Your guide
The best laser printer should print quickly while maintaining precise text and simple graphics. It should be easy to maintain and work efficiently without a lot of bells and whistles. To find the best, we spoke to IT experts, scoured consumer reviews, investigated specs, and gathered the top laser printers from reliable brands. Links to Best printers for mac listed in the video [US] 3. HP OffficeJet 7510: 2. Epson Expression Premium XP-640: 1. Home / 3D Printer News / Best 3D Printers of 2018 – Buyers Guide Facebook Tweet LinkedIn StumbleUpon Shares 1.4k Finding the “Best 3D Printer” can be overwhelming and really depends on your needs and demands.
Ben Keough
We’ve spent more than 300 hours researching and testing laser printers over the past seven years, and we’ve come away convinced that the best choice for a full-featured laser printer is the HP Color LaserJet Pro M254dw. Of the 40 current laser printer models we considered in 2018, it’s the most reliable and least annoying to use of the bunch, and it can print just about anything most people would want, with beautiful results.
Our pick
HP Color LaserJet Pro M254dw
The HP M254dw has a great user interface, prints faster than the competition, and produces crisp black text with vibrant color graphics.
Buying Options
If you need a laser printer that can handle any print job—from tax forms and labels to envelopes and corporate reports—the HP Color LaserJet Pro M254dw is hard to beat. Its easy-to-use touchscreen interface and HP Smart software really stand out from the competition and make setup and daily use far less frustrating than with other printers we’ve tried. It produces crisp black text and vibrant full-color graphics with equal ease. The M254dw is also faster than competing models, pumping out around 17 single-sided pages per minute, and it has a convenient bypass slot that makes printing on envelopes and other odd-sized media easy.
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Budget pick
Brother HL-L2350DW
With low operating costs, quick operation, and useful features, the HL-L2350DW is the best laser printer you can get for around $100.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $100.
If you’re looking for a cheap laser printer for occasional black-and-white print jobs, we recommend the Brother HL-L2350DW. Setup is painless and the machine is compatible with all major platforms, including Windows, MacOS, ChromeOS, Linux, iOS, and Android. Its cost per page is a reasonable 3.3 cents, it sticks to Wi-Fi like glue, and its price generally hovers around $100. Its print quality is merely adequate right out of the box, but you can improve it with a few simple settings tweaks. Just be aware that the L2350DW can’t scan or copy; if you need that functionality, look to our monochrome all-in-one pick.
Also great
Brother MFC-L2750DW
This multifunction printer adds a flatbed scanner and automatic document feeder to the L2350DW, significantly upping its home-office utility.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $136.
If you like the sound of our budget pick but want the ability to scan and copy documents and photos, the MFC-L2750DW should fit the bill. At its core it’s a very similar printer—and it’s just as easy to set up—but it also has a flatbed scanner and a fast, single-pass duplexing automatic document feeder on top. Its print quality is slightly better out of the box, and you get the same operating costs, the same print speed, and the same connectivity options as you do with the L2350DW. For home offices it’s a great do-it-all option—as long as you don’t need color.
Upgrade pick
HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M477fdw
This color laser all-in-one is a great choice for small businesses that need a fast, versatile printer.
Buying Options
May be out of stock
*At the time of publishing, the price was $560.
If you have a small business with more serious productivity needs, the HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M477fdw is a worthwhile upgrade over our other picks. It’s easy enough to set up and also offers more robust admin settings and security options for a multiuser environment. All-in-one color lasers like the M477fdw cost more and are more expensive to operate than inkjet printers with comparable features, but they deliver high-quality color prints, copies, and scans at a quicker pace than cheaper models. They’re also sturdier and more reliable than inkjets.
Everything we recommend
Our pick
HP Color LaserJet Pro M254dw
The HP M254dw has a great user interface, prints faster than the competition, and produces crisp black text with vibrant color graphics.
Buying Options
Budget pick
Brother HL-L2350DW
With low operating costs, quick operation, and useful features, the HL-L2350DW is the best laser printer you can get for around $100.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $100.
Also great
Brother MFC-L2750DW
This multifunction printer adds a flatbed scanner and automatic document feeder to the L2350DW, significantly upping its home-office utility.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $136.
Upgrade pick
HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M477fdw
This color laser all-in-one is a great choice for small businesses that need a fast, versatile printer.
Buying Options
May be out of stock
*At the time of publishing, the price was $560.
The research
Why you should trust us
Wirecutter has covered printers for seven years, and I’ve written about them since 2016. My editors and I have kept an eye on feedback from comment threads, email, and Twitter to better understand our readers’ real-world needs. We’ve considered reviews from other editorial sources, including CNET, Computer Shopper, and PCMag. We’ve scanned thousands of customer reviews to pick out recurring issues with specific models. And we’ve lived with many printers as long-term test units, learning how they can fail and disappoint in the long run.
For this guide to laser printers, we’ve considered 142 different printers and tested 16 of them since 2011. And for this particular update, we’ve put in about 35 hours of research and testing, looking at 40 different models and ultimately testing five.
Who should get this
We think laser printers are best for people who need to print a lot, like small-business owners. They’re also great for people who don’t print often but want a machine that will work without complaint on the rare occasions when they do need to print.
To help you decide if a laser printer is right for you, take a look at this brief list of things laser printers tend to do better than inkjets:
- Laser printers are less frustrating to maintain. Laser toner cartridges don’t have to be replaced as often as ink tanks, and they won’t clog—as inkjet print heads sometimes do—if you go weeks or months between print jobs.
- They’re faster. If you have a home office or run a home business, you may be more conscious of printer speed than regular people. Our laser picks can pump out as many as 27 pages per minute; the fastest inkjets we’ve tested maxed out at 13 pages per minute.
- They print sharper text and graphics. The best inkjets do a good job, but even a mediocre laser printer will do a better job delivering crisp results, especially when it comes to fine lines and small font sizes.
- They may be more economical to run in the long term. Some inkjets have a lower cost per page than home laser printers, but they also waste more ink on cleaning. That waste isn’t reflected in the estimates manufacturers provide for how many pages you can get out of a tank. Laser printers don’t waste toner in the same way, and because they don’t gunk up like inkjets, they may last longer before needing to be replaced.
- Toner doesn’t smear and run when it gets wet. If you need prints that can get wet without becoming unreadable, you want a laser printer.
But laser printers aren’t for everyone, because they’re not great at everything. Here are a few reasons why you might want to stick to an inkjet:
- Inkjets cost less to start with. A basic inkjet can cost as little as $40, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a laser at that price.
- Their ink tanks are cheaper to replace. Toner cartridges may last longer, but replacing an entire set of them will cost you several hundred dollars. Replacing smaller, less expensive ink tanks more often can be easier on your budget, even if it doesn’t really save you money in the long run.
- They can print glossy photos. Sure, laser printers can print a photo on plain paper, but they can’t deliver prints on glossy or matte photo paper. If you want to make frame-worthy prints, an inkjet is your only choice.
- They can print on other stuff besides paper. CDs, metal, and other unusual media are fair game, which makes them much more versatile for crafty types.
If you think you want an inkjet instead of a laser, we recommend the best inkjet machines here.
