from any smartphone or tablet. For print speed, it clocks in at 15 pages per minute, and supports any paper size (up to 8.5 inches by 14 inches, including labels and envelopes).
The Envy 7855 will fit easily into most home office locations (or any area that’s convenient to the entire family). The printer measures 17.87-inches by 7.6-inches by 19.33-inches and weighs just under 17 pounds. Controlling this printer can be done directly from your computer, via a free mobile app, or by using the printer’s own 2.7-inch full-color touchscreen.
The printer has two built-in paper trays and will automatically choose which paper to use based on the printing task at hand. The document feeder (for the copier, flatbed scanner, or fax) can hold up to 35 pages.
The scanner’s resolution is up to 1200 dpi, and the copier speed is between 5 and 19 pages per minute, depending on whether you’re copying black-and-white text, full-color documents or photos. The printer is ideal for homes that print an average of 300 to 400 pages per month.
Keep in mind, this is an inkjet printer. Depending on the type of work you do from your home office, a black-and-white or full-color laser printer may be more appropriate to your needs.
Amazon
Purchasing a color laser printer and keeping it filled with compatible toner, by default, will cost more than a full-color inkjet printer. However, depending on your home office printing needs, laser-printed output will look more professional than business correspondence or other documents printed on an inkjet printer.
The HP Color LaserJet M479fdw offers wireless printing capabilities, supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless connectivity, as well as USB and Ethernet wired connectivity, and has a built-in 4.3-inch touchscreen display for controlling the printer. Being Amazon Alexa-compatible, you can also use voice commands to control the printer’s functionality.
As a multifunction device, this includes full-color printing, a flatbed scanner, fax, and copier—with single-pass/two-sided printing, copying, and scanning capabilities. In terms of printing speed, this printer can handle up to 27 pages per minute (in black and white or full color). Being a laser printer, the HP LaserJet M479fdw is not designed to be a home photo printer. Instead, it’s designed for higher-capacity printing needs.
The HP LaserJet M479fdw has a built-in 150-sheet output bin, and a 300-sheet input capacity for the paper tray. You’ll need to keep this printer stocked with both an HP414A and HP414X toner cartridge (sold separately on Amazon, for example, for $110 and $172, respectively). The HP414A cartridges will generate approximately 2,100 printed pages, while the HP414X will generate approximately 7,500 printed pages before needing to be replaced.
If you’re willing to spend a bit more for a color laser printer, this one is designed to handle up to 4,000 pages per month in terms of recommended monthly volume.
Amazon
Budget-friendly refillable tanks are the most interesting development in printer technology during the last decade. Epson pioneered the cartridge-free system and the EcoTank ET-3760 represents the latest generation of the technology. The cost savings are significant; this printer costs about a penny per color per page.
While the earliest versions of the EcoTank had its ink tanks awkwardly bolted on to the side, the EcoTank is now built directly into the front of the printer, making it easier to refill and see how much ink you have left. Not that you’ll have to worry about that too much, since the ink that comes in the box should last you for about two years (or 7,500 pages, whichever comes first). That’s assuming you print about 200 pages a month.
Features include wireless printing, voice-activated printing, direct printing from your smartphone, copying, scanning, automatic two-sided printing and direct SD card printing. This model is particularly convenient because of the 30-sheet ADF on top, in addition to the 150-sheet main tray. Families with multiple people who have their own printing requirements for work, school, and household tasks will find this printer offers versatility, ease-of-use, and ongoing affordability.
Amazon
For less than $200, this is Canon’s answer to an economical inkjet printer that instead of using costly ink cartridges, it takes advantage of large ink tanks. These tanks hold the same amount of ink as 30 individual ink cartridges—which will generate up to 7,000 pages. This is more than enough to meet the printing needs of an average family for about two years.
In addition to being able to accommodate a wide range of paper sizes (and photo paper), the Canon G3200 works wirelessly with computers, smartphones, and tablets. (It’s AirPrint compatible.)
Yes, the Canon G3200 is a low-cost printer than generates beautiful full-color and black-and-white printed pages, however, as an all-in-one device, it can also serve as a photocopier and full-page scanner.
