Best home printer 2020: versatile printers for use at home

• April 24, 2020

If you don’t think you need one of the best home printers in your house, think again. Just like in the office, you need a printer in your household that can handle printing without a snag. After all, your time at home is just as important as your time at work, especially given the current ongoing situation and compulsory work from home periods.

The best home printers need to be more versatile than regular printers since the modern household needs to print out a wide range of documents. You’ll often find you need to print out forms and documents in your day to day.

Plus, a home printer that can do an excellent job printing your holiday snaps will save you from shelling out a lot of money. And, unlike big and bulky business printers, these are all-in-one printers that take up a small bit of space and can be either laser or ink-based.

No matter what size of household and family demands you have, you’ll find the best home printer for you on this list. And, our price comparison tool makes sure you get the best deals on the one you pick as well.

Best home printer – at a glance

1. Brother INKvestment MFC-J995DW
2. Canon Pixma TS9120
3. Epson EcoTank ET-3760
4. HP LaserJet Pro M15w
5. HP Envy 5055
6. Epson WorkForce WF-7210DTW
7. Kyocera Ecosys P5026 
8. Brother MFC-J5945DW
9. Samsung Xpress C1810W
10. Brother HLL2395DW Compact Monochrome Laser Printer 

1. Brother INKvestment MFC-J995DW

Category: All-in-one inkjet printer | Print speed: Black: 12 ISO ppm, Color: 10 ISO ppm | Paper capacity: 150 sheets | Paper size: up to A4 | Weight: 8.7 kg

Compact

Reliable enough for small businesses

Loud and slow

Despite its compact size, the Brother INKvestment MFC-J995DW is a monster printer. It’s incredibly efficient, being able to print for up to a year without having to change its ink cartridge. And, it’s also a feature-rich and intuitive machine perfect for any home or small business office. You can print to it from just about any device wirelessly and, for mobile, you don’t even need a network to do it, thanks to its NFC (near field communication) technology that connects directly to the printer. While interfacing with its 2.7” color display, you can even print from and scan to the cloud.

2. Canon Pixma TS9120

Category: All-in-one inkjet printer | Print speed: Black: 15 ISO ppm, Color: 10 ISO ppm | Paper capacity: 100 sheets | Paper size: up to A4 | Weight: 6.6 kg

6-color individual ink system

Cloud, Bluetooth and social media printing

Small ink cartridges

Thanks to its 6-color individual ink system, the Canon Pixma TS9120 delivers exceptional photo quality results. The Canon also is very flexible with its connection capabilities, allowing for both bluetooth and wi-fi to print. And you’re not limited to any device. If you want to print from a tablet or smartphone or even from the cloud, the Canon can handle it. The printer also comes with some photo-specific features such as Photo Blue ink as part of the 6-color system and built-in creative filters to add something a little extra to your photos. Lastly, this printer comes in a choice of three different two-tone color options, giving you some cosmetic choices that you don’t really see with printers.

3. Epson EcoTank ET-3760

Category: All-in-one cartridge-free printer | Print speed: Black: 15 ISO ppm, Color: 8 ISO ppm | Paper capacity: 150 sheets | Paper size: Up to A6 | Weight: 7.3kg

Cartridge-free printing

Ink replacement lasts up to 2 years

Not cheap

Whether you’re trying to run a more eco-friendly household or you’re just fed up with having to run out go get ink at the most inconvenient times – in the middle of printing your important documents, for example – you might love the Epson EcoTank ET-3760. This all-in-one printer is cartridge-free and comes with refillable bottles that contain up to two years’ worth of ink instead. It doesn’t have a massive paper capacity, only 150 sheets at a time, that’s hardly a deal-breaker, especially if you’re just mostly using it for personal stuff. It’s a bit expensive, but think of all the money you’ll save not having to run to the store and get replacement cartridges all the time.

4. HP LaserJet Pro M15w printer

Category: colour laser printer | Print speed: 19ppm | Paper capacity: 100 sheets | Paper size: up to A4 | Weight: 3.8kg

Very small!  

Tempting price

No duplex printing

No display

When we tested it, this was the smallest laser printer around and likely to remain so. Being as small and inexpensive as an inkjet, yet with all the speed, economy and consistency of a laser, the LaserJet Pro M15w is in many ways the ideal home printer. It manages to hold one hundred sheets of paper and print on them at the respectable rate of 19ppm. There’s no duplex mode, sadly, and no display, but at this price it’s hard to argue.  