How we picked
Laser printers have a few clear subcategories, and for this guide we looked for good options in each of them.
Color print-only
In the past, we considered color laser printers an extravagance for home use, due to the high cost of color toner and the higher up-front cost of the machines themselves. However, prices have gradually dropped into a more acceptable range, and we think that these printers now provide the best all-around value for people who want a trouble-free printing experience. They’re still expensive compared with inkjets and monochrome lasers, but the convenience factor and flexibility of a color laser machine can’t be overstated.
To find the best color laser printers, we scouted all of the current color laser printers we could find for less than $300, our cutoff for affordability. Then we refined the results by considering only those with automatic duplex printing, Wi-Fi, and support for today’s mobile printing standards. We favored models with cheaper toner costs. To weed out any clunkers that had good specs but poor real-world performance, we read through hundreds of customer and professional reviews. This netted us two serious contenders: the Canon ImageClass LBP612Cdw and the HP Color LaserJet Pro M254dw.
Monochrome print-only
Because they’re fundamentally similar machines, we applied most of the same criteria we used to find our color laser pick, but reduced the price ceiling to $200 because mono laser printers tend to be much less expensive. With those parameters, we ended up with just two contenders. Unfortunately, we found out that one of them is unlikely to be available for much longer, so we decided to test the other—the Brother HL-L2350DW—to confirm that it’s the best choice for people with just occasional printing needs. The L2350DW is the successor to the L2340DW, our pick for a low-cost monochrome laser printer for the past two iterations of this guide.
Monochrome multifunction
Although a print-only machine is sufficient for most people, plenty of other people—particularly small- and home-business owners—also want a copier and scanner. So we sought out monochrome multifunction printers with a reasonable purchase price (under $250), low toner costs (around 3¢ or less per page), Wi-Fi connectivity, mobile apps, duplex printing, and an automatic document feeder (rather than just a flatbed scanner).
Our research turned up 14 mono MFPs that fit those criteria. We read owner and professional reviews to seek out the best of these, and ultimately selected two test models: the Brother MFC-L2750DW and Canon ImageClass MF249dw.
Color multifunction
Finally, we looked for a high-end color laser all-in-one for people with more serious small-office or home-office needs. It needed to be fast and flexible, offer great print and scan quality, and have a relatively affordable price (though none of these machines are cheap).
Filtering through the color laser AIOs from top manufacturers, we arrived at four models that checked off all our requirements for less than $500: the Brother MFC-9340CDW, the Canon Color ImageClass MF733Cdw, and the HP Color LaserJet Pro M477fdw, the upgrade pick in our all-in-one printer guide.
How we tested
Your first experience with a printer sets the tone for the relationship to come. If setup is a breeze, you’ll have a much more positive attitude toward the machine going forward. That’s why we paid especially close attention to the installation process, from the physical unboxing to wirelessly connecting each machine to a Windows PC, Mac, iPhone, and Android device. We considered setup a success when we were able to print a two-sided document from each platform over Wi-Fi, turn the machine off and back on, and do it again.
Best Small Printer For Mac 2018
Because simply getting a job to print can be frustrating, we also tested other ways to wirelessly interact with these machines. As it’s vital for Chromebook owners, we made sure each printer worked with Google Cloud Print. We considered it a success when we could print using Google Cloud Print from a phone using cellular data. Where available, we also checked out other mobile printing standards and proprietary systems, like Mopria and HP ePrint.
You’d have to try hard to find a laser printer that doesn’t offer at least respectable print quality, but some still manage to stand out from the pack. To separate the great from the merely good, we printed several text-based reference documents that also included elements like columns, tables, or charts: instructions for the 1099 tax form (PDF), a star chart designed for lens sharpness testing, a document from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) meant to mimic a typical office report, and a simple Word/PDF document with the same sentence repeated in descending font size from 72 points to 1 point. We printed a few high-resolution photos, too, because more data is always better, and seeing how each printer handles material that really pushes against the limits of its capabilities can be instructive.
As it’s vital for Chromebook owners, we made sure each printer worked with Google Cloud Print.
We also checked out each printer’s quality options, including toner-density sliders and any available print-resolution settings to see what you can expect with toner-saving options, and to find out if we could eke out better-looking text.
Experimenting with quality settings also helped us get familiar with the print menus. We spent time in the standard print box, as well as the more arcane, Web-based control panels that most printers employ for more technical adjustments.
To test printing speed, we ran off four copies of the four-page ISO document in both duplex (two-sided) and simplex (one-sided) modes. We timed the whole process, from hitting Print to the last sheet coming out of the feeder, so that it included any warm-up time required from a cold start. We also tried duplex printing at the highest quality setting for each printer. These tests give us a feel for not only how fast a printer will be able to spit out a 10-page book report, but if the differences between them are substantial enough to make a difference in day-to-day life.
For the multifunction printers, we added speed tests for copying and scanning a large (50-page) document composed of mixed output from our printing tests, again considering both duplex and simplex speed. We also tested the flatbed scan quality of each multifunction printer using a glossy test photo printed on our inkjet all-in-one pick, the HP OfficeJet Pro 8720. We scanned at all available resolutions and looked for notable qualitative differences between each machine’s output, from sharpness to color rendition and contrast.
We timed the whole printing process—from hitting print to the last sheet coming out of the feeder—so that it included any warm-up time required from a cold start.
Finally, we stress-tested all of the paper-feeding parts of each printer, including not just the main paper tray, but also the bypass tray and document feeder, if the printer had them. We (slightly) overstuffed them with paper to see if they’d jam, and we also fed them single sheets to see if they could pick each up. We also fed the multifunction printers a crumpled piece of paper to see if their ADFs could handle the unexpected.
Our pick: HP Color LaserJet Pro M254dw
Our pick
HP Color LaserJet Pro M254dw
The HP M254dw has a great user interface, prints faster than the competition, and produces crisp black text with vibrant color graphics.
Buying Options
The HP Color LaserJet Pro M254dw is fast, powerful, flexible, and—most important—easy to use, which in our book makes it the best laser printer for most people. We love the responsive control panel, the modern design of HP’s PC and mobile software, and how easy the printer is to set up and get on Wi-Fi. Toner is affordable, and you can get it in extra-large cartridges that are good for more than 3,000 pages, which should last most people a very long time before needing replacement. Print quality is excellent across the board, and all of the features you’d expect from a high-end machine are here: auto-duplexing, plenty of networking options, support for common mobile printing standards, and a bypass slot for odd-sized media.
Setting up the M254dw is painless, thanks in large part to the surprisingly helpful Getting Started guide. It lays out three different ways to set up a printer-PC connection: USB, Ethernet, and Wi-Fi. Despite the included USB cable (a rarity these days), we think most people will use Wi-Fi, so that’s the path we chose. With the touchscreen, establishing a wireless connection was as easy as picking our router out of a list and typing in the password. Unlike most other printers we tested, the HP also provides a full QWERTY keyboard, which made entering a complex passkey a lot less frustrating.
