Best Printer for Home in 2023 (September Reviews)

Because no one wants to have to go to the office or FedEx every time they need to print something, we’ve compiled this list of the best home printers that are actually worth the money. All the printers on our list are capable of at least 7 pages per minute, can be configured to print on multiple types of paper, offer great print quality, and use common, readily available cartridges. From printers intended for professional home office settings to wireless home printers designed for printing out your photos, here are some of the best home printers you can buy online. They are all worthy companions for the best computers. You can also browse other great printer options described in our best printers guide.

Our top pick, the HP OfficeJet 5255, is among the most versatile and convenient home printers thanks to its dual-band WiFi, easy online setup, and smartphone scanning and faxing features.

Top 6 Best Printers for Home Compared

 #1  HP OfficeJet 5255 – Top Pick

WHY WE LIKE IT: Fast, high-quality printing and easy setup with dual band wifi, plus the convenience of the HP app that lets you use your smartphone as a scanner or easily print from the cloud, make this one of the most well-rounded printers on the market. It’s great for professionals, creatives, and students, basically, anyone who needs to fax, scan, and print documents with as little fuss as possible.

This OfficeJet printer is designed to be an all-in-one device for those looking for maximum convenience. To that end, a major selling point is its ability to print wirelessly via mobile app. It can also pair with a mobile phone to scan documents, though the device does limit the format of scan outputs– no TIFF format is available. However, it’s not designed primarily for photos, so it may not perform as well as the best photo printer or best printer for art prints. However, it does come with a 35-sheet auto-loading feature and a clear, responsive touch screen. It has a 100-sheet input and 25-sheet output capacity and prints at up to 10 pages per minute in black and white or 7 ppm in color.

This printer also works with HP’s Instant Ink, a scheduled ink cartridge replacement that theoretically ensures you never run out of ink. No need to look for the best scanner with this one, as it is included.

 #2  HP Office Jet 3830 – Honorable Mention

WHY WE LIKE IT: A lower-priced multifunctional home printer that supports mobile printing and the HP instant ink service, it’s also compact enough to fit unobtrusively in your home office. It’s great for those looking for a home printer that doesn’t take up too much space, and those not needing to print out large volumes of pages or mostly photos.

Though it’s marginally slower than the HP OfficeJet 5255, our top pick, the HP 3830 is much less expensive and matches most of the 5255’s features. It lets you print from anywhere with the HP app, and like the 5255 it’s compatible with HP’s Instant Ink for automatic cartridge delivery. It’s also compact, with a footprint of less than 18 by 15 inches, so it can fit neatly next to a laptop or desktop with keyboard. It supports auto feed of up to 35 sheets, and like our top pick, it allows you to use your mobile phone to scan documents. You can also check out the best all in one printer.

The OfficeJet 3830 also functions as a copy machine and fax machine as well. It’s Energy Star-certified and gives you the option, as with the pricer 5255, to use HP’s high-yield cartridges. Also, like the 5255, our top pick, this OfficeJet functions as a scanner and lets you scan documents with your mobile device, too.

 #3  Brother HL2300D – Best Monochrome

WHY WE LIKE IT: Professional quality black and white laser printing for the home office, offering speeds of up to 27 pages per minute, more than twice that of the HP OfficeJet printers. It’s great for writers and other professionals who need to reliably print larger documents with multiple pages and who don’t need wifi or color printing.

This is a compact personal laser printer designed to quickly print out black and white documents at a resolution of 2400×600 dpi. With a footprint of about 14 x 14 inches, it’s smaller than our top pick, and prints much faster (27 ppm vs 10 ppm for black and white) though it’s not for everyone as it lacks color printing, mobile connectivity, or built-in wifi. The only way to connect it is to use your USB cable. However, it can be made to print via wifi if connected to a wireless router or a wireless-enabled computer through a USB connection. Have a look at the best printer for computer for more options.

Its paper tray holds up to 250 pages, handles letter-size or legal-size paper, and it features a more efficient straight-through pathway. It also, like our top pick, the OfficeJet 5255, supports automatic double-sided printing. The included toner cartridge is rated for 700 pages but may print more if you reset the page count. However, this is an inconvenient process. It must also be noted that laser toner is typically more expensive than inkjet ink.

 #4  HP Envy 5055 Photo Printer – Best Photo Printer

WHY WE LIKE IT: A low-priced all-in-one printer that supports typical 4X6 photo sizes and borderless printing. It’s great for those looking to print graphics, brochures, postcards, or photos and who wants the convenience of wireless mobile printing at a low cost.

Designed with small photo printing in mind, this “3-in-1” from HP features dual band wifi, a 2.2-inch touch screen, and an input capacity of up to 100 sheets. While it lacks an auto-document feeder or high-speed black-and-white printing, being limited to 10 ppm or 7 ppm with color, these are likely to be less of an issue for those looking to print photos and PDFs containing graphics. A plus with the HP Envy 5055 is that it supports 4×6 photos as well as letter and legal-size paper, something not all printers do. Have a look at the best inkjet printer while you are here.

It also works with the HP app to allow seamless mobile printing, and it comes with the option of enrolling in HP’s Instant Ink replenishment service, although the cost of this service, once any promotional periods expire, can quickly exceed the bargain initial price of the printer itself.

 #5  Canon Pixma TS512 – Best Cloud/ Mobile Printing

WHY WE LIKE IT: An all-in-one inkjet printer that supports photo printing, mobile printing, and scanning, plus it works with Canon’s PIXMA cloud print service. It’s great for busy students and creative professionals who need convenient mobile scanning and printing options.