Read the full review: HP LaserJet Pro M15w

5. HP Envy 5055 (5010 in the UK) printer

Category: 3-in-1 colour inkjet printer | Print speed: 10ppm | Paper capacity: 100 sheets | Paper size: up to A4 | Weight: 5.4kg

Low price  

Easy to use

High ink cost 

Poor connectivity

This humble all-in-one can scan and copy, but its real strength is in printing photos. Frustratingly, there’s no Ethernet port, nor a USB port for printing from a flash drive and it churns very slowly, but the results are surprisingly good for such an affordable inkjet. The supplied starter cartridges are rather light on ink, but if you replace them with high-capacity carts, then the running cost is competitive too.

6. Epson WorkForce WF-7210DTW printer

Category: colour inkjet printer | Print speed: 18ppm | Paper capacity: 500 sheets | Paper size: up to A3 | Weight: 15.5kg

Duplex A3 printing   

Deep paper trays

Expensive ink 

No front USB port

Printers aimed at the home office that can handle A3 paper are not common, but ones that can automatically print on both sides of an A3 page are downright rare. The WorkForce WF-7210DTW is one such beast and it does so quite successfully. Print quality is impressive, be that monochrome text, or a glossy photo. The long list of features includes both Wi-Fi and  NFC connectivity and the two paper trays can hold 500 sheets combined.  

Read the full review: Epson WorkForce WF-7210DTW

7. Kyocera Ecosys P5026cdw printer

Category: colour laser printer | Print speed: 26ppm | Paper capacity: 250 sheets | Paper size: up to A4 | Weight: 21kg

Fast duplex printing  

Prints quietly

Expensive

Primitive interface 

This stout laser printer takes up relatively little space, given its high capacity for paper and toner. It means you can keep printing quickly and efficiently and with lower running costs than an equivalent inkjet. The display is rather fiddly, but in all other respects, this colour printer is easy to use and can be relied upon for immaculate mono and colour documents time after time.  

Read the full review: Kyocera Ecosys P5026cdw

8. Brother MFC-J5945DW Printer

Category: 4-in-1 colour laser MFD | Print speed: 22ppm | Paper capacity: 500 sheets | Paper size: up to A3 | Weight: 21kg

A3 capability   

High paper capacity

Inconsistent prints 

Less economical than laser

This big Brother blurs the line between home and office printer by combining the fast print speed and high capacity of a laser machine with the superior photo finish of an inkjet. We would recommend it for both applications because although it is smaller than the laser equivalent MFC-L8690CDW, the inkjet MFC-J5945DW can handle A3 paper. There’s really nothing that this fully featured 4-in-1 can’t do and it carries out all tasks satisfactorily.   

Read the full review: Brother MFC-J5945DW

9. Samsung Xpress C1810W printer

Category: colour laser printer | Print speed: 18ppm | Paper capacity: 250 sheets | Paper size: up to A4 | Weight: 16.6kg

Wi-Fi and NFC 

Rapid print speed

No auto duplex

Not the fastest laser

Samsung’s smart-looking laser printer is equipped with both Wi-Fi and NFC for easy mobile printing and is supported by a sophisticated mobile app. It’s an easy size to accommodate at home, but you can fit a useful amount of paper and toner inside, making it good for a monthly cycle of 40,000 pages. It won’t automatically print both sides of the page, but it does have a manual duplex mode.

10. Brother HLL2395DW Compact Monochrome Laser Printer

Category: All-in-one laser printer | Print speed: Black: 36 ISO ppm | Paper capacity: 250 sheets | Paper size: up to A4 | Weight: 10.3 kg

Super fast

Intuitive display

Monochrome only

The Brother HLL2395DW is an ideal printer for any small business that needs to do a lot of printing and to do it quickly. So while you may be limited to black and white with this printer, you’ll be able to print up to 36 pages in a minute and could probably spit out a whole book before having to reload the printer, thanks to a 250 page capacity. Like other recent Brother printers, it has an intuitive display that allows you to print from and scan to cloud services like Dropbox and Google Drive as well as its NFC “touch to connect” printing which allows you to access it from a mobile device without even needing a network connection. All-in-all, this is a pretty nifty printer.

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If you don’t think you need one of the best home printers in your house, think again. Just like in the office, you need a printer in your household that can handle printing without a snag. After all, your time at home is just as important as your time at…