The bright, colorful, smartphone-style touchscreen interface is easy to work with, though it's not as large as the one on our upgrade pick.Photo: Rozette Rago
You can use the M254dw’s top USB port to print photos, PDFs, and Word documents. It stays hidden behind a little flap when not in use. Photo: Rozette Rago
The bright, colorful, smartphone-style touchscreen interface is easy to work with, though it's not as large as the one on our upgrade pick.Photo: Rozette Rago
You can use the M254dw’s top USB port to print photos, PDFs, and Word documents. It stays hidden behind a little flap when not in use. Photo: Rozette Rago
Wi-Fi and that touchscreen interface are a couple of areas where the M254dw excels. Maintaining a solid wireless connection has traditionally been a struggle for printers, but this HP performed without fail during our testing, boosted by a first-in-class feature: dual-band Wi-Fi. Yep, the M254dw works on either the standard 2.4 GHz band or the typically less populated and faster 5 GHz band.
The bright and high-resolution color touchscreen display makes navigating the printer’s many settings menus easy. All of the other printers we tested for this guide use old-school resistive touchscreens that aren’t nearly as accurate or easy to use as the capacitive touchscreens on most smartphones. This screen isn’t as big as the ones on larger all-in-one printers, like our upgrade pick, but it’s still a significant upgrade over the one-line mono readout of our budget pick or the blocky, low-res monochrome touchscreen on the Canon ImageClass LBP612Cdw we also tested.
Once the M254dw is connected to your network, you can grab the appropriate drivers and software for your Mac or Windows PC by heading to 123.hp.com and clicking the link for “LaserJets or PageWides” at the bottom of the page. (Alternatively, you can just click here.) That’ll get you the HP Easy Start installer, which walks you through getting the printer connected, registered, and working with your computer. This process took longer with this printer than with other HPs we’ve tested, but we were still able to wrap everything up within a half an hour. Connecting a smartphone or tablet is much quicker. You can download the HP Smart app (Android and iOS) and add the printer with just a couple taps.
Operating costs for the M254dw are low. Black-and-white pages cost around 3¢ each, and color pages are about 15¢. Bear in mind that these numbers are only estimates; if you’re printing full-page color photos, you can expect to get fewer pages out of each toner cartridge, while a mostly text-based page with a few color graphics could stretch the toner further and lower your cost per page. HP’s toner cartridges feature an integrated drum, so you don’t have to worry about buying a new one after a couple years. If you want to make your dollar stretch a little further, you can make the printer default to duplex printing and adjust menu settings to reduce toner usage. We don’t recommend handing out reduced-toner prints to clients, but the results are passable for everyday personal use.
The M254dw model’s 250-page main paper tray (which can accept everything up to legal size) is larger than many in its class, so you’ll have to fill it less often. A dedicated bypass slot for odd-sized media means you also won’t have to take your regular paper out if you want to print on envelopes, labels, or card stock. The slot is motorized, which was a little off-putting the first time we used it. When you slide an envelope or label sheet into the slot, rollers grab it and suck it into the guts of the printer, where it sits until you send a print job. (However, we weren’t able to find a way to get the printer to eject paper from this slot without printing, which seems a little strange.)
Above the main tray, a handy single-sheet bypass slot can handle labels, envelopes, and other odd-sized media.Photo: Rozette Rago
With capacity for 250 sheets, the main paper tray of the M254dw is larger than those of many competing models.Photo: Rozette Rago
Above the main tray, a handy single-sheet bypass slot can handle labels, envelopes, and other odd-sized media.Photo: Rozette Rago
With capacity for 250 sheets, the main paper tray of the M254dw is larger than those of many competing models.Photo: Rozette Rago
We couldn’t get the M254dw to jam, no matter how hard we tried. When we crammed the paper tray with as many as 50 extra sheets, a warning popped up on the control panel saying the tray was overstuffed, and the machine refused to print. (In this situation, other printers would try, fail, and jam.) When we put exactly 250 pages in, it printed normally; same with just a single sheet in the tray. If we had run into a jam, however, there printer’s back has a convenient access hatch to remove it.
At default settings, the M254dw produces crisp, dark black text that’s readable down to 2 points. Results are similarly impressive when printing business-style graphics and household miscellany like comics, coloring book pages, and crosswords. We didn’t observe any jagged lines or banding in solid-color areas—two problems that often plague cheaper models. Although it can’t print on photo paper, we ran a few high-resolution test photos through the HP on plain paper and came away generally pleased with the results. The prints are a touch washed out, but you get accurate colors, lots of detail, and relatively low noise. These aren’t photos you’d want to hang on a wall, or even display on your fridge, but they’re more than adequate for the cover of a business presentation or a school paper.
HP claims the M254dw can print as fast as 22 pages per minute in black and white, but in our testing it maxed out around 17 pages per minute while printing a PDF consisting of mixed text and graphics. That’s an impressive result—slightly quicker than the Canon LBP612Cdw we tested it against, and certainly fast enough for most home and home-office purposes. Color printing was just a touch slower at 15 pages per minute, and duplexing in either monochrome or color dropped the speed further, to 11 pages per minute. Again, quicker than the competition.
Flaws but not dealbreakers
Early owner reviews noted various problems, most commonly color accuracy and Wi-Fi stability, though it seems that subsequent firmware updates have fixed many of these issues. During testing, we had trouble getting the printer registered with Google Cloud Print before we updated the firmware; afterward, it worked right away. Our advice: Always attempt a firmware update immediately after setting up any printer. You’re less likely to run into issues that way.
Another common owner complaint is that the M254dw can be slow to start printing. We observed this only once during testing, when printing our high-resolution color test photo. In that case, the machine took a little over a minute from receiving the job to start printing. Every other job we ran started right away, from Word docs and PDFs to smaller JPEGs and PSDs from Photoshop.
The M254dw comes with a skimpy set of “starter” toner cartridges good for 800 black-and-white and 700 color pages. High-capacity replacements are good for up to 3,200 monochrome and 2,500 color pages, but a full set will cost you around $400, or almost twice as much as the printer itself. This isn’t a problem limited to the M254dw—almost all consumer laser printers (including alternatives we considered and tested) come with these corner-cutting cartridges, but it’s annoying nonetheless. Most buyers should be prepared to dish out for replacement toner within the first year or so, but the replacement point could come a lot sooner for people using the printer in a home office. Third-party toner can be had for around half the price of the genuine HP product, but we can’t guarantee it’ll work for you; explore that option at your own risk.
Color laser printers are bigger and heavier than their monochrome counterparts, because they use four toner cartridges rather than just one. The Color LaserJet Pro M254dw is no exception: It’s more than twice as heavy as our budget pick (the Brother HL-L2350DW), but still far smaller and lighter than a color all-in-one like our upgrade pick (the HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M477fdw). It’ll take up significant space on your desk, but it won’t colonize it the way an all-in-one would. It also probably won’t fit on your bookshelf, thanks to its 19-inch depth.
Budget pick: Brother HL-L2350DW
Budget pick
Brother HL-L2350DW
With low operating costs, quick operation, and useful features, the HL-L2350DW is the best laser printer you can get for around $100.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $100.
The Brother HL-L2350DW is a simple, affordable, and dependable monochrome laser printer. For people with basic needs—printing taxes, recipes, boarding passes, and so on—its automatic duplex capability, large 250-sheet paper tray, reliable paper handling, speedy printing, and low per-page costs make it an excellent choice, despite a few quirks.
