Portable photo printers have one obvious appeal: they make digital memories feel physical again. There's just something so fun about holding an image in your hand, especially in a world where thousands of photos disappear into a camera roll. The ability to peel off the back and stick it somewhere you’ll actually see it is fun for kids and adults alike.

That is the promise of the Liene Pearl N200 Pro Portable AI Photo Printer ($119), a compact photo printer designed to turn phone pictures into 2x3-inch sticker prints. On paper, it sounds like exactly the kind of gadget my family would love. It is small, easy to set up and built around the kind of instant creativity that works well for kids, scrapbooks, bullet journals, party favors and quick DIY projects.

After using it, I can say this much: the printer itself is genuinely fun. But, the AI got the images wrong every time and frankly, the printer is so good, the AI felt unnecessary.

Setup was surprisingly easy

The best thing about the Liene Pearl N200 Pro is how intuitive it is to set up. In seconds, I downloaded the app, inserted the ink cartridge and loaded the sticker paper. I did not need to wrestle with complicated menus or printer settings just to get started.

When it comes to printers, a product like this lives or dies on whether people can use it casually. If I have to read a manual for 20 minutes, my kids (and myself!) have already moved on. But with the Pearl N200 Pro, the process felt approachable: connect the printer, choose a photo, make a few edits and print.

It also helps that the printer comes with a generous starter supply of ink and sticker paper. That made the experience feel more complete right out of the box instead of making me immediately worry about buying refills.

For families, crafters and people who like turning photos into something more tangible, that ease of use is a major win.

The prints were flawless

The Liene Pearl N200 Pro is so much more than a basic photo printer. It's an “all-in-one” craft tool for projects, bullet journaling, scrapbooking, home decor, workshops and family projects. Everyone from my preschooler to my middle schooler and even my husband found uses for the stickers. Lunch boxes, computer decor, water bottle bling and even fun reminders.

This is where the Pearl N200 Pro feels most useful. It is not trying to replace a full-size printer or a professional photo lab. It is trying to make small, instant, creative prints feel easy. On that front, it mostly succeeds.

I could see this working well for kids’ projects, classroom crafts, birthday parties, family memory books and anyone who wants to bring digital photos into a physical space without dealing with a large printer.

The AI feature was mediocre

The Pearl N200 Pro includes features to transform your photos into different looks, but the results often come out looking incredibly generic. As someone accustomed to the high-quality outputs of dedicated tools like Nano Banana and ChatGPT Images 2, the printer's built-in image generation falls way short.

The app offers plenty of creative variety. You can use customizable templates to turn yourself into a cartoon, a sketch, or even face-swap yourself into an astronaut.

The issue is that AI portraits only work if they preserve the part of the photo people actually care about: the person. If I upload a picture of a family member, I don’t want a generic avatar with a similar hair color; I want it to actually look like them. The app struggles mightily with this identity preservation. At one point, I uploaded an image of my very blonde son, only for the AI to give him dark brown hair. A second attempt got much closer, but just know that it rarely hits the mark on the first try.

Ultimately, these AI features feel forced. For anyone considering this printer, you are much better off designing your custom graphics in Nano Banana or ChatGPT Images, saving them to your phone, and uploading them normally. Bypassing the app's native AI completely lets the hardware do what it actually does best: printing great little photos and stickers.

The sticker paper also has one major flaw

The other issue I ran into was the adhesive. The prints are designed to work as stickers, which is a huge part of the appeal. But in my experience, the stickers were not very sticky and did not attach well to most surfaces. That limits the usefulness of the product because the sticker function is not just a bonus feature. It is the point.

If I am printing little photos for a journal or scrapbook, weak adhesion may not be a dealbreaker because I can always add tape or glue. But if I want to stick them to a notebook, folder, gift bag or craft surface, I expect them to stay put. That was disappointing, especially because the prints themselves are fun to make.

That said, be sure you stick with Liene products only when using this printer. There are others available on Amazon, but when I asked Liene whether users should buy only the company’s own paper, the brand strongly recommends sticking with official Liene paper, suggesting that the printer is part of a calibrated craft ecosystem and that lower-quality alternatives could have uneven coatings or adhesive residue that may damage the thermal print head.

That is worth noting because refills are part of the long-term cost of owning any mini photo printer. If you buy this, you are not just buying the device. You are buying into the Liene paper and cartridge system, too. That is not unusual for photo printers, but it is something shoppers should understand before purchasing.

Final thoughts

Despite my issues with the AI and sticker adhesion, I do think the Liene Pearl N200 Pro is a worthwhile purchase. This is a good fit for people who want a simple, portable way to print tiny photos for crafts. It is especially appealing for families, scrapbookers, bullet journal fans, teachers, workshop leaders and creators who want to turn phone photos into quick physical prints. The prints themselves are flawless and laminated beautifully, so you don't even need to remove the sticky backing.

Overall, the Liene Pearl N200 Pro is a fun little printer. It is easy to set up, simple to use and genuinely enjoyable for creative projects. Just forget about the AI entirely.

More from Tom's Guide

• I tried Google Labs’ Dreambeans app — and it finally broke my infinite scrolling habit
• This simple ChatGPT 'add to cart' prompt keeps saving me money — here's how it works
• I let Google AI help me transform my garden this year — 5 tips that actually worked

Printing your photos using one of the best printers can give you newfound appreciation for your own work — and that’s exactly what happened when I used (and tested) the Canon PIXMA Pro-200S. This is arguably one of the greatest printers for photographers as it can make large and tiny prints, ranging from A3+ to postcard-sized.

The Pro-200S is quick to print, and the resulting prints are high-quality and nothing short of stunning. Whether you’re printing to sell, exhibit, or for personal use, this printer gives you very little to complain about. While Wi-Fi connectivity could be easier to set up, and the yield isn’t the highest, these are minor drawbacks in the grand scheme of things. Neither should stop you from getting the Pro-200S.

For the complete breakdown, read my full Canon PIXMA Pro-200S review.

Canon PIXMA Pro-200S review: Specs

Canon PIXMA Pro-200S review: Price & availability

For photo printers and prosumers, the Canon PIXMA Pro-200S is an excellent choice — and it’s well-worth the investment if you want gallery-style prints to sell. The Pro-200S retails for $647 / £459 at Amazon. If that sounds like a lot, it’s worth keeping an eye out during sales events, like Black Friday, as we’ve seen the printer drop to $429 / £367 in the past.

The Pro-200S is cheaper than its direct competitor, the Epson SureColor P700 ($849) which is also a 13-inch A3+ printer. While there are even cheaper photo printers available, like the Epson Expression Photo XP-8800 ($329) and the Canon PIXMA G620 ($356), the Pro-200S is the better choice if you want best-in-class A3+ size prints and peerless quality.

Canon PIXMA Pro-200S review: Design

The Canon PIXMA Pro-200S is a hefty boy, and given that it’s an A3+ printer, it takes up quite a bit of space. The printer measures 25.2 x 15 x 7.9 inches and weighs 32lbs, so it’s best suited to staying put in one place. It sports an all-black design with subtle branding, so it fits right into most office and home spaces.

This is a print-only printer so unlike multifunction ones, like the Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw II ($702), it can’t scan or make copies. The Pro-200S features a rear automatic document feeder (ADF) which can, as the name suggests, automatically feed either 100 A4/A5/B5 sheets or 50 A3/B4 sheets.

You have the option to manually feed sheets as well, one at a time. The manual sheet feeder is ideal for thicker fine art media or creating banners up to 39 inches long and 13 inches wide.The Pro-200S packs a front-feeding tray too which can be used for printing directly onto white-faced CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays.

Build quality is sublime as the Pro-200S features a metal chassis build, and there are no hollow-sounding parts, so you’re getting great value for money here. Just as sublime are the Pro-200S’ controls and buttons. The physical navigation, home and back buttons are located around the 3-inch color LCD screen which can be used to check ink levels, among other things. You’ll find the print and power buttons next to the front tray. All of them give good tactile feedback when pressed, and I found them to be highly responsive in my testing.

Canon PIXMA Pro-200S review: Setup

It’s extremely straightforward to set up the Canon PIXMA Pro-200S. The first thing you need to do is remove the orange tape on the printer’s body and inside the paper trays. Once that’s done, you need to plug it into mains and turn it on by pressing the power button. It takes about a minute or two for the printer to come to life from a completely powered-down state — and a few seconds when it’s waking up from its sleep state.

After that, all you need to do is follow the on-screen instructions which are self-explanatory and easy to understand. You’ll then need to install the print head and the ink tanks. The ink tank placements are color-coded so simply pop them in until you hear clicks. If you’re struggling, refer to the included physical manual or Canon’s helpful online guide.

Loading the paper into the rear ADF is easy to do as well. The Pro-200S features automatic skew correction to ensure the fed paper is absolutely straight, which prevents misprinting (and wastage of paper). When you’ve loaded the paper and selected ‘OK’ on the screen, the printer will perform an alignment check which takes a couple of minutes, depending on the paper size.

Once you’re done setting up the printer, you can get printing, and there are two ways to do so: wired or wirelessly. You can plug in an Ethernet cable or a USB-B to USB-A cable into the back — the USB-A side would go into your laptop. You’ll then be able to print directly.

If you want to print wirelessly, you’ll need to download the Pro-200S dedicated driver onto your Windows or macOS machine. Follow the on-screen instructions to hook up the printer to your Wi-Fi. Once that’s done, the Pro-200S will synchronize with the Wi-Fi network, enabling you to print from any device that’s connected to the same network.

While it doesn’t take long to get the Wi-Fi hooked up, I do wish the process was easier. For instance, the Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw II requires you to punch in the Wi-Fi password on its touchscreen — no software required.

Canon PIXMA Pro-200S review: Print speeds

Any printer’s print speeds will naturally depend on the complexity of the image, and the number of colors involved. Keeping that in mind, the Canon PIXMA Pro-200S takes neither too long nor too little to produce prints. As this is a photo printer, I put it through its paces by printing a number of photos on four different kinds of paper of varying sizes.

I kicked things off with printing on A3 Pro Luster paper, in standard quality, and it took the Pro-200S one minute and 14 seconds to produce a color print. This dropped to one minute and 10 seconds when producing a mono print. I was impressed with how quickly the Pro-200S printed a packed image of flowers that I’d taken on the Leica SL3-S. Printing at the highest quality took a little longer, with a color print taking three minutes and 40 seconds — still not bad, and the quality was exceptional, which I’ll discuss shortly.

The next thing I did was print on A3+ Premium Matte paper. The Pro-200S produced a color print in one minute and 58 seconds, and a monoprint in a minute and 57 seconds. Both these prints were borderless, and perhaps the printer would be even quicker to produce bordered prints. Printing on A4 MP-101 matte paper didn’t take very long either, with a colored print taking 58 seconds and mono print 38 seconds — almost four times faster than the category average of four minutes.

I love that the Pro-200S isn’t just for large format printing. The printer can accommodate smaller prints too, all the way down to 4 x 6-inch. Canon provided me with a pack of 4 x 6 PP-201 Glossy II paper for testing purposes, so I printed out a few photos I’d captured. It took the Pro-200S 40 seconds to produce a color print and 39 seconds to produce a mono print.

The Pro-200S produces small prints quicker than the Epson Expression Photo XP-8800 which, in our testing, took a minute and 27 seconds to do the same. The Pro-200S performs much better than the category average of one minute and 56 seconds.

Canon PIXMA Pro-200S review: Print quality

As an inkjet printer, the Canon PIXMA Pro-200S utilizes eight dye-based Chroma Life 100+ inks and runs on CLI-65 cartridges. Because the printer utilizes eight inks, it delivers a wide color gamut and extensive tonal range, so prints turn out beautiful and detailed. Additionally, according to Canon, Chroma Life 100+ inks create prints that are resistant to fading for over 100 years when stored in an album.

Print quality is sublime, especially on glossy or luster paper, in both standard and high quality modes. I especially like how vivid shades of greens turn out, as well as the bright blues that feel textured. My favorite print is the one of an Icelandic waterfall, where the water gushing down looks highly detailed. If I look closely, I can see the individual water droplets. The printer performed phenomenally here.

Color printing on matte paper is good but not as beautiful as on glossy paper. To me, the same photo of the waterfall lacks depth ever-so slightly, and appears flat. For glossy color prints, the Pro-200S is second to none, and it suffices for matte prints too.

Printing in black and white is another area where the Pro-200S dominates. The Pro-200S did well to produce rich, deep and inky blacks with plenty of detail, and the overall tonal range is simply excellent, as I noticed in the photo of the man standing outside a theatre. The shadows and highlights are balanced well, and the image looks just like it did when I edited and prepared it for printing.

Small prints look lovely too, and I appreciate the ability to make bordered or borderless prints as the former frames the images well. The Pro-200S’ ability to produce small prints is fantastic for those who want to make postcard-like prints for selling, or for personal use.

Canon PIXMA Pro-200S review: Ink cost & yield

The Canon PIXMA Pro-200S comes with a set of eight ink tanks, 12.6ml each, to get you started — but they won’t last you very long. Canon says that you’ll be able to create just 139 A3+ mono prints with these, or 860 4 x 6-inch mono photos. While that isn’t a lot, the Pro-200S’ running costs aren’t that high.

Each CLI-65 ink tank costs $15, and a set of eight tanks will set you back approximately $120, which isn’t too bad — and certainly not as expensive as the Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw II’s cartridges and toner. These are similar costs to the inks used by the Epson Expression Photo XP-8800.

As with other Canon printers, you can sign up for Auto-Ink Delivery when buying the Pro-200S directly from Canon, or even after you’ve bought it. When your printer is running low on ink, it automatically notifies the company who then ships out ink without you having to place an order manually.

Canon PIXMA Pro-200S review: Verdict

It really wasn’t difficult to rate the Canon PIXMA Pro-200S so highly. Once I saw the print quality, I was floored. Designed for photographers and creative professionals, the Pro-200S delivers exceptional print quality across a range of sizes — from postcard to gallery-worthy A3+ prints. Thanks to the printer’s eight-color dye-based ink system, colors appear vibrant, and blacks are deep and rich.

There are a couple of drawbacks preventing a perfect score, such as the complicated wireless setup, and low ink yields for heavy users. But these issues are relatively minor considering the overall experience.

At the end of the day, the Pro-200S stands out as one of the best photo printers in its class, offering professional-quality results that will have falling in love over and over again with your own work.

If you’re after the best laser printer for your small office or personal use, look no further than the Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw II. Its inconspicuous, all-white design makes it fit into most professional spaces, and it comes with four cartridges to get your started — and they’ll last you a while, too.

What makes the MF753Cdw II an outstanding choice in a crowded market are its rapid print, scan and copy speeds. The printer is outfitted with a larger paper output tray, and if you want to increase the input capacity, you can buy an additional accessory for around $250. Oh, and the printer’s got a customizable and responsive touchscreen too.

To find out if this is the best all-in-one printer for you, read my full Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw II review.

This printer goes by two different names: Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw II in the U.S., and i-SENSYS MF754Cdw II everywhere else. For the purpose of this review and your convenience, I’ll refer to it as Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw II, its American name.

Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw II review: Specs

Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw II review: Price & availability

The Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw II is a solid mid-range printer, and it retails for $702 at Amazon U.S. We’ve seen it drop to $499 in the past though, so it’s good to keep an eye out during sales events. Outside of the U.S., the printer goes by i-SENSYS MF754Cdw II, and is available for £539 at Amazon U.K. Similar to the States, the printer can be bought for around £390 during sales events.

This printer is available in white only. As a 4-in-1 laser printer that can print, scan, copy and fax, the MF753Cdw II finds itself competing with the likes of the Brother MFC-L8930CDW ($899), the Brother MFC-L2750DW XL ($689), and the HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP 4301fdw ($859). It’s ideal for small office owners and those who work from home.

Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw II review: Design

The Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw II sports an all-white design with black accents, and it fits right into a professional office space. It doesn’t look too loud so it doesn’t draw eyeballs to your desk. It’s big but not too large, measuring 18.2 x 16.8 x 17 inches. It’s a little heavy, though, weighing 48.5lbs so it’s best for it to stay put in one spot.

As a multifunction printer, the MF753Cdw II can scan, fax, print and copy, and it’s well-equipped to do so. It features a 50-sheet Automatic Document Feeder (ADF) on top with a glass scanner located underneath it. There’s a main paper in-tray at the bottom which can hold up 250 sheets, and an out-tray which can accommodate 150 prints in the middle. If you want even more print storage — say, 550 sheets of letter or A4 paper — you can grab the Canon PF-K1 Optional Cassette for $284.

Located on the right-hand side is a 5-inch color LCD touchscreen that can be tilted vertically to optimize the viewing angle. It can be customized too, to display functions and settings you use the most. There’s a power button located under the screen to switch off the MF753Cdw II or wake it from sleep (takes about seven seconds).

Overall, the MF753Cdw II is designed well, and the settings on the touchscreen feel accessible and easy to understand. Additionally, the build quality feels solid too, and you can rest assured that you’re getting bang for your buck here.

Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw II review: Setup

Setting up the Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw II couldn’t be easier. It takes about 14 seconds for it to warm up from a powered-off state, or seven seconds when waking from sleep mode.

When using it for the first time, all you need to do is plug the printer into the mains and follow the on-screen instructions. It took me just a few minutes to get the printer up and running. Fitting or replacing the ink cartridges is fairly straightforward too, as all you need to do is open the tray, align the cartridge with the color-coded slot (Black, Cyan, Magenta, or Yellow), and press down firmly until it clicks into place.

There are two ways to use the MF753Cdw II: wired or wirelessly. You’ll find ports for Ethernet and fax modem cables at the rear, and a USB-A port on the front. You can use the front USB-A port to print directly from USB sticks too, which is quite handy and doesn’t require any settings to be changed.

To print wirelessly, you’ll need to use the touchscreen to enable Wi-Fi and input your network’s password. Once that’s done, you’ll see the printer pop up in your computer’s (or phone’s) settings. You may need to download the printer’s driver from the Canon website if your laptop doesn’t automatically detect it. I found this easy to do, and Canon happily provides a QR code on the printer’s touchscreen that you can scan with your phone to access the Quick Start guide, if you’re in a pickle.

If you’re in a literal jam when paper gets stuck in any of the trays, the touchscreen will show you step-by-step instructions to remove the blockage too. I encountered paper jam only once in my testing, and I found the on-screen instructions super easy to follow.

Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw II review: Print speeds

The Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw II’s print speeds are extremely impressive. If it’s rapid printing you’re after, this is the printer for you. I put it through its paces by printing a variety of documents. It took the MF753Cdw II 11.31 seconds to print a five-page text document — or 26.5 pages per minute (ppm). That’s really quick, and the MF753Cdw II bests the likes of the Brother MFC-L2750DW XL and its 18.5 ppm.

I then printed a two-side text document, which took 9.55 seconds, and the MF753Cdw II managed to print a 10-page text document onto five double-sided sheets in 30.13 seconds. These are the fastest printing times of our most recently reviewed laser printers.

The MF753Cdw II is capable of printing mixed documents rapidly too. I put this to the test by printing a six-page mixed PDF consisting of text and color graphics, such as charts and graphs. It took the printer 18.74 seconds to do so, or 19.21 ppm. The Brother MFC-L2750DW XL, on the other hand, can do only 11 ppm, making the MF753Cdw II the better choice.

Laser printers are better suited to printing documents and inkjet printers are best for photo printing. Even so, the MF753Cdw II is capable of printing decent color prints. I printed an 8 x 10 hi-res image, taken on a Leica SL3-S, on Canon Photo Paper Glossy II. In 7.06 seconds, the print was ready. I’ll get into print quality shortly to discuss what the print looked like — but as speediness goes, the MF753Cdw II doesn’t give you much to complain about.

Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw II review: Copy & scan speeds

The Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw II boasts best-in-class copy and scan speeds. In my testing, it took 6.86 seconds for a black-and-white copy and 8.6 seconds for a color copy. It’s faster than the Brother MFC-L2750DW XL which takes 8.4 seconds to make a copy.

Scanning is just as quick. I inserted a USB-A stick into the front port and chose that as the save destination. A color scan took 6.22 seconds while a black-and-white scan took exactly six seconds. Again, it’s faster than the Brother MFC-L2750DW XL which takes 8.4 seconds to scan a monochrome document, and a snail’s pace 38.4 seconds for color scanning in JPEG format.

Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw II review: Print & copy quality

The Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw II makes attractive prints and copies, both color and black and white. The text-only documents I printed came out with sufficient contrast, and looked just as they did on my screen. I found the text easy to read, and none of it was misaligned on any of the prints.

Graphic prints were fairly attractive too, as the colors appeared natural and the different hues and tones appeared well-balanced. The colors didn’t appear oversaturated or heavily edited. I didn’t notice any bleeding either.

I was very surprised by the quality of the glossy photo print. As I mentioned earlier, inkjet printers are better suited to photo printing. Still, the MF753Cdw II’s photo quality is respectable. The print packed plenty of detail, such as the flowers’ stigma and the patterns in the petals. Greens appeared vivid while pinks appeared bright — albeit slightly more saturated than I’d have preferred. But again, this isn’t a photo-first printer. You may want to consider the Canon PIXMA TR8620 ($199) or the Canon PIXMA Pro-200S ($647) if you want a photo printer.

Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw II review: Ink cost & yield

The Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw II’s box comes bundled with four starter toner cartridges, and Canon claims that these can last you 1,100 color pages or 2,100 monochrome prints. This should be enough to get you started.

It’s important to note that it isn’t cheap to run the MF753Cdw II. The printer’s 069 cartridges cost $142 each, which is quite a bit. For four cartridges, you’re looking at an expenditure of $568 — or 51 cents per color page and 27 cents per mono print. The Brother MFC-L2750DW XL offers lower printing costs, approximately 3.75 cents per page.

If you don’t want to buy the cartridges manually every time you’re about to run out, Canon offers an Auto Replenishment Service which you can sign up for at checkout. An order is automatically placed with Canon when your printer is running low on toner. You can do so after you’ve bought the printer, too.

Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw II review: Verdict

The Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw II is an exceptional all-in-one laser printer designed for small offices. You can print, copy, scan and fax — and speedily too. The MF753Cdw II delivers blazing-fast output speeds across the board, and the resulting text prints are sharp while color graphics are bright and detailed.

Beyond raw performance, the MF753Cdw II provides a seamless user experience. Setup is ridiculously easy, and the 5-inch customizable touchscreen makes navigation a breeze. The all-white design, though unremarkable, fits right into any workspace — but its 48.5lbs footprint means you’ll need to find a fixed spot for it.

