Home Printer Buyers Guide
Home Printer Buyers Guide
Selecting A Home Network Printer
No matter who you are or what you do there’s a printer out there designed for you. There are home printers, business printers, photo printers, printers for students, etc. The focus of this buying guide will be on home printers.
Most people associate home printing with inkjet printers. I refuse to recommend inkjet printers for any reason. Yes, they print pretty colors, and yes, they are usually cheap, but if you don’t use them on a regular basis the ink dries up and the nozzles clog. If you do use them on a regular basis it won’t be long before they start smearing and smudging.
Many times all four replacement ink cartridges cost as much or more than the printer itself. In an effort to save money in the short term you can end up costing yourself money and frustration in the long term.
That being said the type of home printers I recommend for home use are affordable, light-duty laser printers designed for home office or small business use. Laser printers are quieter, faster, and print much better quality documents than inkjet printers.
Even after months of neglect, they’ll be there for you at a moment’s notice ready to print whatever you need with no muss and no fuss. I won’t be covering photo printers in this guide either. I consider them expensive, specialty printers that don’t fall into the small home office category.
How Laser Printers Work
Laser printers use static electricity to force a very fine powder called toner to stick to a page in a specific pattern determined by negative and positive charges. That toner is then permanently fused to the paper using heat from a fuser. The positive and negative charges are applied by a laser that is very fast and quiet. The whole process to print a single page takes seconds. It’s an amazing technology that’s becoming more commonplace and affordable as time goes on.
Home Printer Connectivity
Inkjet printers use USB or WiFi connections almost exclusively. You’ll very rarely find an Ethernet inkjet printer. Ethernet is usually reserved for laser printers. WiFi Direct is another option that allows a direct WiFi connection to a printer via its own internal WiFi signal. This allows anyone with a mobile phone and the password to the printer’s WiFi to print directly to it without connecting to the local WiFi network.
Recommended Home Printers
Multi-Functions
Sometimes you just want to print. Other times you want to print, scan, copy, and fax. Whenever you see MFP in the name of the printer that designates it as a Multi-Function Printer. That means at the very least the printer will usually have a glass plate on top you can use for copying and scanning. Even if it’s a black and white printer you’ll be able to scan and make copies in color.
Duplexing
Duplex printing is another feature that’s becoming more and more common in affordable laser home printers. Duplex printing saves you the trouble of reloading paper, flipping it over, and reprinting to get printing on both sides. Duplex printers have a “duplexer” mechanism inside that flips the paper over for you and feeds it back through to print on the other side. This saves time and paper.
Media
Another feature that’s becoming more commonplace is card readers or media slots. These allow you to print directly from memory sticks, portable hard drives, or memory cards from your camera or phone.
Printing Costs
You get what you pay for and if you want something you have to pay for it. There’s no getting around it. A major factor in deciding on a printer is printing costs. More expensive, high-volume printers will have a lower price per page cost in terms of paper and toner. Less expensive, low to medium volume printers will have a higher per-page cost.
Per page, costs can range anywhere from 1 cent per page to 5 cents per page. It’s unavoidable. They get you coming or they get you going. The main decision is to decide if you want to pay for most of that cost upfront or spread it out over time. The best approach is to look at the average toner costs per 1000 pages and decide how much you’ll be printing to arrive at an estimated annual print cost you can live with.
Investment
It may be tempting to run to the local electronics store, grab the cheapest off-brand printer you can find, and take it home. That strategy may work for you short term but it’s wiser to consider a printer a long-term investment and get something that will last several years instead of several months. Sticking to trusted brands like Brother, Canon, Epson, and HP with strong warranties and technical support is a safer bet.
Printing Speed
A printer’s speed is measured in ppm or pages per minute. Printers in the price range I focus on in this guide are usually 16ppm to 36ppm. Faster speeds than that are usually for higher-end, more expensive high-volume printers.
These are usually very handy features to have. The cost of a multi-function printer is usually not that much more than a regular laser printer. Some multi-function printers will have an analog phone port built-in to be used for faxing.
Color Printing
We can go two different ways with this. Four colors or three colors. The four colors are Magenta, Cyan, Yellow, and Black. If you have a four-color printer and print mostly in black and white you should be able to get away with replacing the black toner cartridge most often. A color printer with three colors uses all three colors to create black. That means you may find yourself having to replace all three toner cartridges just to continue printing in black and white.
As you can imagine color laser printing can get expensive. You shouldn’t expect photo-quality prints unless you’re prepared to spend a lot of money on a special photo-quality printer. This type of printer is usually used by photographers and graphic design studios. A color laser printer for a home office is best for mostly text documents with colorful charts and graphs.