With a machine this straightforward, physical setup is quick. You only have to remove the packing tape, insert the toner cartridge, adjust the paper-tray guides, and load some paper. Getting the printer on Wi-Fi is a little more complicated to do with this model than with some other printers, because the HL-L2350DW employs a decidedly old-school user interface that consists of a one-line monochrome LED display and an array of rubber buttons. There’s no way to type in a Wi-Fi passkey on the machine itself, so you have to complete the process with the help of a PC. Even so, we were able to get connected to our network within a few minutes, and the printer reliably maintained a connection throughout testing—even several rooms away and a floor below our router. Some owners reported issues with this printer’s predecessor, the L2340DW, refusing to wake up from Deep Sleep mode, so we were happy to find that the new model didn’t give us any issues during our testing. You can operate the L2350DW over USB, if you prefer, but you’ll have to supply your own cable. If you want an Ethernet port for wired Internet, you can upgrade to the otherwise nearly identical HL-L2370DW.
The L2350DW works with Windows PCs, Macs, and even Linux systems. It’s also compatible with all major mobile printing standards, including Google Cloud Print, which means it’s a solid pick for Chromebook owners. However, you may have issues getting the printer to complete Cloud Print registration; we certainly did. For us, the solution was to access the printer’s Web control panel, navigate to the Networking tab, and disable IPv6. With that done, the printer was able to get on Cloud Print right away and worked flawlessly for the remainder of testing. It’s a mystery why Brother ships the L2350DW with this setting enabled, considering that it’s a known fact that Cloud Print doesn’t work with IPv6. At least it’s an easy fix.
You don’t really need to install any extra software for the L2350DW, because it has native Windows and Mac drivers. It also works automatically with AirPrint on iOS, and can be added with the Brother Print Service on Android. Brother’s iPrint&Scan app is available for all four platforms. It’s perfectly functional, if not as well-designed as HP’s software. Unfortunately, in our testing, printing from iPrint&Scan resulted in horrendous quality, regardless of the quality setting selected. We reached out to Brother for comment, but the company wasn’t able to provide any explanation for the print-quality discrepancy. In general, we’d recommend you avoid the app and print through your operating system’s native print dialog, which works just great.
Right out of the box, the HL-L2350DW produces good-looking text. Tax forms and other documents with tiny fonts (all the way down to 2 points) are perfectly readable, and larger headers come out with crisp edges and dark centers. All in all, this printer should be more than adequate for printing text-heavy documents. Graphics and photos, on the other hand, are merely mediocre at default settings. Some light banding is visible in solid-color areas, and graphics appear a little grainy. The output is good enough for personal use or internal business documents, and you can improve it with adjustments to toner density and resolution settings (at the expense of toner longevity) if you need to hand out documents to clients.
Brother claims the L2350DW can print at up to 32 pages per minute, which is 5 pages per minute faster than the machine it replaces. It wasn’t quite that fast for us, but it was still speedy enough for just about any home or home-office use we can imagine. We clocked it at 25 pages per minute while printing single-sided PDFs, and 12 pages per minute while using duplex—faster than our top pick, the M254dw, in both cases. Print jobs reliably started up within a couple seconds, too, so you won’t be left waiting long in any case.
As with its now-discontinued predecessor (our top pick for the past two years), one of the best things about the HL-L2350DW is its low cost of ownership. It shouldn’t cost you much more than $100 for the printer itself, and we’ve seen it on sale for far less than that. Operating costs are low, too. Even accounting for drum wear, each print will run you about 3.3¢, which is right in line with the other models we recommend. And optional 3,000-page high-yield cartridges mean you won’t need to replace your toner too often. (However, like most other laser printers, the L2350DW comes with a puny starter cartridge good for just 700 pages.)
This printer is extremely small and light. At just 15.9 pounds, it’s more than 10 pounds lighter than our next smallest pick, and its footprint is significantly smaller as well. It’s especially short at 7.2 inches tall, which should help you fit it on a bookshelf. But it’ll just as easily find a space on your desk, or anywhere else you might want to shove it.
However, don’t expect great build quality from a cheap printer like the HL-L2350DW. Our test unit came in a very banged-up box (thanks, FedEx!) that released a confetti of shattered styrofoam when we opened it. After getting the printer up and running, we immediately noticed that duplex printing wasn’t working; every time we printed a two-sided document, it jammed in exactly the same place. We hopped on the phone and a Brother customer support agent quickly diagnosed the problem: a plastic guide in the paper path that had gotten knocked out of place in transit. It was simple enough to pop it back in where it was supposed to go, but it speaks to the L2350DW’s flimsiness (and shoddy packaging) that the issue happened in the first place.
Also great: Brother MFC-L2750DW
Also great
Brother MFC-L2750DW
This multifunction printer adds a flatbed scanner and automatic document feeder to the L2350DW, significantly upping its home-office utility.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $136.
If you work from home, run a home business, or simply want the flexibility of a laser printer that can also scan and copy, we recommend the Brother MFC-L2750DW. This powerful machine marries the basic utility and reliability of our Brother HL-L2350DW budget pick with the versatility of a flatbed scanner and single-pass duplexing automatic document feeder. It’s dependable, quick, cost-effective, and reasonably compact, and can handle everything except color print jobs. (Yes, including faxing.)
The MFC-L2750DW is even simpler to set up than its little sibling, because you can connect it to Wi-Fi using the color touchscreen control panel. The interface is easy to navigate, if not quite as user-friendly as the one on our main pick. It includes a number of handy built-in apps, including Dropbox and Google Drive, so you can walk up and print directly from your cloud accounts. It also has a scan-to-email app, which is refreshingly simple to configure. It timed out on us a few times when trying to scan very large jobs, but otherwise worked quickly.
The 250-sheet paper tray has adjustable guides for envelopes and other different media.Photo: Rozette Rago
The L2750DW model’s color touchscreen is simple to operate, and much less frustrating than what you’d get from some competing models.Photo: Rozette Rago
The 250-sheet paper tray has adjustable guides for envelopes and other different media.Photo: Rozette Rago
The L2750DW model’s color touchscreen is simple to operate, and much less frustrating than what you’d get from some competing models.Photo: Rozette Rago
Default print quality from the L2750DW is good enough for home and internal business use—a small step ahead of our budget pick Brother HL-L2350DW, with sharper text at small font sizes and marginally better graphics performance. But for professional-looking brochures or presentations, you’d probably want to use a printer like our upgrade pick HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M477fdw, or punt the job to a pro print shop.
Scans from the automatic document feeder look just fine, though they can come out a bit crooked if you don’t micromanage the paper guides on the ADF tray (a fault shared by many all-in-ones). Flatbed scans sidestep this issue and have excellent sharpness thanks to the 1200 dpi maximum resolution (double what some competing machines offer). You can scan to email, a network computer or drive, an FTP server, or cloud apps like Dropbox and Google Drive. Unfortunately, this printer lacks a USB port, so you can’t save your scans directly to a thumb drive.
Thanks to its single-pass duplexing automatic document feeder, scanning is really quick even with two-sided documents—24 pages per minute in black and white and 8 pages per minute in color. The Canon ImageClass MF249dw we tested was just as fast with single-sided documents, but 66 percent slower at duplexing because it took two passes to scan a two-sided sheet.