While some people may find the high cost of replacement cartridges a tough pill to swallow, I don’t think that should put you off from getting the MF753Cdw II. If it’s a robust, reliable workhouse you’re after, few laser printers are better than the MF753Cdw II.

The Brother INKvestment MFC-T780DW ($340) is an ink-jet all-in-one that offers a range of home and small office features, and solid performance. It offers copying and scanning, has buttons for standalone operation, and offers an automatic document feeder (ADF) for scanning and copying multipage documents. It does not have fax capability.

The MFC-780DW has four ink tanks for black, cyan, magenta, and yellow. This all-in-one comes with two bottles of black ink, each rated to last 7,500 pages. The color inks are rated to last 5,000 pages — easily one of the best printers I've tested.

Brother INKvestment MFC-T780DW: Design

The control panel hinges upward roughly 45 degrees and has dedicated buttons for color and black-and-white copying. The color LCD is small, at just 1.8 inches. It is not a touch screen. You use the 4-way buttons to navigate the LCD menus.

The MFC-780DW is designed for small office use. Paper handling is modest. The ADF accommodates up to 20 sheets, and the output tray up to 50 sheets. The input tray can hold up to 150 pages.

The ADF atop the all-in-one is lightweight. Its hinges do not offer resistance to hold up the lid, so you will need clearance to lift it 90 degrees in order to use both hands to place documents on the scanner glass.

Where original documents land after being scanned, there is a flip-up catch to prevent the pages from getting pushed over the edge. A specialty media tray sits at the back of the unit; you fold down a door to reveal the tray.

It can accommodate only one sheet at a time, up to 79-pound thickness, versus the 58-pound paper weight maximum for the main 150-sheet input tray that sits below the 50-sheet output tray.

The MFC-T780DW offers scan-to-email, as well as file-sharing options for scans sent to a PC: file, email, image, OCR, and all the major cloud services.

The T780DW is of modest size and weight, measuring 15.4 x 13.5 x 7.2 inches. It weighs 17.2 pounds.

Brother INKvestment MFC-T780DW: Print Speed

The T780DW performed very well in our tests. On only one test was it slower than the average of our six most recently reviewed ink tank models (hereafter referred to as the category average). And, even on that test, it was barely slower than the average. On four of our tests, it was significantly faster than the category average.

This Brother printed text documents at a rapid 12.4 ppm, taking just 24.2 seconds to print a five-page document. This was the fastest time of our most recently reviewed ink tank models. The category average is 9.6 ppm. By comparison, the Canon G3290 printed text documents at 9.2 ppm, and the HP Smart Tank 706 did so at 8.6 ppm.

Taking 2 minutes and 17 seconds to print our document of mixed text and color graphics, the T780DW printed at a roughly average speed of 2.6 ppm. The HP Smart Tank 706 was moderately quicker, printing the same document at 3.1 ppm. The Canon G3290 printed more slowly, at 2.2 ppm.

Keeping true to its office worthiness, this Brother all-in-one printed two-sided text documents quickly. It printed a 10-page text document onto five double-sided sheets in 1 minute and 29 seconds, or 6.7 ppm. By comparison, the Canon G3290 bested the Brother, making duplex prints at 7.2 ppm. The HP Smart Tank 7602 made duplex text prints at a more modest 5 ppm

The T780DW made duplex prints of a color PDF at 2.4 ppm, taking 2 minutes and 31 seconds to complete the six-page print. By contrast, the HP Smart Tank 760 was quicker, at 2.8 ppm, and the Canon G3290 was slower, at 1.9 ppm.

Brother INKvestment MFC-T780DW: Copy and Scan Speed

The MFC-T780DW copies quickly in color. It copied a color page in just 19.5 seconds, which was much faster than the average of 26.8 seconds for ink tank models. By comparison, the HP Smart Tank 760 copied a color page at the same speed as the Brother, while the Canon G3290 was slower, at 27.5 seconds.

The Brother MFC-T780DW also copied text pages at a respectable pace. It made a copy in 12.8 seconds, on average, which was slightly slower than the category average of 12.3 seconds. Both the HP 760 and Canon G3290 turned in similar times of 12.7 and 12.5 seconds, respectively.

Using its ADF, the MFC-T780DW made copies of multipage text documents at a good clip of 7.6 ppm. The HP SmartTank 760 was a little slower, at 7 ppm, while the Epson EcoTank ET-4760 lagged behind, at 4.5 ppm. (The Canon G3290 does not have a document feeder.)

Scanning speed was impressive, particularly in color. The MFC-T780DW made a 600 dpi color scan to JPEG format in just over 50 seconds—significantly faster than the category average of 1 minute and 20 seconds. By contrast, the Canon G3290 took 1 minute and 5 seconds to make the same scan. The HP 760 took 1 minute and 25 seconds.

The MFC-T780DW scanned black-and-white documents at 300 dpi at better than average speed. It scanned a page to PDF format in 12.5 seconds, which was one second faster than the category average. The HP 760 was slower, at 16.2 seconds, while the Canon G3290 was slower still, taking 21.8 seconds to capture the same scan.

Brother INKvestment MFC-T780DW: Print Quality

The MFC-T780DW printed text that looked quite sharp, although it was a little on the light side and not as dark as laser-quality text. Graphics also looked attractive, with sharp details and smooth textures. Mid-tone transitions were gradual and not abrupt. Similarly, copy quality was high.

Glossy photo prints looked very attractive, which was a little of a surprise for an office-oriented all-in-one that doesn’t tout itself as being photo-centric.

Nonetheless, colors were well saturated, details looked sharp, and skin tones appeared natural. Dark shadows did, however, tend to flatten into a dark mass that lost the original photograph’s subtle details.

Brother INKvestment MFC-T780DW: Ink/Toner Cost and Yield

It’s highly unlikely you’ll ever gripe about the cost of ink with the MFC-T780DW.

A bottle of black ink costs $20.99 and is rated to print 7,500 pages. This comes out to a cost of just 0.3 cent per text page. Plus, you get two bottles of black ink in the box with the printer.

A set of three color ink bottles (cyan, magenta and yellow) costs $32.99 (or, $12.29 individually). These are rated to last 5,000 pages. At this rated yield, printing a color page costs less than a penny—just 0.94 cent. (The MFC-T780DW is not eligible for the company’s Refresh EZ Print subscription plan.)

Brother does not offer any ink subscriptions on ink tank printers.

Brother INKvestment MFC-T780DW: Setup and Startup Time

This is the only ink tank printer where I’ve gotten ink on my fingers. The bottle nozzles are not symmetrical so you need to make sure you line up the spout to the small opening atop the ink tank.

The printer comes with a basic printed setup guide. You can follow that, or use the QR code to set up the MFC-T870DW with your mobile device. Older iPhones will not work: The Brother Mobile Connect app requires iOS 17 or later, or Android 7.0 and up.

After removing a half dozen pieces of packaging tape and loading paper in the input drawer, I connected the power cord. Using the four-way control buttons, I entered the year, date and time using the four-way buttons; having to navigate to the LCD’s on-screen numbers was a little cumbersome.

Meanwhile, I downloaded the Brother Easy Setup app to my laptop. Setting up the printer on a home network requires that you enter your network administration name and password. This is followed by ink initialization and entering confirmation on the control panel that each ink tank is full. This was followed by a printhead alignment (printing and scanning an alignment sheet), nozzle check, and firmware update.

My first search for the printer from my laptop using WiFi Direct did not succeed. When I tried connecting a USB cable to complete setup, the LCD said “initial setup incomplete”. I could not understand why. This was followed by the LCD displaying a QR code; I was unable to navigate away from the QR code. (I did not use this setup because my iPhone is too old to run the Mobile Connect app).

I resorted to the WPS method, navigating to the wireless setup menu on the printer’s small LCD, using the four-way control buttons. Pressing the WPS on my wireless router put the T870DW on my network. However, after turning off my laptop’s wireless, the printer failed to reconnect over W-Fi when I turned it back on.

I had to go to the printer’s wireless setup menu to reestablish the connection. A few days later, I found that the printer had dropped off my network again and I had to repeat the wireless setup. My MacBook was displaying that the printer was idle and “out of ink”, which was clearly untrue. Hereafter, however, the T870DW remained reliably connected and on my network.

Although the Quick Setup Guide said nothing about the Brother iPrint & Scan software, I chose to download and install it. Doing so resumed the printer’s functioning on my network and my laptop could once again see the device.

Brother INKvestment MFC-T780DW: Software

Brother’s iPrint & Scan software is basic, but it’s adequate for everyday print and scanning tasks from a Windows or Mac computer. For example, you can save workflows such as scanning at specified settings to a particular folder.

Scanning to the cloud is supported for OneNote, Google Drive, Dropbox, Evernote, Box, SharePoint Online, and corresponding business versions. You can print photos and PDF files from the application, while text files are expected to be printed from their native application.

One drawback, however, is that the software cannot scan automatically detect multiple photos on the scanner glass and save them as separate files. You will need to scan one at a time.

Placing multiple photos on the flatbed results in only one photo being offered by the software for saving. For Windows users, the workaround is to use the TWAIN driver and PaperPort software.

The mobile app for this model is Brother Mobile Connect. The previous mobile app, iPrint & Scan, is not compatible with the MFC-T780DW. Despite sharing the same name, this change in mobile app does not apply to the desktop software, which remains the current supported version.

The T780DW starts up quickly, offering its main menu in just 4 to 5 seconds. However, I couldn’t navigate the menus until about 18 seconds had passed. That’s still very quick. However, I ran into a frustrating anomaly: Even though I had reset the paper type to plain paper, upon restarting the printer, its paper type had reverted to “other glossy”, the setting I’d changed it from.

Brother INKvestment MFC-T780DW: Bottom line

The MFC-T870DW has a lot to offer, with a couple compromises. It’s a solid performer that will accommodate most small office tasks. Outfitted with a capable ADF, duplexer, and dedicated buttons for copying, this Brother all-in-one will satisfy the needs of many offices.

The 20-sheet capacity of the ADF may be too small for some outfits, as may be the 150-sheet input tray and one-sheet-at-a-time specialty media slot.

The small color LCD isn’t flashy, like a big touchscreen would be. But this ink tank all-in-one isn’t about being glamorous. It’s a performer and a money saver, offering costs per page of just 0.3 cent and 0.94 cent per page, respectively.

The MFC-T780DW performed consistently well in every one of our speed tests, whether printing, copying or scanning. Two-sided printing was above average for text and roughly average for color pages. Image quality was high, even for glossy photo prints. If the specs and speeds meet your needs, this office-oriented all-in-one is unlikely to disappoint.

Los Angeles could soon become the first major U.S. city to ban certain single-use printer cartridges. It would join current bans on other single-use plastics like shopping bags and takeaway containers.

To be clear, this wouldn't be a ban on the entire category of printer cartridges. Specifically, the city is looking at ink cartridges that can't be recycled through reuse, remanufacturing, or in take-back programs. Effectively, they are designed to be thrown away once empty.

The printer industry is quite confusing, where even at a store you can find branded cartridges, third-party compatible clones and even counterfeits. In this instance, LA is trying to regulate the end result, not the brands themselves.

More than a year in the making

This week, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved the creation of an ordinance that would prohibit the sale of single-use printer cartridges within city limits.

The ban was first proposed in 2024 alongside suggested plastic bans for items like single-use vapes and bag clips. At the time, councilmember John Lee said that single-use cartridges are a significant contributor to environmental waste.

"Banning aftermarket clone cartridges is a simple way to keep building on our environmental achievements and bring attention to an issue that has gone unaddressed for too long," Lee said in a press release.

According to city documents, cartridges are tough to recycle because of the plastic, metal and chemicals inside. Additionally, the pots are classified as "regulated waste" because they leach toxic substances into the environment.

This means the city's recycling program can't recycle the cartridges, and even if hazardous waste programs take the cartridges, more than 70% end up in landfills.

As a Los Angeles resident, the plastic bag ban is the easiest comparison. Recently, grocery stores like Safeway or Ralphs offered plastic bags as an option but those have completely disappeared since the ban went into effect. It also means that takeout no longer comes in plastic bags instead restaurants are sending takeaway in paper bags.

Food still comes in plastic containers but often those containers are recyclable or reusable with careful washing.

A ban hasn't gone into effect yet though. LA Sanitation is currently recommending that the ordinance prohibit the sale of single-use ink cartridges whether alone or bundled with a printer. If it goes into effect, it will won't start for at least a year.

Ink options

It will be interesting to see how consumers in LA respond to the ban once the city figures it out. Ink and toner are already some of the most expensive purchases you can make over time.

Our collleagues at TechRadar broke down how confusing ink prices can be in 2024 showing how divergent they can be.

But printer manufacturers are shifting as refillable tank printers are becoming more available. These printers remove the need for single-use cartridges and reduce plastic waste. Ink subscriptions can be tricky, but they do offer convenience and built-in recycling.

If you are looking for a new printer, check out our picks for the best all-in-one printers, portable printers or laser printers.

More from Tom's Guide

• Intel XeSS 3 vs Nvidia DLSS 4 shouldn’t be a fair fight, but my laptop tests say otherwise
• Oops! Google accidentally posted a first look at its unreleased Android PC operating system
• I just tried Apple Creator Studio — and I’m never going back to Adobe

Uncomplicated, straightforward and easy. That's what the best all-in-one printers should be, and exactly why this guide will point you towards the go-to machine for all your printing, copying and scanning needs (along with faxing, if needed).

Whether you need to scan important documents, print letters to loved ones or shipping labels for packages to send off, or quickly make copies of files, the all-in-one printers we've tested and reviewed over the years strive to make your life easier. There are many, though, but I'm here to tell you that, really, there are only a few you need to look at.

If there's one no-fuss printer to put on your radar straight away, it's the Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw II. It does it all: blazing-fast print speeds, easy copy and scanning, and yes, even faxing. Need more options? We've got them, and if you're after more details, our expert testing comes with all the info you need to make the right choice. So, let's find the best all-in-one printer for you.

If you just need a simple way to print documents, photos and everything in between without any scanning, copying or faxing, our guide on the best printers will give you all the options you need.

The best all-in-one printers you can buy today

The best all-in-one printer overall

When it comes down to it, the Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw II is quite simply the only printer you'll ever need. Yes, it can print, scan, copy and fax, but it does it all with a hassle-free setup experience and rapid speeds across the board. When a printer actually gives easy step-by-step instructions on how to fix a paper jam, you know it's a good one.

In our tests, it delivered a five-page text print job in just 11.31 seconds (26.5 pages per minute) and scanned in color in 6.22 seconds, and that's faster than its inkjet competitors. And this 250-capacity printer (plus an extra 150 prints in the middle section) with quick start-up, too, as our reviewer, Nikita, found it effortless to get up and running, with warm-up times as quick as 14 seconds from off. It isn't just speed, as print quality is consistently sharp and detailed, both in color and black and white, and everyday jobs came out looking just as sharp as they did on our screens.

Where the MF753Cdw II pulls ahead of inkjet competitors like the more budget-friendly Canon MegaTank Pixma G3290 is in raw speed and features. You get much faster printing and a true all-in-one experience (there's no faxing on it), but running costs are higher if you print in volume. Against the business-class Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5850, the MF753Cdw II still keeps up on print speed and quality but can’t match those rock-bottom ink costs.

That’s the main compromise here: the per-page price is higher than what you’ll find with most ink tank printers (around 51 cents per color page and 27 cents per mono print). But not by that much, and that shouldn't put you off grabbing this workhorse. If you want a dependable, fuss-free machine for everyday tasks — letters, homework, invoices, you name it — the MF753Cdw II is the best fit for most households.

• Read our full Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw II review

The best value all-in-one printer

Unless you need faxing in your life, this is the all-in-one printer to grab if you're after a reliable machine for excellent prints. The Brother INKvestment MFC-T780DW stands out largely thanks to its exceptionally low ink costs: just 0.3 cent per black page and 0.94 cent per color page based on our lab testing. That's value you can't ignore.

In daily use, the T780DW keeps pace with demanding routines. It prints standard text documents at 12.4 pages per minute (ppm) and handles double-sided text at 6.7 ppm. These speeds put it among the fastest inkjets we've tested for both single and duplex jobs, making it reliable for everything from schoolwork to business invoices.

Print and scan quality are equally reassuring. In our hands-on tests, text and graphics came out crisp and accurate, while color scans preserved detail and clarity.

The main compromise is its 20-sheet automatic document feeder. While fine for light multi-page copying and scanning, if you've got a large batch of documents, it will take some time to do. That, and there's no USB thumb drive port, and don't expect to make double-sided copies or scans via the automatic document feeder (ADF).

In any case, for those who want low running costs and easy printing, the Brother MFC-T780DW will fit in nicely with your home or office.

• Read our full Brother INKvestment MFC-T780DW review

The best all-in-one printer for photos

Whether you're a photographer or just need highly detailed, colorful prints, the Canon MegaTank Pixma G3290 is the all-in-one printer for you. Sure, it may come with fewer additional features, but it excels where it matters: print quality and affordability.

It's a modest printer; it has just one paper tray and no document feeder, and it's not the speediest option. But for home use, it's an excellent choice. Expect this to deliver reliable, high-quality prints with the versatility to do documents, photos and double-sided print jobs. Speaking of, those graphics prints and glossy photos will come out with plenty of details and natural, accurate colors.

While the Canon MegaTank Pixma G3290 prints at pretty average speeds, it actually excels at double-sided documents. In our testing, it printed single-sided pages at an average of 9.2 pages per minute, but double-sided text documents that cranked up to 7.2 pages per minute, the fastest duplex print speed we've recorded of any recent ink tank printers.

And thanks to its easy setup process, robust wireless support (this thing can print via Wi-Fi or a smartphone app) and low ink costs (we estimate color prints cost roughly 0.9 cents per page, significantly lower than the 1.9 cent per page category average), I recommend the Canon MegaTank Pixma G3290 for anyone seeking an affordable, reliable ink all-in-one printer, especially for photo printing.

• Read our full Canon MegaTank Pixma G3290 review

The best all-in-one printer for business

I recommend the Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5850 as the best all-in-one for business because it combines impressively low ink costs with a device capable of handling more than 3,000 pages per month.

And the EcoTank design uses refillable ink tanks and comes with enough spare ink bottles to print thousands of pages. The printer can scan, copy and fax, uses dual 250-page paper cassettes and has a 50-sheet automatic document feeder.

In our timed printer tests, the Epson ET-5850 delivered some of the fastest printing we've seen, and produced crisp, clear text that nearly rivals laser printer quality. That same quick, high-quality performance was also seen in copying and scanning, making it the printer of choice for offices that need a full-featured multifunction printer.

But I think the real draw is the ink savings, extremely low per-page costs of 0.4 cents for text pages, and 1.6 cents per color page. The upfront price may be high, but the combination of quality, features and super-low operating expenses makes this one of the best investments you can make for your office.

• Read our full Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5850 review

Also tested

How to choose the best all-in-one printer for you

Not sure which all-in-one printer to buy? No worries, I'm here to help.

Obviously, you want a printer that performs well, so all of our reviews and rankings discuss a printer's output quality and speed, but there's more to an all-in-one printer than just how quickly it can crank out documents.

Price: All-in-one printers sell for as little as $60 (£45/AU$90) for inkjet models, and $150 (£170/AU$200) for laser printers, with high-end models costing hundreds of dollars, but offering better print quality, durability, and features. And don’t forget ink and toner, which can range from 1-5 cents per page for basic documents (photos will cost more).

Inkjet or Laser: Next, it helps to determine whether you need an inkjet or a laser printer. Inkjet printers are generally better suited to producing the full range of colors, making them better suited to printing graphics and photos. Laser printers can quickly produce professional-looking text documents, often at a lower cost per page.

Home or Office: Home and office printers differ greatly in their handling of large print volumes. Some printers are built to offer great quality and value for the home user who prints a few pages a week, while others are built for busy offices where multiple users print dozens or hundreds of pages every day. Find the one that’s right for you to avoid paying for features you don’t need.

Use case: Additional use cases, like photo printing, are addressed in our selections above, while specific features are discussed in every printer review we do. Portable printing is another niche area where the right printer can make a world of difference.

Operating expenses: Finally, consider the cost per page. Whether it’s using ink cartridges or toner, printers cost money over time. Check our reviews for a breakdown of the costs to print individual pages as a good measure of how expensive operating costs will be over the life of the printer.

Some companies even offer subscription services that save you money while sending you ink just in time to replace that empty cartridge. Learn more in our article HP Instant Ink vs. Canon vs. Epson: Are ink subscriptions worth it?

How we test the best all-in-one printers

To help you find best all-in-one printer, we put each model through an extensive range of printer tests, including timed prints of text, mixed text and graphics and color photos. The resulting prints are carefully examined for errors and issues, and compared with samples from other printers to determine the print quality.

We time every test print to see how quickly the machine handles document printing, and closely examine the finished product to determine how well different printing tasks are handled.

We also test the scanning and copying functions of the printer, timing how quickly it captures a page and comparing the results to the original images to determine how well it captures color and detail.

To measure the cost of owning and operating a printer, we look at the current street price of ink refills and the estimated number of pages that each cartridge can produce, and calculate the cost for printing a single page.

The Canon MegaTank Pixma G3290 ($249) is an entry-level ink tank printer that offers basic features and very low ink costs. It is outfitted with four ink tanks, comes with four bottles of ink and has a flat-bed scanner for copying and scanning.

The duplexer enables two-sided printing, but otherwise this Canon foregoes additional features such as a second paper tray, a USB thumb drive port or an automatic document feeder.

Yet this printer remains versatile and easy to print from despite its frugal design. You can connect to this MegaTank via the USB port, wireless, and Wi-Fi Direct. Mobile devices can use the Canon Print app to perform print, scanning and copy functions.

In our tests, the MegaTank G3290 turned in consistent speeds and image quality. It's no speed demon, but neither does it have an Achilles' heel. The Pixma G3290 can copy documents up to 8.5 x 11.7 inches, make borderless prints up to letter size, and has a duty cycle of up to 3,000 pages per month.

For delivering that level of reliable workhorse performance with such low ink costs, this Canon is one of the best printers you can buy if you're on a budget. In this Canon MegaTank Pixma G3290 review I'll show you why.

Canon MegaTank Pixma G3290 review: Design

The G3290 has a 2.7-inch LCD touchscreen on its control panel, which can be angled upward roughly 45 degrees. There are physical buttons for home, back, monochrome copy/scan and color copy/scan, as well as a stop button. The LCD offers four scene selections: standard, work, study and lifestyle (pattern papers, e.g.).