This is one of the most affordable all-in-one print, copy scan, and fax machines for the home office on the market that also supports photo printing in common 4×6, 5×5, and 5×7 sizes. It’s also WiFi-enabled and promises wireless and convenient mobile printing via PictBridge or Canon’s PIXMA cloud print feature. The TS512 lets you scan and save documents to your mobile phone or laptop, send a fax, and print documents ranging from 5×5 to 8.5 x 14 legal size. It will also print on US #10 envelopes. It supports double-sided printing and borderless printing, though the setup is a bit tricky, involving software installation and wifi set up on the printer itself, and it lacks a touchscreen.

It prints decent quality black and white as well, with an output speed of up to 13 ppm, slightly faster than our Top Pick, the HP 5255, though still far behind the Brother HL2300D’s 27 ppm. It’s definitely more of a budget all-in-one than a dedicated office printer. See what the best home printer has to offer for comparison.

 #6  HP DeskJet 2622 – Best Budget

WHY WE LIKE IT: The most compact all-in-one wireless printer, copier, scanner, and fax on our list, it’s also about half the cost of the HP 5255, our top pick. It’s great for anyone looking for an easy-to-use and unobtrusive printer that can fit just about anywhere.

This wireless printer is among the smallest all-in-one home printers on the market, with a footprint of only 16.74 x 11.97 inches. Input and output trays fold up when not in use, adding to their compact form factor. The DeskJet 2622 also has some features even the more expensive Canon Pixma TS512 lacks, such as fax capability. As with the other HP printers on our list, this wireless home printer lets you easily print from a smartphone or tablet, pairing with HP’s Smart App for on-the-go printing, scanning, and ink-level monitoring.

Compared to the more expensive HP 5255, this compact printer may be less suited to higher volume tasks, as it prints slower, 7.5 ppm vs 10 ppm, and its input tray is limited to 60 sheets rather than 100. If you are rocking a Chromebook, check out the best printer for Chromebook. And if you generally want to get a printer for the office, click our best printer for office guide.

How We Decided

For choosing the best home printers, we looked for models capable of at least 7 pages per minute, have excellent print quality, and can be configured to print on multiple types of paper using common, readily available cartridges. Therefore we included both color printers and the monochrome Brother HL2300D laser printer, which prints black and white but does so significantly faster than the inkjet printers on our list.

While we made an exception for the Brother laser printer, due to it being one of the most affordable home laser printers available, we included only those inkjet printers that offered WiFi for convenient setup and printing.

Home Printer Buying Guide

The Most Important Features to Consider

1. Ink Type
   If you’re looking for a home printer at a reasonable price, you can’t forget to consider the cost of ink. Just like the top-rated printers for Mac, most of the best printers for home on our list use color and black inlet cartridges; this is the most affordable and generally reliable way of getting good quality color prints at home, as both monochrome and color laser printers have higher ink costs.
   • A notable exception is the Brother HL2300D, a monochrome laser printer, but keep in mind that replacement toner cartridges are more expensive than inkjet cartridges.
   • If you only need to print text or other black-and-white documents, but printing speed and volume are a priority, you may want to consider a monochrome printer.
   • A monochrome printer gives you the benefits of laser printing at a price comparable to color inkjet home printers.
   • But, as with any printer, performing printer maintenance regularly is crucial to making it last, so be sure to factor in maintenance costs when you decide on a model.
2. WiFi/ Bluetooth
   Nearly all printers will have an ethernet port, but depending on your needs, some form of wireless connectivity may be important to you in a home printer. A wireless printer like our top pick, the HP 5255, can work with a smartphone app such as the HP Smart app. This type of printer allows you to scan, print, and fax documents remotely from your smartphone or tablet.
3. Paper Type
   The best home printers have input and output trays that don’t limit you to one paper format. Most can handle a variety of paper sizes, including standard 8.5 x 11 letter size 8.5 x 11 or legal size paper, while some, such as the HP Envy, our # 4 pick, offer personal photo-friendly 7×5 and 5×5 compatibility, so they can use glossy paper. Worth noting, the HP OfficeJet printers, like our top pick, the OfficeJet 5255, as well as the Canon Pixma TS512, will print on envelopes as well.
4. Scan, Copy, and Fax Functionality
   Many of the top home printers are “all-in-one” or “three-in-one” printers offering scan, copy, and fax functions in addition to printing. The HP 5255, our top pick, is a multifunction printer that does all of these and lets you scan with your phone and then send the scanned document as a fax. Some even offer duplex printing or two-sided printing and should include an automatic document feeder.
5. Print Speed
   When printing in black and white, most of the best affordable inkjet printers offer faster speeds, from 8 to 13 pages per minute. With print jobs requiring full color, this tends to be more like 7 pages per minute. Any slower than that, and you might feel you could have saved time by going to a print shop. If you’re looking to print longer black-and-white documents or print speed is a priority, consider a lower-priced laser printer like the Brother HL2300D.
6. Image Quality
   Another aspect to keep in mind is how good the final print is. Budget options aren’t as likely to produce high-quality color photos as a more expensive printer can, regardless of whether you’re using premium photo paper or not. Look for models with a print resolution that matches your intended use. For example, a resolution of 1200 x 1400 dpi is good for photos up to 5×7 inches, but anything larger than this will start to look grainy,
   
   And, for a look at two printers we recommend, check out our Brother MFC J995DW review and our Brother HL L8260CDW review.