9 best home printers 2024: Tried and tested wireless models to complete your office

This pricy maxify printer from Canon might demand a second look at the bank balance, but the maxify line offers a higher yield of colour pages, prints faster, and produces an impressively accurate range of colours, when up against Canon’s Pixma products (which are in themselves not something to be sniffed at).

The GX7050 is a refillable ink tank printer marketed to the business user, but would certainly be a useful bit of kit at home, especially for those who need professional-quality prints for their home office/kitchen table. There’s a stonking 600-sheet capacity, and the refillable element adds bonus green points. It’s more expensive but, in this instance, you get what you pay for.

It’s simple: Brother makes solid printers. The DCP-J1200W is no different, coming in at an impressive up-front price and good-value printing. The three-in-one printer might look simple, but don’t let the basic layout deceive you: this offers the same app choices as the brand’s more expensive options, along with scanning and copying capability.

It won’t win any awards for print quality but, for the price, you get good prints at a quick rate that’ll only cost a few pence. If you’re on the lookout for a classic, simple printer/scanner without an expensive outlay, you’ve found it.

The Canon i-SENSYS MF754Cdw (say that five times fast) is a beast – a printing leviathan that takes two sensible owners to take out of the box and set down in the right spot. What you get for this, however, is one of the best printing experiences on the market, with rapid printing speed, quality black-and-white or colour prints, and impressively high-quality photo reproduction.

The touch screen is brilliantly responsive, and, along with a huge range of printing and scanning options, little touches such as a crescent moon logo when in sleep mode elevate the i-SENSYS to the top table. The i-SENSYS is a cartridge printer, which adds a little to the ink premium, but if you’re looking for a no-nonsense printer that will handle pretty much anything a medium-sized office could throw at it, and you have a nice spot next to your desk, then you could do much worse.

The mono in the printer’s name refers to the fact it’s a one-stop monochrome shop. If you need a printer that can rapidly whack out page after page of important black-and-white documents or your latest coming-of-age novel without breaking a sweat, this effort from Brother is one of the best out there.

Despite the large 250-sheet paper input, it’s a handy size for most tables, or to put under your desk. It’s also surprisingly quiet: Brother says all the models within the HL range print at less than 50dB. We tested it late at night and felt more than comfortable doing so.

Read the full Brother HL-L2350DW mono laser printer review

This is the artist of the printing world. On top of the usual four ink tanks, the ET-8550 has extra black and grey tanks, providing an impressive depth to photo printing not really seen elsewhere. Colour balance stays pretty accurate on the whole, too, on a par with Canon’s photo offerings.

Basically, the ET-8550 produces some of the highest-quality photo prints we’ve tested, at a pacy rate and with minimal ink usage. Although the initial cost of the printer is pretty sizeable, the running costs make this easier to swallow: the range’s cartridge-free ink tanks lead to a more efficient printing process that’s not only better for the planet but also your wallet. The ET-8550’s print yield is fantastic, providing thousands of prints off a single ink tank to save users money and extra hassle.

This is a very fun bit of kit. Almost a modern polaroid camera, simply pick a photo from your phone via the Canon app, frame how you like, and watch your square photo print in seconds. While it looks quite pricey on the surface, it’s a sophisticated machine: Canon claims the high-quality prints will stay that way for 100 years (tested using an accelerated ageing method), so choose your photos wisely.

The portable mini-printer has a decent battery life, and feels sturdy enough to take with you on holiday. There are also options for filters and photo editing on the app, for any last-minute airbrushing you need to do (don’t bother, you look great).

Read the full Canon selphy square QX10 review

Epson comes to the rescue once again, with a great-value label printer that will do the job in most situations. The lightweight LW-C410 is small but mighty, offering everything from QR codes and imagery to classic name tags and label designs from scratch. There’s an easy Epson app that has enough editing power for domestic and business tasks, there are 36 different material options available, from matte tape to ribbon, and Epson’s auto-cutter margin tech reduces waste and cost.

Be aware, however, that it’s battery-operated with no mains connectivity, meaning a potential trip to the shop after any particularly enthusiastic label producing session.

For high-speed, business-quality printing at an ultra-low cost, Epson has the goods. While the ET-3850 doesn’t have a touchscreen (something you might expect at this price) and is a pretty standard mid-range printer, the real advantage is the fantastic-value ink. The ink that comes with the printer already has capacity to print 14,000 black-and-white pages (or more than 5,000 colour), and any refill bottles cost – according to Epson – about 90 per cent less than traditional cartridges.

Besides the great value, this three-in-one device does its job with minimal fuss, producing quality prints with impressive consistency. If you’re looking for a new printer for a small office or busy home (coursework won’t print itself), you won’t go far wrong with the ET-3850. Your bank balance will thank you.

The envy inspire 7220e is a great value three-in-one machine that offers pretty much everything you need from a home printer for a lower price than many rivals. It performs admirably, with solid printing speeds and impressive quality prints. However, HP’s secret weapon takes its inspiration from the era of Netflix.

The HP+ system makes it easy to see how much ink you have left, and Instant Ink, HP’s subscription model, can work out as a long-term boon to your finances (with a saving of up to 70 per cent). It also means you don’t need to worry about traipsing out to a shop to find the right cartridges or refill bottles, as HP will send replacement ink directly to your door.