The LCD responded well to input in our testing, but menu navigation wasn't always ideal. For example, using the LCD to change paper size required scrolling past many sizes I will never use, and some I don't even know. Locating my preferred print sizes was made less intuitive because they were identified by multiple names, such as KG/4"x6" (10x15). However, after using 4 x 6-inch paper, this paper size setting showed up at the top of the menu list.

The paper tray can hold up to 100 sheets of paper or 20 sheets of photo paper. The paper tray is at the back of the unit; you raise a support and load paper vertically. This adds a few inches in height and depth to the printer. The G3290 measures 16.4 x 14.3 x 7 inches closed up for shipping, and measures 16.4 x 21.9 x 10.6 inches with the output tray and input support extended. This MegaTank model weighs 14.2 pounds.

The black ink tank is to the left of the control panel. The three color ink tanks are to the right. Windows into the ink tanks allow you to see the ink levels.

Canon MegaTank Pixma G3290 review: Print speed

The MegaTank Pixma G3290 was consistent in our speed tests. Neither blisteringly fast nor agonizingly slow, the G3290 tended to perform at roughly average speeds. It printed our five-page text document in 32.8 seconds, or 9.2 pages per minute (ppm). This was faster than the similarly outfitted Epson EcoTank ET-2850, at 8.7 ppm, though slightly slower than the category average of 9.8 ppm for the ink tank models we've tested.

The G3290 printed two-sided text documents quickly at 7.2 ppm, which was the fastest duplexer speed amongst recently tested ink tank models. This was a little faster than the Epson ET-2850, at 6.5 ppm, and significantly faster than the category average duplex speed of 5.5 ppm.

The Canon G3290 printed our six-page PDF of mixed text and color graphics in 2 minutes and 42 seconds, or 2.2 ppm. The Epson ET-2850 was faster, at 2.7 ppm, and ink tank models in general have averaged 3 ppm.

Using its duplexer, the G3290 printed the same color PDF at 1.9 ppm, which is the slowest time for recently tested ink tank printers—but not by much. The Epson ET-2850 made the same two-sided print at 2.4 ppm; the category average is 2.5 ppm.

The G3290 took 4 minutes and 12 seconds to make a high-resolution 8 x 10-inch glossy photo print. This was only 10 seconds slower than the category average. The Epson ET-2850 was significantly slower, taking just over 6 minutes to make the same print.

Canon MegaTank Pixma G3290 review: Copy and scan speed

The MegaTank G3290 made copies at roughly average speeds. It took 27.5 seconds to make a color copy, compared to the category average of 25.3 seconds. Similarly, black-and-white copies took 12.5 seconds on average to produce, compared to the average of 11.4 seconds for ink tank models.

The G3290 was relatively quick to scan in color, but slower than average at scanning and saving in grayscale or black-and-white (see the Software section for more details). Making a 600 dpi scan to JPEG format was quick, taking 1 minute and 5 seconds. The category average, by contrast, was slower, at 1 minute and 23 seconds.

Scanning in black-and-white at 300 dpi to PDF format took 21.8 seconds. The average for ink tank models is a much quicker 14.4 seconds.

Canon MegaTank Pixma G3290 review: Print quality

The MegaTank G3290 makes attractive text document prints. Letterforms look fairly sharp and sleek. The text looked sufficiently dark, though not quite the darkest we've seen. Some duplex prints had a top line of slightly misaligned text.

Graphics prints were similarly attractive. Colors looked natural and adequately saturated. Details in graphics were reproduced well. The quality on duplex prints was comparable. However, there was some very slight banding in some flat areas, and some black boxes with white text printed with a slightly different background shade than the surrounding area, which had matched in single-sided prints.

Glossy photos printed with well saturated colors and plenty of details. Dark shadow areas retained fine details rather than get blocked up, skin tones looked natural, and images had a warm appearance overall.

Copy quality was good overall. Copies of magazine pages were reproduced with sharp-looking text. Copies of a laser print of a text document, however, had letterforms that looked a little thick, having lost their sleekness. Reproductions of graphics were very attractive and retained the colors and details in the original.

In particular, copies of photographic prints were impressive. Most copies of professional photo prints looked nearly as sharp as the original, and were faithful to the color tint and saturation. Only one photo print copy looked subpar, losing some mid tones, which gave the photo a slightly unnatural and flattened appearance.

Scans of photographs and documents were faithful to the originals. Photo scans looked attractive, with well saturated colors that looked natural and warm overall. Scans also retained fine details in dark shadow areas.

Canon MegaTank Pixma G3290 review: Ink cost and yield

The MegaTank G3290 delivers bargain ink costs of just 0.4 cents per text page, which is the category average. On color pages, however, this printer offers drastic savings of 0.9 cents per color page—significantly lower than the category average of 1.9 cents.

A bottle of the pigment-based black ink costs $21.99. The three dye-based color inks cost $13.99 each. The bottles of ink last an estimated 6,000 text pages or 7,700 color pages.

Canon MegaTank Pixma G3290 review: Setup and software

Packing material was minimal, and I quickly had this MegaTank out of the box and ready to set up. The printed setup guide instructs you to plug in the printer and to follow the instructions on the LCD.

After installing the two printheads (black and color), the LCD's on-screen animation depicted how to unlatch the cover of the carriage in order to install the printheads. But, I did not find the animation totally clear; it took some tinkering to figure it out. Then, I poured the inks into their respective well, which was easy. The LCD said it would take about seven minutes for the printer to complete the setup process. Thereafter, screen displayed a URL for setting up the printer with a computer or smart phone. From the web page, I downloaded the software to my Windows 10 PC. It's called Canon Print, but it also offers scanning functionality.

Putting the G3290 on my network was simple. I used the WPS method, which took a few menu steps on the control panel LCD and a press of the WPS button on my router.

Basic copy and scan functions can be performed from the control panel of the G3290, using the dedicated buttons and LCD menu. When my original photo matched the loaded paper, all went well. But, when I tried copying a 5 x 7-inch photo print to 4 x 6-inch photo paper, I did not get a print with the entire image shrunken to fit. The LCD had not offered a choice to fit the entire image or crop; the G3290 simply cropped the image. It did offer an on-screen preview, however. In addition, you can scan multiple photos at one time. The LCD had a tendency to say that the G3290 had failed to correct a slanted photo or document, however, even when I had placed it snuggly in the upper corner, as instructed.

The scanning software in Windows 10 is basic. I did not find a way to customize settings on my PC and set up shortcuts for various document types. As a result, I had to make these selections with each scan. The LCD, however, does offer a little customization; there are four "scenes" to choose from: standard, work, study, and lifestyle. Standard has on-screen buttons for print, copy and scan. Work has buttons for standard copy, two-sided copy, and save to computer. Lifestyle offers three print functions: wallpaper-like patterns, templates, and print from cloud.

Canon Print software asks you to set the type of the original before scanning, either document or photo. But you can't select color or black-and-white scanning—you make this choice when saving the scan, in color, grayscale, or true black-and-white. When scanning from the G3290's control panel, pressing the "black" copy/scan button produced a grayscale JPG or PDF file.

The latest version of the Canon Print iOS app requires iOS 16. However, you can still use a previous version of the app with an older device, such as my iPhone 7, which runs iOS 15. Using the Canon Print app you can print, scan, store to the cloud, and make a smartphone copy (as opposed to scanning on the flatbed). This last feature I am typically skeptical of, but the app did a good job in my testing. Using the flatbed scanner, the G3290 made a copy of a magazine page that was attractive, but had areas where text was distorted because the slightly wrinkled page did not press firmly down on the glass (the scanner lid is lightweight). However, using the Canon Print app, the resulting copy had text in these same areas that was less blurred than in the flatbed copy. In both cases, graphics looked attractive and colorful, and text was moderately, but not razor-, sharp.

The MegaTank G3290 starts up in 12 seconds, which is a few seconds faster than the category average.

Canon MegaTank Pixma G3290 review: Verdict

The Canon MegaTank Pixma G3290 offers a fair number of features for a bargain price, making it a good choice for those who need an all-in-one printer without a lot of frills.

This ink tank model performs consistently well, delivers very low ink costs, and includes a duplexer. The G3290 creates high-quality prints, copies and scans. Although the included software is basic, solid performance and high image quality make this MegaTank model worth a serious look, especially for students and folks on a budget.

In a seemingly all-digital world, we often overlook the one tool that brings our ideas from a device’s screen to our hands. Today’s printers are better designed to improve our workflows rather than complicate them. The 2025 lineup of printers from Canon, for example, is specifically tailored to meet the needs of the user. Whether you’re a big business architect printing large blueprints or a small artist looking for high-quality prints of your work, there’s a Canon printer designed for you.

Print museum-grade images from your own studio

For artists, photographers, and designers, producing high-quality, highly pigmented prints on a variety of paper types is imperative to having your work seen. Canon has long been a favorite brand of printers for meeting those needs, and its latest in photo printing continues to build on that hard-earned trust by providing professional, large-format printing with accurate color matching.

The Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-200S, PRO-310, and PRO-1100 photo printers are must-haves for the print needs of creatives, as these printers provide museum-grade prints with intense color precision and outstanding detail. The imagePROGRAF line of printers is compatible with a wide array of paper finishes, including glossy, matte, and textured, and even supports large-format, borderless printing.

Sharing your photos or illustrations through art galleries and public showings, along with selling high-quality prints, is an exceptional way to grow and expand your creative business. Canon’s imagePROGRAF printer series can allow you to provide those prints from your very own studio, without having to rely on a third-party printing service that may not be as color accurate.

The imagePROGRAF series isn’t limited to artists and creatives, either. The Canon imagePROGRAF TC-21M All-in-One large format printer is an excellent choice for construction professionals, architects, and engineers who may need to produce high-quality blueprints and ultra-accurate CAD prints, or scan larger documents. Despite its large-format printing functionality, this printer is surprisingly compact and features just a 24-inch footprint, making it ideal for smaller offices with big printing needs.

Print to your heart’s content with a low cost-per-page

Printing fees can be costly, not just for artists but also for remote workers and educators. If you’re looking to cut the cost of high-volume printing, Canon’s got just the tool for that, as well. The Canon MegaTank GX7120 and GX6120 Inkjet All-in-One printer line features refillable MegaTank ink tanks that produce high-volumes of pages at a low cost-per-page output, saving you money and still getting the job done.

The MegaTank lineup also offers unique functions like wireless and mobile printing support. No more needing to run down to the office to print that new worksheet for your students if you are a teacher. Instead, send the file to print to a Canon MegaTank from your phone or laptop right there in the room. It doesn’t get more convenient.

The Canon MegaTank also offers advanced security features, so it can be used safely in a business or educational setting. Even if you’re working from home, your scanning and printing are safe and secure. Not all printing takes place at home, though, so what happens if you need something equally secure but a little more portable than a standard printer?

Canon has that covered, too, with the Canon PIXMA TR160 Portable Wireless Printer, a lightweight, ultraportable printer with wireless options that is specifically engineered to print on the go. Perfect for sales reps, consultants, and real estate agents who may need to produce documents quickly without heading back to a home office, the PIXMA TR160 can reliably print borderless photos and crisp documents alike. For those digital nomads who may not always have a reliable power source on hand when the need to print arises, an optional battery is also available.

Printers engineered for precisely for your workflow

Canon’s teams have been hard at work designing precision-engineered printing devices that can enhance and improve the workflows of various professions. Regardless of whether you’re working solo at home, gearing up for your first art gallery exhibit, or printing massive blueprints for a major construction project, there is a Canon printer capable of producing the high-quality, crisp, clean prints that you need.

How often have you been deep into a gaming session to discover that your pizza has gone cold? Rarely?

If you find yourself in that situation, Pizza Hut Canada has what you need with the new PIZZAWRMR (via Creative Bloq). It's a 3D-printed model that uses the heat exhaust from your PlayStation 5 to keep your pizza hot.

The model is free to download, but you must fire up one of the best 3D printers to get it. We should note that your printer needs to have a build volume of 15 x 15 inches, at a minimum, to accommodate the warmer. It does rule out many of our recommended 3D printers based on size unless you're okay with cutting the model up. We recommend trying the Prusa XL, a larger version of the beginner-friendly Prusa Mini+.

Usually, when companies post silly products on their social media accounts, there is no way that they become a reality — looking at that KFC gaming console.

The PIZZAWRMR will work best with the standard PS5. However, the PDF with the STL files says it should work on a PS5 Slim. There is no word on whether or not it can handle the PS5 Pro or Xbox Series X|S.

The model is printed in separate parts with STL files for the body, lid, manifold and left and right stands. It's not clear from anything released by Pizza Hut how long the print is expected to take, but based on the size and number of parts, we imagine this is a multi-day print. Also, Pizza Hut Canada recommends using food-safe materials in your print. They specifically mention PLA plastic. To prohibit grease and foil from getting everywhere, Pizza Hut recommends placing a foil tray that measures 34 x 23 x 2.5 cm in the warmer.

As for the pizza holder itself, it doesn't look like it will hold an entire pizza together, but instead, it seems like it can hold a small pizza split up.

Based on the design, we have to say this looks like it could work. However, as a general rule, you don't want foodstuffs near your gaming console or controllers. Who wants a greasy DualSense or Nacon Revolution 5 Pro? Also, we don't want to block heat exhaust from our electronics, even those with reliable heat sinks installed.

Still, I want to try it...

More from Tom's Guide

• Black Friday PS5 deals at Amazon — here’s 12 picks I’d buy with my own money
• I test headphones for a living and these are the best Black Friday headphone deals live now
• 7 top new movies this week on Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus and more (Nov. 12-18)

It's difficult choosing a printer. 

I would know, I've been reviewing printers professionally for two decades. But if you follow these steps when evaluating potential models, you can find a good bargain that's just the right mix of features and performance.

Many printers today are multifunction devices (also known as all-in-ones) that incorporate a flatbed scanner. This enables them to scan and make copies. Additional features include a duplexer for making two-sided prints and copies, and an automatic document feeder (ADF) for making copies and scans of multipage documents. 

These advanced features tend to add to a model's initial price, however, so it's important to only pay for models that do what you want well. After identifying which features are must-haves for you, have a look at our test results—just because a feature sounds great doesn't its performs well. Slow performance or subpar image quality is a big disappointment.

Performance testing conducted by Tom's Guide helps us figure out which are the best printers on the market, and it's a great resource to weed out bad apples and put you on a path to the perfect printer for your needs. Put simply, we put them through their paces so you don't have to — find more details in the Image Quality and Performance sections below.

Ink costs

After identifying your most important features, compare ink costs.

Inkjet printers are notorious for their expensive ink—but refillable ink tanks and very high yield ink cartridges are changing that equation, delivering much lower ink costs than traditional ink cartridges. Ink tank models tend to cost more up front. But they also tend to come with plenty of ink in the box compared to lower cost models that include only starter cartridges with low page yields. For example, the Epson EcoTank ET-5850 comes with nearly $200 worth of of ink—enough to print 15,000 pages of text or 12,000 color pages. So, let's do some quick math.

Whether a pricier ink tank model is worth it for you, depends on how much you print. Comparing recently tested high-yield models versus lower priced printers, recouping the higher purchase price will likely take at least a thousand pages. How many pages do you print in a month?

Here's one example: The Epson EcoTank ET-4760 ($449 when reviewed) versus the Brother INKvestment MFC-J4535DW ($250). The Epson (which uses refillable ink tanks) offers low costs per page of just 0.3 cents (text) and 0.9 cents (color). The Brother (which uses very high-yield ink cartridges) also has low costs per page of 1.1 cents (text) and 6 cents (color). 

To make up the $199 price premium of the Epson ET-4760, you'd need to print almost 25,000 text pages or nearly 4,000 color pages.

By comparison, most inkjet printers have much higher costs per page. Models we've tested—even when using their high-yield ink cartridges—average 6.2 cents (text) and 15.9 cents (color) per page. Even at that cost per color page, you'd print 2,000 pages on the Epson ET-4760 before recouping a $300 premium over a $150 model that uses standard ink cartridges.

Image quality

Differences in print quality are much less dramatic today then they were in years past. These days, most inkjet printers are able to print both attractive documents with fairly sharp text and appealing graphics on plain paper, as well as attractive photos on glossy paper. The days of testing printers that takes eons to produce a laughably bad photo print are long forgotten. 

Still, these subtle differences in color accuracy, saturation and fine details are enough to sway a purchasing decision. That's why at Tom's Guide we put printers through a full battery of tests—to take the guesswork out of choosing the right printer for you.

For example, a pitfall for some models is duplex printing. Some models make two-sided prints that are less attractive than their single-sided prints, with fuzzier text and less-detailed graphics. Sometimes, this lower quality printing only occurred on the backside of our test prints and copies. Similarly, the biggest overall differences in image quality tend to be found in copies, not prints. So, if it's office equipment you're looking for, be sure to check our ratings on copy quality.

Performance

Most printers are not speedy at every task. Many of them perform well on some jobs, but very few are fast across the board. You should focus on what type of printing you'll do most, and prioritize that performance. Speed ratings from manufacturers aren't realistic, however, which is why Tom's Guide tests every printer with the same set of documents and photos—so they're directly comparable, and provide real-world results.

We wouldn't test them if we didn't have to. But models from the same manufacturer often turn in dramatically different results in our tests. For example, the $250 Brother MFC-J4535DW printed a 4x6-inch photo at high resolution in just 1 minute and 8 seconds. Meanwhile, the $130 Brother MFC-J1205w took more than three times as long, taking nearly 4 minutes to print the same snapshot.

Similarly, two-sided printing varies greatly. While the Canon Pixma TS702a ($130) printed two-sided text documents at a modest 3.1 pages per minute (ppm), the Brother MFC-J4535DW ($250) spat them out more than three times faster, at 10.7 ppm.

Features

Today's all-in-one's are highly sophisticated machines that offer variety of capabilities. There are so many models out there—but don't get overwhelmed. Zero in on one or two features that are most important to you and make sure they'll perform as promised.

If you will operate your printer from a PC, there's no need to pay for a touchscreen or for an excess of dedicated buttons on the control panel. But if standalone operation is your preference, be sure it won't be frustrating. I've reviewed models with kludgy touchscreens and menus that aren't intuitive. Other models have physical buttons for copying that are more convenient than having to navigate a menu.

And, don't forget about setup and software. The HP Envy Inspire 7955e ($270), for example, proved difficult to set up wirelessly, and its accompanying HP Smart software posed some frustrating limitations.

Not all software packages and mobile phone apps are equal. One feature I found lacking in quality is a copy feature I first tested in the iOS HP Smart app—but it's really just taking a photo and then printing the result. The Canon iOS Print app offers this same feature, with only passable results. But if you buy a single function printer with no scanner bed, it's better than nothing.

One last potential pitfall is scanning software. I've uncovered bad results in the scanning software included with some Brother and Epson models. The issue was with the auto cropping feature—some documents fooled the software into cropping the scan to a small portion of the image. This requires you to manually select a document size. If your document is of an unconventional size, you'll need to select a size larger than your document, and then manually crop the scan yourself.

The bottom line

Finding a printer that's both a bargain and a solid performer is easier than you might think. At Tom's Guide, we break down the pros and the cons, uncover the weaknesses, and highlight the strengths. I spend hours running printers through all the tasks that make offices run and printing photos fun.

We also spell out the ink costs so you don't learn an expensive lesson the hard way. But be sure to gauge your print volume. If you only print a modest amount, spending a lot of money for really low costs per page may not pay off for a really long time.

More from Tom's Guide

• How to find the best cheap printer money can buy
• My favorite new to Netflix movies that you should watch
• These are the best Canon printers around right now

Have you ever wanted to be your own action figure? I had the chance to do so at CES, where Hasbro was demoing its Selfie Series, which lets you put your 3D-printed head atop a Ghostbuster, Star Wars, Power Ranger, GI Joe, or Marvel action figure for $60. 

Hasbro partnered with the 3D printing company Formlabs (which makes some of the models on our best 3D printers list) to make customized action figures with some of the most valuable IP out there. 

So, is it worth spending $60 to get a personalized action figure for you or someone else? I went through the whole process, so you can see the results for yourself.

It starts with an app...

Here's how it works: Within the Hasbro Pulse app (Android, iOS), you scan your face by turning your head to the right and left; it's a bit like setting up Face ID with an iPhone. 

Then, the app generates a digital image of your head. From there, a series of screens lets you adjust your skin tone, and then select the action figure you'd like to be. 

At the moment, you can choose from the following, which is somewhat limited, but not too shabby considering the service started this past fall.

Star Wars — Mandalorian, Storm Trooper, X-Wing pilot, or Princess Leia

Marvel Legends — Spider-Man, Iron Man, Black Panther, or Black Widow

Power Rangers — Red or the Pink ranger

GI Joe — Snake Eyes or Scarlett

Ghostbusters — Male or a female Ghostbuster

Despite my lifelong affinity for Star Wars, I opted to go with the Ghostbuster body, as I had received the Ecto-1 Lego kit as a Christmas present, and thought that it would complement it nicely. (As an aside: The Ecto-1 Lego kit is a pretty fantastic build, with some really clever moving parts. Thanks to my wife and sister for getting it for me!) The Ghostbuster figure also comes with some nice accessories, including a proton pack and a P.K.E meter. 

A note to would-be Stormtroopers, Mandalorians, Iron Men, Spiders-Man and Black Panthers: Those figures don't come with helmets, so you don't necessarily get the full effect of the whole outfit. As you're going through the process, you can see what accessories each figure comes with. 

Next, you choose your hairstyle, of which there are 48 to choose from, as well as five different hair colors. After, you can give yourself facial hair, and choose its style and color.

And then you wait...

Then, go ahead and order it. At CES, I was told the typical turnaround is about 45 days; it took a slightly shorter amount of time to get to me (mine arrived in late January), but when I went through the process of making a new action figure on Feb. 9, it said that the estimated delivery would be March 26. 

So, if you're planning to give this as a gift to someone (you can send it as a gift code via the Hasbro Pulse app), just let them know that it'll be a while before they receive the finished product.

The results

And when it arrived? It had a passing resemblance to me, in that it had hair and a beard. The color of both was a bit lighter than my actual hair color, but ultimately, I think it looked more like Jake Gyllenhaal than myself. Which may not be a bad thing. 

Still, there's lots of great detail in the costume itself, and the figurine is very adjustable. All of the joints are articulated, so you can pose it in just about any way you choose. The only quibble (aside from the likeness) is that the hands had trouble keeping the proton gun in place. 

If you're worried about Hasbro saving your face data, a company rep told The Verge that it would be deleted 60 days after the ship date of your action figure. 

Would I get this as a gift for someone? Definitely. I have one cousin who has a basement full of action figures, bobbleheads, and other assorted toys for whom this would be a perfect present. I wish it would look a bit more like me, but the novelty of it outweighs the lack of verisimilitude. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to make like Dark Helmet and play with my dolls again.

