The 5 Best Home Printers - Winter 2023 Reviews

The best home printer we've tested is the Epson EcoTank Photo ET-8550, an all-in-one inkjet model. It produces sharp, high-quality documents as well as incredibly detailed and colorful photos. You can connect to the printer via Wi-Fi, USB, or Ethernet and print directly from an SD card. Its flatbed scanner performs incredibly well, as it can pick up even the tiniest details, so it's excellent for digitizing your old photos. There isn't an automatic document feeder, so you'll have to scan multi-page documents manually.

As its name suggests, this is a supertank model, meaning it has a refillable ink tank instead of cartridges. A set of ink yields thousands of prints, and replacement ink is cheap, so you don't need to worry about high maintenance costs. It takes about 50 seconds to print a 4" x 6" photo on glossy paper and supports paper sizes up to 13" x 19", which is great for making posters.

If you don't need wide format printing, you can save some money with the cheaper Epson EcoTank Photo ET-8500 variant, which gives you the same print quality but only supports paper sizes up to 8.5" x 11". Also, this is a photo printer first, so if you only plan on printing documents, you can easily find cheaper models that can do it just as well, like the mid-range picks we have below.

If you only need a printer for document printing and general office tasks, get the Epson EcoTank ET-3850 instead. Like the Epson EcoTank Photo ET-8550 above, it's also an all-in-one color inkjet model with a refillable ink tank, so it's a great choice for households that print a lot, as a full tank yields thousands of pages. It prints black and color documents well and does so at a decent speed, churning out 15 black or seven color pages per minute. Printed photos look good but aren't as detailed or color-accurate as the pictures the ET-8550 produces since it's more of a general-purpose printer.

For connectivity, it has Wi-Fi, USB, and Ethernet, and it supports Apple AirPrint and Mopria Print Service, making it easy for every household member to access the printer. The scanner produces exceptionally high-quality scans and is equipped with an automatic feeder to process multi-page documents. However, it's slow, as it can only scan up to three pages per minute and doesn't support duplex scanning. It's compatible with Epson's mobile app, which you can use to print, scan, copy, and perform maintenance tasks.

If you want to save more money with a more modest mid-range model, check out the Brother MFC-J4335DW. This all-in-one inkjet model yields around 2200 black and 800 color pages, and you can get XL cartridges that'll last even longer. Of course, it'll never match the page yield or cost-per-print of a supertank printer like the models we recommend above, but for a printer that uses ink cartridges, it's mighty impressive. It produces high-quality black and color documents, and although it doesn't have the best color accuracy or color range, printed photos still look very detailed.

As for printing speed, it churns out 17 black or 15 color pages per minute, and it doesn't take long to wake from sleep and get a page out. The scanner processes up to 20 pages per minute through its automatic feeder, but it doesn't support duplex scanning, so you'll have to scan double-sided sheets manually.

Our pick for the best budget home printer is the Brother MFC-J1205W. It's a good option if you print a little more than the occasional project. It produces sharp-looking documents, so you aren't compromising on document print quality. For photos, it's excellent at reproducing very fine details, but it struggles with bright, saturated tones, so pictures look slightly muted. The ink cartridges are good for around 1100 black and 700 color pages, meaning you won't have to replace them all too often, and they're relatively cheap, which helps keep running costs low.

As this is a budget model, there are a couple of tradeoffs, like the lack of an automatic feeder and Ethernet connectivity. It's also on the slower side for printing speed, so it isn't the best option if you regularly print long reports or essays.

If you only print occasionally, we recommend the Canon PIXMA MG3620. It prints good-quality documents and photos, but unlike the models above, it yields significantly fewer prints, meaning you'll have to replace the ink cartridges often. The cost per print is still low because the ink cartridges are relatively cheap; it just requires a lot of maintenance. Also, since it uses a tri-color cartridge, you have to replace the entire cartridge if one color runs out, which is wasteful.

You can get XL cartridges that'll last longer; however, they'll still yield fewer prints than the budget Brother MFC-J1205W or the mid-range Brother MFC-J4335DW. Unfortunately, it takes longer than most inkjet printers to initialize and prints very slowly at nine black or three color pages per minute.