Best Printer 2025: Our top-reviewed printers ranked

The HP Smart Tank 5105 is our top recommended multifunction printer for a number of reasons. It can print, scan and copy (although lacks any fax functionality), its small size is easy to accommodate in a home office and its low-cost printing makes it a great value option in the long run.

HP typically uses cartridges in its printers, which are renowned for expensive running costs. But the Smart Tank 5105 uses highly efficient ink bottles instead, resulting in ink costs of just 0.7p per colour page – few printers have better running costs than this. HP even ships its printer with 6,000 pages worth of ink, so it’s possible you won’t even need to buy more ink.

Our tests showed the printing speeds to be reasonable at 10.9 pages per minute, while we were very impressed with the print quality on plain paper. This printer is not recommended for photo prints, with imperfect colour accuracy and loss of detail with dark colours. The Canon PIXMA G650 and Instax Square Link are better options for those who want to print photos.

But if you’re happy to stick to printing documents and fancy a great value all-purpose home multifunction printer, then the HP Smart Tank 5105 is our top recommendation.

The Canon PIXMA Pro-200 has no equal if you’re looking for high-quality photo printing. Whether you’re looking for fantastic portraits, vibrant and detailed group shots or breathtaking landscapes, the PIXMA Pro-200 has you covered.

This A3+ printer features a straightforward design, inviting the average user to take full advantage of its tremendous photo printing capabilities. Canon’s printer innovates with an eight-cartridge approach, adding two shades of grey as well as lighter shades of magenta and cyan to the traditional set of four. This decision makes for finer control over colour, ideal for photo prints.

Along with showing its class when it comes to finer details, the PIXMA Pro-200 provides luxurious mid and dark tones as well as more than holding its own with contrasty subjects. Consistency was also top-notch in our testing, with only one photo in our entering testing period coming out with a flaw.

You’d think this high of a standard of print may take some time, right? Not with this Canon, speedily dishing out your prints even at sizes beyond A3. This printer is an ideal package for those looking for top-tier A3+ photo prints.

Not all printers are created equal, and some focus on value over luxurious quality. The Epson EcoTank ET-18100 is the former, offering a great all-around experience that keeps the burden on your wallet low, with low-running costs.

The low-running costs really are the star of the show here, with the EcoTank ET-18100 donning refillable ink tanks. These tanks not only save time on refilling compared with cartridges but they are typically cheaper to run. You’d get a full set of these bottles in the box too. The replacement ink costs up to £12 per colour, with Epson saying a full tank will get you around 2,100 prints – coming in at 3.3p per postcard print.

The Epson is a photo printer at heart but it performs to an acceptable level with plain paper. When tackling photos, the results are speedy and impressive. This is a key selling point, as this is a printer for those who will make plenty of use of its photo capabilities. Its low-running costs will only negate its high £600 price if you’re going to print a lot.

Its quality isn’t up to the pro levels of the Canon PIXMA Pro-200, which will better suit professional photographers but, if you’re a very keen amateur photographer, it’ll be hard to find better. The EcoTank ET-18100 excels with sharpness and vivid details in its photos – you won’t be disappointed.

Because of its 3-in-1 concept, bringing together a traditional printer, copier and scanner into a single device, the Brother DCP-T580DW works very well for families or larger households who have at least one person working from home.

The quality of standard prints is good and if you stick to monochrome, then the printing process is a speedy one, so if you need to sign a quick set of documents, then the DCP-T580DW has you covered.

What did surprise us is that the quality of photo prints is actually quite high with this device, so if you want to print out some family photos at home, you’ve got more than enough capacity to do so here (just don’t expect it to be as fast an experience as what you’ll get with monochrome prints).

Unlike a fair amount of printers these days that try to tie you into an ink subscription service, you’ve got far more flexibility with Brother’s offering. The ink cartridges within the DCP-T580DW are refillable, so you don’t have to worry about any unnecessary single-use plastics going to waste, and the process of actually swapping in new ink is fairly simple.

The base price of £250 definitely puts it in the higher bracket of cost compared to some of the other printers on this list, but for all the functionality you get here, alongside the low cost of ink in the long-run, you’ll get more than your money’s worth.

If you’re planning on printing a lot of documents every day, then the printing costs will become even more important than a printer’s upfront fee. Our tests show that the Epson EcoTank ET-2830 multi-function printer costs just half a penny per page, which is one of the best running costs we’ve ever seen from a printer. Epson even bundles in around 6000 pages’ worth of ink in the box, so some owners may never even need to buy more ink in the future.

As a multifunction printer, it’s capable of both printing and scanning although it doesn’t support duplexing. Scans and copies from the Epson EcoTank ET-2830 were all impressive too, and are easily good enough for day-to-day use.

Features are a little limited here, as the printer has no display or card slots. It’s also fairly slow, with average printing speeds of 15 pages per minute in black, and 8 pages per minute in colour.

However, all of its limitations are forgiven when you remember just how cheap the running costs are with the Epson EcoTank ET-2830, saving you a fortune in the long-term.

The Canon MAXIFY GX5550 is an inkjet print fitted with all the features a home office or even a busy small office could need.

This printer is designed to compete with the colour laser printers usually found in home offices and small businesses. It has two 250-sheet paper trays, allowing it to hold twice as much paper as a standard laser printer, along with a further 100-sheet paper feed at the back. This means it can store a total of 600 pages and separate them into three different media types, such as headed notepaper or coated matte inkjet paper.