Look, this wouldn't be much of a guide to buying the best printers if I just told you to get the Brother INKvestment MFC-T780DW. I mean, if you just need to print, copy and scan documents with great print quality and low ink costs, then that's the very printer you'll be looking for (and you can see why in our in-depth review).

But here at Tom's Guide, we put the dozens of printers we review each year through a series of tests to see how fast, capable and, most importantly, affordable they are. You see, there are printers that are better for day-to-day work, but others offer up incredible detail for photo printing or the space for scanning those lengthy documents.

That's why I'm here to point you towards a variety of options to sort your printing needs. So, no more messy prints, runaway ink costs and terrible interfaces. Just mean, clean printing machines (that scan and copy, too). Let's take the pain out of printing with our top recommendations on the best printers around.

• View our Canon promo codes for a 10% discount

The best printers you can buy now

The best printer overall

The Brother INKvestment MFC-T780DW is our top all-around printer pick for most homes and small offices, thanks to its exceptionally low running costs, just 0.3 cent per text page and under a penny per color page, and its snappy print speeds. When a printer produces a five-page text document in just 24.2 seconds, you know it's just the machine to get the job done.

When it comes to print quality, the MFC-T780DW delivers sharp text and attractive graphics, though text tends to be slightly lighter than what you’d see from a laser printer. The output on glossy photo paper looks vibrant and detailed, a strong showing for a printer that isn’t marketed as photo-centric.

Beyond printing, the MFC-T780DW proves itself as a true multifunction machine. Its four-tank ink system keeps you prepared for any print job, and scanning is notably fast: a 600 dpi color scan to JPEG took just over 50 seconds in our testing, well ahead of the category average. These features make it a reliable option for scanning, copying, and general document handling.

Compared to other models in this price range, the MFC-T780DW holds its own, as its per-page ink costs even rival those of the Brother HL-L2390DW. While the HP Smart Tank 760 can print photos faster, the MFC-T780DW’s balance of low ink costs and consistent print quality makes it the better all-purpose choice. The Canon Pixma TR8620 leads in photo output with its 5-ink system, but the MFC-T780DW keeps ongoing expenses lower and is better suited for regular office work.

There are some trade-offs. The automatic document feeder holds only 20 sheets, which might be limiting for higher-volume users. The small, simple LCD lacks the convenience of a touchscreen, and setup can be finicky. Wireless connections sometimes require a manual reset, and filling the ink tanks may get messy. That being said, the Brother INKvestment MFC-T780DW still stands out for anyone after dependable, cost-effective printing and scanning.

• Read our full Brother INKvestment MFC-T780DW review

The best budget printer

The Canon MegaTank Pixma G3290 is an ink tank all-in-one that delivers great prints with low ink costs and an affordable up-front price, making it my top recommendation for folks seeking a great budget printer.

Of course, you shouldn't expect a lot of bells and whistles on this entry-level all-in-one. It has no document feeder and only one paper tray, plus the speed of copies and prints is pretty average, so you won't be flying through big print jobs.

But if you don't need to be printing all the time, this is a great choice because it delivers what most of us are looking for in a great all-in-one: reliable, high-quality prints with the versatility to do documents, photos and double-sided print jobs.

In our testing, this machine managed to print an average of 9.2 pages per minute, which is pretty on par with the competition. But when printing double-sided text documents that cranked up to 7.2 pages per minute, the fastest duplex print speed we've recorded of any recent ink tank printers.

And thanks to its easy setup process, robust wireless support (this thing can print via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or a smartphone app) and low ink costs (we estimate color prints cost roughly 0.9 cents per page, significantly lower than the 1.9 cent per page category average), this is a great printer for anyone seeking a cheap, reliable ink printer for photos and documents.

• Read our full Canon MegaTank Pixma G3290 review

The best printer for students

The HP Smart Tank 7602 is a wireless multifunction printer that we regularly recommend as the best printer for students (most of the time) because it's easy to set up and prints good-quality prints quickly, with very low ink costs.

I know because our printer expert exhaustively tested it himself in his own home, and the HP Smart Tank 7602 surprised him by printing an 8x-10-inch glossy photo at high resolution in under 2 minutes, which is more than twice as fast as the category average (4 minutes 1 second).

It also scans and prints quite quickly, and is speedy at kicking out color and black-and-white documents. However, printed scans often showed small discolorations and pixelations, so this isn't a great printer for photojournalism students or others who prize perfection in prints.

However, our reviewer definitely had some hassles when trying to set up the printer via its included HP Smart software. You can connect the printer to a PC via either USB, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, and unfortunately, you'll need a (free) HP Smart account to take full advantage of all the printer's features.

Still, despite these setup headaches, this printer is our top recommendation for students because of its ease of use, good print quality and low ink costs.

• Read our full HP Smart Tank 7602 review

The best photo printer

Photographers can see their work in fine detail on screens, but it's all for naught if the quality and colors don't match once it's printed out. That's where the Canon PIXMA Pro-200S comes in. It's our top recommendation for photo enthusiasts who want to print gallery-worthy images at home.

With its wide-format support up to A3+ and an 8-ink dye system (double the ink tanks of any we've tested), it delivers vibrant color accuracy and flexibility for everything from panoramic landscapes to finely detailed portraits.

In our hands-on tests, the Pro-200S delivered images with remarkably true-to-life greens and bright blues that feel almost textured, details that often get lost on lesser printers. Fine textures in skin and foliage held up beautifully, and color transitions were smooth, making this an excellent choice for anyone obsessed with faithful photographic reproduction.

And it won't be slow printing off your masterpieces, either. On A3 Pro luster paper, the Pro-200S turned out borderless prints in just over a minute. Even when pushed to the highest quality mode, times stayed under four minutes, making it a fine choice for batch printing.

The Pro-200S isn’t perfect for everyone. Wi-Fi setup can be a little fiddly, and ink costs are higher than document-centric printers, especially if you print lots of large photos. Mono page yield isn't the best, so it’s not a great fit for heavy office use. But for photographers who care most about image quality and print flexibility, these trade-offs are worth it.

• Read our full Canon PIXMA Pro-200S review

The best all-in-one printer

If you just want a printer that does it all, and will last you for any printing jobs for years to come, the Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw II is the printer for you, offering up true all-in-one functionality with print, copy, scan and fax in a single device and a generous 250-sheet main paper tray.

Everyday tasks feel streamlined on this machine. The 5-inch touchscreen is responsive and intuitive, simplifying everything from walk-up copying to complex scan jobs. More impressively, print quality impressed us across the board: text was sharp in black and white, and color documents showed plenty of detail and vibrancy.

It's easy to set up, too, which means none of those typical printer pain points. As in, the touchscreen actually makes resolving paper jams much less of a hassle, guiding you step by step. Now that's a welcome feature. But you're also getting rapid print speeds here. In our lab tests, it printed a five-page text document in 11.31 seconds, equivalent to 26.5 pages per minute, meaning you'll be printing out documents on the fly.

If you’re weighing cost efficiency, the Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw II is on the more expensive end with its pricier running costs. It's also heavy, so it's the type of printer that you'll want to stay in one spot in your home or office. In the grand scheme of how well this printer performs, though, those are only small nuisances.

From the blazing-fast print speeds to the sharp print quality it offers, the Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw II is one reliable laser printer that's hard to pass up, especially for homes or offices that need a workhorse for all printing needs.

• Read our full Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw II review

Also tested

There are lots of other great printers out there that don't quite have what it takes to knock any of our best printers off their perch. But it's awfully close, and when we test and review a printer that's nearly good enough to earn a spot on this list, you should know about it.

If you're after more printers to suit your needs, check out the other models we've tested.

• ^ Back to the top

How to choose the best printer for you

Finding the right printer starts with defining what you need that printer to do. There's a drastic difference between a large multifunction printer that will copy, scan and fax, and a pocket-sized photo printer that's perfect for printing snapshots on the go. The best place to start is to narrow down what functions you want and what aspects of printing are most important to you.

Inkjet or Laser: Inkjet printers are generally better at producing the full range of colors, making them more suited for printing graphics and photos. Laser printers, on the other hand, can quickly produce professional-looking text documents, often at a lower cost per page. Three ways to cut printing costs to a minimum include: Switching to a laser printer, opting for a tank-based inkjet printer or signing up for a subscription ink service. (See our article Inkjet vs. Laser: Which printer is right for you? to learn more.)

All-in-One printers offer more than just printing, with built-in scanners that can scan and copy everything from forms to photos. Some (but not all) will also have fax capability.

Photo printing is a separate concern, requiring support for printing on glossy paper, handling different photo paper sizes and sometimes requiring additional (and potentially expensive) inks to deliver better print quality.

Portable printing is all about mobility. Compact designs are paired with batteries and sometimes exotic print technologies to let you print from a hotel room, in your car, or even out at the beach.

• ^ Back to the top

Frequently Asked Questions

• ^ Back to the top

How we test the best printers

Every printer we review is extensively tested to give us a clear idea of how well it performs, in terms of print capability, general ease of use and expense over time. Our testing procedures include timed print tests to determine print speeds, with a set of standardized documents that have a mix of text and graphics and color photos.

Every print is examined and compared, with errors and print problems noted in the review and overall quality measured against the other printers on the market.

We also test the scanning and copying functions (when they are offered), timing how quickly it captures a page and comparing the results to the original images to determine how well it captures color and detail.

To measure the cost of owning and operating a printer, we look at the current street price of ink refills and the estimated number of pages that each cartridge can produce, and calculate the cost for printing a single page.

These specific tests are adapted as needed to handle all sorts of printers, from monochrome laser printers and portable snapshot printers to full-featured all-in-one inkjets. Wherever possible, we make sure that the tests are done in such a way that they can not only be compared within a specific category, but also across all printer types generally.

For more information on our testing process, check out our guide to how we test.

• ^ Back to the top

When you imagine a printer you probably think of a big boxy machine on a desk, but nowadays many are built to be used on the go—and the best portable printers don't feel like a downgrade or a compromise.

I know because my team and I review the best printers from the top manufacturers (Brother, Canon, Epson, HP and more) every year and I keep an eye peeled for the best portable printers so I can compile them here in one easy-to-read buying guide.

In a hurry and don't want to read the whole thing? Just know I typically recommend the HP OfficeJet 250 as the best portable printer for most people because it offers the functionality of a full printer (including copying and scanning) in a package that fits in a backpack.

But it is a bit heavier and expensive than many portable printers, and if you just want a cheaper option for printing documents and photos I recommend the Canon Pixma TR150 because it does both fairly well at a great price, making it one of the best values in portable printers around. If you can't find the TR150 model on sale, snag the newer TR160 version—it's just as good.

If you need something for business use I suggest you check out the Epson WorkForce EC-C110. It's a little slower than other portable printers, but it offers business-friendly features and a low cost per page, so what it lacks in efficiency it makes up in economy.

Scroll on for more tips and buying advice, including links to our full reviews of the best portable printers we've tested with detailed breakdowns of print quality, price per page and more!

The quick list

In a hurry? Here's a quick list of the best portable printers we recommend.

The best portable printers you can buy now

The best overall

This HP OfficeJet 250 maximizes what you can do on the go, offering fast copying and scanning, in addition to fast print speeds—with high image quality across the board. This portable printer is on the pricey side, but it offers a lot of features and performance in a compact package. The most immediate payoff is a large, 2.6-inch color touch screen, which makes for easy operation.

Better yet is a small, 10-page automatic document feeder for copying and scanning. This is the only portable printer we've tested that offers copy and scan functions, but with no flatbed scanner, the printer draws paper through the body of the OfficeJet for scanning and copying. Scans weren't always straight, and the paper path's 60-degree bend left me nervous about it possibly damaging photos. But having scanning and copying capability on the go is well-worth these compromises.

The OfficeJet 250 printed text very quickly from a PC, at 9 ppm. On battery power, text printed at 7 ppm. The OfficeJet 250 also printed quickly our six-page PDF of text and color graphics, taking 1:57, compared with the average of 2:27. Photo printing was extremely fast, as well. A 4 x 6-inch glossy photo printed in just 37.6 seconds, at default settings, and in just under 50 seconds at the high-quality setting. The closest competitor, the HP Tango X, took 1:15. The OfficeJet also was the fastest when printing from an iPhone, making a photo print in 42.9 seconds.

Copy and scan speeds were fast, making a color copy in 19.5 seconds, compared with the average of 28.7 seconds for desktop inkjets. The OfficeJet made a black-and-white copy in 13.1 seconds, versus the 16-second desktop average. It made a 600 dpi color scan to JPEG in 1 minute and 21 seconds, and a 300 dpi black-and-white scan to PDF in 20.1 seconds (desktop models average 11 seconds).

Best of all, the speed didn't come with any trade-off in image quality. The very high-quality photo prints had rich, well-saturated colors, pleasing midtone transitions, and lots of fine details. Text documents printed with dark letterforms and edges looked quite sharp. Graphics on plain paper were equally attractive. Document scans looked accurate, with only some sharpness lost on text edges. Photo scans were attractive, with accurate colors and plenty of detail.

The HP OfficeJet offers mobile and cloud printing, but there are some quirks. Using the HP Smart iPhone app was problematic—the app turned a five-page .doc file into a four-page document, while the .docx version was reformatted onto six pages. Photos printed from the Box cloud storage service did not print in full. Roughly two-thirds of the photo would print—but the rest of the paper was left blank.

Ink costs for printing text documents are about average for portable printers, at 9 cents each. With standard cartridges, cost per color page is high, at 23 cents per page. Using high-yield cartridges, you can lower this to 17.3 cents, though this is still higher than the 15.5 cents per color page you get with the Canon iP110 when using standard cartridges. You can save even more money by using HP Instant Ink, HP's subscription service for ink refills by mail.

• ^ Back to the top

The best value

One of our favorite portable printers is the Canon Pixma TR150, a compact inkjet that's small enough to carry in a backpack, but still offers excellent document and photo printing. With a two-cartridge ink system and printing for text documents, graphics and even glossy photos, the Pixma TR150 is a solid choice for portable printing. It doesn't offer copy or scan functionality, but at $199, it's also a great option for your pocketbook.

An optional battery lets you use it when you're away from a wall outlet, but even without it, the Canon Pixma TR150 is one of the most portable and travel-friendly printers out there, weighing less than the HP OfficeJet 250 and offering a more affordable print-only option.

The Pixma TR150 measures a compact 12.7 x 7.3 x 2.6 inches when closed, and weighs just 4.5 pounds – and weighs only 5.1 pounds with an optional battery attached. It opens up to a larger size, accommodating a 50-page paper tray, a basic control panel and plenty of connectivity, so long as you don't need a card slot.

It also offers excellent print speeds, a five-page document in 38.7 seconds, or 7.8 ppm.

In addition to its great mobility, the portable Pixma TR150 made high-quality photos faster than other competing portable printers, and delivered excellent color and detail. It can also handle larger photo prints, but unlike some of our photo printing favorites, there is no copy or scan capability. You do get a solidly-built portable printer with optional battery and even support for Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant voice controls, but we love it for the great photos and low ink costs it offers.

Read our full Canon Pixma TR150 review.

• ^ Back to the top

The best for business

Of the four models outfitted with a battery, the Epson WorkForce EC-C110 is the least expensive. With the WorkForce moniker, this mobile printer is sold by business equipment resellers, and might be the best portable printer for business users. Of the inkjet models here, it is the lightest, weighing just 3.5 pounds.

You lift the lid and lean it back to serve as the 20-sheet input tray. Doing so reveals a small, 1.4-inch color LCD and four-way control buttons. Prints come out a slot on the front panel. You can use the LCD and buttons to change settings, configure Wi-Fi, and so on. You also need it to confirm the paper size, which I was prompted to do every time I loaded paper.

The EC-C110's print speeds were slower than the average. Text printed at 5.8 ppm, versus the average of 6.9 ppm. Running on battery power slowed the EC-C110 substantially: Text printing slowed to 3.4 ppm. Our six-page PDF of mixed text and color graphics more slowly than any other inkjet in this roundup, taking 3:16, or 1.8 ppm. The average was 2.4 ppm.

The EC-C110 printed a photo at default settings from a PC via USB in 1:11. Printing at high resolution slowed the EC-C110 to 3:59. Over Wi-Fi Direct at high-quality settings from an iPhone was agonizingly slow, taking 5:28 to print one photo; printing a second snapshot took almost 7 minutes.

Print quality was high across the board. Text looked dark and sharp, though the letter edges looked a little rough up close. Color graphics printed with natural-looking colors and sharp details. Glossy photos looked very attractive.

Costs per page are better than the portable printers average. Estimated costs per page are 8.8 cents for text and 17.8 cents for color.

I ran into a glitch when trying to print 4 x 6-inch photos from a Windows 10 PC. In the print driver, an error said, "photo doesn't fit on selected paper." The online FAQ did not help, but changing the default paper size to 4-x-6 in the Windows 10 printing preferences solved the issue.

When printing with an iPhone, the EC-C110 had a tendency to drop the Wi-Fi Direct connection before I could finish printing. Resetting the connection and re-entering the password seemed to solve this issue.

Cloud printing may not always be seamless. The Epson iOS app reflowed text in .doc files opened from Box, the online storage service, turning a five-page document into a seven-page reflow that would not be worthy of a business meeting.

This Epson WorkForce model delivers below-average costs per page, Wi-Fi Direct connectivity, an LCD and control panel buttons, but low battery life and slower-than-average print speeds limit its appeal.

View our Epson coupon codes to help you save on the Epson WorkForce EC-C110

Frequently Asked Questions

• ^ Back to the top

How to choose the best portable printer for you

When selecting a portable printer, you'll want to consider a few key factors, such as how you intend to use the printer, what your document printing needs are and what level of portability will be best suited to your circumstances.

Printing needs: Do you need color printing or even photo printing capability? All of the printers listed above are inkjet models so they all can handle it, but the Canon Pixma is better for photos while the Epson Workforce EC-C110 is better for documents. The HP OfficeJet 250 is the only model with an automatic document feeder for copying and scanning.

Portability: Portability is largely a question of size and weight. The HP OfficeJet 250 is the biggest and heaviest option on this list at 15 x 7.8 x 3.6 inches and 6.7 pounds, while the Epson Workforce EC-C1100 is the smallest and lightest at 12.2 x 6.3 x 2.4 inches and just 3.5 pounds. It's not a huge difference, but if you plan to carry this printer around for long portions of the day that extra 3 pounds is going to make a difference.

Battery: Most portable printers also have optional batteries, letting you print even when there's no outlet to use for power. These are accessories that sometimes need to be bought in addition to the printer itself, so plan your purchase accordingly. Many of these printers also offer car-charging options, which are ideal for use in a vehicle while out making sales calls or printing during a road trip.

Functions: Most of these portable models are single-function printers. They are too small to have a flatbed scanner for copying and scanning. One model does scan and copy, however: The HP OfficeJet 250. It has a partial lid that you fold forward to reveal a slender automatic document feeder, so if you need that functionality I recommend you choose HP.

Price range: To help you find the right mobile printer, we considered a range of models and chose five products that we felt best represented the variety available. The printers we reviewed are priced from $200 to almost $500 (including accessories, such as a battery). For more buying advice, check out our guide on how to find the best cheap printer money can buy.

• ^ Back to the top

How we tested these portable printers

To test portable printers, we performed a variety of everyday tasks. To make the results comparable to desktop inkjet printers, we performed a few of the same printing speed tests, from a Windows 10 laptop: A five-page text document, and a six-page PDF with text and graphics.

While desktop models printed text pages at 8.8 ppm, on average, the portables were not far behind, at 6.9 ppm. The portable printers almost matched the desktop printers' 2.7 ppm average on color graphics, clocking in at 2.4 ppm. This average excludes the Brother PocketJet 773 because it prints only in black-and-white (and even so printed only at 1.6 ppm on this test).

For photo speed, we printed a 4 x 6-inch glossy snapshot. The Brother PocketJet 773, however, does not print on photo papers and was excluded from this test.

To test portability, we focus on the wireless and battery-powered functions of the printer. We perform a wireless network setup, evaluating the ease of use for connecting on the go. We also print from a laptop and smartphone using Wi-Fi Direct, and gauge the differences in performance compared to wired and outlet-powered printing.

For more information on our testing process, check out our guide to how we test and our more specific rundown of how we test printers.

• ^ Back to the top

The best cheap printer for your needs is one that does everything you need it to and nothing you don't. You don't need to pay a fortune for high image quality and good performance. If you know what to look for—and what to avoid—a bargain printer can deliver what you need, without disappointment.

Low-cost models tend to forego the flashy and focus on the functional. For example, a bargain-priced printer is unlikely to have a color touch-screen LCD, a tilting control panel, or an automatic document feeder. But some bargain models offer a duplexer for making two-sided prints and copies.

If you don't need copy or scan functions and are looking for a single-function printer, you can likely get another attractive amenity, such as a second paper tray for specialty media. The best news is, you don't have to sacrifice image quality. Attractive prints, copies and scans can be had from models costing as little as $60.

At Tom's Guide, we put these bargain inkjet printers through the same test regimen as pricier models to find the best printers on the market. On some tasks, performance can vary widely, so it's important to compare test results to ensure that your primary task isn't the model's Achilles' heel. But that doesn't mean you can't find a budget printer that outperforms a more expensive model at a particular task—you absolutely can. It just takes a little digging.

Get the features you need most

Bargain printers are best suited for use with a PC or smart phone. That's because the control panel tends to be simple, with only a few dedicated function buttons, if any. If there is a screen, it's likely a small LED without backlighting. The control panel is unlikely to tilt, so where you place your printer is important for easy standalone operation. For example, a small LED on the front face of a printer will be difficult to read if it's on a low table in a dimly lit room. Some models offer a control panel on the top of the printer. Which configuration is best for you depends on where you place the printer.

If you need a printer mostly for office tasks, the Brother MFC-1205w ($130) is worth a serious look, for both its speedy performance and low ink costs. But if photography-related fun is more up your alley, you're more likely to gravitate toward the Canon Pixma TS702a ($130), which can print onto various specialty media, such as glossy magnetic photo paper, double-sided matte paper, fabric iron-on transfers and nail stickers.

Most bargain printers offer one paper tray. The Canon Pixma TS702a is one exception, offering both a paper cassette and a vertical rear paper tray. This allows you to keep two types of media loaded. The rear tray offers a straighter paper path, which can accommodate thicker media such as card stock.

Most bargain printers don't offer a duplexer—but both the Canon TS702a and the previously reviewed Canon MG3620 (priced at $60 when reviewed) do.