Amazon
You can spend a small fortune on a photo printer, but if you’re not a working professional photographer, you don’t have to break the bank; there are a lot of affordable inkjets that do a wonderful job printing photos for home use. The Canon Pixma Pro-200 isn’t the least expensive option, but it’s an excellent model that creates beautiful borderless photos and can make oversized images up to 13-inches by 39-inches in size.
Unlike many popular printers, this model isn’t an all-in-one. This dedicated photo printer employs high-end Full-Photolithography Inkjet Nozzle Engineering nozzles to generate a resolution of 4,800×2,400 dpi images. The printer uses eight independent color cartridges (cyan, magenta, yellow, black, photo cyan, photo magenta, light gray, and gray) to create gorgeous prints that rival the best printers costing as much as $2,000. Keep in mind, the ongoing cost of relishing eight ink cartridges can get expensive, but you’re paying for the convenience of being able to generate professional-quality photo prints in your home—without needing to outsource to a photo lab.
You can connect to the printer via Wi-Fi, USB or Ethernet, though it conspicuously lacks a media card reader for directly accessing photos from your camera’s memory card. This printer isn’t optimal if you need to do a lot of text-only printing, so it’s best for dedicated photo printing. But if that’s what you need, few printers in this price range will make prints as satisfying.
Amazon
The Canon TR8620’s signature feature is simply how much it does—and how well it does it—for under $250. As an all-in-one printer, it includes a 20-sheet automatic document feeder, which is common in slightly more pricey printers, but a welcome bonus here.
There’s a large color touchscreen to control the printer operations, plus a great mobile app and integration with Apple AirPrint, Amazon Alexa, and Google Assistant. Print quality is solid thanks to a 5-ink system with two levels of black that delivers rich shadows and dark tones chock full of detail. This too is a nice, general-purpose printer that’ll likely support the needs of all family members.
Staples
Wide-format printers tend to cost a premium, but they’re indispensable if you find yourself needing to print oversized documents or enjoy printing and hanging your own photos around the house. The Epson Expression Photo HD XP-15000 accommodates truly large print jobs, and is able to make borderless prints up to 13×19-inches—at an eye-popping 5760 by 1440-pixel resolution.
Thanks to six individual color cartridges (with extra red and gray), the XP-15000 creates superb prints suitable for framing around the house or using to print creatives for a small business. It includes a 50-sheet tray for specialty media, like card stock, and there’s also a 200-sheet tray that can be used for automatic two-sided printing.
You can control the printer from the user-friendly 2.4-inch color LCD, and it supports both wired and wireless printing (but there’s no media slot for printing directly from your camera’s SD card, unfortunately).
Amazon
There’s nothing worse than sending a bunch of print jobs to your printer and having it fail to connect—or get halfway through printing and have your ink cartridges run out. The HP Envy 6055 All-in-One Printer circumvents both common printer issues. Its “self-healing” dual-band Wi-Fi is able to recover from common connectivity issues and can connect on either a 2.4 or 5 GHz band network (many printers can only connect to the slower 2.4GHz Wi-Fi band).
If you opt into HP’s Instant Ink program, the brand will send you replacement ink cartridges automatically whenever you run low, for as little as $2.99 per month, based on the number of pages you print. The Envy 6055 is also a capable photo printer, able to print borderless images. Plus, it can copy and scan, sending documents directly to Google Drive or Dropbox. In all, it’s a hassle-free printer for those who don’t want to think about their printer.
HP
All-in-one devices are great for people who move a lot of paper around, but what if you rarely (or never) need to scan or copy? In fact, even color ink might be overkill for some people. The HP Neverstop Laser Printer 1001NW is a monochrome laser printer for anyone with non-color printing needs. It has onboard Wi-Fi, and its 21 ppm (pages per minute) print speed is considerably better than many comparable inkjet printers.
With a footprint that’s not much larger than a sheet of 8.5-inch by 11-inch sheet of paper, you’ll be hard pressed to find a printer that does more in such a small space. The best part? Instead of toner cartridge refills that cost hundreds of dollars, the 1001nw uses a refillable toner tank that gives you 2,500 pages per refill (the device ships with 5,000 pages worth of toner in the tank) and costs under $30 for a 2-pack.
