The home printer may be seeing the end of its usefulness. The days of needing to print, scan, and fax documents are slowly sunsetting, and it’s because of the rise of digital technology. You don’t need to print road trip maps anymore since our smartphones come with built-in GPS systems to use on Google Maps or similar apps. Our phones can also take photos of documents to send when needed, and systems like E-Verify and Docusign let us complete important forms digitally. More secure apps like Apple Wallet and Google Wallet have features that let us store key documents, so we don’t necessarily have to have them all printed out and filed away.
All these innovations are replacing the need to keep a printer at home. These aren’t really products you want to buy for recreational uses or just in case, either. Printers are not necessarily a cheap purchase, and you don’t have to go far online to find complaints and jokes about how unreliable they are. When you couple those with the fact that the average printer lasts about three to seven years with proper maintenance, it can hardly seem worth it.
Is there anything you actually still need to print?
Is it worth never buying a home printer again, or are there still things you need to print? One of the first things that comes to mind is return shipping labels. In this age of online shopping, you may have to return items that don’t fit or don’t work how you expected them to. You might not actually need to print these yourself, though. For example, if you shop for clothes online with Stitch Fix, a prepaid USPS return label is included in your bag of items. Amazon has label-free return options depending on how you are going about your return. Of course, this varies greatly based on where you are shopping from and what you are returning. You may not return many items, but with about eight billion shipments per year, you can bet Amazon sees its fair share of returns.
There still can be some other outlier scenarios where you find yourself needing to print something. It could be a document for school, your job, or the government that is impossible or difficult to handle digitally. If you are someone who enjoys having physical photo albums or scrapbooking, you may also prefer a home printer that prints photos. If you feel like you have to have a printer, you may want to be sure it is one of the most reliable printer brands.
Other options for printing aside from a home printer
There are still ways to avoid purchasing and maintaining a home printer, even with those outlier scenarios above, especially given the news that an early-2026 Windows update discontinued service for some printers. When it comes to return labels, many shipping companies, like UPS or FedEx, are able to print them on-site, though you sometimes have to pay a fee for the label. So you can have the label printed at the same counter where you are going through the return process.
For printing photos, you can upload and order photos to be mailed to you online through services like Shutterfly, or you could get them printed at your local Walgreens. There are alternatives to physical photo albums, as well. There are digital photo frames you can upload photos to, and they will cycle through them to always be on display. You can also create and print large-scale photo collages from services such as Shutterfly to hang up as posters in your home.
If there are documents you need to print, there are some other options. Local public libraries are a good resource for printing and scanning items. Stores like Office Depot or Staples often offer on-site printing services, too. There are even some cafes and coffee shops that offer printers to use to help draw in people to hang out and order drinks and snacks.