The L2750DW shares a couple of annoying but easily fixable faults with its print-only stablemate. As with the L2350DW, print quality degrades when you initiate jobs from Brother’s iPrint&Scan app, so you should use your operating system’s native print dialog instead. Google Cloud Print doesn’t work from the get-go—or didn’t for us, anyway—but you can fix that by disabling IPv6 in the Web control panel’s networking options.
This machine feels pretty flimsy, but the upside is that it’s light and compact for its class, which makes it easier to fit into your space. When you first set it up, just be sure to check for any plastic pieces that might have jumped out of place, and run a few print and scan jobs to make sure everything is working properly. If it’s not, give Brother’s customer support a call before returning the machine; the fix might be really simple.
Upgrade pick: HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M477fdw
Upgrade pick
HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M477fdw
This color laser all-in-one is a great choice for small businesses that need a fast, versatile printer.
Buying Options
May be out of stock
*At the time of publishing, the price was $560.
If you need (or just want) a more serious printer than our other picks, the HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M477fdw is a reasonably priced laser all-in-one that can print in color and comes with all of the most important productivity features, including duplex printing and scanning, wireless connectivity, and fax capability. This is a solid fit for small businesses—more powerful than your typical inkjet all-in-one, yet smaller and more affordable than the hulking enterprise machines you’d see at your local cubicle farm.
Though not enterprise-grade, the M477fdw is still huge and heavy at more than 51 pounds. Just removing it from the box can be a struggle, so make sure you have help on hand before you start setting it up. Once it’s unboxed, getting it running is straightforward: remove the packing tape, adjust the paper guides, insert some paper, and power it up. Connecting to Wi-Fi is simple thanks to the touchscreen interface; it’s a huge, colorful, capacitive panel that behaves just like a smartphone screen. As with other HP laser printers, you can head to 123.hp.com, click the “LaserJets or PageWides” link, and acquire all the software your PC or Mac needs to establish a satisfying working relationship with the machine. As we’ve noted elsewhere, we really like the HP Smart software; it’s super user-friendly in both computer and smartphone form.
Like other recent HP printers, the M477fdw is compatible with all major mobile printing standards, including Google Cloud Print and Mopria. HP also offers its own print service, HP ePrint. Essentially, your printer gets its own email address, and you can email it JPEGs, PDFs, and other files (up to 10 MB per email) to be printed. It works great. Scanning is similarly simple. You can use the HP Smart app to scan directly to your phone or PC, or send scans directly to Google Drive, Dropbox, and other cloud storage services via apps on the printer itself. As you’d expect from a business-oriented machine, you can also scan to email or a network drive, and the printer has a USB port so you can scan to a thumb drive. You can also use the same port to print Word files, PDFs, and photos.
We found that the M477fdw produces very sharp text, similar to that of the M254dw, our main pick, and outdoing both of our monochrome laser picks at smaller font sizes. Graphics look clean and crisp, with accurate colors and smooth edges; there was none of the banding and excessive darkness or lightness that we’ve seen from budget laser machines. The results are suitable for everything from personal use to business presentations. You’ll never have to worry about the quality.
Like most laser printers, the M477fdw is very fast. We clocked its print speeds at around 27 pages per minute, even over Wi-Fi. Scanning is nearly as quick. We timed it at 25 single-sided black-and-white pages per minute, or 11 double-sided color pages per minute. The M477fdw can scan both sides of a two-sided document in a single pass, which contributes to its blazing speed. And as befits a professionally oriented machine, this printer is up and printing just a couple of seconds after you begin the print job—even if you’ve let it sit for weeks between uses.
The M477fdw’s toner costs are about the same as those of the Brother MFC-9340CDW, and cheaper than those of the Canon Color ImageClass MF726Cdw and HP’s own Color LaserJet Pro M277dw. Black-and-white pages cost about 2¢, color pages cost about 13¢.
As we noted with the Brother MFC-L2750DW, the M477fdw can sometimes produce slightly crooked scans from the document feeder; to keep your results as uniform as possible, be sure to check that the guides are tight against the sides of your document before you start. Some of our commenters have also pointed out that the M477fdw model’s ADF maxes out at a resolution of just 300 dpi, which is quite pedestrian; if you need higher-quality scans, you’re going to have to use the flatbed scanner, which can go up to 1200 dpi.
HP makes plenty of similar LaserJet models (including variants in the 477 series), so if you don’t think you need all the features that this specific model offers, look around—you can expect similar performance elsewhere in the line.
The competition
Color print-only printers
We tested the Brother HL-L3270CDW and found that it came up short against our top pick due to its lack of single-pass duplex printing, a bypass printing slot for odd-size media, and a USB port for printing from a thumb drive. Print quality was mediocre overall, and colors had a distinctly greenish hue.
We also tested the Canon ImageClass LBP612Cdw but came away disappointed with its interface and Wi-Fi performance. It’s a good machine, but the HP we picked is better.
The HP Color LaserJet Pro M452dw is the big sibling to our main pick, the M254dw, with slightly faster printing, more paper-handling options, and a slightly lower cost per page. But it costs a lot more up front, as well. If you can find one on sale, go for it, but we think the M254dw usually strikes a better balance between price and performance for most people.
The Xerox Phaser 6510/DNI is a powerful color laser machine, and both owner and editorial reviews report very good print quality. However, they also mention networking issues with some routers, along with parts failures.
Monochrome print-only printers
The Brother HL-L2315DW isn’t that much cheaper than our budget pick, the Brother HL-L2350DW, but it’s much slower and has only 25 percent as much memory, so it may struggle with larger print jobs.
The Canon ImageClass LBP6230dw is cheap and small, and has automatic duplexing and Wi-Fi connectivity. But the cost per page is too high, and it doesn’t support AirPrint or Google Cloud Print, which is a problem if you own a Chromebook or want to print from a mobile device.
The Dell E310dw is nearly identical to our previous budget pick, the Brother HL-L2340DW, but Dell hasn’t updated it in years. It’s probably a fine printer, but newer, better models are available.
The HP LaserJet Pro M203dw has a low cost per page and a reasonable asking price, but owner reviews are poor, complaining of difficult setup, unreliable Internet connections, and breakdowns.
Monochrome multifunction and all-in-one models
The Brother HL-L2380DW, HL-L2390DW, and HL-L2395DW are all essentially the same machine as our budget pick, the Brother HL-L2350DW, but with a flatbed scanner bolted to the top, plus or minus some extra software features. We like these models, but over time reader feedback has led us to favor multifunction printers with automatic document feeders.
The Brother DCP-L2550DW is a good bargain option if you don’t need some of the features that our monochrome multifunction pick offers. Specifically, this one lacks duplex copy and scan, fax capability, and a touchscreen interface.
The Brother MFC-L2710DW is similar to the L2750DW we like, but lacks its touchscreen interface and auto-duplex scanning and copying. It also has just 25 percent as much onboard memory, which means it might balk at large print jobs, and is a little slower.
We tested the Canon ImageClass MF249dw and found that although it produced nice prints and scans, it was much less enjoyable to use than our pick, the HP Color LaserJet Pro M254dw, with a horrible touchscreen interface, annoying software, moderately flaky Wi-Fi, and occasional paper jams.
