What Printer To Buy For Home EXCLUSIVE

Don't fret: We've got you covered on all fronts. PC Labs tests dozens of printers every year, across everyday consumer models, big business machines, pocket-size photo printers, and more. Scroll down for our top tested picks across all these categories, then read on for a comprehensive guide to how to buy a printer.

what printer to buy for home

Non-AIO inkjets are uncommon items these days. But if all you want to do is print documents and, perhaps, glossy-paper photos en masse, and maximize your savings on ink while doing it, look into this Maxify model. Cheap ink is its biggest selling point: You won't get a classic AIO scanning or copy function (though Canon offers a sort-of copy workaround, letting you shoot a document with your phone's camera and print it in one step), but you will get a bulk-ink design that takes refills from bottled ink. Our math based on Canon's yield claims and bottle costs works out to 0.5 cent per monochrome black page and 0.7 cent per color page. And that's before you factor in Canon's full-size ink bottles bundled with the printer. (Plus, before we forget to mention: The output looks very good.)

The Maxify is geared toward home offices, but it can serve the needs of a heavy-printing family, too. It's all about printing enough, day in and day out, to leverage the low ink costs, since the printer itself, like most bulk-ink/bottle-refill models, is priced on the high side for the feature set. But if you have a home business, plus a family that hits a printer hard for schoolwork or hobbies, it's an excellent longer-term money-saver.

Both homes and small (to be honest, very small) offices can readily make room for this Brother printer. You won't use its fax capability often, but you never know when you might need it, and its competent paper handling joins its more-than-adequate text and better-than-adequate graphics quality.

Photo-perfect color inkjets get all the attention, but compact, low-cost monochrome laser printers will never die for small offices and workgroups that mostly crank out black-and-white text documents. Heavy-printing families can use them too, especially if they have a student or students who print lots of worksheets or report drafts. For these uses, Canon's imageClass MF452dw is the mono laser AIO of the moment that others will have to beat, and the pricing is aggressive, too. It's part of an imageClass line with slight feature variations, and this model adds faxing if you need it. A big, easy-to-use touch panel and flexible paper handing for both printing and scanning make it a great utility player, and the mono output quality is excellent.

Small offices and workgroups will benefit from the AIO features the most, but don't discount this model for a heavy-printing home. You won't use it for photo or image printing, but for raw document input and output, it's a super deal.

If you need top-quality graphics and photos, the Neverstop isn't for you, but neither is any other mono laser. But if your home or small office needs to print around 2,500 black-and-white pages per month on a rock-bottom budget, with occasional copy and scan jobs thrown in, this MFP is a godsend.

Making copies? There's a Xerox machine for that. Scanning? Bah humbug! The Brother HL-L9310CDW is a single-function laser printer, period. It's ready to crank out page after page (up to 6,000 each month) with flawless, vividly colorful Excel and PowerPoint graphics and typesetter-quality text, at speeds only the most expensive enterprise printers can beat. It offers plenty of connectivity and expansion options, plus extensive fleet security features.

Epson has long offered exceptional wide-format art printers for professional photographers, and the SureColor P900 is a fine example. Printing on cut sheets up to 17 by 22 inches and paper rolls for panoramas up to 17 by 129 inches, it uses 10 premium high-definition inks to produce breathtaking banners and photos. It automatically switches between photo-black and matte-black inks and makes the most of Epson's extensive, expensive variety of photo and art paper.

We're suckers for jokes or memes that say "You had one job!" The Canon Selphy CP1500 sure does: It delivers great-looking photo prints, period. It comes from a venerable line of Selphy dye-sublimation printers that deliver snapshot-size output using "print packs" that bundle the paper and dye-ribbon cartridges in one box, good for a fixed number of prints. This model stands out for its support for up to four different print sizes, some with adhesive backing and some without. (Supporting smaller than the default 4-by-6-inch size requires a cheap adapter tray.) It's relatively fast and produces high-quality prints at very competitive running costs. You'll find the software geared more toward printing from mobile devices than PCs, but it will do a creditable job whatever the photo source.

