Which printer should i buy for home use

NFC: NFC Near-Field Communication is also available on some models, letting you connect your printer to a smartphone or tablet by simply touching the device to a specified area on your printer. Cloud printing: Many fully featured printers, particularly AIOs, now offer internet-based features that let you access photos stored on sites such as Facebook, Flickr, Dropbox , and Google Drive , as well as remote printing and access to arts and crafts you can print out. This may be especially useful for photographers who can transfer SD cards directly from cameras to printers.

If you regularly perform big print jobs — perhaps for a home-based business or a remote work situation that requires hard copies — then printing ink cost is a big factor to consider. A powerful, expensive printer may only cost around 4 cents per black-and-white page and 8 cents per colored page. Some printers will provide direct cost-per-print information you can look up to learn more, or you can divide the cost of toner cartridges versus the cartridge page yield from the cost per print yourself.

Subscription plans for a continued supply of printer ink can help cut costs for home businesses if necessary. Duplexing refers to printing or scanning both sides of the page without requiring that you manually flip the page over.

On a printer, duplexing is accomplished by printing the first side of the page, pulling the page back through the printer, flipping it over, and printing the other side. Many all-in-one devices with an automatic document feeder ADF for the scanner also have duplexing, allowing you to scan both sides of the page as the document feeds through the ADF. Duplex scanning is a major convenience if you frequently scan two-sided pages, like those cut from a magazine.

Every printer will feed on a fat stack of 8. Thankfully, many printers now include dedicated feed trays for printing on specialty papers with unusual sizes or different weights, which make it easier to deal with those situations when they crop up.

Consider the size of the input tray here: Smaller trays will require you to add paper all the time, while a page hopper can make it a once-a-month affair. Many printer buyers in the s face a conundrum of a different sort: Their homes are largely paperless, and most of their work is digital. Yet, they still need a printer for the occasional photo art project or scanning and sending in a signature. Once you have connected your wireless printer to the internet, you can access a range of online services, such as the free mobile printing apps offered by the big printer brands — HP, Epson, Canon and Brother.

Other online features to look out for include Apple AirPrint, enabling you to print from Mac, iPhone and iPad devices more easily, and Cloud Print, enabling simpler printing from Google programs and services.

Find out more in our in-depth guide to wireless printing. When buying a printer, make sure you're handing your money over to a reputable seller. Check the retailer's returns policy and pay attention to customer feedback and reviews. For more details on shopping online safely and arranging refunds for faulty products, see our advice on shopping online.

Ink and toner cartridges account for a huge amount of waste plastic — with tens of millions going straight into landfill every year in the UK alone. Fortunately, there are ways to reduce this. Services like Recycle4Charity allow you to send in your used cartridges for recycling — including some third-party models — free of charge. Some schemes require that you save up several ink cartridges before sending them back.

So, your used cartridge could soon be living a second life as a water bottle or clothes peg. HP is currently the exception, as it uses these raw materials to make new ink cartridges.

Similarly, many local recycling centres will accept ink cartridges of all kinds. Recyclenow has a useful search filter to help you find somewhere in your local area. Another way to reduce ink cartridge waste is to stop using them altogether.

Ink tank printers, which use refillable ink reservoirs instead of cartridges, have stormed our Best Buy tables in recent years. This allows for automatic double-sided printing, potentially cutting your paper budget in half.

Recycle your paper where possible. Test score. Our expert guide explains how to identify the best printer to deliver high-quality prints at a pleasingly low cost, whether you want a basic black and white printer, or a colour all-in-one printer that can scan and copy too. FW Felix Wilson. In this article Video: how to buy the best printer What type of printer should I choose? How much should I spend?

What is an inkjet printer? This lets you can connect one to your phone by simply touching the phone to the NFC label on the printer. Most printers today, even the most basic, come with LCDs that allow you to easily connect to your wireless network and tweak the printer settings — for example, if you want to always print double-sided, or to pull paper from a specific paper cassette. Non-touchscreens usually mean having to hit a combination of buttons to navigate to the feature you want to access, selecting the feature, navigating to the setting, selecting it, and then getting back to the main menu.