If you think you'll periodically move your printer—but don't want to specifically buy a portable printer—check out the weight. For example, the HP DeskJet 2755e weighs just 7.5 pounds. By comparison, the Brother MFC-J120 weighs just over 14 pounds, which is much more typical.

Photography features

The convenience of printing photos at home can't be beat. But not all budget printers put the same emphasis on photo printing and related features.

For example, the HP DeskJet 2755e does not support borderless photo printing at all. The Brother MFC-J1205w, on the other hand, won't make borderless photo prints via its Windows 10 driver—you have to use the company's iPrint&Scan software.

Also, the Canon TS702a offers PictBridge support for printing directly from a compatible digital camera. These days, with most photos taken with a smartphone, this is not as cool as it used to be. Neither the Brother MFC-J1205w nor the HP DeskJet 2755e ($85) offer PictBridge support—but like the Canon they offer an iOS and Android app for printing photos from a smartphone. 

 Connectivity and smart assistants 

Bargain printers all offer Wi-Fi these days. Some forego a USB port, so make sure you take your networking plans into account. As is typical, the HP 2755e and Brother J1205w offer a USB port and Wi-Fi connectivity. The Canon TS702a offers these as well, plus an Ethernet port.

In addition, if you're in the market for a printer with Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant compatibility, your only choice among these bargain models is the Canon TS702a.

Performance: Print, copy and scan speeds

Performance can vary widely among printers. Waiting around for a print job to finish can be frustrating. While very few printers excel across the board, this tends to be more true among bargain-priced models. 

To minimize your impatience and disappointment, pay particular attention to your most frequent tasks. Some models excel at printing and copying documents, but lag behind the pack at photo printing. And, even photo printing performance can be mixed. For example, the HP DeskJet 2755e was faster than the average at printing a 4 x 6 inch glossy, but was comparatively slow to make an 8 x 10 photo print. 

The Brother MFC-J1205w, on the other hand, was very slow to print photos at both sizes. For comparison, the Brother took almost 4 minutes to print a 4 x 6-inch photo print, while the Canon TS702a did so in 1 minutes and 3 seconds. 

The Brother, however, was much faster than average at printing documents on plain paper. It printed text documents at 12.2 ppm, and color pages at 3.2 ppm. The Canon printed text at 9.5 ppm and color pages at 3.5 ppm. The HP was the slowest model on these tests, printing text at 7.6 ppm and color pages at 2 ppm. The category averages are 8.8 ppm (text) and 2.7 ppm (color).

Similarly, the Brother was very fast at copying in black-and-white, reproducing a text page in just 10.8 seconds. The HP DeskJet took 25.1 seconds to make the same copy. Making color copies was average or slower-than-average: The Brother made a color copy in 28.1 seconds, which is exactly the average, while the HP was a little slower, at 32.4 seconds. 

Scanning, on the other hand, was brisk with the Brother. It made a 600 dpi color scan in just 37.5 seconds, while the HP took 1 minute and 36 seconds. (The average is 1 minute and 6 seconds). Scanning in black-and-white was also fast with the Brother, which captured a 300 dpi scan to PDF format in just 9.1 seconds, while the HP took 19.4 seconds to finish the same task. (The average is 11.7 seconds). 

Ink costs

If there's an elephant in the room when it comes to bargain printers, it's ink costs. Nothing will trigger buyer's remorse faster than seeing your initial savings get eaten up by pricy ink cartridges. 

Both the HP DeskJet 2755e and Canon TS702a have somewhat high ink costs. The HP's ink costs are 10 cents (text) and 22.5 cents (color) per page, when using high-yield XL cartridges. The Canon offers lower ink costs: When using its XXL high-yield cartridges, costs per page are 6.3 cents (text) and 17.9 cents (color).

Alternatively, the Brother MFC-J1205w offers only high-yield cartridges that have an estimated page output of 750 pages. (The HP's XL cartridges top out at 240 pages, while the Canon's max for color cartridges is 824 pages.

To rein in ink costs, a subscription plan is worth considering. If you buy an HP printer, you will be regularly solicited to sign up for Instant Ink. To figure out if it's right for you, see our article explaining what Is HP Instant ink, which reveals how this plan could deliver significant savings.

In contrast, the Brother Refresh program performs automatic ordering of ink cartridges, but unlike HP's program, you do not have to sign up for a specific number of pages per month. 

The Canon TS702a, oddly, did not come with printed information on the company's ink subscription program. But during setup with an iPhone, the Canon Print app prompted me to sign up for the Pixma Print Plan, which claims to save you 20 percent to 70 percent. These plans start at $3.99 per month. 

For a thorough breakdown of ink subscription plans from all the major vendors, see our story comparing HP Instant Ink vs. Canon vs. Epson to determine which subscription plan is worth the cost.

Print quality

All three of the budget printers mentioned in this article delivered high image quality. There were some subtle differences, however. The Brother and Canon models printed comparably dark and sharp text, while the HP's text was slightly softer around the edges.

All three models printed attractive color graphics. However, the HP had a little difficulty with our test PDF, and its reproductions of both text and fine details in graphics lacked the sharpness of the Brother and Canon prints.

Photo quality was very high for all three models. The differences were subtle, but in general the Brother made lower-contrast prints than the Canon did. The added contrast in the Canon prints added extra "pop". The HP tended to hype yellows and warm shades, and to make a lighter print than the Canon, which produced darker, richer reds in its glossies. 

Both the HP and the Brother made high-quality scans. 

Copy and scan quality

Both the Brother MFC-J1205w and HP DeskJet 2755e made attractive copies in our tests. Both models faithfully reproduced documents and graphics, with plenty of detail and natural-looking colors. (The Canon TS702a is single-function and does not copy or scan).

Both the Brother and the HP also captured high-quality scans in our testing. Both models had a tendency to lose some fine details is dark, shadow areas. The Brother tended to increase the exposure, preventing harsh shadows on faces, compared to the HP. The disappointment with the HP was the HP Smart scanning software's auto crop feature, which was unreliable and had a tendency to cut out a significant portion of the original image.

Excellent scan quality doesn't have to cost a lot. The $60 Canon MG3620 delivered excellent photo scans in our tests, and it actually beat the category average (see charts embedded above) in terms of copy speeds.

Software

Printers include software and a smart phone app. Our individual reviews offer details on these apps. In general, software packages with budget models are pretty basic, as are the smart phone apps. 

One oddity is the "camera scan" function, which is, for all practical purposes, just taking a picture. The HP Smart app also has a copy function. In both cases, these features capture passable facsimiles, but mostly the subpar quality is a waste of time. If the flatbed scanner is within reach, just use it. You'll get far superior results.

The final decision

To make sure you get the best bargain printer for your money, prioritize your wish list. Are you primarily outfitting the home office or buying a photo printer, or looking for a little of both? No single printer is the best fit for everybody, no matter how inexpensive it is.

Tom's Guide's tests reveal the strengths and weaknesses of each model, so you don't have to find out the hard way. Low cost doesn't mean low quality or poor performance—but you'll likely have to make a tradeoff somewhere. With the variety of bargain printers on the market, a little bit of research can ensure it's only a small tradeoff.

Knowing how to connect a printer to a laptop or desktop computer is important for those who regularly need to print documents, photos, manuscripts and more. Whether you have a Windows or Apple computer, connecting a printer is fairly similar for both. We’ll show you how.

There are two primary ways to connect a printer to your computer. The simplest method is to connect via USB cable. Connecting wirelessly involves a few more steps, but isn’t overly difficult even for casual users. Whichever method you choose, we’ll detail all the steps necessary to get you printing in no time.

Note that we're detailing the simplest methods to connect a printer to a single computer. The methods outlined below work with most modern printers.

How to connect a printer to a laptop or desktop computer: Windows via USB cable 

1. Connect your printer to your laptop or desktop with a USB cable. After that, turn on your printer.

2. Click on the Start button and type "Settings".

3. Click on Bluetooth & Devices.

4. Select printers and scanners.

5. Click on your printer name and follow the setup instructions.

That's it! We told you this was the easiest method.

If, for some reason, your printer doesn’t appear, click on "The printer that I want isn’t listed" link. This will take you through some troubleshooting steps whereby hopefully you can resolve your issue. If not, you may have to get in touch with the manufacturer of your printer for support. Check the manufacturer's website or your printer's instruction manual for more details.

How to connect a printer to a laptop or desktop computer: Windows via wireless

1. Connecting to a wireless printer is a bit more involved than doing so via USB.

As detailed in the previous step, ensure your printer is turned on. After that, you'll have to turn on your printer's Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. This varies by manufacturer so refer to your printer's instruction manual.

Also ensure your printer is on the same Wi-Fi network as your computer. Again, this step varies by manufacturer.

2. Follow steps 2 - 4 of the previous section. After that, click on Add device.

3. Select your printer from the list. This will establish a connection.

How to connect a printer to a laptop or desktop computer: Mac via USB cable 

1. Click the Apple icon on the upper left corner and then Select System Preferences.

2. Click on Printers and Scanners.

3. Select your printer from the list on the left.

4. You can also add a printer by clicking on the plus sign underneath the printer list. You should see your printer listed on the following window. Click the add button on the bottom right to add your printer.

And that’s it! Once again, using a cable is pretty easy. However, on Mac, there's an even easier way... 

How to connect a printer to a laptop or desktop computer: Mac via AirPrint 

Many modern printers use a technology called AirPrint, which is meant to facilitate connecting wireless printers to a Mac computer. So long as your printer's Wi-Fi or Bluetooth is enabled and both the printer and Mac are connected to the same network, they should connect seamlessly. If you have an older printer, you can follow most of the steps outlined above to connect wirelessly.

1. Be sure your printer is turned on before starting. Afterward, enable your printer's Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. Again, this varies by manufacturer so refer to your printer's instruction manual.

2. Follow steps 1-4 from the previous step. This is all the same, except that you're connected wirelessly instead of wired. So long as your printer is on the same network as your Mac, it will be listed under printers and scanners.

3. That's it! You're now free to print everything you need.

For more computing guides, be sure to check out our other how-tos, including how to use hot corners on Mac, how to split your screen on Mac, how to change the Windows 11 Start menu back to Windows 10, how to clone a hard drive and how to fix an external hard dive that's not showing up. 

At Tom's Guide we test a variety of printers that are well-suited to the home and the office, as well as on the go. Most models we test use either inkjet or laser technology, and are designed to sit on a desk or table. Some models, however, are small and lightweight, and therefore portable.

We put each printer we review through the same series of tests to evaluate key performance indicators, including image quality and print speed, in order to help determine which are the best printers on the market.

This is just one facet of our editorial strategy, and you can read more about all the different gear we test and how in our guide to how we test products on Tom's Guide. Without further ado, here's how we test printers, and why it's important for you to know. 

Print Speed Testing

Regardless of the type, all our printers go through a series of tests so you can compare them to similar models. We test print speeds, of course, and for capable models we test copying and scanning speed. In all cases, we use a variety of documents in an effort to duplicate real-life use, and to identify strengths and weaknesses of each model.

Print speed tests are conducted with a text document, with a PDF of colored graphics and text, and with a series of 8-by-10-inch color photographs. 

For monochrome laser printers, we print the photographs in black and white on plain paper. For color laser printers that accommodate glossy paper, we test this feature in addition to plain paper prints to help determine which are the best laser printers. If a model offers a duplexer for two-sided printing, we test its two-side print speed with our text and PDF documents.

For portable printers that do not print on larger formats, we test photo print speeds on 4-by-6-inch glossy paper and compare the results to figure out which are the best portable printers.

Copy and Scan Speed Testing

If a printer offers copying capability, as most do these days, we run speed tests copying black-and-white and color documents that contain a variety of text and graphics. Speed tests for scanning also include text documents and documents with color graphics. We scan to both PDF and JPEG formats.

If the model has an automatic document feeder (ADF) for copying multipage documents, we test this feature for both copying and scanning, and make note of speeds and image quality. If the model has a duplexer, two-sided copying and scanning is evaluated for speed and image quality.

Image Quality Tests

All documents printed, copied or scanned in our timed tests are evaluated for quality and compared to the output of competing models. Text is examined for sharpness and graphics are evaluated for fineness of detail and color accuracy.

In addition to the standard documents used for timed tests, a wider variety of documents are used to evaluate image quality. In print tests, this includes additional photographs of varying subject types. In evaluating copy quality, we duplicate a variety of magazine pages that include different text fonts and dense graphics that are sometimes difficult to replicate in the subtle details. 

For photo-centric models, we make copies of glossy photographs and evaluate the duplicate in order to help determine which are the best photo printers.

Evaluating the Features

Test results and image quality are two solid measurements of a printer's worth. But whether a well-performing model is worth an Editor's Choice distinction, sometimes comes down to how user-friendly it is. That's why we run every printer through all its paces, simulating a busy day-to-day workflow to make sure we understand what works great, and what's just so-so.

For starters, we evaluate how east the setup is. Whether it's easy or a mind-boggling, we let you know. We use the software and repeat tests using the mobile phone app, to ensure it's as good as operating from a computer. If there's an LCD, we spend significant time operating the on-screen menus to evaluate them. If it's a touch screen, we do a lot of tapping and/or swiping to see if it's a breeze or something closer to a headache. We set up both wired and wireless connections (if offered) to ensure that neither configuration is troublesome. We also calculate startup time.

Estimating Ink/Toner Costs

For all printers, we discuss the estimated ink or toner costs. These costs are derived from data provided by the printer manufacturers, which are based on standardized testing and industry-accepted test images. If high-capacity cartridges are available, we discuss the difference in costs per page versus standard cartridges.

For printers that offer an ink or toner subscription program, this estimated cost is discussed for comparison purposes.

In the end, all of our testing is in pursuit of a single goal: to give you the most useful data possible, so that you can make a well-informed buying decision and find the printer that's just right for your needs.

For more information on our testing methodologies, read the rest of our guides to how we test products on Tom's Guide.

Businesses and creators looking to invest in a new 3D printer to create models, prototypes, molds, and end-use parts will run into the question of which technology to use: fused deposition modeling (FDM) or stereolithography (SLA).

SLA was the first 3D printing technology created, and it has long been the preferred printing technology for professional designers and engineers. The SLA printing process uses an incredibly precise laser to cure liquid resin into the solid final part. Thanks to this precision, SLA prints can have incredibly fine detail, smooth finishes, and accurate sizing for machine parts and prototypes. 

SLA printed parts come out dense, watertight, and isotropic, giving them structural integrity in a wider variety of applications. Those qualities combined with the precision of SLA-printed parts even allows them to be used in industrial applications.

There’s also a greater degree of flexibility available with SLA printing. Creators can use different SLA resins to produce hard or soft objects, use resins filled with additives like glass or wax, create either opaque or clear prints, and choose materials for their unique mechanical properties. There are also biocompatible materials available for SLA printing, allowing for customized healthcare products, like dental aligners or surgical planning tools. 

There are some key ways that SLA printing differs from FDM, the other largely popular 3D printing technology. FDM printers deposit material in a melted form to build each layer of the print. Each line the printer deposits can be slightly rounded and may not always adhere perfectly to the layer beneath, creating an anisotropic structure. The resulting prints will show gradation between layers that can impact the aesthetics and functionality of the design. 

The precision of FDM prints is also limited by the size of the extrusion nozzles and inaccuracies caused by the thermal expansion and contraction of the filament, so FDM printers are not as well suited for creating fine details on smaller designs. While FDM prints come out of the printer without requiring cleaning or post-curing, they may require support removal and sanding to remove any unwanted layer lines. This makes them better suited for quick mock-ups or for use in workflows that won’t involve considerable post-production work, which adds time and labor expenses that may negate the relative affordability of the printers and low cost of filament material.

So if SLA printers have so many clear advantages over FDM printers, why would anyone opt for an FDM printer? The answer is thatSLA printing technology hasn’t been as accessible for many companies. The large, industrial machines previously used for SLA printing were expensive, especially compared to many of the affordable FDM printers available on the market today. 

A big factor in the price of SLA printers has been the expensive laser responsible for curing the resin. The resins can also be expensive, and the complicated process of shifting between print layers puts a strain on parts and could cause costly print failures. 

But the relative inaccessibility of SLA printing has gradually been addressed by the introduction of desktop SLA printers from Formlabs. Formlabs has spent the last decade eliminating the prohibitive costs of SLA printing while simultaneously making the technology more versatile, reliable, and intuitive. These investments have culminated in the recently launched Form 3+ SLA printer. 

The Form 3+ is a capable, fast, and reliable 3D printer for business applications. Its versatility allows users to employ it for rapid prototyping, end-use parts, model making, and more. The Form 3+ starts at $3,499 for the basic package.

The precision of the laser in the Form 3+ produces prints that require minimal post-processing. Beyond the smooth finishes of its prints, Formlabs’ software can automatically create support structures for each design and the laser can cure them in such a way that they break off easily and cleanly, further eliminating post-production work. The printer is backed by an ecosystem to improve and simplify the production pipeline, including automated washing and curing machines as well as a quick-release build platform.

The reliability of the printer and the quality of the prints can allow a business to save time and money on prototyping or designing custom parts. While the upfront cost may be higher than an entry-level FDM printer, the flexibility allows this printer to do more, and the reduction in post-production labor, print time, and print failures can outweigh the higher upfront costs. Ultimately, it’s an investment that makes sense for businesses looking to go from concept to final form quickly, precisely, and reliably. 

If you think Formlabs’ Form 3+ may be right for your business or application, you can find out more about the printer here. 

For the month of February, Formlabs will also be running a giveaway on a Form 3+ Basic Package that includes the Form 3+ 3D printer, Build Platform, Resin Tank, Finish Kit, and one liter of Draft Resin, valued at $3,500. You can enter for a chance to win here. 

The ongoing chip shortage is having an impact on Canon, which has had so much trouble sourcing components for its printer cartridges that it's now selling some of them without the chips Canon printers use to authenticate inks.

That's significant because Canon has made a lot of money selling cheap printers which will only print using ink and toner cartridges with Canon chips in them. Canon's not alone in this practice, of course; Brother, HP, and other printer makers all rely on similar schemes, which is why many of the best printers you can buy won't print using third-party cartridges.

However, the ongoing supply chain issues and chip shortages caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have apparently made it so hard for Canon to get components for its toner cartridges that some are now being sold without the chip which authenticates them to Canon printers. 

This has put Canon in the remarkable position of having to publish a public warning and guide that instructs Canon printer owners in Europe on how to bypass error messages and continue printing on Canon ImageRunner printers using cartridges which don't have the requisite components.

"To ensure you enjoy a continuous and reliable supply of consumables, we have chosen to supply consumable products without the semiconductor component until normal supply resumes," reads a printer support guide published to Canon Europe's website. "While there is no negative impact on print quality when using consumables without electronic components, certain ancillary functions, such as the ability to detect toner levels, may be affected."

Essentially, Canon is publicly admitting that there really is no reason why its printers can't print using non-Canon cartridges. Like many printer companies, Canon says embedding chips in ink cartridges is helpful because they let the printer know how much ink is left in the cartridge. And while that does seem helpful, it's hardly valuable enough to justify locking Canon customers out of buying and using third-party print cartridges, which might be cheaper and better than what comes from Canon.

It's nice to think that this temporary snarl caused by the chip shortage might lead to a broader shift in business strategy on the part of Canon and other printer makers, but don't get your hopes up: Canon's guide to bypassing its own printer DRM is aimed at folks using the big, multifunction printers that you typically see in offices and businesses, rather than the slim little all-in-one printer you might have at home.

If you’ve ever wondered how to print from an Android phone or tablet, don’t worry, it’s easier than you might think.

Many people store and edit important documents on the go using their phone nowadays. So if you’re one of those people, it’s really useful to know how to print them out straight from your phone, rather than having to take up time transferring them to your computer. Plus, it’s always nice to be able to print your photos so you can physical copies of them to put on display.

• Best Android phones 
• How to check Android battery health 

Most apps, such as Google Docs and Photos, offer the ability to print straight from the app. If your printer is Bluetooth enabled, you can connect it to your phone wirelessly and print right away. The same goes for if your printer connects to Wi-Fi. 

How to print from an Android phone or tablet 

1. Open the document you’d like to print. 

2. Open the menu, and select “Print."

This process will be different depending on the device, app, or filetype you’re using. In general, try checking the top corners of the screen for the three lines or three dots to open the menu. 

In Google Docs and Drive, you can print documents by finding the file on the main menu and pressing the three dots next to the file name. 

In Apple's Photos a[[, swipe up on the photo you’d like to print, and scroll right though the menu until you see the “Print” icon.

3. The print menu will open. You’ll be able to choose the number of copies, select the paper size, and change the orientation of the paper as well as change a few other settings.

4. Select a printer from the drop-down menu. If your printer doesn’t appear in the list, try checking your phone’s Bluetooth settings to make sure you’re connected.

5. Select “print.” Your document will be sent to your printer.

If you need more help with your Android device, we have more tutorials available that will help you. Check out how to open Zip files on Android, how to receive Facetime calls on Android, how to sign documents on Android and how to change the keyboard language on Android. 

We’ve seen the 3D printer market change over the past few years, with prices falling and the quality of the prints improving. The AnyCubic Photon Mono X continues this excellent trend by offering SLA printing for $599. That’s not the cheapest price we’ve seen for an SLA printer, but it’s definitely an attractive one for a devicer that produces high-quality prints and has earned a place among the best 3D printers we’ve tested.

As part of our AnyCubic Photon Mono X review, we also tested the Anycubic Wash and Cure Plus machine, a separate device that can wash the prints the Photon Mono X produces and cure them to harden the resin with a series of UV lights. 

Photon Mono X 3D printer review: Price and availability

The Photon Mono X is available now for $559 from Amazon. The Wash and Cure Plus costs $249.99 from Amazon.  

Photon Mono X 3D printer review: Design

The Photon Mini X is a Stereolithography (SLA) 3D printer, which means it uses a light source to turn a liquid resin solid. This solid material then sticks to the metal print bed, which is raised, lowered, and the process repeats, creating the print layer by layer. 

It’s a bit more complex than the FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling) type of 3D printer, which uses melted plastic to build the layers, so SLA printers have generally been the more expensive option. (Our favorite SLA printer, the Form 3 from Form Labs, costs $3,499.) However, SLA printers produce more complex prints with finer detail because they produce finer layers. The default layer height for the Photon Mono X is 0.01mm, ten times smaller than a typical FDM printer. 

At 18 inches tall and 11.4 inches wide, the Photon Mini X is a small printer for the size of prints it produces: It’s capable of producing 9.6 x 7.5 x 4.6-inch prints — a total of 331 cubic inches. Most of the volume of the printer is the hood that fits over the printing area, made of see-through plastic that shows you the printing process, but blocks UV light from getting in or out. 