The printer market is flush with portable printers that can print snapshot-size or Instagram-style square photo prints, but much less common are truly portable printers that can churn out letter-size documents in a pinch. Brother's line of PocketJet printers has been doing that for many years. Our latest fave is the PJ883, a thermal-printing model that uses fax-style thermal paper stock to print without ink. It's not cheap, the thermal paper has a limited life without fading, and the output is strictly monochrome, but the connection flexibility and extreme portability (it weighs just 1.34 pounds, including its battery) make this model a winner for this very specific usage case. Note that Brother offers a host of slight-variant PocketJet models that differ according to print resolution, battery inclusion, and connectivity.

The Rollo X1040 isn't the only printer that specializes in 4-by-6-inch shipping labels for small businesses that push out a lot of packages. But this $279.99-MSRP device adds extra convenience by taking advantage of a Wi-Fi connection instead of a USB or Ethernet tether. It works with almost any die-cut thermal paper roll or stack, automatically finding gaps between labels and determining the label size to position itself for printing. Better yet, it works with the cloud-based Rollo Ship Manager that, for 5 cents per label after your free first 200, gives you a unified interface for USPS, UPS, and 13 online shopping platforms. Plus, it gives you access to significant discounts for the Post Office and UPS. (The company says FedEx is coming soon.)

Stores, shops, and Etsy entrepreneurs can use all the help with shipping that they can get. If you send enough packages to be thinking about a label printer, the Rollo is a first-class (well, parcel post) choice.

Most printers are designed with either business (usually office) or home use in mind. Generally, business models are geared toward outputting text if they are mono printers, and both text and graphics if they are color models. Home printers (typically inkjets) favor photos and often graphics, as well.

Special-purpose options include label printers, portable printers, and dedicated and near-dedicated photo printers. (Even among specialty printers, 3D printers are a special case, and beyond the scope of this discussion.)

Most printers today add extra functions beyond printing. The additions always include scanning, which can be convenient and economical if you have light- to moderate-duty scanning needs. If you don't need scanning or related features like copying and faxing at all, however, or your scanning needs are heavy-duty, you might be better off with a single-function printer and a separate scanner.

Most lasers, and some inkjets, with extra functions include "multifunction printer" or "MFP" in the name, while most inkjets, and some lasers, use "all-in-one" or "AIO." The two terms, and their acronyms, are interchangeable. Along with scanning, the additional functions almost always include some combination of standalone copying, standalone faxing, faxing from your PC, standalone emailing, emailing through your PC, and standalone copying to and printing from online systems.

Some inkjet AIOs offer additional printing options, including printing on optical discs. Many let you print documents and images from, and scan to, mobile devices. Some models let you email documents to the printer from anywhere in the world, then print them out. Our roundup of the best all-in-one printers will help you sift through the many options out there.

Generally, business models use laser or similar technology (more on that shortly) and are geared toward text, or text and graphics, while home printers are generally inkjets and favor photos and graphics. Within each printer category, quality for each kind of output varies widely. Some business printers can handle all three types well enough for in-house printing of brochures and other marketing materials, for example.

The two most common technologies, laser and inkjet, increasingly overlap in capabilities, but there are still differences. Most lasers and LED printers (which are identical to lasers other than using LEDs for a light source) print higher-quality text than most inkjets, and almost any inkjet prints higher-quality photos than most lasers. However, some inkjets today print text that's nearly laser quality, except for a tendency to smudge if they get wet, while some lasers print photos at what's known as business quality, which translates to good enough for a trifold brochure.

Home printers (approximate price range: $50 to $250) are almost exclusively inkjets (with the exception of some small-format dedicated photo printers). They are built for low-volume printing, tend to be slow, and also tend to have high ink costs. They typically print photos better than text, and may or may not print graphics well. Almost all of them are all-in-ones. If your budget is tight, and you want a single printer for text, graphics, and photos that handles photos reasonably well, this is where to start looking for an inexpensive printer.

Home-office printers ($100 to $400) are largely inkjets or inexpensive mono lasers, and are built for low- to mid-volume printing. Most inkjets in this category are all-in-one printers, geared primarily toward text and graphics printing, though some also handle photos well, while most lasers are printers only. Paper capacity starts at about 100 sheets, though higher-end models can hold up to 500 sheets. Most of these printers are also suitable for micro offices (with up to five people), and many are perfectly fine choices for households, especially for students printing a lot of documents for school. 041b061a72