Touchscreens make that process a lot simpler. Unless you plan to fill up several albums with physical photos, a photo printer is probably not necessary. Some photo printers offer features like the ability to remove red-eye in photos of people, but this same functionality is commonly available in a number of photo apps and is probably easier to deal with in software.

There are exceptions. These are fun for family gatherings and parties. Although be aware that you will have to buy special photo paper as well as ink for this one. But otherwise, most midlevel color printers will — if you use good photo paper — do quite an adequate job. You can also usually purchase a printer directly from the manufacturer — for example, HP , Canon , and Epson all sell from their websites. Prices have been updated, some printers have been named to replace those that are no longer available, and sections on NFC-capable printers, LCDs, and where to buy have been added.

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YouTube Instagram Adobe. On average, black and white documents cost about 3 cents a page and color docs cost 3. When it comes to print speed, it's about average. The LBPCdw features a single-sheet feeder that can take in envelopes and photos while leaving your regular sheet paper tray undisturbed. And you can stack up to 10 envelopes in the main paper tray, which is more than twice as many as most other laser printer options. And though this printer's five-line LCD isn't a touchscreen, it's easy to navigate and provides helpful information including the name of the job and person who sent it.

There's also a USB port that allows you to connect and print if the network goes down. If you're looking for a printer that can do it all, keep looking. But if you're looking for one that delivers photos that are colorful and vivid, with natural tones, high contrast and terrific detail, the Canon Pixma iP is a great choice.

Measuring roughly 23 by 13 by 6 inches, this Canon printer is big enough to accommodate six ink cartridges -- and print 13xinch photos. This Canon printer has no physical controls or LCD screen, so you control it via the printer dialog box on your device. Instead of a traditional paper tray, you simply stack your media of choice into a rear document feeder, which makes it easy to swap out different-sized and types of papers.

You'll get the best photo printing results from Canon photo paper; most printers deliver the highest-quality output when they're matched with their own brand of paper. The Canon iP's ink cartridges lasted longer than its photo-centric competition, even taking into account the additional ink necessary to produce 13xinch prints.

And it's fast: It printed an 8. Again, this Canon printer is not an all-in-one. This printer doesn't scan or copy. If that's a deal-breaker, check out our other picks below. If space is tight but you need to print shipping labels, shopping lists or homework assignments a few times a month -- an increasing likelihood as the coronavirus era drags on -- this is your machine.

The HP LaserJet Pro M15w is a great fit for practical, nonfussy tasks and its tiny footprint, measuring about 8 inches deep and 14 inches wide, fits perfectly on a bookshelf. And at just 8. If the students in your family can live without a scanner -- after all, phone cameras can handle most scanning jobs now -- and color output, the LaserJet Pro M15w is a great choice for a decent price.

Even if you almost never need a printer, when you need a printer, you need a printer. This HP DeskJet -- which is a cheap portable printer, tiny and unassuming -- is the perfect home printer solution.

This HP printer has no flatbed scanner or copier bed, so it folds up into a compact 16 by 7 by 5. There's a foldable rear tray for paper, a top-mounted scanner and an output tray -- but it's so small you can easily store it on a desktop or shelf. You don't have to worry about running out of ink while printing if you sign up for an HP instant ink subscription account when setting up your printer. A new HP instant ink cartridge is automatically sent to you when ink levels get low.

You can cancel the subscription at any time. Quality isn't the point. It's not a workhorse. Print quality isn't extraordinary.

But HP DeskJet is cheap, unobtrusive and ready for basic jobs when you need it. As far as first-world problems go, waiting for a printer to spit out your document ranks high. The HP OfficeJet Pro addresses this issue by processing documents and photo prints two to three times faster than its inkjet printer competitors.