Many SLA 3D printers use a laser to zap the resin, but the Photon Mono X goes another route, using a panel of ultraviolet (UV) LEDs with an LCD screen above, right below the tank that holds the resin. This works like the backlight on your HDTV: the light shines through the LCD screen where each pixel is turned and blocked where each is turned off. The screen has a 4K resolution (3840 by 2400 pixels), which means that each pixel translates into a space of less than 0.01mm on the final print. The bottom of the resin tank is a sheet of clear film made of a material called Fluorinated Ethylene Propylene (FEP) that lets through the UV light to solidify the resin. 

Both the screen and the FEP film require replacement after heavy use, as the UV light damages them over time. AnyCubic claims that the monochrome screen used in this model will last for thousands of hours of printing, while the FEP sheet needs to be replaced every 20 to 30 prints. 

The other advantage of a monochrome screen is speed: while the color LCD screens that are used in most SLA printers have three filters to let through red, green, and blue light, monochrome screens don’t have any filters. That means more light gets through, so the printing is quicker. AnyCubic claims a printing speed of 6 vertical centimeters (about 2.3 inches) per hour, and we wouldn’t disagree: this is a fast printer. 

The Wash And Cure Plus is the same size and shape as the printer, with a similar design. Instead of the print head, there is an arm covered in UV LEDs which bends at the end to cover the entire print. A removable vat for washing is also included; it includes a built-in agitator to stir the liquid. 

Photon Mono X 3D printer review: Print process

The prints that the Mono X produces are set up in the Photon Workshop software, available as a free download for Windows and OSX.  It’s a decent if slightly quirky 3D slicer that allows you to load one or more 3D models and set them up for printing. The models can be moved, multiplied, and scaled up and down, the saved for printing. You can’t create new models in Photon Workshop, though. 

The Photon Workshop can automatically add the supports, the tree-like structures that hold the print in place while it is being produced, and which are removed later. This didn’t prove to be too successful, though: several of our print failures were caused by incorrectly placed supports, and I found that I would usually do the automatic supports, then go through and manually add more to the places on the print that might have issues. 

One interesting feature here is the ability to divide models. If a model is too big to print at once, Photon Workshop can divide it into pieces. Each piece is then printed in turn and stuck together. That’s a nice trick that would be good to see on other slicer apps. 

There is also an Anycubic app available for Android and iOS that you can use to start a print or monitor print progress from your phone. You can’t upload a print file from this app, but it is nice to have a way to see how far a print has to go before it’s done. Even nicer would be a camera to show you if the print is working properly, but that isn’t present on the Photon Mono Xr.

Once the print is complete, you use the Wash and Cure Plus to — as the name suggests — wash the print to remove any liquid resin and cure it to solidify the resin with UV light. Firstly, you wash the print in isopropyl alcohol, which can be done either after you remove the print from the print bed or mount the entire print bed onto one of two slots in an included basket. This large container holds a lot of liquid — up to 8.5 liters (2.25 gallons). You won’t always need that much, but you will need enough to cover the print completely. At the moment isopropyl alcohol is not cheap, as it is one of the main ingredients of hand sanitizer.  

When the print is in place, you select how long you want it to be washed for, then press the control dial in to start. The agitator stirs the liquid, changing direction every 2 minutes to make sure that all of the cracks and crevices of the print are washed. 

Once your print is washed, you remove the print and let it dry. After that, it is time to cure the print, which you do by replacing the alcohol container on the Wash and Cure Plus with a rotating platform. Again, you use the control dial to select how long to cure for: typically, this would be 2 to 5 minutes, depending on the size of the print.

Once you start the process, the platform rotates exposing the print to the UV light from the LEDs on the arm that towers over the print. The process won’t start until you replace the plastic cover, which blocks the UV light from coming out. That’s a good precaution, as this intensity of UV light can damage your eyes. 

Photon Mono X 3D printer review: Print speed

The Photon Mono X is a speedy printer: our 4-inch high Thinker test model took 7 hours and 35 minutes to print, which is significantly faster than most printers in this class. The Peopeoly Phenom, for instance, took just over 13 hours to print the same model at the same size. 

We usually print the Thinker model vertically to make it fair for printers that don’t have enough space on the build plate to print the Thinker lying down horizontally. The Photon Mono X has plenty of print space large enough to handle this, so we also tested this and found out that it was much, much quicker, taking just 3 hours and 56 minutes to print in this direction.

Photon Mono X 3D printer review: Print quality

I was impressed with the quality of the prints that the Photon Mono X produced. My prints had clean, sharp edges and smooth, organic curves and surfaces. We test using three models that test the ability of the printer to reproduce details: a scan of Rodin’s Thinker, a set of planetary gears, and a geometric sculpture. 

The Thinker statue was generally well reproduced, with fine details and smooth, organic curves that looked like the real thing on the head and shoulders. The Geometric sculpture had sharp, clean edges with nice points and accurate interlocking surfaces. The Gears were easily assembled and ran smoothly, although the grey resin we tested with this printer produced a lot of dust and residue (the white material) when we screwed the various parts of the gears together. 

We did notice some problems on prints, though: sometimes, some of the layers seemed to come loose, leading to loose flaps of resin. Look, for instance, at the keg in the horizontal print of the Thinker: the inner calf of his right leg has a few layers that didn’t stick to the ones above. Likewise, one of the points of the geometric sculpture seems to be flattened because the layers were pushed down by the liquid resin as the print was produced.

Most of these issues can be corrected by tweaking the print, though: the loose layers and the squashed point indicate that the print required a few more supports to hold it in place while printing, or that the object might be better printed at a different angle. 

All of this indicates something that is true of most 3D printers: they still require a lot of tweaking to get the best quality prints out of them, and much of this tweaking relies on working out why a print failed and trying again. 

Photon Mono X 3D printer review: Verdict 

The AnyCubic Photon Mono X breaks new ground, pushing down the cost of SLA printing to a new low. It does so without making too many compromises: printing remains a slightly messy business that occasionally fails, but once you get used to the Photon Mono X (and buy a mask and a big box of disposable gloves), it is generally hassle-free and fast. 

SLA printing is definitely still a process that requires patience, though, as some prints from the Photon Mon X failed and require alteration and re-printing. I would also recommend that you buy the Wash and Cure Plus, as it makes the rather icky business of cleaning and curing SLA prints much easier. 

Combined, the two cost less than $800 and can produce large, high-quality prints at a faster speed than most of the competition. The Form 3 remains the SLA printer to get for professionals who need to do a lot of heavy-duty printing, but the Photon Mono X is an excellent option for at-home work by hobbyists or those curious about 3D printing. 

From office chairs to laptops, Office Depot deals can save you hundreds when it comes to furnishing your home office space. Office Depot deals are also a great way to save on non-tech items like face masks, Clorox spray, and digital thermometers. 

For instance, right now Office Depot is taking up to $120 off select office chairs. The sale includes executive chairs, leather chairs, ergonomic chairs, and more. So if you're looking for ways to save some extra cash, we're rounding up today's best Office Depot deals on everything from monitors to cleaning supplies. 

• Shop all sales at Office Depot

Back to school and Office Depot deals

Back to school season is here and Office Depot is offering back to school sales on everything from printers to laptops. Currently, the retailer is taking up to 55% off back to school essentials like Crayola Markers, notebooks/binders, laptops, and backpacks. 

Best Office Depot deals right now

The desire to save money on printing is nothing new. Replacing a printer's ink cartridges gets expensive in the long run. To ease the pain, some printer models offer high-yield cartridges, which offer some savings. A new strategy to reduce ongoing ink costs is with an ink cartridge subscription plan. All the major printer manufacturers now offer some variation of this.

When the ink in your printer is running low, these services automatically order and ship ink cartridges to you. This is undoubtedly convenient, saving you a trip to the office supply store.

Convenience aside, the big question is, will an ink subscription really save you money? That's what we set out to determine for this story.

We compared plans from the four biggest inkjet printer brands: Brother, Canon, Epson and HP. The plans vary and offer different terms, so you'll want to match your printing needs to the right plan in order to maximize your savings.

What are ink subscription plans?

These days, every printer manufacturer offers some sort of ink subscription plan. For a small recurring fee, you get to skip the inconvenience of running out of ink in the middle of a printing project, and save yourself a trip to the store, all while giving printer companies a new way to encourage brand loyalty and keep more dollars from going to third-party budget ink sellers.

Some plans have a monthly fee that includes a set number of printed pages, and the option to buy extra pages. Other plans simply offer a discount on the automatically triggered ink purchases, or just free shipping.

When the ink in your printer is running low, these services automatically order and ship ink cartridges to you. This is undoubtedly convenient, saving you a trip to the office supply store. In most cases, the shipping will be free, and you will receive an email notification that the order has been placed. Generally, you will have 24 hours to cancel the order, just in case you don't really need it. The printer needs to be connected to the internet for these subscription services to work.

All of these plans automatically ship ink cartridges to you when your printer is running low. The printer must be connected to the internet to initiate the order. And, of course, the printer must be eligible for the subscription plan. In our research, we found that most inkjet printers and all-in-ones we have tested are eligible for the manufacturer's ink subscription plan—but not all of them.

What types of subscription plans are available?

There are two types of ink subscriptions. Those with a monthly fee allow you a set number of printed pages. You pay only the monthly fee, not for the ink cartridges themselves when they are shipped to you.

An ink subscription with a monthly page count may be best suited to users with a consistent print volume. If your print needs vary widely, you may have to monitor your ink subscription plan in order to avoid excessive purchases of extra pages, or to avoid losing excessive pages that have been rolled over from previous months when you printed less than your plan allows.

The second plan type has no monthly fee—you just pay for the ink cartridges, sometimes at a discount price. There is no set number of monthly pages, or a monthly subscription fee, just free shipping and in some cases a discount on your order.

Regardless of the type of plan, the ink shipment is triggered automatically, and you are sent a notice, which gives you the option to cancel.

In some cases, third-party ink ordering programs are done in partnership with the printer makers. For example, Amazon Smart Ordering is offered by Brother.

If you already own a printer by HP, Brother or Epson, you have only one type of plan to choose from. Interestingly, Canon offers both types of ink subscription plans—but at press time only a couple models were eligible for its Pixma Print plan, which comes with a monthly fee and a set number of pages.

What makes a good ink subscription plan?

For this story, we evaluated ink subscription services for personal/small office inkjet printers. The majority of inkjet printers tested by Tom's Guide have a standard black ink cartridge that will print an estimated 1,000 pages or less. For these models, the average costs per page are 7.7 cents (text) and 20.7 cents (color). When using high-yield cartridges, these averages go down to 5.9 cents and 14.9 cents per page, respectively.

Both Canon and HP offer this type of plan, with page-count tiers. Both plans offer extra pages for 10 cents each, and a limited number of rollover pages. We have calculated the cost per page for the plans, assuming you printed exactly the monthly limit.

For these models, the average costs per page are 7.7 cents (text) and 20.7 cents (color). When using high-yield cartridges, these averages go down to 5.9 cents and 14.9 cents per page, respectively.

Basic cartridge replacement plans generally offer a set discount over retail pricing, but the amount varies by manufacturer. Even on those plans without special savings, you'll get free shipping and the added convenience of one less trip to the store when you run out of ink.

HP Instant Ink

Arguably the most popular and widely known ink subscription plan is HP Instant Ink, which offers a monthly fee-type plan that lets users pick the plan that matches their regular printing needs, and sends cartridges in the mail just when you need a refill.

HP Instant Ink offers five subscription tiers, ranging from 15 to 300 pages per month for the majority of home and business users. HP offers Instant Ink subscriptions on many models. You can find a complete list of eligible printers on the HP Instant Ink webpage. And unlike most ink subscription plans, HP offers toner for laser printers, as well.

Check our HP coupon codes page for discounts and offers. 

If you use all of your pages, your cost per page will be anywhere from 4 cents to 7 cents. Extra pages cost $1 for 10, or 10 cents each. You are allowed to roll over up to three times the number of pages in your monthly plan.

By comparison, the Envy 7855 has costs per page of 7.1 cents (text) and 18 cents (color) when using high-yield cartridges. The printer uses two cartridges: black and tri-color.

If you used all your pages in the Occasional plan that comes with 50 pages per month, your cost per page would be 6 cents, regardless of how much color you printed. At that rate, Instant Ink looks like a pretty good bargain. Upping your plan to 100 pages per month would drop your cost per page to 5 cents.

Verdict: If you don't let rollover pages expire, it's a pretty good bet you'd save money with HP Instant Ink.

Canon Pixma Print

Canon Pixma Print is one of two ink subscription plans offered for Canon printers, and uses the monthly page count approach, charging a monthly fee for an allotted number of pages, and then shipping fresh ink whenever the printer is running low.

Canon offers four tiers for its Pixma Print ink subscription plan, beginning at $3.99 per month. The plans' page limits range from 30 pages to 200 pages monthly.

One plan, Pay As You Print, limits you to 30 pages and does not offer extra page purchases or allow you to rollover unused pages. The other Canon plan tiers offer extra pages for 10 cents each, as well as rollover pages. Shipping is free.

Costs per page range from 5 cents to 17 cents, if you were to use all your pages. However, at press time, only two models were eligible for this plan: the Pixma TS6420 ($100) and Pixma TR7020 ($130). (To check the list of eligible models, see Canon's website.) Both models use two ink cartridges: one black, and one tri-color.

One important detail is rollover pages. Comparing each company's 100-page plan, HP allows customers to roll over up to 300 pages, while Canon limits you to 100 rollover pages. However, Canon does include 100 free pages in its plan, which are good for six months.

Without this plan, printing 4-by-6-inch color photos with the two eligible models costs 37.1 cents using standard cartridges, and 28.9 cents with high-yield cartridges. If you print photos almost exclusively, even the entry-level plan would save you a chunk of change, at 17 cents per print. At the highest volume, the 200-pages-per-month Frequent plan drops cost per print to just 5 cents. This assumes, of course, that you are able to use all your pages, and never lose any pages you roll over. It also assumes you never go over and have to pay 10 cents per extra print.

Verdict: The Canon Pixma Print plan can certainly save you money if you keep up with the plan's page count. However, only two models are currently eligible.

Brother Refresh

Brother Refresh offers a 5 percent discount on ink cartridges. There is no monthly fee, and you can cancel at any time without penalty. To enroll, you select either Brother or Amazon Smart Order as the fulfillment provider. You can use the Brother PrinterProPlus app to enroll in Refresh, check ink levels, and manage your account.

When you enroll, you select whether you want standard, high-yield, or super high-yield cartridges to be ordered. Standard shipping is free to the continental U.S., for orders over $20. Shipping on smaller orders costs $5.75. After an order is placed automatically, the customer receives an email notification. You have 24 hours to cancel the order.

Unlike previously mentioned printers, the Brother MFC-J995DW that we tested already offers very low costs per page. Using high-yield cartridges, the MFC-J995DW offers low costs per page of 1 cent (text) and 5 cents (color). These cartridges print an estimated 6,000 and 5,000 pages each, respectively. Signing up for this automatic ordering will save you five percent, and the shipping will always be free because even one standard yield ink cartridge for this model costs more than the minimum for free shipping.

You can find a list of eligible printers on the Brother Refresh website, and it includes both inkjet and laser printers.

Verdict: Brother's high-yield printers are known for low costs per page already. Saving another 5 percent is a no-brainer.

Canon Auto Replenishment

Canon's Auto Replenishment service offers free enrollment and free standard shipping on ink purchases. When your printer displays a low ink message, replacement cartridges will be ordered and an order confirmation email will be sent. Free standard shipping takes three to seven days, according to Canon.

Canon does not offer a set discount with its plan, which is disappointing. However, you will receive a discount if a promotional discount is being offered when your order is placed.

Of the Canon printers we've tested in this category, they averaged costs per page of 8.9 cents (text) and 22.1 cents (color) with standard cartridges, and 7 cents (text) and 16 cents (color) when using high-yield cartridges.

You can find a list of eligible printers on the Canon website.

Verdict: Canon's Auto Replenishment subscription does not offer a set discount, so the benefit is more for convenience than cost savings.

Epson ReadyInk

Epson does not offer an ink cartridge subscription directly. Rather, its ReadyInk program directs customers to enroll via a third-party ink subscription plan from Amazon or Staples. Both companies offer automatic ordering of ink cartridges, triggered by an eligible printer. (See the list of eligible printers on the Epson ReadyInk website.)

Both Amazon Dash and Staples Smart Ordering offer a 10 percent discount on ink purchases. Amazon Dash does not require an Amazon Prime membership. For Prime members, using Amazon Smart Ordering adds Alexa functionality with the printer. As with previously discussed plans, ink cartridge orders are triggered when the printer detects it is low on ink.

Amazon Dash offers free shipping if the product is eligible for free shipping. Staples Smart Ordering offers free shipping on every order.

If you don't yet need more ink, with Staples Smart Ordering you can not cancel the order, but must pause your subscription. You also are allowed to cancel your subscription without penalty.

For comparison, the Epson WorkForce WF-2760, which we reviewed, offers costs per page of 6 cents (text) and 17.3 cents (color), when using its high-yield ink cartridges. Getting a 10 percent discount and free shipping knocks that down to 5.4 cents and 15.6 cents, respectively. Those savings add up, and if you saved on your printer with an Epson coupon code, mean you're consistently paying less than the asking price for your printing setup.

Verdict: Epson's ReadyInk subscription will save you 10 percent on ink purchases, and Amazon Prime members can take advantage of Alexa integration on compatible printers.

Which ink subscription plan is right for you?

Which type of ink subscription is right for you depends on how consistent your print volume is. Whether you have the stomach for managing an ink subscription with a monthly page count, to make sure you don't leave money on the table, is a largely personal decision. If managed well, a page count plan can certainly save you money.

On the other hand, a subscription plan that offers a set discount on ink sounds like a no-brainer. With a set discount on ink purchases, which arrive automatically as with the page count plans, you know you're saving money without having to take any action whatsoever.

Whichever type of plan you choose, it appears the printer makers are offering a fair amount of flexibility. In one form or another, these plans allow you to change your page count, buy extra pages, carry over unused pages, pause the subscription, cancel an unneeded order, or cancel the service without penalty. No matter which variety you decide on, it's pretty certain you'll be able to lower your printing costs.

Canon's Pixma G6020 MegaTank ($270) is a great value and a solid performer. With a recommended monthly duty cycle of up to 3,300 pages, the G6020 built for a heavy workload. It prints, scans and copies, but does not offer fax capability.

Outfitted with four refillable ink tanks, the Pixma G6020 uses a pigment black and three dye-based colors: cyan, magenta and yellow. The refillable ink tanks keep printing costs extremely low. In the box, you get two extra bottles of black ink. These are valued at $18 each and will print an estimated 12,000 pages in total. Given the already low purchase price, this really adds to this all-in-one's value. We liked it so much, we named it one of the best printers in our 2021 Tom's Guide Awards, as well as one of the best all-in-one printers.

Canon Pixma G6020 MegaTank review: Design

The G6020 has a compact body and is well suited for a home office. It offers a duplexer for making two-sided prints, although it lacks an automatic document feeder (ADF) for multi-page copying and scanning.

For standalone operation, the control panel has a handful of physical buttons for selecting operations and navigating settings menus. There are dedicated buttons for copying/scanning in black-and-white and in color, for example. At the center of the panel is a small monochrome LCD. The two-line display lacks backlighting, which can make it difficult to read in poorly lit areas or due to reflections off the glass. The control panel angles upward 90 degrees.

The G6020 measures 15.9 x 14.6 x 7.7 inches, which is compact for a model with ink tanks. Because there's no ADF atop the scanner lid, it's a couple inches shorter than the similarly sized Epson ET-4760 with its ADF folded out for operation. The G6020 weighs 17.8 pounds.

There are two paper trays, with a total capacity of 350 sheets. The main paper cassette holds 250 sheets, while the rear paper tray can hold 100 sheets.

Canon Pixma G6020 MegaTank review: Print speed

The G6020 printed a five-page text document at roughly average speed, doing so in 33.5 seconds, or at 9 ppm. The category average is 9.1 ppm. The G6020 printed a six-page PDF of mixed text and color graphics in 2 minutes, 46 seconds, or 2.2 ppm, which was a little slower than the average of 2.6 ppm. By comparison, the more expensive Epson EcoTank ET-4760 was faster in both tests, printing text documents at 11.1 ppm and color documents at 3.9 ppm. The HP SmartTank Plus 651 was slightly slower, at 8.5 ppm and 1.7 ppm, respectively.

The G6020's two-sided print speed for text documents was roughly the same as its print speed for one-sided color documents. It printed two-sided text documents at 2.3 ppm, pausing roughly 14 seconds before printing the second side of each sheet. It printed two-sided color documents at 1.8 ppm, pausing about 18 seconds between sides. Again, the Epson ET-4760 was markedly faster, printing two-sided text documents at a brisk 6.5 ppm, and two-sided color documents at 3.2 ppm.

In black-and-white, the G6020 made a copy in 11.3 seconds, and a color copy in 31.2 seconds. The Epson ET-4760 was a little slower to copy a page of text, doing so in 12.8 seconds, but slightly faster at copying a color page, making the facsimile in 30.1 seconds. By contrast, the HP SmartTank 651 was agonizingly slow at copying, taking 2 minutes and 12 seconds to copy a page of text, and almost three-and-a-half minutes to copy a color page.

The G6020 scans quickly. It made a 300 dpi PDF in black-and-white in 8.4 seconds, which was much faster than the average of 11.6 seconds. By contrast, the Epson ET-4760 took 12.4 seconds to make the same scan. The HP Smart Tank was quick on this test, making the same black-and-white scan in 8.3 seconds.

The G6020 made a 600 dpi color scan to JPEG format in 1 minute, 5 seconds. This was 4 seconds faster than the average. By comparison, the Epson ET-4760 took 1 minute, 49 seconds to make the same scan. The HP Smart Tank was even slower, at 2 minutes and 16 seconds.

Canon Pixma G6020 MegaTank review: Print quality

The G6020 prints attractive text documents. In our tests, letterforms were dark, with sharp edges. There was only a little bit of errant spray and some slightly lumpy edges. In duplex prints, text looked just as dark and sharp as in one-sided prints. By comparison the letterforms printed by the HP Smart Tank 651 were a little sleeker, with slightly sharper edges.