Top 5 Home Printers
1. HP LaserJet Pro M118DW
HP Laserjet Pro M118dw Wireless Monochrome Laser Printer, Auto Two-Sided Printing, Mobile...
- Uncompromising quality – Produce consistently high-quality prints with the HP LaserJet Pro M118dw wireless laser printer, HP's best-value printer for automatic 2-sided printing
- Speed through tasks – Stay productive with a 250-sheet input tray and print speeds of up to 30 pages a minute from this monochrome laser printer
- Uncompromising quality – Produce consistently high-quality prints with the HP LaserJet Pro M118dw wireless laser printer, HP's best-value printer for automatic 2-sided printing
- Speed through tasks – Stay productive with a 250-sheet input tray and print speeds of up to 30 pages a minute from this monochrome laser printer
- Stay connected when it matters most - Print from Dropbox and Google Drive with the highly rated HP Smart app for easy printing from your mobile device, or HP Voice-activated printing makes it easy to connect your virtual assistant to your HP printer
- Easily print with or without wires – Print from anywhere in the office, and access and share resources on a network with this duplex printer's built-in wireless functionality
- Print with or without a network – Connect your smartphone directly to your wireless laser printer for easy mobile printing via built-in Wi-Fi Direct, or use Ethernet for wired networking
- Save time and energy – Swiftly print two-sided documents and save paper with automatic two-sided printing, and save energy with HP Auto-On/Auto-Off technology that helps ensure your duplex printer is only on when you need it
- Sharp text and crisp graphics – Print 1,000 professional-quality pages right out of the box with sharp, black text and rich, dimensional grayscales using this wireless laser printer with HP Original 94A/94X toner
- One-year limited hardware warranty – Get help with 24-hour, 7 days a week FREE HP Web support. Easily set up your printer by downloading the HP Smart App on your mobile device
On many low-cost printers, the feature you cannot find anywhere else is an auto duplexer. This means it pulls each sheet of paper back into the printer and flips it over before sending it to the output tray by default. This saves time, hassle, and money in paper costs. The two-sided single tray supports letter and legal-sized paper.
The HP LaserJet Pro M118dw is a cost-effective printer that doesn’t consume much power but can produce high-quality prints. It’s particularly cost-effective if you need to print just a few pages per month. The automatic double-sided printing function makes the HP LaserJet Pro M118dw a printer worth considering.
HP LaserJet Pro M118DW Full Review
2. Brother HL-L2370DW
Brother Compact Monochrome Laser Printer, HL-L2370DWXL Extended Print, Up to 2 Years...
- COMPACT BUT HIGHLY PRODUCTIVE – Perfectly sized to fit on smaller desks or tight spaces, the Brother Compact black and white laser printer is the perfect solution for the busy home or small office with a 250 sheet paper capacity
- COMPACT BUT HIGHLY PRODUCTIVE – Perfectly sized to fit on smaller desks or tight spaces, the Brother Compact black and white laser printer is the perfect solution for the busy home or small office with a 250 sheet paper capacity
- OPTIMIZED FOR SPEED – Loaded with new features, the HLL2370DWXL compact laser printer is optimized for efficiency, allowing you to print up to 36 pages per minute – a class leader(2).Carton Dimensions (WxDxH) 17.5 x 17.7x 14.4 inches
- UP TO TWO YEARS OF TONER INCLUDED – This Brother laser printer comes with up to two years of printing with up to two years of toner in box(1). Included are one Brother Genuine high yield toner (TN 760) and one Brother Genuine super high yield toner (TN 770)(4)
- MANUAL FEED SLOT – The manual feed slot offers flexible handling for multiple sizes of paper, including card stock, envelopes, legal and letter sized paper, and more
- WIRELESS PRINTING & EXCEPTIONAL SUPPORT – Easy to link wireless technology allows you to submit print jobs from your laptop, smartphone, desktop, and tablet(3). Free, at your side support, online or via phone or live chat, is available for the life of your printer. At Brother, we want to ensure that your experience with us is exceptional
- NOTE: Kindly refer User Guide before use
- Save up to 50% on toner with Refresh EZ Print Subscription Service(1). For one low monthly payment, get Brother Genuine Toner delivered right to your door, before you need it. Up to 2 months free trial included(2).
This Brother printer has the full set of network connectivity needed for your needs. You can connect to your PC or laptop via USB, from a mobile phone through Wi-Fi Direct, and there’s also Wi-Fi . It is surprising to find an Ethernet connectivity at such a low cost for a laser printer.
