Best Printer for 2024 – CNET

First off, this isn’t a typical printer machine. The bulky square shape isn’t something you would want to see in a fashionable home office. Because of the extra paper tray, the Epson can hold a large amount of paper for use. This makes it perfect if you and another person use it daily. It prints fast too — the fastest in our test, though the scanning is a little slow. The graphics, text and webpage text were all excellent, although the image quality on glossy paper was only good. This is a workhorse designed for high-volume text, not imagery.

My only real issue with the Workforce Pro was the size of the ink cartridges. It’s great that you have two large paper trays to hold a lot of paper, but if the amount of ink you have doesn’t match, then you are going to have a problem.

The Brother MFC-J1010DW is a terrible name for a pretty good printer in this price bracket. Photos came out clear and sharp as did the graphics on the website and brochure test. Even the text was very sharp. For an all-in-one printer at this price, it did every job well. It’s a good job it has Amazon dash replenishment although, as the inks are woefully undersized for the printer.

The Canon Pixma TR4720 isn’t going to be winning any awards in any category. In all of my testing, it came out around the middle of the pack in just about every category. While that could be seen as a negative in a printer that costs several hundred dollars, for one that is as cheap as the Pixma, it’s encouraging. 

The Pixma scored better in color reproduction when placed against other, more expensive all-in-one printers when printing on glossy paper. Some printers suffer from dimpling when printing images, but the Pixma didn’t and the skin tones were far better on the Canon image than on other brands. My only real negative is the machine’s volume. You can tell it was built on a budget, but as far as budget printers go, this one’s pretty good.

HP’s latest Smart Tank is a midlevel all-in-one with some nice features and a few that are missing. In all our tests, it did very well, especially the website printing test, where all the graphics were as crisp and clear as the text. The image test was good too, although not as good as that of the more expensive Smart Tank 7301. The colors were vivid, and there was no sign of chromatic abrasion. There was a little grain in the image, but nothing that better paper couldn’t fix.

My big bugbear with the 5101 is the rear-loading paper tray. It makes the printer deeper than a standard shelf, limiting where you can put it. It also limits the amount of paper it can store to just a few sheets, making it less than ideal for a larger workload. The lack of a scanner feeder on the top also slows you down, forcing you to scan each document a single page at a time.

Overall the 5101 is a good choice if you want excellent color re-creation at a reasonable price. Because it’s an ink tank system, the ink should last at least a year. 

I love a tool that is for one purpose, and it does that purpose almost perfectly. The Nelko thermal printer is specifically designed to print labels for packages — although it does print other labels too — and if you have an Etsy or Shopify store, it can be an invaluable tool.

Most of the tests I’ve designed for this article don’t apply to the Nelko, although the print speed per page is shockingly fast, so it isn’t comparable to the other printers here. It’s also at the top of the pack of the thermal printers I’ve tested. The app-controlled Bluetooth connection makes it even easier to print shipping labels. Simply purchase them through Etsy on your phone and print them using the app. You can even crop the image to remove the white space. It’s so simple I should have bought one years ago.

My only gripe with the Nelko is the lack of roller hooks. I like that the printer is small, but there is no room for a roll of thermal stickers, limiting you to single sheets or jury-rigging something to fit.

Sublimation is the process of transferring ink from paper to another material like T-shirts, mugs and canvases. There are plenty of options if you are looking to convert a standard printer to use sublimation ink, but if possible, you should buy a dedicated printer like the Brother SP1 for the job.

Brother has recently entered the sublimation market with the SP1, and it’s a pretty impressive offering. Like all modern printers, it has Wi-Fi printing and, using the Artspira app on your phone or tablet, you can create great layouts for printing just about any design on anything you can heat press. I appreciate how easy it is to use, although I wish the inks were a little bigger. The price is excellent for a sublimation printer too.

After testing the Expression, I was pleasantly surprised at how well this printer did. Being Epson’s budget option it could have been poor, but instead performed excellently at text reproduction and about average on the image quality. The setup was quick and easy and the Wi-Fi connection seems to be solid wherever I put it in my house. Print time was average at 1 minute, 15 seconds, but the text quality more than made up for the speed. All of the text, even the photocopied text was legible and smooth.

The only downside is how small the ink cartridges are on this printer. I know ink is where companies make the most money, but replacing these tiny cartridges every few weeks or months will get old quickly.

The Sawgrass SG500 is purpose-built to print using sublimation ink and paper. It works great too: You can print up a storm of artwork to put on T-shirts for the whole family. While this has a larger ink well than the Brother, the creaky feeling of the plastic and the extra hundreds of dollars it costs means it can’t quite land this printer a top slot.

The Munbyn is good — for a thermal printer. It printed quickly, and its labels were crisp and sharp, with no issues reading barcodes. However, it fell when trying to connect to the app. I found the app needed a lot of work, and it failed to connect more times than it connected. It’s also a hundred dollars more than its peers and not worth that extra money.