Our professional and personal lives continue to become increasingly digital, with more and more that exists in the cloud, but a completely paperless world hasn’t yet materialized. Whether you’re working from home or managing the documentation of daily life for yourself or the whole family, the urgent need to scan, copy, and print pops up more often than you’d think.
Fortunately, modern home printers are compact, reliable, and cost-effective, and these multi-taskers are only getting more so with each generation. The printers recommended below include options for assorted jobs and projects whether that’s producing crisp photos or printing out PDFs. Some printers offer additional features like the ability to scan, copy, or even fax documents, which can make these electronic partners the reliable workhorse of your home office.
The Best Home Printers
The Expert: I have worked remote for the better part of a decade, so I am familiar with home printers and why it’s worth it to have one. In our suburban Salt Lake City home, our printer does double duty serving both the needs of my business and those of my tween daughter who loves to print and create photo collages. After extensive research, our family traded in our old inkjet printer that gobbled up its own weight in cartridges for a new wireless laser printer that transformed how we scan and print photos and documents.
What to Consider in a Home Printer
Before buying a home printer or replacing an old one, you will need to determine what type of printer best suits your needs. Take into account where you will store the printer—do you need a compact version that will be taken out only when it’s needed or do you have a a home office where space isn’t an issue? It’s also smart to factor in the cost and access to ink refills so you get a true sense of not only the initial cost, but the expenses you will incur during the life of the printer.
Why Ink Runs Out So Fast and How to Preserve It
If you’ve owned an inkjet printer, you’ve likely found yourself frustrated by insatiable cartridges that tend to guzzle ink. Even if you use a printer infrequently, you can find yourself replacing expensive cartridges for just a light one- or two-page print job. You’re not imagining this phantom drain phenomenon.
Unfortunately, inkjet printers not only use ink to print on the page, but also for maintenance. Leaving the printer on between uses may reduce the ink used during this maintenance cycle—without requiring a ton of electricity to keep it running. You can also save significantly by purchasing XL ink cartridges in bundles.
If you print only a few times a year and seem to always have to buy new ink whenever you go to print, you’ll probably be better off printing through your workplace, the library, or another service from stores like Staples or FedEx. This issue occurs only with inkjet printers. If you won’t be using your printer daily, you may instead want to consider laser printers that use toner instead of liquid ink, because toner won’t dry up between use.
How We Selected Home Printers
To make the recommendations below, I leaned heavily into my own experience using several printers in my home office. My work reviewing home electronics and technology products over the past decade guided me in which key features and specifications are most optimal for home printing needs.
I also weighed the cost of each printer in terms of initial purchase and the tab it runs up in long-term ink or toner usage. Additionally, I scoured customer reviews to get a sense of what has worked and what hasn’t for most folks. Finally, I factored in the testing and research of Hunter Fenollol and Paige Szmodis, and their contributions to the earlier versions of this article.
Our Full Home Printer Reviews
If you’re looking for a home printer that does it all and does it well, for under $300, it would be hard to pass up the newest version of the HP OfficeJet Pro. With a flatbed scanner, document feeder, wireless connection with self-healing Wi-Fi (it automatically detects/resolves connection issues), and relatively fast print speed, this inkjet can handle any print job you’ll do at home.
This is a relatively affordable inkjet printer, but there will be a cost later when it’s time to for new cartridges. While the first three months of ink are free, you’ll have to shell out $50 or more for each color cartridge replacement in the future.
Where this Canon tank inkjet printer shines is in paper capacity and cost-efficiency as you can get a myriad of color refill bottles to top off the ink at a fraction of the cost. But clear your desk, because this printer’s dimensions make it a bit of a space hog.
While this isn’t the best choice for printing high-quality photos, this printer does everything else well for a fraction of the cost of a traditional inkjet. As the cornerstone of a home office, you’ll get outsized paper capacity and the ability to print in duplex, as well as copy, fax, and scan albeit at a more expensive price tag than a traditional inkjet.
The HP Color LaserJet Pro gives you the best of both worlds in home printers. You’ll get the faster print speeds and lower per page costs of laser printing combined with the capacity to print in color. The HP app enables you to print, scan, copy, or fax right from your smartphone.
However, in addition to the higher cost up front to your wallet associated with laser printers, this specific option also comes in at a heavier weight than most. And although they print nearly twice the page capacity of a typical inkjet, toner refills for the LaserJet Pro will still set you back about $100 per cartridge.
Looking for a printer that does one thing and does it well? This basic monochrome Brother laser printer is your best bet. With quick print speeds, duplex or double-sided printing, and the ability to connect from your mobile app or smartphone, you’ll get plenty of bang for your buck out of this laser printer.
While it’s not a tank model, the black toner refill cartridges are relatively affordable and you’ll get nearly 3,000 pages per cartridge. This basic laser printer also comes with a one-year warranty and the ability to subscribe and save on toner refills delivered to your door.
This affordable home inkjet printer excels at delivering high-quality photos for scrapbookers, artists, and graphic designers. This tank inkjet will definitely not disappoint as it prints out about 3,800 4×6 color photos on a single set of ink with refill bottles running less than half the cost of a traditional inkjet cartridge replacement. The PIXMA even copies and scans so it can stand in as a home office printer in a pinch.
In exchange for printing cheap photos at home, you’ll sacrifice some functionality. You’ll have to squint to see the tiny monochrome display on the PIXMA and the turtle-speed print jobs and small paper capacity mean sizable print jobs will need some serious oversight.
The Epson EcoTank, one of the least expensive printers in our roundup, offers cost-effective cartridge-free ink efficiency, which is what makes it our best budget pick for the long run. When you purchase an Epson EcoTank, you get about two years worth of ink in the box, which translates into the ability to print 4,500 pages in black or 7,500 pages in color.
While you can also scan and copy documents with the Epson EcoTank, the lack of a display can make the process a little clunky. And your tradeoff for such a model of efficiency is a printer with a smaller paper capacity and slower print speeds than other inkjets.
Sleek and simple, the Epson Workforce is a fairly lightweight printer (just over 4 pounds) built to slide into a briefcase or backpack (yes, really!) and runs on a rechargeable battery. While it won’t handle scanning or copying, this mobile inkjet reliably tackles small print jobs on-the-go with the capacity to produce up to 100 monochrome or 50 color pages.
As you might expect, this Epson doesn’t sport much in the way of a display and has slow print speeds. But, considering its relatively low price and compact size, it’s a printer that’s punching above its weight.
Expert Kaz Weida on a How Long a Printer Should Last, Ink SuperTanks, and Printing From the Cloud.
Kaz Weida is a former educator turned freelance journalist who started off producing reviews and guides in the home security and telecom industry in 2015; she has tested, researched, and reviewed more products than she count, be it air quality monitors or kids GPS trackers. Kaz had bylines in a wide array of publications and sites including HuffPost, BlogHer, SheKnows, SafeWise, CableTV, and Rosetta Stone, and her work has been featured in Medium, Womens E News, Scary Mommy, and Salt Lake City Weekly. When she’s not at her desk, Kaz is in the kitchen crafting and photographing cocktails.
£