Sometimes you just want to print. The Brother HL-L2370 lets you do that easily and quickly, reliably, and inexpensively. It’s simple to impress you with an abundance of tricks. It’s just there for you when you want to PRINT. Ethernet connectivity and auto-duplexing are significant features for a printer of this caliber at this price point.
Brother HL-L2370DW Full Review
3. HP LaserJet Pro M15W
HP LaserJet Pro M15w Wireless Monochrome Printer, works with Alexa (W2G51A)
- World's smallest laser printer in its class – HP’s smallest LaserJet Pro is 35% smaller than its predecessor yet still delivers the same professional-quality black and white prints you’ve come to expect.
- World's smallest laser printer in its class – HP’s smallest LaserJet Pro is 35% smaller than its predecessor yet still delivers the same professional-quality black and white prints you’ve come to expect.
- Fast printing – Prints up to 19 pages per minute, with the first page out in as few as 8.1 seconds.
- The power of your laser printer in the palm of your hand – The HP Smart app allows you to easily scan from your smartphone or tablet, order toner, and print from the cloud, such as iCloud, Google Drive, and Dropbox
- Wireless connectivity you can count on – Built-in wireless capabilities let you easily access, print, and share resources on a network; for those with no Wi-Fi connection, connect directly to the wireless laser printer using Wi-Fi Direct
- Uncompromising quality – Get the professional, reliable quality you want for less; this easy-to-use laser printer is the lowest priced LaserJet from HP, ever
- Designed for simplicity – This LaserJet Pro is extremely intuitive to use and measures at only 13.6"w X 7.5"d X 6.3"h, making it the smallest LaserJet in its class
- On when you need it, off when you don't – Help save energy with HP Auto-On/Auto-Off Technology—intelligence that can turn your wireless laser printer on when you need it and off when you don’t
- One-year limited hardware warranty – 24-hour, 7 days a week FREE HP Web support
- This printer is intended to work only with cartridges with original HP chips or circuitry and will block cartridges using non-HP chips or circuitry. Periodic firmware updates will maintain the effectiveness of these measures. More at
You won’t find fancy things like duplex printing and flatbed scanning, but you will indeed find fast (19 ppm) printing and inexpensive, sharp laser printing. The display isn’t touchscreen, but the app’s intuitive interface fills in the gap for a good experience.
As for laser printers when it comes to performance and quality, they easily outdo inkjet printers. Inkjet printers are sometimes bulkier and noisier outdoing their laser printer counterparts. Smudges, smears, clogging nozzles, and constantly replacing dried-up ink are the downsides to inkjet printing. The HP LaserJect Pro M15W gives you laserjet printer quality at an inkjet printer price.
HP LaserJect Pro M15W Full Review
4 HP LaserJet Pro M148DW
HP Laserjet Pro M148dw All-in-One Wireless Monochrome Laser Printer, Mobile & Auto...
- Uncompromising quality – Print, scan, and copy consistently high-quality documents with the HP LaserJet Pro M148dw all-in-one laser printer, HP's best-value printer for automatic 2-sided printing
- Speed through tasks – Stay productive with an auto document feeder, 250-sheet input tray and print speeds of up to 30 pages a minute from this laser printer scanner
- Uncompromising quality – Print, scan, and copy consistently high-quality documents with the HP LaserJet Pro M148dw all-in-one laser printer, HP's best-value printer for automatic 2-sided printing
- Speed through tasks – Stay productive with an auto document feeder, 250-sheet input tray and print speeds of up to 30 pages a minute from this laser printer scanner
- Stay connected when it matters most - Print from Dropbox and Google Drive with the highly rated HP Smart app for easy printing from your mobile device, or HP Voice-activated printing makes it easy to connect your virtual assistant to your HP printer
- Easily print with or without wires – Print from anywhere in the office, and access and share resources on a network with this multifunction laser printer's built-in Ethernet or wireless functionality
- Print with or without a network – Use built-in Wi-Fi Direct to connect your smartphone directly to your wireless laser printer for easy mobile printing, even without a local network connection
- Save time and energy – Swiftly print two-sided documents and save paper with automatic two-sided printing, and save energy with HP Auto-On/Auto-Off technology that helps ensure your laser printer scanner is only on when you need it
- Sharp text and crisp graphics – Print 1,000 professional-quality pages with sharp, black text and rich, dimensional grayscales using this wireless laser printer with HP Original 94A/94X toner
- One-year limited hardware warranty – Get help with 24-hour, 7 days a week FREE HP Web support. Easily set up your printer by downloading the HP Smart App on your mobile device
The HP Laserjet Pro M148dw has various WiFi Direct features, enabling you to print directly from your tablet or smartphone using the printer. The automated duplex printing feature gives you the opportunity to print on both sides of the page automatically.