Keep in mind, a laser printer uses a totally different printing technology than an ink jet printer. Thus, in addition to greater printing speed, a laser printer’s output won’t smudge as easily, and text on the printed page will often look sharper. Black and white laser printers in general are much more affordable than the newer full-color laser printers, and the toner cartridges last significantly longer than inkjet cartridges.
Amazon
Brother positions this as an all-in-one printer with a very low lifetime cost and extremely long ink lifetime, which is super important for a home office printer. On any inkjet printer, the ink cost is easily the most expensive part of the equation, and nobody likes frequently having to swap ink cartridges. The Brother MFC-J995DW’s innovative “INKvestment Tank” Ink System is key to the printer’s low cost and long ink life.
Essentially, each oversized cartridge transfers its contents to an internal ink storage tank that lets you print substantially more pages of uninterrupted printing. That means you won’t end up discarding cartridges that still have some ink in them, and when a cartridge is empty you’re not completely out of ink and can keep printing. This isn’t a refillable supertank-style printer, but it’s close. And you get a year’s worth of ink right in the box with the initial purchase.
The ink system is so good, it’s easy to almost overlook the printing capabilities, but that would be a mistake. This is an excellent home office printer. Print quality is excellent, supported by a 150-page paper tray, automatic two-sided full-duplex printing, and a 20-sheet automatic document feeder. Everything is controllable from a friendly 2.7-inhc color touchscreen or mobile app, and you can print via wireless, USB, Ethernet or AirPrint. It’s hard to find a better overall value for your home office.
HP
While inkjet printers have a lot of advantages—namely the potential for better image quality in photo prints—color laser printers are quieter, faster, and work better for text documents. If that’s what you’re looking for, the HP Color LaserJet Pro M454dw is an excellent choice. It’s especially well equipped for low-to-mid volume home offices and to meet the general printing needs of most families.
You get Ethernet, USB and Wi-Fi along with AirPrint and other common wireless connectivity solutions, and you can print directly from USB flash drives—though there’s no media card reader. Two paper trays accommodate up to 300 sheets at once, and you can expand that to 550 sheets with an optional expansion paper drawer.
Because this is a laser printer, it’s relatively fast. You can print color documents as quickly as 17 pages per minute, and print quality is quite good—though photo prints lag in quality behind a good inkjet, like the Canon PIXMA Pro-200.
In general, a color laser printer will do an amazing job at printing full-color (or black and white) documents, graphics, graphs, and charts, for example, but is not designed to produce photo lab-quality prints from your digital images (even if you use special photo paper in the printer).
Best Buy
The Canon SELPHY CP1300 is custom built for one thing and one thing only—to deliver snapshot printouts and convenient printing from your smartphone or other mobile devices. With its optional battery pack and petite size, it’s portable, so you can take it with you to photo shoots. You can AirPrint directly from your phone or tablet, or plug in a USB stick or your camera’s memory card.
While the SELPHY can give you instantly dry, archival quality prints via its dye sublimation printing on Canon paper (rated for up to 100 years), you can also switch out the standard 4×6 prints with square photo label paper that lets you print instant stickers. It’s a great way to get your prints off your phone or camera and into the real world in an instant.
Amazon
For a truly portable and wireless photo printing experience, consider the ultra-small and battery powered Polaroid Hi-Print Pocket Photo Printer. This device will generate 2-inch by 3-inch, full-color prints on special, sticky-back Polaroid paper, so no ink cartridges are required.
The printer bundle comes with two 20-sheet paper packages. Additional 20-sheet paper packs cost $17 (on Amazon). This printer is great for creating tiny prints right from your smartphone or tablet from just about anywhere. The printer uses a built-in rechargeable battery for power.
Amazon
This is a newly redesigned version of Canon’s iP110 portable printer, and it offers a bunch of useful new features, including AirPrint compatibility (for use with Macs, iPhones and iPads), a USB-C port, a 50 sheet paper tray, along with a 1.44-inch OLED display (which provides menu options for making printing easier).
The Pixma TR150 offers the ability to print in full color or black-and-white. It’s an inkjet printer that uses replaceable ink cartridges to print on 8.5 x 11-inch or 8.5 x 14-inch paper. An optional battery pack (sold separately for $100), allows you to set up and print virtually anywhere. When powered by battery, the printer will generate up to 330 printed pages per charge.
