Whether you need a printer for school or your small business, these are the best machines according to CNET experts.
While printers are not a strict necessity these days, they can be a useful addition to your work from home setup. Whether you need to print concert tickets, want to decorate your space with family photos or are tired of looking at your computer screen, a printer is a handy tool. fabric printer
Many printers even have scanners onboard that come in handy for the reverse, digitizing what’s most important. Though printers might not be the flashiest or must-have tech, there are still plenty of great options. Thankfully, I’ve been testing the latest printers for a while now, often running dozens of machines simultaneously. It’s noisy, but the best overall options always cut through the chaos.
In this roundup, you'll find printers capable of mobile printing and wireless printing from a phone or any PC, Mac or Chromebook. You can also print over a cabled connection and via wireless printer connectivity. (Note that some, but not all, printers support Apple's AirPrint and Google's Cloud Print protocols, which are usually less onerous than the printer vendors' proprietary systems.) Some of the printers here go beyond the standard options. We’ve included thermal label printers, sublimation printers, and even DTF printers to offer a well-rounded selection for your printing needs.
For a home office with just one or two people using it, the HP OfficeJet Pro 9125e is the best overall choice. The print speed was excellent, and all the printed words were crisp and clear. This isn't a photo printer, and it shows, but it works well enough for daily imagery tasks. If you're using it to print brochures or Word documents, this is an almost perfect printer for you.
If you work from home but need all the advantages of an office printer, the OfficeJet Pro is an excellent choice. In terms of sheer printing speed, the HP is ahead of most others in its price range. It printed the 10 pages in just 32 seconds and scanned and printed them in 58 seconds. Very impressive.
The last model had some issues with graphics and imagery, but this new upgrade is much better. The graphics in the brochure test were sharp and accurate, and the images, while being a little dotty, still looked great. The text was excellent, with clearly defined edges, even the Comic Sans parts. It's a bit larger than some of the printers I tested, but the deep paper tray and auto-feed for the scanner make the size worthwhile. Of the printers I've tested so far, the OfficeJet Pro is the most versatile. It also comes with three months of free ink, based on a standard usage if you sign up for HP Plus. While HP Plus does give you some extra helpful app choices for free and the ink, the downside is you can only use HP inks while subscribed to it.
With this HP Envy 6458E wireless all-in-one printer, you'll pick up a home printing center that covers all the basics. Print, scan, and copy everyday documents for school, work, and side gigs simply and wirelessly. Intuitive setup with the HP Smart app means you're ready on any device.
Includes the HP Envy 6458E wireless all-in-one printer, an HP 67 tri-color ink cartridge, and an HP 67 black ink cartridge.
First off, this is not a typical printer machine. The bulky square shape is not something you would want to see in a fashionable home office. It is solidly constructed, though, and unlike some of the other products in this price range, it doesn't have any creaky plastic pieces. It's built well and it shows.
Because of the extra paper tray, the Epson can hold a large amount of paper for use. This makes it perfect if you and another person use it daily. It prints fast too -- the fastest in our test, though the scanning is a little slow. The graphic, text, and webpage text were all excellent, though the image quality on glossy paper was only good. This is a workhorse though, designed for high-volume text, not imagery.
My only real issue with the Workforce Pro was the size of the ink cartridges. It's great that there are two large paper trays to hold a lot of paper, but if the amount of ink you have doesn't match, then you'll have a problem.
The Brother MFC-J1010DW is a terrible name for a pretty good printer in this price bracket. Photos came out clear and sharp as did the graphics on the website and brochure test. Even the text was very sharp. For an all-in-one printer at this price, it did every job well. It's good that it has Amazon dash replenishment, though, as the inks are woefully undersized for the printer.
DTF printing is a fairly new technology that combines the color choices of screen printing with the ease of heat transfer vinyl, which you might see on a Cricut vinyl cutter. To use it, you print a full-color image onto a special film, cover the back in a special powder, and cook it in a small oven to create an adhesive layer. From there, you use a heat press to seal it into an item of clothing or other surface. Procolored makes several DTF printers, with the Panda F8 being a more consumer-friendly version than their other, larger machines. It works very well to make small batches or products, so using the Panda F8 to print unique clothing items for your Etsy store is better than using a Cricut or sublimation printer, especially for shirts that are not white.
My biggest issue with the Panda F8 is the need for it to be in constant use. The ink delivery system is unstable, so it needs constant use to keep it from getting stale. That's fine if you have a lot of orders, but if you don't, you'll need to print stuff anyway to keep it going.
The Canon Pixma TR4720 isn't going to be winning any awards in any category. In all of my testing, it came out around the middle of the pack in just about every category. While that could be seen as a negative in a printer that costs several hundred dollars, for one that is as cheap as the Pixma, it's encouraging.
epson color print The Pixma scored better in color reproduction when placed against other, more expensive all-in-one printers when printing on glossy paper. Some printers suffer from dimpling when printing images, but the Pixma didn't and the skin tones were far better on the Canon image than on other brands. My only real negative is the machine's volume. You can tell it was built on a budget, but as far as budget printers go, this one's pretty good.