The HP M148 is a very good printer for low-volume printing. Some rivals consider it an inexpensive photo printer too. Don’t get confused for it like a color printer though. It’s an inexpensive, versatile multi-function solution that is ideal for home.
HP LaserJet Pro M148DW Full Review
5 HP Color LaserJet Pro M255DW
HP Color LaserJet Pro M255dw Wireless Laser Printer, Remote Mobile Print, Duplex...
- Impress with color and increase efficiency: This business printer offers extraordinary wireless printing, fast print speeds––up to 22 ppm, automatic two-sided printing, and an intuitive 2.7" color touchscreen
- Impress with color and increase efficiency: This business printer offers extraordinary wireless printing, fast print speeds––up to 22 ppm, automatic two-sided printing, and an intuitive 2.7" color touchscreen
- Print remotely with the HP Smart app: Set up your LaserJet printer, manage print jobs, receive notifications, and print and scan on the go with HP Smart––HP's best-in-class mobile print app
- Save time with customizable shortcuts: Eliminate steps in repetitive tasks and organize documents 50% faster directly from your mobile device using exclusive office features in the HP Smart app
- Strong security: Help protect your HP printer and sensitive business data with built-in security essentials that help detect and stop attacks
- Wireless connectivity you can count on: Have confidence in your connection with steady performance from dual band Wi-Fi
- JetIntelligence value: Count on Original HP Toner cartridges with JetIntelligence to enable professional-quality pages, peak printing performance every time, and protection against counterfeits with innovative anti-fraud technology
- Wide range of paper support: This color LaserJet printer works with letter, legal, executive, Oficio, 4x6 in, 5x8 in, A4, A5, A5-R, A6, B5, B6, 16K, Postcard, Double Postcard, Envelopes (No. 10,B5, C5, DL, Monarch)
- One-year limited hardware warranty: Get one-year commercial hardware warranty, plus 24-hour, 7 days a week Web support
- This printer is intended to work only with cartridges with original HP chips or circuitry and will block cartridges using non-HP chips or circuitry. Periodic firmware updates will maintain the effectiveness of these measures. More at
The HP Color LaserJet Pro M255dw supports wireless printing at speeds up to 22 pages per minute, automatic two-sided printing (auto-duplexing), and the control can be handled via the 2.7-inch color touchscreen or mobile apps. Using the HP Smart app permits individuals to set up a printer from a mobile device, manage print job settings, and also get alerts.
This printer’s light-to-easy configuration makes it appropriate for use in a little home-office setting, producing up to 3,000 sharp text pages and up to 2,500 pages of high-quality charts and graphs every month. It works perfectly without sacrificing ability or consistency with the higher models, making them a pain if mismanaged.
HP Color LaserJet Pro M255DW Full Review
Buzzwords You Should Know
Toner Cartridge
Most people are familiar with toner cartridges. They’re long plastic cases full of toner that the laser printer uses to print an image on the page. Most printers will have indicators to tell you when your toner is low. If you get an indication your toner is low taking it out and giving a quick sideways shake or two will spread it out more evenly and give you a few more print jobs while your waiting for more toner.
Fuser
The fuser is a box in the back of most printers that applies heat to the paper one has toner stuck to it and fuses them together permanently. Maintenance kits for printers usually contain a new fuser. When replacing a fuser make sure to unplug the printer first and give the fuser some time to cool down before removing it because it can get very hot.
Drum
The drum is an electrically charged cylinder in the printer that creates the difference in charge between the paper and toner that causes them to stick together (Opposites attract.) Once the toner is stuck on the paper the fuser fuses them together with heat.
In some printers, the drum may be incorporated with the toner cartridge so when you replace the toner cartridge you also replace the drum. In some printers, a drum is a separate unit.
Imaging Unit
The Imaging Unit is the same thing as the Drum. If your drum or imaging unit is separate from the toner cartridge you probably won’t need to replace the drum as often as the toner. You may be able to go through 3-4 toner cartridges before having to replace the drum.
Whenever replacing a drum or imaging unit it’s important to make sure you DON’T TOUCH the shiny surface of the transfer roller. The oils on your finger can destroy the coating on the roller and ruin the quality of your print jobs. The only fix is to replace the drum.
