
- #Best all in one home printers 2018 consumer plus
- #Best all in one home printers 2018 consumer series
Tank printers dispense with the pricey replacement cartridges used in conventional inkjet printers in favor of refillable reservoirs replenished with a bottle of ink. A few all-in-one printers also have built-in duplexers to automatically print on both sides of the page. This will allow you to copy not only documents but also book pages and photos with ease. And speaking of scanning, always look for a printer model with a flatbed design, as opposed to one that scans through the paper feed. For sophisticated jobs, for example, a separate scanner will have more options.

Note that most all-in-one printers have fewer features than stand-alone scanners, copiers, and fax machines. And purchasing an all-in-one printer can be less expensive than buying separate devices to perform various tasks. They don't take up much more space, either. You can get a printer that also has scanning, copying, and (sometimes) faxing capabilities-often for roughly the same price. Models start at well below $100, as long as you’re getting an inkjet rather than a laser printer, but don't forget to factor in ink costs (see below). So if you don’t need to scan, copy, or fax-or if you own other machines that do those tasks-a regular printer could be a good fit. Learn about the best laser printers of the year.Ī regular (or basic) printer’s only function is to print. Laser cartridges, which cost from about $50 to $100, can print thousands of black-and-white pages for 1 to 6 cents per page. Laser printers usually outperform inkjets in terms of speed, cranking out black-and-white text at a rate of nine to 25 pages per minute. Another advantage: According to data from our member surveys, laser printers tend to be more reliable than inkjets.īlack-and-white lasers generally cost about as much as midpriced inkjet models. Lasers typically can’t accommodate unusually sized papers, such as 4圆 or greeting cards, either. Even models that print in color aren’t intended for use with glossy photo stock or other specialty papers, and the photo quality is often poor.
#Best all in one home printers 2018 consumer series
With that in mind, we’re rounding up the best at-home printers according to the people. (See our introduction to this series here.) Our recommendations range from our deputy editor’s beloved minimalistic laser printer to something called the EcoTank, which saved a Hollywood screenwriter from his nightmare with ink.If you print only text documents-and a lot of them-a laser printer makes the most sense. Laser printers produce sharp black-and-white text, and some do well with color type and graphics.īut laser printers generally are not well-suited for printing photos. There are color laser printers, but they’re often prohibitively expensive for personal use. If you want to print in color, you probably want to stick with inkjet printers.
#Best all in one home printers 2018 consumer plus
Plus laser printers are faster and have superior print quality with text that looks much more precise and clear. And while inkjet printers can be much cheaper, they don’t tend to last as long as laser printers, and you do have to factor in the cost of more frequent ink refills. Inkjet printers use liquid ink, while laser printers use a powder ink that’s melted on the page.

The biggest thing to consider is whether you want an inkjet or a laser printer. Most at-home, nonprofessional printers are all-in-one units, which means they include some form of scanner and fax machine, but if you don’t need those features, you can save a little money by finding a print-only machine. It’s not particularly hard to find a printer that will suit your day-to-day needs. For most of us, a small and discreet printer that can handle the occasional online form or shipping label will be plenty. Unless you’re a lawyer or an author, or in some other profession that relies on printing a lot of documents, you probably don’t need one of those gargantuan, gray, rectangular printers. But one thing most of us don’t think about having until we actually need it is a printer. Over the past two years, your home may have suddenly transformed into a makeshift office complete with a comfortable desk and chair, a wireless keyboard, and a wireless mouse.