The G6020 printed color graphics with lots of fine details, attractive textures overall and natural-looking, well-saturated colors. Some mild banding was visible, however, and upon close examination there was slight pixelation in otherwise smooth-looking textures. Two-sided prints of color graphics were equally impressive – something that the Epson ET-4760 did not do, producing two-sided prints that looked lighter and less sharp than single-sided prints. The HP Smart Tank (which only makes single-sided prints) printed color graphics of comparable quality to the G6020, but without the banding that was distracting in the Canon’s prints.

Glossy photo prints were very attractive, with plenty of fine detail and well-saturated colors. The Epson ET-4760’s glossy photo prints set themselves apart with warm reds and yellows that looked a little darker and richer than in the Canon’s prints. However, the Epson’s shadows were also darker, which caused some fine details to get lost amidst the increased contrast. The HP SmartTank’s glossy prints were also very attractive and detailed, with slightly less brightness in the reds and yellows, which arguably is more natural-looking but offers less “pop” than the Canon and Epson prints.

The Canon G6020 reproduced text accurately in its copies, and graphics retained their details and color accuracy. There was, however, some very mild banding in copies of both color and grayscale graphics, though this was not pronounced. By comparison, the HP SmartTank’s color copies looked a little muddy, lacking the brightness and mid-tone details of the G6020’s brighter color copies.

Scans also proved to be faithful reproductions. Sharp details and accurate textures were in both grayscale and color scans. Colors looked accurate in photo scans, and details were retained in shadow areas (something the Epson ET-4760 had difficulty with, producing blocked-up shadows lacking details).

Canon Pixma G6020 MegaTank review: Ink cost and yield

The Pixma G6020 keeps printing costs extremely low by using refillable ink tanks. At just 0.2 cent for text and 0.8 cent for color pages, this Canon keeps ink costs very budget-friendly. A bottle of pigment black ink sells for $17.99 and lasts an estimated 6,000 pages. The three color inks cost  $11.99 per bottle, and print an estimated 7,700 pages. There is a CMY three-pack, but it will only save you two cents, priced at $35.95. The $450 HP SmartTank Plus 651 offers the same low costs per page; the Epson ET-4760 differs only slightly on color pages, at 0.9 cent.

Take a look at our Canon promo codes for ways to save on your order. 

By comparison, the $129 Brother INKvestment MFC-J805DW (which does not have ink tanks, but uses larger-than-average cartridges) delivers costs per page of 1 cent (text) and 6.2 cents (color) when using its highest yield cartridges.

Canon Pixma G6020 MegaTank review: Setup and software

The startup guide directs you to go online, where pictures and videos step you through the setup. After removing a few pieces of packaging tape, you install the two printheads and fill the ink tanks. This is an easy process, with almost no risk of spilling ink and making a mess. With the G6020, as with all other refillable ink tank models we’ve reviewed, I’ve never spilled a single drop of ink during this process. The ink bottle nozzles fit securely into the ink tank valve, and you let gravity do its work.

Then you perform the printhead alignment. After printing a page of patterns, the G6020 draws each page back into the unit. You do not need to select which block of finely spaced lines is most properly aligned, as is necessary with the Epson ET-4760.

Setting up wireless was easy. The G6020 offers WPS method, which you select in the on-screen menu. After doing so, pressing the WPS button on my wireless router established the connection.

Printing and scanning from a Windows PC is smooth sailing. And, with the dedicated black-and-white and color buttons on the control panel, standalone copying is simple as well. But customizing settings  in standalone mode is not the G6020's strong suit. Navigating menus with the two-line monochrome LCD is not nearly as elegant as a large, responsive touchscreen. That said, it's also not nearly as frustrating as an unresponsive, kludgy touchscreen, or one that's too small to navigate efficiently.

Setting up my phone with the G6020 was no hassle. After downloading the Canon Print app to my iPhone, the app found the G6020, and the wireless connection was made.

The G6020 offers digital assistant compatibility, supporting integration with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and IFTTT (If This Then That).

Startup time is very fast. The G6020 offered its menu screen in just 3 seconds. When choosing immediately to make a black-and-white copy, the G6020 produced the copy in a total of 30 seconds from when the power button was pressed.

Canon Pixma G6020 MegaTank review: Verdict

The Canon Pixma G6020 MegaTank offers a lot for the money—extremely low ink costs, attractive two-sided prints, and a high duty cycle for cranking out a high volume of prints. With an attractively low initial cost of $269—plus lots of extra black ink in the box—this office-worthy unit has a lot to offer, including high image quality across the board, and two paper trays.

The G6020 doesn't, however, offer every office feature. For example, if copying multipage documents is a critical feature for you, you might wish the G6020 had an ADF for feeding those documents (like the Epson EcoTank ET-4760 does). Also, two-sided printing is on the slow side and may not be up to par for a busy workgroup wanting to regularly make duplex prints. The Epson ET-4760, by comparison, is demonstrably faster at duplex printing, while the HP SmartTank 651 offers only single-sided printing. Also, the G6020 doesn't send faxes, like the ET-4760.

Nonetheless, if you don't need an ADF and two-sided printing doesn't need to be lightning-fast, this low of a price for an all-in-one with refillable ink tanks is impossible to ignore. With two extra bottles of black ink in the box, the Canon Pixma G6020 MegaTank's really low ink costs and top-of-the-line print, copy and scan quality deliver a whole lot of value for the money.

If you own an inkjet printer or are considering the purchase of one, you would be wise to consider an ink subscription. Just like high-yield ink cartridges reduce ongoing ink costs compared to lower-yield cartridges, an ink subscription offers another way to save on ink. The most popular of these services is HP Instant Ink, an ink-by-mail subscription service that is offered alongside most of the HP printers sold today.

For this article, we're looking at HP's Instant Ink program, which the company claims can save you up to 50% on ink costs. We've crunched the numbers and compared the subscription plan costs to the price of standard cartridges to see if this is true. We've also looked at how HP Instant Ink rollover pages can save you money and headache, and how the ease of changing your plan makes HP Instant Ink billing pretty simple, even when your printing needs change in a given month.

What is HP Instant Ink?

HP's Instant Ink program is a subscription service that HP offers its customers, which uses your printer's usage data and your monthly printing habits to send regular ink refills right when you need them.

The best part? It's all at a low monthly cost that is generally less expensive and more convenient than buying new cartridges in stores every time you run out.

How does HP Instant Ink work?

One convenience of an Instant Ink subscription is that ink cartridges are ordered automatically. Although it can take up to 10 days for the cartridges to arrive by mail, ink gets ordered well before you should ever run out. For this to happen, you need to have the printer connected to the internet. To set up the subscription account, you need a valid email address and to put a valid credit or debit card on file.

Unless you suddenly decide to take on an enormous printing project, you should not run out of ink before replacement cartridges arrive. That's because an ink cartridge order is placed well before you're expected to run out—and this is based on the number of pages included in your monthly plan.

HP Instant Ink prices and monthly plans

Every person, household and office has different printing needs, which is why HP offers four primary monthly plans, ranging from 15 to 300 pages per month for the majority of home and business users.

If you need something better suited to the demands of an office, HP also has a Business plan that jumps up to 700 pages per month.

HP offers flexibility in changing plans, allowing you to upgrade and downgrade, depending on your printing volume. If you downgrade to a lesser plan, the change takes place at the next billing cycle. You can, however, upgrade your plan in the middle of a billing cycle.

If you need more pages in any given month, you can purchase 10 extra pages for $1 (10 cents per page), or 15 pages for $1 (6.7 cents per page) with the Business plan. If you don't use all of your pages, they will roll over—up to double the monthly page amount allowed in your subscription plan. If the printer is connected to the internet, you should receive an email notifying you when you are near using up all the pages in your plan. You also can check your print volume via HPSmart.com.

Perhaps the most interesting detail in this subscription program is that all pages cost the same. No matter if you print an 8 x 10-inch color photo on glossy paper or a text document on plain paper, every page simply counts as a page under the plan.

HP calls its Instant Ink cartridges “extra high capacity”. They have more ink than XL cartridges, and thus you replace them less often. You return the cartridges for recycling in postage-paid packaging sent to you by HP. No more need to drive them to a local retailer like Office Depot that recycles ink cartridges.

There are no additional fees for a subscription, beyond the monthly fee and the additional pages surcharge. There is no hidden annual fee. You can cancel at any time.

If you already own an Instant Ink-eligible printer, you can sign up for a subscription now, but you won't be billed until you begin using it. So, even if you still have plenty of ink in your HP printer, you can sign up now for Instant Ink now, but won't be billed until 30 days after you have installed the first Instant Ink cartridge in your printer.

HP Instant Ink vs regular ink purchases

Will a subscription plan in all cases be less expensive than buying ink cartridges on your own? That may be a difficult calculation to make, because many factors come into play.

For example, let's take the HP OfficeJet 250, a portable printer whose high-yield cartridges have estimated costs per page of 6.7 cents for black, and 17.3 cents for color pages. Even with the basic plan, which comes out to 7 cents a month, it looks like you would come out ahead if you printed just a few color pages per month. By this logic, the more color pages you print, the more you are saving by having a subscription plan.

As previously described, you don't lose pages you don't use. But, you can only roll over so many. On the Basic plan of 15 pages a month, you can roll over a maximum of 30 pages. With the 50-page Occasional plan, you can roll over up to 100 pages, and so on. As long as you use up all your pages, it appears that you will save money over buying cartridges on your own, when you need them.

By the same token, the HP Envy 7855 offers costs per page of 7.1 cents (text) and 18 cents (color) when using high-yield cartridges. The Moderate plan of 100 pages monthly would knock down your cost per page to 5 cents. The more color pages you print, the more money you're saving.

If you need to downgrade your plan, and do so in time, you should be able to prevent any loss in rolled over pages.

HP Instant Ink ready printers

Many of the company's Deskjet and Officejet printers are eligible for the program, including all of the models recently tested by Tom's Guide. This includes models seen in our best printers list, like our HP Tango X review, the HP Envy 7855 printer review and the HP OfficeJet 250 that tops our list of the best portable printers. Several of HP's office-oriented printers, like the HP OfficeJet Pro 9025, also support an Instant Ink subscription.

Given the long list of compatible models, it’s most likely that an HP model on your short list supports Instant Ink. HP’s online store offers a page listing Instant Ink printers.

One critical feature for compatibility is a working internet connection. If a printer is offline, it will not be able to report supply levels and trigger shipment of your next set of ink cartridges (or, toner cartridge).

However, Instant Ink is not available on all HP printers. The slightly older HP OfficeJet Pro 7720, for example, isn't eligible for an Instant Ink plan.

What you'll find missing from this list is any mention of HP's many laser printers, but that's not going to be the case for long. HP has recently added toner to the Instant Ink plan, letting monochrome laser printer owners enjoy the same subscription-based savings and convenient refills by mail. At press time, color laser printers were not supported.

Is HP Instant Ink worth it?

There is no doubt that HP Instant Ink can save you money, if you maximize your monthly print limit. HP claims that you can save up to 50 percent, but this calculation is based on standard cartridges, not high-yield cartridges, and assumes a fixed cost per page. The biggest question is how many color pages you print—the more color pages you print, the more you'll save by switching to an Instant Ink subscription, particularly if you make lots of large prints of color photos. Or, to look at it another way, having an Instant Ink subscription will free you up to print all those documents in color that in the past you printed in black-and-white in order to avoid the high cost of using your color inks.

It may take vigilance to avoid losing rolled-over pages. You need to make sure to downgrade your plan if you are not using all your pages, and are approaching the limit of rolled-over pages. HP makes this part easy, allowing you to downgrade at the next monthly billing cycle, without locking you in to a longer term. Checking your print volume is easy via HPSmart.com.

Also, you will want to make sure you upgrade your plan if you need to, so you don't overpay for extra pages. HP makes it easy to purchase extra pages, and also allows you to upgrade in the middle of a billing cycle, if you want to. That's quite a bit of flexibility.

All that said, even if you were to lose some pages in your plan, your cost per page would not skyrocket to the traditional costs of color pages, using ink cartridges without a subscription.

For example, even if you only used 75 of the 100 pages allowed each month under the Moderate plan—and lost them all because you maxed out the allowed rollover—your cost per page would only increase from 5 cents to 6.7 cents. That's still less than the cost of a text page when printing with high-yield cartridges in the HP Envy 7855.

As a worst-case scenario, if you only used 10 of the 15 pages under the Basic plan, you'd be paying 9.9 cents per page, using the same "lost rollover pages" assumption.

Although your individual savings may depend on what you print, and the consistency of your print volume, HP Instant Ink appears to be a pretty solid bet for most printing scenarios. Given the flexibility of the plans, the number of allowed rollover pages, and the ability to change plans without getting into a long-term commitment, it appears HP Instant Ink offers a subscription service that can save most inkjet printer owners money.

The Epson EcoTank ET-4760 ($449, or less with the right Epson coupon code) is an inkjet all-in-one that's built for heavy printing duty in a small office or home office. Outfitted with high-capacity ink tanks, the ET-4760 is built to print thousands of pages, yet keep ink costs very low.

This EcoTank model prints, copies, scans and faxes. There's a duplexer for making two-sided prints, and a 30-page automatic document feeder (ADF) for drawing multipage documents across the scanner glass. It offers a fair number of features and respectable performance, making it a contender for the best all-in-one printers.  We liked it so much, we named it one of the best printers in our 2021 Tom's Guide Awards. Ink costs per page are extremely low, although your overall savings may require thousands of printed pages compared to less expensive models with office-worthy features.

Epson EcoTank ET-4760: Design

The ET-4760 has a modest-sized 2.4-inch color touchscreen on its control panel, which tilts upward almost 90 degrees. The screen is on the small side for navigating menus for stand-alone operation. The only physical buttons on the control panel are for the power, home and help functions. There is a USB port, Ethernet port and fax port, plus support for Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi Direct. There is no USB thumb drive port or memory card slot.

Like other tank models, the ET-4760 has windows into the ink tanks on its front panel, so you can see if you're running low on ink. The initial set of ink bottles should last you a while, however. The bottle of black ink is rated to print 7,500 pages, while each bottle of color ink lasts an estimated 6,000 pages.

This EcoTank is quite compact, measuring 10 x 16.4 x 19.8 inches when set up to print. It's also lightweight, at just 15 pounds. A 250-sheet paper tray is at the bottom of the unit. There isn't a secondary paper tray, so you can't keep more than one kind of paper loaded. When switching paper, you will need to change the paper type in the settings menu; paper type is not automatically detected.

The ET-4760 has a 33.6 kbps modem and can store up to 100 pages. The unit can store up to 60 speed dial numbers.

The all-in-one comes in black or a creamy off-white.

Epson EcoTank ET-4760: Print speed

The ET-4760 printed documents quickly on plain paper. It printed a five-page text document in 27.1 seconds, or 11.1 pages per minute (ppm). The average is 33.1 seconds, or 9.1 ppm. Similarly, the ET-4760 printed our six-page text and color graphics document faster than the average. It printed the document in 1 minute and 32 seconds, or 3.4 ppm. The average is 2 minutes and 16 seconds, or 2.2 ppm.

Our letter-size glossy photo printed in 4 minutes and 34 seconds. This was slightly slower than the average by 11 seconds.

Two-sided print speeds were fast. Two-sided text documents printed at 6.5 ppm, and mixed text/graphics documents printed at 3.2 ppm. While these speeds were much slower than the more expensive Epson ET-5850 (14.5 ppm and 9.5 ppm, respectively), they were much faster than the less expensive Canon Pixma G6020 (2.3 ppm and 1.8 ppm, respectively).

The ET-4760 copied a page of mixed text and color graphics in 30.1 seconds, which was faster than the average of 34.8 seconds. It also copied a black-and-white page quickly, doing so in 12.8 seconds, compared to the average of 19.2 seconds. The EcoTank scanned a page in black-and-white to PDF format in roughly average time, making the 300 dpi scan in 12.4 seconds. Scanning at high resolution to JPEG format, however, was on the slow side: Compared to the average of 1 minute and 9 seconds, the EcoTank took 40 seconds longer to make the same scan.

Epson EcoTank ET-4760: Copy and scan speed

The ET-4760 is quick at copying in black-and-white, and faster than the average at copying color documents. This EcoTank copied a color page in 30.1 seconds, versus the average of 34.8 seconds. Making a black-and-white copy of a text document in 12.8 seconds, the EcoTank bested the average of 19.2 seconds by a significant margin.

Using its ADF, a five-page text document copied in 1 minute and 7 seconds, or 4.5 ppm. By contrast, the pricier Epson ET-5850 was much faster, copying the same document at 13.8 ppm.  The less expensive Canon G6020 does not have a document feeder.

The ET-4760 does not make two-sided copies from two-sided originals via its ADF.

Black-and-white scanning was a little slower than the average. The ET-4760 scanned a page in black-and-white in 12.4 seconds, versus the average of 11.6 seconds. Color scanning, however, was quite slow. It took the ET-4760 almost two minutes to capture a color document (1 minute and 49 seconds), versus the average of 1 minute and 9 seconds.

Epson EcoTank ET-4760: Print quality

Text prints with fairly sharp edges and fairly dark letterforms. Upon close examination, however, there is some ink splatter beyond the letters and some lumpy-looking edges.

Graphics looked very attractive, with well saturated colors that looked very natural. Pixels were visible in some areas where textures could have looked smoother, however, which also contributed to some fine details not looking razor sharp. Overall, however, graphics looked quite attractive.

The biggest print quality let-down was with duplex prints. Making a two-sided print of the same document, both text and graphics came out a little lighter, with a slightly washed-out appearance that made fine details look a little less sharp, and made the sense of depth look shallower.

The ET-4760 made faithful reproductions of text and graphics. Whether copied or scanned, the EcoTank captured sharp details and accurately reproduced natural-looking colors. When using the ADF, however, there were occasional anomalies in multi-page copies: One line of copied text looked stretched out and demonstrably taller than the previous one, suggesting a problem with the paper feed. Photographic scans, which came out a little dark, lost details in shadow areas. Compared to scans made by our Editor's Choice, the Canon Pixma TR9120, these scans looked darker overall, with more abrupt dark mid-tone transitions, and lacked some sharpness in the finest details.

Glossy photos printed with plenty of details, smooth textures and well-saturated colors.

Epson EcoTank ET-4760:  Ink cost and yield

The ET-4760 has four ink tanks. One bottle of black ink is rated to last 7,500 pages. Each of the three colors (cyan, magenta and yellow) is rated to last 6,000 pages. The black ink costs $19.99 per bottle, and the color inks sell for $12.99 each. There is also a three-pack of color inks, but it will only save you 2 cents. No matter. With page yields this high, you'll spend just 0.2 cents per text page and 0.9 cents per color page.

So, is this ink tank model right for your wallet? That could depend on your print volume. For example, compared to the $200 Brother INKvestment MFC-J995DW, which uses ink cartridges, the ET-4760 will save you 0.7 cents per text page and 4.1 cents per color page. This assumes the MFC-J995DW is outfitted with high-yield cartridges (standard yield cartridges have a slightly higher cost per page). Given that the MFC-J995DW costs $249 more than the TR9120, you will need to print more than 35,000 text pages or 6,000 color pages to recoup that extra investment.

Epson EcoTank ET-4760: Setup and software

After removing roughly a dozen pieces of packaging tape, you fill the ET-4760's ink tanks, which is easy to do. After turning on the printer, it takes about 10 minutes for the ink charging process. The startup guide lists the URL for downloading software (there is no QR code). The software package includes a setup utility, scanning software and fax utility.

After selecting your connection type on the screen, you connect your computer (if using USB). If you choose to put the printer on your wireless network at a later time, you simply follow the on-screen menu selections, which are self-explanatory.

Before printing, you need to perform a printhead alignment. You print five pages of lines and blocks, and then select which of the seven sets is best aligned or does not overlap. This completes the setup.

The ET-4760 supports a variety of mobile apps and protocols. You can use the company's Epson Email Print, Remote Print, and Scan to Cloud apps, for example, in addition to Epson iPrint for iOS and Android. Also supported are AirPrint, Google Cloud Print and Android printing, for example.

Startup was relatively quick, with the main menu screen illuminating in 8 seconds from pressing the power button.

Epson EcoTank ET-4760: Verdict

The Epson EcoTank ET-4760 offers office-worthy features and performance, and ink costs so low you might fantasize about what you'll do with all the money you'll save. With an initial price of $449, however, you would need to print thousands of pages to make up the difference between the ET-4760 and, for example, the less expensive $200 Brother MFC-J995DW, which also offers low costs per page with its high-yield ink cartridges.

Fast printing and fast copying make this printer a good fit for a small office, and its footprint is modest, though you may miss having a second paper tray. The duplexer makes for convenient two-sided prints, but pages print lighter than single-sided documents. The printer's ADF enables quick copying and scanning, but anomalies in copied documents suggest the document feeder may not be totally reliable, which is unfortunate for an office workhorse.

All things considered, if you need an office workhorse for heavy print and copy duty—while keeping ink costs extremely low—you will most likely find the Epson EcoTank ET-4760 to be a valuable office all-in-one.

One thing that strikes you immediately about the Peopoly Phenom when you first lay eyes on this 30.7-inch tall 3D printer — it’s one of the biggest models available to home users. That’s because this 3D printer has a huge build area: a stonkingly large 10.8 x 6.1 x 15.8 inches, for a total of over a million cubic inches of build volume. That’s more than four times the build volume of the Form 3 at about half the cost. 

That sounds awesome, but is the Peopoly Phenom usable enough to land on our list of the best 3D printers? Our Peopoly Phenom review find that the answer is yes, but with enough caveats to make this a pick for 3D enthusiasts only. 

Peopoly Phenom review: Price and availability

When we first reviewed the Peopoly Phenom about a year ago, it cost $1,799. These days, the printer costs $1,999, which is still significantly less than the Form 3's $3,499 asking price. You can buy the Peopoly Phenom directly from Peopoly's website.

Peopoly Phenom review: Design

The Peopoly Phenom uses a combination of an LCD screen and UV LED rather than the UV laser used in the smaller Peopoly Moai and the Form 3. In the Phenom, the UV light comes from a grid of LEDs under the print bed which shines through the LED screen. 

Where this screen is opaque, the light is blocked and the layer of resin between the build plate and the print bed remains liquid. Where the screen is see-through, the UV light passes through and the resin is solidified. Once the resin is solid and sticks to the build plate, the plate is raised, liquid resin rushes in and the process repeats, building the print layer by layer.

The upside of Peopoly’s approach is that it is simpler and requires fewer moving parts: you don’t have to use an intricate mirror system to bounce a laser beam around. The downside is that the parts wear out quicker: the LCD screen can be damaged by the intense UV light and will need to be replaced eventually. Peopoly estimates that this will happen after about 400 hours of print time. That might sound like a lot, but with large prints often taking 24 hours or longer, it can quickly get eaten up. The LCD screen, which is a modified 4K laptop screen, can be replaced with a replacement unit costing about $100. 

