Most home offices have very different printing needs and budgets than larger offices. For the most part, color printing is not something you’ll probably use a lot, but if you need it for a flyer, poster, or proposal, it better be there!
You can buy a basic printer for as little as $40 at many big box stores or even the local supermarket. If you only print a few pages a month, one of these models may be best—and they’re cheap enough to toss if they break. On the downside, when you run out of ink on a forty-buck special, it might cost you nearly the same amount to buy ink refills.
For the modest printing needs of the typical home office, here are some printer models from some of the major vendors. When considering which might be appropriate, look at the price, the capacity of ink cartridges or toner, and the suggested monthly number of prints. The monthly duty cycle may well be several times this recommended amount, but if you continually churn out that amount, you can expect your printer to have a very short lifetime.
Also, consider the cost per page of the printer or All-in-One. This is less important if you print only a small volume of pages per month, but in the under $250 market, higher volume inkjets may be less expensive in the long run if you print a lot every month. Another thing to consider is that the ink in inkjet printers may dry up in the printhead if you don’t print anything for weeks. Laser printers don’t have this problem. For mobile printing from your phone or tablet, all the printers we selected (other than the HP Tango X) offer Apple AirPrint and Google Cloud Print capability. The Tango X offers mobile printing using HP’s Smart App, available for iOS and Android.
If you need more than just printing capability, consider an All-in-One device. These offer a scanner as well as a printer, so you can scan, copy, and (on some models) send and receive faxes. We’ve taken a look at a lot of printers and All-in-Ones, and here are our picks, all of which are priced at $250 or less.
Best Overall Home Office Printer: Brother HLL3210CW Compact Digital Color Printer [$180]
Sometimes, you don’t need a gadget that can scan, copy, and make great french fries—all you need is a nice color printer. The Brother HLL3210CW might just fit the bill. This compact color printer spits out prints at a fast, 19 pages per minute in both monochrome and color. It also uses high-yield toner cartridges to keep the cost of printing low. As with many lower-priced printers, you do have to compromise on some features. In this case, it’s duplex (two-sided) printing, but for many home offices, this won’t be a problem.
The HLL3210CW is a good, no-frills device, and if you print more than just a few pages a month, you’ll appreciate the large, 250-sheet capacity input paper tray. The starter cartridges that come packed with the printer will give you about 1,000 pages of printing, and the drum unit is good for 18,000 pages, so you won’t have to replace it for quite a while.
Don’t mistake the HLL3210CW for a laser printer. It uses LED, rather than laser technology, which is why the print speed is the same for monochrome or color. The LED mechanism also requires fewer parts than an equivalent laser printer, so it should prove very reliable.
Brother gives the Maximum Monthly Duty Cycle up to 30,000 pages. The recommended Monthly Print Volume of 1,500 pages is more realistic. That’s three reams of paper, so you can churn out reports, financial statements, ledgers, and invoices to your heart’s content.
Best Economical Inkjet All-in-One for Volume Printing: Epson Expression ET-2750 EcoTank Supertank All-in-One [$250]