The Canon ImageClass MF244dw and MF247dw are very similar to the MF249dw we tested, but both have a smaller ADF capacity and neither does duplex scanning and copying. The MF244dw also lacks fax capability.
The Dell E515dw is pretty inexpensive and has solid owner reviews, but also has a high cost per page and isn’t rated to print as many pages per month as the models we tested.
The HP LaserJet Pro MFP M227fdw has an attractive cost per page and a nice touchscreen interface, but owner reviews are deeply mediocre.
Color all-in-one models
We tested the Brother MFC-L3770CDW but found that it couldn’t keep up with our laser AIO pick in usability or raw performance. Its resistive touchscreen wasn’t as responsive as the HP M477fdw’s capacitive panel, the Brother iPrint&Scan software froze repeatedly on our MacBook during multipage scan jobs, and since its duplex printing isn’t single-pass, it took nearly twice as long to print two-sided documents as the HP.
The Brother MFC-9340CDW looks to be a good deal with its all-mode duplexing, affordable toner, and relatively low up-front cost, but it’s slower than our color AIO pick and has had a rash of one-star owner reviews complaining about fused toner rollers and Wi-Fi connectivity problems.
The Canon Color ImageClass MF632Cdw, MF634Cdw, MF731Cdw, and MF733Cdw compete well with our color laser all-in-one pick on paper. Unfortunately, Canon’s user interface and software leave a lot to be desired, and we’ve had more issues with Wi-Fi and paper handling than we did with comparable HP machines.
The HP Color LaserJet Pro M281fdw is essentially a scaled-down version of our pick: slower, smaller, and less robust. If your needs aren’t too demanding, you might want to consider it, but we think the M477fdw is a more complete solution for most home and small businesses.
Footnotes
When a manufacturer says that a cartridge will print 3,000 pages, it means the printer will print 3,000 pages—of a double-spaced document with no headers or footers, basically. Yeah, that’s on the low side of what you usually print in the real world. But it’s an industry standard—all manufacturers use that as a reference point. We’d be willing to guess that most text-only pages have about 7 percent coverage, and graphics bump it up to at least 10 percent. For simplicity’s sake, we stuck with the estimated capacities that the manufacturers advertised.
Jump back.We all know that ink and toner cartridges eventually empty out. But a laser printer’s imaging drum also has a limited lifespan, and the cost of replacement often gets ignored in cost-per-page calculations. Roughly speaking, the wear on the drum adds somewhere between a half a cent and one full cent to the cost of toner for each page. Sometimes the toner and drum are sold as a single unit, so you don’t have to do any additional math to get the real cost per page. We’ve consciously tried to account for toner and drum costs in all of our predictions here, unless otherwise noted.
Jump back.Some people swear by third-party toner and even third-party imaging drums. It’s certainly tempting, because it can cut the cost per page by 75 percent. We’ve never tested any of these products, but based on what we’ve read, it seems like a more reliable option than using third-party ink in an inkjet printer. Toner is a simple substance, and laser printers don’t seem to purposely disable themselves whenever they detect non-OEM cartridges. We’d love to look into this more some day. Use at your own risk, and feel free to share your experiences.
Jump back.
Our editors independently research, test, and recommend the best products; you can learn more about our review process here. We may receive commissions on purchases made from our chosen links.
The Rundown
- Best Overall:Brother MFC-J985 at Amazon, “a good choice, thanks to its low running costs.”
- Best High Speed:Brother MFC-L6800DW at Amazon, “capable of printing at a max speed of 48 pages per minute.”
- Best Photo Printer:HP OfficeJet Pro 8720 at Amazon, “boasts impressive connectivity options and borderless photo printing.”
- Best Budget:HP OfficeJet 5255 at Amazon, “With Wi-Fi connectivity, you can easily set this printer up in any room.”
- Best for Ease of Use:Epson XP-830 Small-in-One at Amazon, “versatile, wireless and offers excellent photo quality printing.”
- Runner-Up, Best High Speed:Brother MFC-L5800DW at Amazon, “a quick monochrome printer and scanner.”
- Best Value:Brother MFC-J895DW at Amazon, “it’s simple, shuttable design helps it keep from being an eyesore.”
- Best for Small Businesses:Samsung ProXpress at Staples, “this is a straightforward and capable option with killer speeds.”
- Best for Versatility:Epson Expression Premium at Amazon, “more high-quality prints than you'd expect from your typical printer.”
- Best High Capacity:Epson workForce Pro at Amazon, “when it comes to high-capacity printing, it is both capable and upgradable.”
- Best Compact:Canon Pixma TR4520 at Amazon, “the Canon Pixma TR4520 is on the small side for a printer of its class.”
- Best Design:Canon Pixma TS9120 at Amazon, “a versatile all-in-one printer with scanning and copying.”
Our Top Picks
Best Overall: Brother MFC-J985DW with INKvestment Cartridges
The Brother MFC-J985DW all-in-one inkjet printer is a great choice, thanks to its low running costs. With its high-capacity ink refills as part of Brother's INKvestment series, you're getting one of the best cost-per-page value of any home inkjet on the market. Operating costs are less than 1 cent per black and white page, and less than 5 cents per color page.
It also has great features for the office, including duplex (two-sided) printing, and wireless printing from devices via AirPrint, Google Cloud Print, Mopria, Brother iPrint&Scan, and Wi-Fi Direct. Networking is enabled via Wi-Fi, Ethernet, Wi-Fi Direct, or you can print directly from USB. Paper capacity is 100 pages, and this printer can handle up to legal-sized paper (8.5” x 14”). You can print up to 12 black-and-white pages or 10 color pages per minute.
Best Small Printer For Mac 2018 Holiday
Best High Speed: Brother MFC-L6800DW
When it comes to speed, Brother makes a mighty impressive, monochrome all-in-one model. Whether you want to print or scan, the Brother MFC-L6800DW will floor it, offering incredible speed no matter your project. It’s capable of printing at a max speed of 48 pages per minute, and it can scan 50 single-sided or 100 double-sided documents per minute.
The Brother MFC-L6800DW can fit 570 sheets of paper in its main and multi-purpose trays, and it can be fitted with an even larger tray to expand the capacity up to 1,610 sheets if needed. Considering how fast it can print documents, business customers printing high volumes may find that extra capacity useful.
On top of its high speeds, the Brother MFC-L6800DW supports auto-duplex printing and faxing, can scan directly to the cloud or mobile devices, and has Wi-Fi connectivity. Plus, it comes with a number of business-oriented features, like Secure Print — to ensure no one gets your documents — and Setting Lock — to keep people from messing with your preferred settings. Whatever you need to print, copy, or fax, the Brother MFC-L6800DW can help you do it quick.
Best Photo Printer: HP OfficeJet Pro 8720 Wireless Printer
This all-in-one color inkjet printer from HP boasts impressive connectivity options and borderless photo printing, making it an ideal option for standard tasks, copying, faxing and photography. You can manage your printing jobs via a 4.3-inch color touchscreen, which has an intuitive tap and swipe feature. Wireless printing is facilitated by AirPrint for Apple devices and NFC touch-to-print for other smart devices. Some users have commented they have had difficulty setting up wireless functionality, but once up and running it offers a seamless and convenient way to bring your documents to life.
