The Best Printers for Home and Office

Before anything else, you'll have to decide between ink and laser. I'll get into the details when it comes to each model, but the most important consideration is paper type, because it’s a limitation rather than a benefit. Laser printers use heat in the bonding process, which means if you regularly print on windowed envelopes or photo paper, you'll need to either use an ink printer or change to a thermally safe alternative, which can be cost prohibitive if you print a lot.

Inkjets are the most common flavor of home printer, and they work like you might expect, by boiling ink until it splatters through a series of tiny holes. You didn't expect that? Me neither! Pretty exciting stuff.

Inkjet printers come in two flavors, with either prefilled cartridges or built-in tanks. The latter is quickly becoming more popular thanks to better pricing, more convenience, and a massive reduction in wasted plastic. If you're buying a new printer in 2025 you should opt for an ink tank, if not a laser printer. They're a little more work to setup and maintain, since you have to keep the tanks topped off, and they should remain in one place on a flat surface to avoid leaks. I can't imagine many situations where a printer would be constantly moving and tilting, but it's a consideration.

You thought InkJets were cool? Laser printers work by blasting a tube full of dried plastic particles, then fusing them to the paper with heat. They tend to cost more upfront, but the cost per page is overall much lower. Where a $20 ink cartridge might print 200 pages, a $60 toner cartridge could print 2000. They tend to be a lot faster than inkjet printers, and you don't have to worry about them drying out. Plus, the pages come out of the printer nice and warm, and you can't really put a price on that.

There are also thermal printers, which are commonly used for receipts or shipping labels. Instead of filling the printer with ink and depositing it onto a surface, they apply heat in precise patterns to special paper, allowing you to print text and images in low resolution, and typically in one color. If you print shipping labels or simple stickers at home, these can save you a lot of time and ink cost, but they have more limitations.

Laser printers are my preferred type, as long as your paper type and budget can support them, but most home users will be happy with an ink tank printer.

While Wi-Fi is increasingly common, especially on high-end printers, it isn’t a given. If your home has a dedicated desktop, you can often plug in the printer through USB and share the connection over the network, but otherwise you may need to find a spot with an Ethernet cable. If you don’t have a desktop or a convenient spot next to the router, Wi-Fi will make your life a lot easier.

You'll also want to keep an eye out for different interface options. Basic models may have no screen at all, or a single line of dot-matrix characters. Upgrades often include a color LCD for clearer error messages, or even a touchscreen for advanced configuration without an app. I generally find these are most important during the initial setup, and become less useful over time.

The exception here is on machines with a document feeder, where a good interface can save you time shuffling through settings. Particularly in situations where you make a lot of copies, a touchscreen with proper presets and options

I can't tell you definitively whether you need a scanner, but if you've used the feature in the last two years, and your phone camera hasn't sufficed, it's worth the upgrade. You don't want to have to shop for a standalone scanner, or buy an entirely new printer just to make copies twice a year. Most models come in scan-ful and scan-less varieties that are otherwise identical, so it shouldn’t complicate the decision much.

Flatbed scanners are the most common, and are often found on multi-purpose home printers. A flatbed is more than sufficient for uploading occasional forms, and it's preferable for photos, with typically higher resolution, and no fear of bending precious memories.

Document feeders are found on higher-end and small business-focused printers, and are really only necessary for situations where you’re regularly scanning stacks of pages. If you have customers filling out stacks of signed forms, or you're making copies of handouts and need them collated, it's worth upgrading.