Print up to nine pages per minute from this compact and extremely portable printer that measures just 12.7 x 7.3 x 2.6 inches. When not in use, this printer can be stored and easily transported in a briefcase or carry-on, so you can use it at home, in a car, within a hotel room or just anywhere your remote work activities take you.
Amazon
When it comes to home use, a sublimation printer is basically the same as a full-color inkjet printer, but it can also use specialized ink and sublimation paper to create designs that can then be transferred to other items, such as coffee mugs or T-shirts, using pressure and heat.
Keep in mind, if you’re using a regular inkjet printer that supports this functionality, you must flush out the traditional ink from the printer before adding the specialized sublimation ink (or vice versa).
The Epson EcoTank ET-2760 does away with traditional ink cartridges and uses high-capacity ink tanks instead. This means zero cartridge waste and the ability to print upwards of 7,500 B&W pages or 6,000 color pages before needing to replenish the ink. What this means for traditional paper-based printing is that your cost drops down to about $0.01 per full-color page.
If you plan to use the printer for sublimation printing, you can order the special ink that’s required from several different companies, such as MerryWork, via Amazon for about $24 per set (which includes one bottle of black, red, blue and yellow ink). Special sublimation paper is also sold by a wide range of companies, like A-Sub, and it comes in different paper sizes.
A pack of 110 sheets of 8.5-inch x 11-inch sublimation paper will cost around $20. Because this is heat-transfer paper, to transfer what you print to a T-shirt, mug or another compatible material will require a heat and pressure source, such as an iron, a sublimation heat press, or a specialized device for imprinting on mugs, for example.
There’s more to selecting a printer than first meets the eye. Your choice of printer depends on how much you routinely print—a few pages a month or dozens each day—as well as whether you want to print photos or two-sided documents. You also need to consider if your printing needs are typically black and white, or if full-color printing of correspondence, documents and files, for example, is often required.
Your easiest decision is probably whether to get an inkjet or laser printer. Lasers are a good choice if you print a lot, such as in a small or home office. Monochrome laser printers are fast, reliable and inexpensive. They don’t do photos very well, though—you can get a color laser, but they’re a lot pricier and more complicated. If your printing needs sometimes include color—whether for home, home office, or schoolwork—an inkjet is your least expensive option.
The print quality of a laser printer versus an inkjet printer, however, tends to be superior, so for a home office from which you’re generating printed business correspondence or reports to be shared with others, a laser printer is likely more appropriate. To meet the average needs of a family, however, a full-color inkjet printer will be more economical and versatile.
Here are some other printer-related features to consider:
As you might imagine, there’s no single best printer brand; collectively, several companies offer the best printers of 2022. But depending upon what you’re looking for—affordability, high printing volume for a small office, photo and creative printing, or other criteria—you might prefer one brand over another.
Brother, Canon, Epson and HP—as well as a handful of other brands—all offer superb models. If you’re interested in office and productivity printing, HP and Brother are worthy of investigation; if you want to make high-quality photo prints or get a multi-purpose printer than can do prints as well as other kinds of documents, Canon and Epson have a number of compelling choices.
For all their advantages, inkjet printers can be woefully expensive to maintain, because name-band replacement ink cartridges are pricey. So if low-cost ink is your overriding concern, consider a laser printer; laser toner (for black-and-white later printers) is substantially less expensive than ink cartridges.
Among inkjet printers, though, consider printer models in which each color is stored in its own cartridge. Printers which use combo cartridges (in which three or more colors are housed in a single cartridge) are usually a lot more expensive to operate, because if you run out of any color you need to discard the entire cartridge along with any of its remaining ink.
The cheapest ink is found in printers that use refillable tanks, sometimes called supertanks. The Epson EcoTank ET-3760, for example, is such a “supertank” printer that lets you purchase bulk quantities of ink that last longer and cost much less than traditional ink cartridges for a comparable amount of ink.
Keep in mind, there are independent companies, like LD Products, that manufacturer and sell inkjet and laser printer toner cartridges direct-to-consumer that are 100 percent compatible with name-brand ink cartridges or toner cartridges, but they’re sold at a fraction of the price. You can also save money by subscribing to an ink cartridge replenishment service operated by your printer manufacturer.