Impressive print management options are buoyed by high speeds, with ultra-fast automatic two-sided printing and a 50-page automatic document printer and 250-sheet paper tray. HP claims the specs are 24 pages per minute for black and white printing and 20 pages per minute for color. The high volume trays and efficient ink model result in up to 50 percent lower cost per page compared to laser printers. Documents scan at 1200 dpi resolution, while borderless photos print in standard 4 x 6-inch size.
Want to take a look at some other options? See our guide to the best photo printers.
Best Budget: HP OfficeJet 5255
HP’s OfficeJet 5255 is probably exactly what you’d think of when you imagine a budget printer in 2018. But, when you need something affordable that can handle basic printing, copying, scanning, and faxing, the OfficeJet 5255 does the job. And a few extra features make it even more compelling.
With Wi-Fi connectivity, you can easily set this printer up in any room in your house and print from wherever you are. You’ll also have an easy time printing documents from a variety of devices, since you can print from computers, your mobile phone, tablet, and cloud-based storage services like Google Drive, iCloud, and Dropbox.
The OfficeJet 5255 also has handy features like an auto document feeder with a 35-sheet capacity, as well as automatic duplex printing. If you’re expecting to do a lot of printing, you’ll also be able to save on ink by using Amazon Dash replenishment to automatically order ink refills when your printer detects it’s running low, so you'll never be out when you need it most.
Best for Ease of Use: Epson XP-830 Small-in-One
The Epson XP-830 all-in-one is versatile, wireless and offers excellent photo quality printing. You can print, copy, scan or fax from this compact AIO, and the automatic document feeder is capable of holding 30 pages. Two-sided printing is available, and print speeds are rated at 9.5 pages per minute (ppm) for black-and-white pages, and 9ppm for color pages, making for a rather slow printer, but photo printers aren't usually fast. The XP-830 has the additional ability to print on pre-surfaced optical discs.
This Small-in-One is a great option for someone who doesn’t have heavy usage demands and wants an inexpensive all-in-one with superior print quality. Mobile printing options, such as printing directly from your phone or tablet, are a snap thanks to Epson Connect software and other mobile printing options. A 4.3-inch touchscreen makes it easy to use. And it’s small, at 15.4” x 13.3” x 7.5”, so it’ll fit just about anywhere.
Runner-Up, Best High Speed: Brother MFC-L5800DW
The smaller sibling of the Brother MFC-L6800DW, Brother’s MFC-L5800DW model is also a quick monochrome printer and scanner — just with a more palatable price. This machine can spit out documents at a maximum speed of 42 pages per minute while scanning 28 impressions per minute. This model has a base capacity of 300 sheets of paper but has an auto document feeder that's also able to fit 70 pages.
Since the Brother MFC-L5800DW is significantly cheaper than its sibling, it does miss out on some perks, namely the bigger touchscreen display and duplex copying, but it still offers plenty of speed. And, like other printers in this Brother series, its paper capacity can be greatly expanded with add-ons, ultimately allowing users to stow as many as 1,340 sheets.
The Brother MFC-L5800DW can connect to Wi-Fi and supports printing from and scanning to iOS and Android devices, as well as Kindle Fire and even Windows Phone devices. You can also link the printer with Evernote, Google Drive, and Dropbox and scan documents to those cloud storage services or print files from them for convenience.
Best Value: Brother MFC-J895DW
The impressive Brother MFC-J895DW offers a comparable experience to it's XL sibling (literally called the MFC-J985DW XL), but at a much more budget-friendly price point. Since it blends great all-around performance and features with a price tag that is not painfully high, it gets our top pick for best value printer.
The Brother MFC-J895DW offers color printing, copying, and scanning along with faxing. And, it’s simple, shuttable design helps it keep from being an eyesore — something particularly nice for those using it at home. Like its larger sibling, it can print a maximum of 12 pages per minute, and 10 pages per minute in color. It can hold 150 sheets of paper and has an auto document feeder that can hold 20 sheets.
The Brother MFC-J895DW supports automatic duplex printing. Plus, thanks to its Wi-Fi and NFC connectivity, it supports a host of other features. You can print from or scan to the cloud, you can connect to your computer wirelessly, and you can connect to mobile devices with NFC without needing to sign on to a Wi-Fi network. Amazon Dash Replenishment support will also help you keep your ink stocked so you never run out in the middle of a job.
Best for Small Businesses: Samsung ProXpress SL-M3870FW
It may not be the prettiest, but the Samsung ProXpress M3870FW printer gets the job done — and fast. If your small business does a lot of printing and you don’t need color, this is a straightforward and capable option with killer speeds.
The Samsung ProXpress M3870FW can print up to 40 pages per minute, and warms up quickly, with the first page ready in as few as 6.5 seconds. For heavy printing loads, this printer has a duty cycle up to 80,000 pages per month. You’ll be able to put in a lot of paper, too, with a 250-sheet input tray, a 50-sheet multi-purpose tray, and a 50-sheet auto document feeder. With auto-duplex printing, you’ll get more from each sheet as well.
So, to summarize, you’ll get plenty of use out of the Samsung ProXpress M3870FW in a business setting, plus you'll get some of the handy modern features of an internet-connected printer. You can print documents from anywhere using Google Cloud Print or the Samsung Mobile Print App and Apple users can use Apple AirPrint. Best of all, it won't run you much more than your average consumer printer.
Best for Versatility: Epson Expression Premium ET-7750 EcoTank
The Epson Expression Premium ET-7750 EcoTank takes the versatility of an all-in-one printer and does consumers one better. If you can do without faxing — the machine's one caveat — and are looking for a printer that, beyond regular document printing, delivers brilliant photo prints, then this is the unit for the job.
The Epson Expression Premium ET-7750 EcoTank can handle wide-format printing, supporting sizes of up to 11' x 17'. That — combined with a high DPI, three ink colors, and two separate black ink types — can make for much more high-quality photo and document prints than you'd expect from your typical printer. Plus, you can still get solid printing and copying performance with auto-duplex printing and speeds of up to 13 pages per minute.
This EcoTank model doesn’t use regular ink cartridges. Rather, you can fill it back up with bottles of ink, and Epson includes an estimated two-years worth of extra ink right in the box. You also get handy options for printing from smartphones and the cloud using the printer's internet connection. So, whether it’s documents or photos, the Epson Expression Premium ET-7750 EcoTank is a flexible pick.
Best High Capacity: Epson workForce Pro ET-8700 EcoTank
Epson’s various EcoTank models have a lot going for them, and when it comes to high-capacity printing, the Epson WorkForce Pro ET-8700 EcoTank is both capable and upgradable. While the base model’s main paper tray has a capacity of 250 sheets and an additional rear tray can hold 80 sheets, there’s the option of adding on an additional tray with a 500-sheet capacity.
All that flexibility in capacity is balanced out with strong printing and copying performance. The WorkForce Pro ET-8700 EcoTank can print documents at up to 24 pages per minute, and it can scan documents just as fast. Helping you take advantage of the high sheet capacity is the EcoTank line’s ink, which doesn’t come in a typical cartridge. Epson boasts including enough ink to deliver 16,000 monochrome pages or 11,000 color pages.