The duplex function allows the printer to flip sheets over and print on the reverse side, saving you paper when printing longer documents, while and wireless networking make sharing the printer with family members and colleagues a breeze.

The refillable ink tanks can provide 6000 black and 14000 colour pages, or up to 9000/21000 in Economy Mode. The affordable cost of the ink works out at just 0.6p for a full-colour page or 0.43p using Economy Mode. This makes the printer significantly cheaper to run than a typical laser printer.

We found the printing speed to be close to that of laser printers when printing colour documents, though it struggled more to keep up when printing our test documents. Here, the printer took 24 seconds to deliver the first page of black text, which is nowhere near laser-fast. If speed is your most important criterion, opt for a laser printer instead.

It also can’t scan, copy or fax, but if you need an excellent printer with brilliant paper handling and extremely low running costs, the Canon MAXIFY GX5550 is our pick.

The Canon PIXMA TS5350i isn’t going to win the race for best overall printer, but if you’ve got a tight budget to spend on a printer, the TS5350i is the one for you.

It may be cheap, but it comes with a bunch of features and gets the job done to a suitable standard at a decent speed. The range of specs are surprisingly good for the low price and it does a strong job when it comes to photo printing as well. Being a three-in-one multifunction printer, you’ll find printing, scanning and copying all onboard this cheap device.

What slightly damages this low-cost printer’s value proposition is the cost of ink, which isn’t the cheapest on the market. Thankfully, Canon’s printer ink subscription service eases the blow and is your best option if you are going to get plenty of use out of this printer.

The Instax Square Link is one of three instant “Link” printers sold by Fujifilm. While each printer in this series has its own unique feature set, the deciding factor here ultimately comes down to film size – that is if you want to print mini, wide or, in this case, square photos.

The Square Link makes it easy to print bright and detailed 6.2 x 6.2cm images on the go with help from the smartphone app. Photos take just 15 seconds to print, though we found film development lasted a few minutes once the paper was ejected from the printer.

The editing controls in the app are very basic, but offer a convenient way to crop and rotate your images and boost the brightness, saturation and contrast before you hit print. You also have the option to edit the images in a third-party app before uploading them.

There’s a good range of features available through the Instax Square app, including stickers, filters, collage templates and themed frames.

There’s also an AR Print option not found on other Instax printers. This feature allows you to attach secret augmented reality messages and animations that can be unlocked by scanning the QR code on the print.

Instax Connect is another Square Link-exclusive feature that gives you the ability to decorate images before sending them to friends and family to print. There’s even a calendar to make sure you don’t miss any important birthdays or holidays.

The printer itself is quite chunky, but still small enough to slip into most small bags, making it a great option for taking on the go.

Of course, being an instant printer (and not an instant camera) also means you also have the option to snap photos when you’re out and wait until you get home to print them, making the Square Link a convenient gateway into instant photography.

If you’ve limited space on your desk or in your home office, you can’t beat the small and squat Canon PIXMA TS8750, especially if you plan to use it for more creative jobs, such as photo printing and scanning.

This smartly designed inkjet printer has two 100-sheet paper trays, though depending on where you put the printer, you might not have the easiest time accessing both. Still, having two trays is useful for paper storage and is complemented by duplex printing, allowing you to print on both sides of a sheet to save paper.

The design also includes an SD card slot – a rarity these days – making it easy for photographers to insert a card and browse thumbnails on the display. The six ink tanks will also tempt photographers, working on plain paper and offering a vibrant, glossy finish on coated photo papers.

Because this printer uses cartridges, it’s more expensive to run than a printer with an ink tank. Black text will run you about 4.2p a page and colour graphics around 7.7p a page. It’ll cost you more than 12p for a full-colour page with text and graphics, meaning this certainly isn’t the most economical printer in this list.

The print quality is excellent, as is the scan quality, though the printing speed is on the slower side. Black text is sharp and bold, while colour graphics are punchy on plain paper. Photo prints are superb too, with bold colours and plenty of detail. The PIXMA TS8750 excels at producing realistic skin tones, dark black skies and vivid fruits, though is perhaps most impressive when faced with black and white photos, drawing detail from the deepest shadows.

If you want a squat printer and scanner that produces high-quality results – especially when printing photos – the Canon PIXMA TS8750 is a fantastic choice. However, those on a budget or looking for speedy printing may want to steer clear.

There’s a case to be made that with its compact and understated design, not to mention a low upfront cost, the HP Envy 6120e is an easy pick for the average home office worker who prints fairly regularly, but doesn’t need the fastest speeds on the market.

The touchscreen at the front of the device makes things simple when navigating through the different modes, and we found the 5GHz Wi-Fi connection to be quite reliable during testing, so the likelihood of being bogged down by error messages is a slim one.

There’s even automatic duplex (double-sided) printing which, as you may know if you’ve had any experience with home printers before, isn’t always a given at the more affordable end of the market, but it can go a long way towards saving you money on the amount of paper you use.

We even found the quality of the built-in scanner to be good, so if there are key documents that you need to make copies of then you’re more than covered here. There’s no automatic document feeder, so you’ll need to add and remove pages manually as part of the scanning process.