The WorkForce Pro ET-8700 EcoTank also has a number of features for ease-of-use, such as a 4.3' color touchscreen and auto-duplex printing. It can also connect to wireless networks, use Wi-Fi direct, or NFC, giving you plenty of options for printing files from a variety of devices.
Best Compact: Canon Pixma TR4520
It might not look it, but the Canon Pixma TR4520 is on the small side for a printer of its class. Plenty of others come smaller, but the Canon Pixma TR4520 supports printing, scanning, copying, and faxing, while its competition may focus on just printing. Despite its smaller size, it can still hold 100 sheets of paper and features an auto document feeder and automatic duplex printing.
At a printing speed of 8.8 pages per minute, it’s not the fastest all-in-one printer, but it wins on size, measuring just 17.2' x 11.7' x 7.5' when closed. Best yet, it packs quite a few bonus features on top of its basic functionality.
The Canon Pixma TR 4520 can connect to the internet via Wi-Fi, and supports wireless printing and scanning. You’ll be able to print documents from the cloud, scan documents to the Canon Print App, and create multi-page PDFs. This printer even supports Amazon Alexa natively along with IFTTT (If This Then That) and Google Assistant through IFTTT. This means you’ll have extensive automation options available to you. All that comes in a small package with a similarly small price tag.
Best Design: Canon Pixma TS9120
The Canon Pixma TS9120 may lack faxing functionality, but it still proves a versatile all-in-one printer with scanning and copying, and it boasts a number of other valuable features that round out its performance. Plus, on a more superficial level, what the printer really does best is look pretty. So, if you don’t have a dedicated home office where you can hide your printer away, this is a great option that will blend pretty seamlessly with your decor.
The Pixma TS9120 has a simple, box-shaped design, and a metallic gold, gray, or red finish on top. The rear paper feed and front tray for catching your printed documents pop out when needed, and tuck away when not in use. Both the rear and bottom paper trays can hold 100 sheets of paper each, which is helpful since this can print 15 pages per minute.
On the front, there is a large, 5' LCD touchscreen display that makes navigation easier. The Canon Pixma TS9120 also offers plenty of connectivity options, with USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and even Bluetooth. You’ll have plenty of ways to print files from your devices, and, you won’t be limited to just documents, either, as this is a capable photo printer, and even can print special CD/DVD/Blu-ray cover images.
Tested by
How We Tested
We bought five top-rated all-in-one printers that our reviewers tested for more than 40 hours. We asked our testers to consider the most important features when using these printers, from their supply costs to their networking capabilities. We’ve outlined the key takeaways here so that you, too, know what to look for when shopping.
What to Look for in an All-in-One Printer
Inkjet vs. laser -If you’re looking for a printer that can handle a combination of text, graphics, and photos, an inkjet is the way to go. However, if you’ll mostly be printing and scanning black-and-white text documents, a laser printer makes more sense.
Supply costs -While AIO printers themselves might not cost a lot, the printer cartridges can really add up. Research those costs before you make your purchase, as in some cases a more expensive printer can end up being cheaper in the long run. Also look into the possibility of refilling your own cartridges.
Networking capability -Connection via USB has been standard in printers for years, but for an office environment, it’s essential that it supports Wi-Fi. This makes it easy for several devices to connect and many even offer one-click wireless setup. Some printers even offer near-field communication (NFC) connectivity, which let you connect a smartphone just by tapping it on a specific area on the machine.
Test Results: Brother MFC-J985DW (Best Overall)
What We Like
Sharp, quick text printing
Super efficient ink usage
Fast scanning and copying
What We Don't Like
Slow color printing
Subpar graphics and photos
No direct USB to PC connection
Our tester said this printer 'stands out for having the lowest long-term operating costs of any comparable printer because of its efficient and inexpensive ink.' In terms of print quality, however, our reviewer noted that 'it's better geared toward text than images.' Still, he found the setup 'fast and straightforward,' the scanner 'adequate,' and the fax quality to be 'solid.' Overall, our tester recommended this printer for anyone looking for 'long-term value for a reasonable up-front price.'
Test Results: Brother MFC-L6800DW (Best High Speed)
What We Like
High capacity and speed
Accessible price
Universal connectivity
Fast and effective scanner
What We Don't Like
Monochrome printing
Lost detail on high-resolution images
Calling it “an ideal all-in-one for high-volume printing and scanning,” our tester was impressed by this printer’s “smart, focused features” and “relatively accessible price.” He noted “text documents were of reasonably high and consistent quality,” but cautioned that it “handles images less well.” However, our reviewer explained that the real highlight of this printer is “the top-mounted automatic document feeder, which can scan double-sided documents on a single pass at an impressive clip.” The takeaway? “The Brother MFC-L6800DW strikes a perfect balance between speed, features, and cost for a printer for any budget-minded small-business or home office,” he said.
Test Results: HP OfficeJet Pro 8720 Wireless Printer (Best Photo Printer)
What We Like
Scanning is crystal clear
Duplex automatic document feeder
High-speed printing
Rich color printing
What We Don't Like
Large footprint
Some inconsistency in printing text
“For color printing, the OfficeJet Pro 8720 was fast, producing rich and consistent colors that matched the screen image very well,” our tester raved. Other pluses, according to our reviewer, include the “fast, easy, and high-quality” scanner, super easy setup, and functional design. While he did notice “tiny, stray ink spots showing up in large text documents,” he felt this wasn’t a huge concern. And although our tester didn’t like its bulkiness, he still called this model “the best middle ground between a consumer-grade inkjet printer and a small-business-ready all-in-one.”
Test Results: HP OfficeJet 5255 (Best Budget)
What We Like
Inexpensive
High-quality color printing
Automatic duplex printing
What We Don't Like
Ink gets pricey
Spotty wireless connectivity
“HP has managed to cut costs in such a way that combines all of the basic business hardware features at an acceptable quality with an exceedingly low price,” our tester said of this budget-friendly printer. He called the printing speeds “more than adequate” and said the overall printing quality was “fairly impressive.” The downsides? Our reviewer said the scanner is just “mediocre” and setting up the wireless feature was a “stubborn” process. And while the price of the printer itself is ideal, our tester warned that “ink operating costs are not the best.”
Test Results: Epson XP-830 Small-in-One (Best for Ease of Use)
What We Like
Small size
Great print quality
Easy to use
“For a small printer, I thought it packed a lot into one,” one of our reviewers said about the Epson XP-830. She liked the multi-page paper feeder, the ability to scan, and the scan-to-email functionality. Plus, she thought the touchscreen made it easy to flip from one function to the next. “Set up to my laptop was pretty easy and setting it up to a phone was even easier,” she added.
During some of our other printer tests, Lifewire reviewers noticed that the printed colors sometimes ended up duller than expected—but not with this model. “I've printed out text documents and high-color photos and everything looks great,” one person said. Color-heavy print jobs will come out a bit slower, but the end result will impress you.
Our writers spent 10 hours researching the most popular all-in-one printers on the market. Before making their final recommendations, they considered 90 different laptops, screened options from 9 different brands and manufacturers, and read over 40 user reviews (both positive and negative). All of this research adds up to recommendations you can trust.