Although the Peopoly Phenom design and construction is generally excellent, we noticed a few quirks. For one, there is no Wi-Fi on the 3D printer, despite the on-screen display advertising it as a feature. Peopoly told us that this is because the firmware used on the printer supports Wi-Fi and that the company was not able to remove it. Instead, you have to use wired ethernet to connect to the Peopoly Phenom.

Peopoly Phenom review: Controls

You control the Phenom through a small touch screen on the front of the printer, which is pretty easy to use. With that touch screen, you control every function of the 3D printer including moving the print bed up and down, setting the brightness of the UV light and starting and stopping prints. 

The print files are sent to the printer either through a wired ethernet connection or on a USB drive. To create files for the Phenom, you could use any 3D printing app, but Peopoly recommends the free Chitubox. Available for Windows, Mac and Linux, it’s a good choice that is easy to use and is focussed on printing with resin printers like the Phenom. 

With Chitubox, load the model and click on Add Supports; the program analyzes the model and automatically adds supports that will make it easier to print. Chitubox can also do things like automatically hollow a model, removing the interior so it uses less resin to print. 

Once the print file is ready, you can save it to a USB drive or send it directly to the Peopoly Phenom over the wired ethernet connection. 

Peopoly Phenom review: Materials and maintenance

Peopoly doesn’t place limitations on which resins you can use with the Phenom: you can pour any resin you like into the print tray. Different resins require different settings, though, so you will need to tweak settings (notably the LED power and exposure time) for different types. Peopoly mentains a Google Sheet of recommended settings and there is an active community of users on the Peopoly forums. 

Peopoly offers its own Delft resin for this printer, which is priced at $60/kg. Due to the coronavirus pandemic occurring during our testing, this resin was not available. Instead, we used Siraya Tech Fast, a resin designed for use with LED printers like the Phenom that was recommended by Peopoly. This costs a very reasonable $35/kg. It’s a good example of the benefits of not having your 3D printer tied to just one material — when the global supply chain is interrupted, you can just switch to another. 

As noted above, the LCD screen that the Phenom uses is damaged over time by the UV light and requires replacing after about 400 hours of print time. A replacement screen costs $100, and the process of installing it requires removing the tape holding the old one in place under the print vat, disconnecting the controller cable, plugging in the new screen, putting it in place and taping it down. It’s not a difficult process, but it is more hands-on than the simple snap-into-place process of replacing the laser module on a Form 3. It also presupposes that you are comfortable enough to start tearing large amounts of masking tape out of the printer and unplugging things. 

Peopoly Phenom review: Print process

Producing a 3D print with the Peopoly Phenom is fairly straightforward, though it involves a few manual steps. First, you have to fill the print tray with resin since there is no auto-fill feature like what you’d find on the Form 3. The Phenom also lacks the ability to detect low resin, so, if you don’t fill the tray enough, your print will just fail part way through without warning or notice. 

Once the tray is ready, you insert the USB drive with the print file and hit Print on the control panel. If you need to confirm you are printing the right thing, the Phenom shows you a small preview of the print on the screen. 

During our testing for this Peopoly Phenom review, we found printing to be a bit of a stinky, noisy process. To keep the UV LEDs cool, the Phenom has two fans on the side of the case, pulling and pushing air over the LEDs. This makes a lot of noise — about the same as a vacuum cleaner running in the next room. This also means that the slight chemical smell of the resin gets spread through the room. Let’s put it this way: You wouldn’t want to sleep in the same room as the Peopoly Phenom. 

Peopoly Phenom review: Print speed

The Phenom is a fairly fast printer, because the UV LED and LCD screen approach means it can print an entire layer at once. That doesn’t make it much quicker than printers that use a single laser spot, though, because the LED lights aren’t as intense as the laser, so they have to be exposed for longer. 

In the end, the two different approaches are about equal: The Phenom took just under 13 hours to print a 4-inch high Thinker model, which is comparable to the Form Labs 3. 

Peopoly Phenom review: Print quality

We were impressed with the print quality of the Phenom, which produced clean, smooth-surfaced prints. We found that our test print of Rodin’s thinker was printed with natural, smooth curves.

Our geometric sculpture print had sharp, clean edges, and our test print of a set of gears fit together well, requiring little cleaning to make the various gear teeth and screw threads fit together. 

That’s not to say that the process is hassle-free, though: like all resin printers, you need to treat the prints to get the best results, washing them in alcohol and hardening them with UV light. None of this is handled by the Phenom; you have to handle all this yourself. 

Peopoly Phenom review: Verdict

There is no doubt that the Peopoly Phenom is a great printer. It offers a huge print volume, it’s relatively easy to use and it can produce excellent prints. And the price for this 3D printer is great: at $1,999, the Peopoly Phenom costs almost half as much as the Form Labs Form 3 and can print much larger objects.

There’s some “buts,” though. The Peopoly Phenom is  a hands-on printer that needs a fair amount of tweaking to get the best quality out of it. To use it effectively, you need to be comfortable with getting into the guts of the thing, tweaking settings, fiddling with rather unpolished software and doing multiple print tests to find the settings that work best for each type of resin. That’s a different approach to the hands-off, press-and-print approach of the Form 3. 

If you just want to print and not worry about the process, the Form 3 is the better pick. But if the idea of tweaking and fiddling to get the best results sounds like fun (and you have the time and energy to do it), the Peopoly Phenom is the resin printer to get. 

Polaroid isn’t a name that springs to mind for 3D printing — at least not for U.S. shoppers — but the Polaroid PlaySmart 3D printer might change that. Polaroid has built a simple device that produces excellent quality prints using a variety of materials, as we discovered during testing our Polaroid PlaySmart 3D printer review.

The Polaroid PlaySmart 3D printer costs $599. Like the Polaroid 3D Play Pen we tested for our 3D pen face-off, Polaroid's 3D printer is an exclusive at craft retailer Joann, currently offering the printer at an attractive discount as of this writing.

Without that discount, you’ll find less expensive choices for novice users among our list of the best 3D printers. But the Polaroid name and the quality output from the PlaySmart make this device worth a look if you want a 3D printer for the home.

Polaroid PlaySmart 3D printer review: Design

Polaroid’s better known for its instant cameras, and the PlaySmart takes some design cues from that iconic product, using white and black plastic and the Polaroid logo. The printer might come across as dated to some, but it didn’t look out of place next to one of my vintage 1970s Polaroid cameras. 

The print area of the PlaySmart is rather small, at just 4.7 by 4.7 by 4.7 inches, for a total of 103 cubic inches. That’s a lot less than comparable printers like the Monoprice Voxel (329 cubic inches in total), but it’s the same as the Da Vinci Nano. Printing area is less of an issue than you might first suspect, though: it isn’t difficult to cut objects into parts and print one at a time if need be. 

Above the PlaySmart’s print area is a small camera, used to monitor prints in progress and to produce timelapse videos. The filament is stored on a separate holder that also monitors how much filament you have left. It’s a nice touch, but one that feels somewhat redundant when you can clearly see how much filament is left on the roll. The PlaySmart works with filament from either Polaroid or third-party manufacturers.

Polaroid PlaySmart 3D printer review: Controls

Next to the print area, the Polaroid PlaySmart 3D printer features an LCD controller, which is a small but easy-to-read touch screen. It is also responsive, and picking out on-screen options is easy to do. 

Still, you’ll find it easier to control the PlaySmart with the Polaroid PLAYSmart app, available for iOS and Android. This free app allows you to start prints from the library of manufacturer-supplied models, monitor a print in progress through the camera or run maintenance tasks. If you’re printing your own model though, you’ll need to use the control panel and the Polaroid SmartPrep software for Windows or Mac. 

This simple 3D modeling program can load existing models in the .STL and .OBJ formats. You can resize, move, combine or otherwise manipulate your models, saving them and preparing them for printing. The print file can’t be sent directly to the PlaySmart printer, though: you have to save the print files to a USB drive, then connect this to the printer yourself and select it for printing. That seems like an odd requirement as the PlaySmart supports Wi-Fi.

Polaroid PlaySmart 3D printer review: Print speed

The PlaySmart is a pretty fast printer: it cranked out a 4-inch high print of our Thinker model in 3 hours and 56 minutes in Draft mode. Changing the settings to Fine mode lengthened the print time to 10 hours and 13 minutes. That means the PlaySmart can quickly produce a rough print when required or produce a finer, smoother print overnight. 

The PlaySmart is a little faster than most printers we have tested, producing a draft print quicker than the Monoprice Voxel, currently our favorite 3D printer for beginners.

Polaroid PlaySmart 3D printer review: Print materials

The PlaySmart can print using three different materials: PLA, P-Wood and PETG. PLA, or polylactic acid is the standard printing material that most 3D printers use. PETG, or Polyethylene terephthalate, is a plastic that is commonly used in plastic bottles and the like. It is lighter and stronger than PLA, but is also more expensive. P-Wood is a form of PLA that is mixed with sawdust to produce a wood-like feel. 

These materials aren’t expensive: a 1KG reel of PLA costs $38, while a similar amount of PETG  costs $48 and P-Wood is $55 for half a kilogram. You aren’t limited to these filaments, though: the PlaySmart can also use third-party filament, making this device more flexible than 3D printers restricting you to their manufacturers’ filaments.

Polaroid PlaySmart 3D printer: Print Quality

As fast as the Polaroid PlaySmart 3D printer created prints, we also were impressed by the print quality of those models. The PlaySmart 3D printer yielded prints with clean, smooth details and very few issues. 

We test print quality by printing three models: a scan of Rodin’s Thinker sculpture, a geometric sculpture and a set of gears. Our first test model came out very well: the Thinker sculpture had excellent detail and smooth, organic-looking surfaces. The printer did a great job of reproducing the curves of the sculptures back and muscles. The layers of the print were rather obvious in all of the print modes, though: the print lacked the polished smoothness of SLA printers and some more expensive FDM printers. 

Our second test model uses a geometric sculpture that really showcases the ability of a 3D printer to produce clean, sharp edges. The PlaySmart struggled a little here, with a print that had a lot of thin filaments of PLA between the edges of the print. Those filaments were produced by the material stretching as the print head moved between the different parts of the print. These are not difficult to trim off, though, and once removed the PlaySmart’s geometric sculpture print had sharp, smooth edges and well-defined points. 

Finally, we printed a set of gears that are designed to snap together to form a set of hand-cranked planetary gears. The PlaySmart handled these without too many issues, producing a set of gears that fit together with only minimal cleaning. We did have to trim off a lot of the brim that held the print onto the print bed, though. 

Polaroid PlaySmart 3D printer review: Verdict

The Polaroid PlaySmart 3D printer offers a lot for $599: it can produce high-quality prints and churn out quick draft prints very rapidly. It also supports a variety of materials and doesn’t lock you into one supplier for your filament. 

But when comparing this device to other 3D printers aimed at novices for our Polaroid PlaySmart 3D printer preview, Polaroid’s offering is relatively expensive. The Monoprice Voxel, for example, can produce prints that are nearly as good while costing $200 less.

Even at its regular price, though, you're getting a high-quality device for your money with the Polaroid PlaySmart 3D printer. And if that price drops below $599, then it becomes a very good deal indeed. Even when not on sale, though, the Polaroid PlaySmart 3D printer is a very good pick for home users who want to get started with 3D printing and want the very best prints, regardless of how much they have to pay upfront.

The Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5850 often $850-$999, or less with an Epson coupon code) is an inkjet all-in-one that lives up to its “pro” moniker in many ways. It's a workgroup printer that's built like a workhorse, outfitted with high-capacity tanks (as the product name suggests) that holds enough ink to print thousands of pages. The tanks keep ink costs extremely low. 

In addition to the traditional multifunction jobs of printing, copying and scanning, this workgroup printer offers fax capability and can store 200 speed dial numbers. It offers a full complement of features, which we'll outline in detail, and blazed through our tests with impressive speed—all while delivering top-notch image quality.  

Built to handle up to 3,300 pages per month, our Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5850 review left no doubt that it's one of the best all-in-one printers you can buy,  built for the busy office that can't afford to have its multifunction printer be a productivity bottleneck.

Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5850: Design

Similar to another ink tank competitor, the recently reviewed HP Smart Tank 651, the EcoTank ET-5850's front panel has little windows into its ink reservoirs, so you can plan ahead on ordering ink. But you won't have to do that too soon: Two bottles of each ink come in the box: black, cyan, yellow and magenta. 

The ET-5850 has some heft to it, at almost 40 pounds. It measures 16.7 x 32.4 x 18.1 inches when printing, so it will need a fair chunk of tabletop real estate. That's not surprising, given that it houses two 250-sheet paper cassettes, a 50-sheet specialty media tray, a 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF), and a duplexer. In addition to making two-sided prints, the ET-5850 can scan and copy two-sided original documents via the ADF.

The large, 4.3-inch touch screen operates smoothly. The large on-screen buttons make menu selections simple, and you can swipe the menu icons across the screen, like you can with a smartphone. Help screens and animated instructions are well organized and easy to follow. There are no physical navigation buttons. On the back panel are the USB, Ethernet, and phone line (fax) ports. Wi-Fi networking and Wi-Fi Direct are supported.

Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5850: Print speed

The ET-5850 put the pedal to the metal in our tests, delivering very fast performance in every print, copy and scan test. It printed our five-page text document in 19.6 seconds, or 15.3 pages per minute (ppm). That was significantly faster than the HP Smart Tank Plus 651, at 34 seconds, or 8.8 ppm, and a little slower than Canon Maxify MB5420 (our previous Editor’s Choice for small businesses), at 17.5 ppm. The average for ink tank and high-yield cartridge models was 31 seconds, or 9.7 ppm. Business workgroup inkjets averaged 22.1 seconds, or 13.6 ppm in our tests.

The EcoTank printed our six-page color PDF of mixed text and graphics in just 32.8 seconds—a blistering pace of 11 ppm that's a fraction of the category average of 2.6 ppm (or, 2 minutes and 19 seconds). The HP Smart Tank Plus 651 printed the same document at a glacial pace of 3 minutes and 30 seconds, or 1.7 ppm. The Canon Maxify MB5420 printed it at half the pace of the EcoTank, taking about 1 minute.

Using the rear special media tray, the EcoTank made a high-quality letter-size glossy photo print in 2 minutes and 21 seconds. The Canon MB5420 was slightly faster, printing the same photo in 2 minutes and 5 seconds. High-yield inkjets averaged 4 minutes and 31 seconds, while the HP Smart Tank Plus 651 was even slower, taking 5 minutes and 4 seconds.

The ET-5850 was equally impressive at making two-sided prints, losing only one or two pages per minute versus single-sided prints. The EcoTank spat out two-sided text documents at 14.5 ppm. By comparison, the Canon MB5420 did so at 11.7 ppm.

The ET-5850 also printed two-sided color documents quickly, at 9.5 ppm. By comparison, the Canon MB5420 did so at 6 ppm. Slower models include the Epson EcoTank ET-4750, at 3.4 ppm, and the Canon Pixma TS9120, at 2.3 ppm.

Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5850: Copy and scan speed

The ET-5850 made a black-and-white copy in just 6.7 seconds, the fastest time we've recorded for an inkjet all-in-one. It was more than four times faster than the average for ink tank and high-yield models, 28.8 seconds, as well as the fastest among business models. The Canon MB5420 was the next-fastest business model, making the same copy in 7.6 seconds. 

The EcoTank was was also lightning-fast at making a color copy, doing so in 10 seconds—a fraction of the time it took most general-purpose models. Similarly impressive, the Canon MB5420 made a color copy in 13.4 seconds. The average for business models is 31.1 seconds. In our testing, high-yield models have been somewhat slow at this task, taking 49 seconds on average.

Like its duplexer, the ET-5850's automatic document feeder (ADF) is fast. Using the ADF, the EcoTank copied a single-sided five-page text document in 21.7 seconds, or 13.8 ppm. By contrast, the HP Smart Tank 651 took almost 11 minutes to copy five text pages—less than half a page per minute. The Brother INKvestment J805DW made the same copy in 44.2 seconds, or 6.8 ppm.

The ET-5850 continued to work at a brisk pace when copying two-sided multi-page documents, taking only 1 minute and 11 seconds (8.5 ppm) to make a two-sided copy of a 10-page double-sided text document. The Canon MB5420 was slightly faster, at 8.8 ppm.

Scanning speeds were also fast in both of our tests. The ET-5850 was quick to make a high-resolution scan of a 8-by-10-inch photo, creating a 600 dpi JPEG in just 17 seconds (the fastest time we've measured for an inkjet all-in-one). This was almost twice as fast as the Canon MB5420, at 31.7 seconds, and the business category average of 31.1 seconds.  HP Smart Tank Plus 651, on the other hand, took 2 minutes and 16 seconds to make the same scan. 

Similarly, the EcoTank scanned in record time, making a 300 dpi grayscale PDF in only 5.6 seconds, compared to the category average of 7.1 seconds for business inkjets. The HP Smart Tank 651 made the same scan in 8.3 seconds. The Canon MB5420 made the scan in 9.4 seconds.

The EcoTank also scans quickly using its ADF. It made a 300 dpi five-page PDF scan of a text and mixed color graphics document in just 40.3 seconds, or just over 8 seconds per page. Scanning a two-sided original via the ADF, the EcoTank made a two-page 300 dpi grayscale PDF in 21.5 seconds. Scanning the same two-page document in color took 27.9 seconds. Adding more pages did not slow down the EcoTank's pace: It scanned a 10-page, two-sided original quickly, creating a 300 dpi PDF in 1 minute and 39 seconds, or just under 10 seconds per page.

Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5850: Print quality

The EcoTank ET-5850 makes high-quality prints. Text looked crisp and as close as you can get with an inkjet to the razor-sharp letterforms of a good quality laser printer. Text in two-sided prints looked just as sharp. 

Prints of graphics were of high quality. There was some mild banding visible in flat areas, but it was spaced out enough to not be distracting. High-quality inkjet paper seemed to reduce the banding. Colors looked well saturated and natural, mid tone transitions were smooth, and details looked sharp.

Photographs printed on glossy paper looked very attractive, with rich colors and sharp details. The EcoTank tends to emphasize reds and yellows, creating a warm tone that is arguably a little unnatural looking. Shadow areas in photographic prints tended to lose some subtle details. 

Copies of text documents looked attractive, with letter forms that came out a little fatter than in the original. On occasion, copy quality suffered due to an apparent ADF or paper feed inaccuracy. On copies of multi-page text documents, this led to some jagged and mismatched lines of text. At worst, a five-page copy had a line of misaligned text on three of its pages; another 10-page copy had one page with a misaligned row of text. Several other documents copied accurately, however, and graphics copied on plain paper looked faithful to the originals.

Scans of documents with mixed text and graphics looked very attractive in PDF format. The document scans looked accurate and detailed. Scans of glossy photographs made at default settings, however, tended to come out darker than the original. Although details were sharp and skin tones looked natural, dark mid tones tended to transition abruptly into shadow, giving an underexposed appearance. Shadows looked too dark and flat, losing details in the original print.

Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5850: Ink cost and yield

Ink costs for the EcoTank ET-5850 are extremely low. A bottle of black ink costs $29.99 and lasts an estimated 7,500 pages. Color inks cost $22.99 each, and are rated to last 6,000 pages. Two bottles of each ink come in the box. There is a three-pack of cyan, magenta and yellow inks, but it's priced only 2 cents less than if you bought the three inks individually. All inks are pigment-based.

These estimates deliver costs per page of 0.4 cents for text pages, and 1.6 cents per color page. By comparison, the HP SmartTank 651's costs per page are 0.3 cents and 0.8 cents, respectively. Using high-yield cartridges, the Canon MB5420 has much higher costs per page of 1.5 cents (text) and 7.1 cents (color). The Brother INKvestment MFC-J805DW has costs per page of 1.2 cents for text and 5 cents for color. The average for high-yield printers is 0.6 cents per page for text, and 3 cents per page for color, while business inkjets average 1.9 and 8.9 cents, respectively. In both cases, this is a dramatic improvement over standard inkjets, which average costs per page of 5.9 cents and 14.9 cents, respectively.

One additional consumable that needs factoring into costs is a maintenance box, which stores ink discharged during print head cleaning. This part costs $23.99 and would be a significant expense if it needed regular replacement. At press time, Epson had not sent us an estimate of how often users might need to replace the maintenance box. In our testing, the LCD showed the maintenance box to be roughly 60 percent filled up after using half a bottle of black ink and roughly five-eighths of the color inks. If this rate was constant, the box may need replacing every 5,000 pages or so, adding almost half a cent per page to printing costs. However, it's also likely that the initial setup accounted for much of the maintenance box usage, and the box will last much longer.

Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5850: Setup and software

To set up the ET-5850, I removed roughly a dozen pieces of blue packaging tape, and then filled the four ink tanks. Filling the tanks from the included bottles is simple: You twist off the cap of each ink bottle, and insert it atop the corresponding tank, and wait for gravity to work its magic.

I ran the installation from the CD-ROM on a Windows 10 PC, and followed instructions for charging the ink, which took roughly nine minutes. When prompted to print a test page, the ET-5850 automatically extended its output tray.  

The CD-ROM includes two scanning programs. ScanSmart is required for using the “scan to computer” function from the ET-5850's touch screen. In Windows 10, ScanSmart's home screen offers double-sided and single-sided scanning options, and plenty of file saving options. One function you might miss, however, is auto cropping. The scanning area menu only offers document sizes such as letter, A4, etc. If you scan smaller objects, such as a 4-by-6-inch photo or three-fold brochure cover, you will get a lot of white space you'll need to crop out later. The Epson Scan 2 program provides TWAIN compliance.

I set up the ET-5850 over USB (no cable included) and on my wireless network. In both cases the setup was straightforward. 

Printing from a mobile phone was pretty seamless. The iOS version of the Epson iPrint app worked well on an iPhone 7, and was intuitive, except for a couple unsupported formats. For example, the “print photos” function took me to the Photos gallery to select pictures for printing. But, because the app does not support the iOS Notes format, selecting the Epson iPrint app directly from Notes resulted in a “format not supported” message. The same was true of .png files (screenshots). However, the workaround was easy in both cases: Instead of selecting Epson iPrint from the share menu, I selected the native “print” function and then selected the ET-5850 from the list of printers. The ET-5850 supports Apple AirPrint and Mopria, and there is an Android version of the iPrint app, as well.

Epson's iPrint app also offers voice-activated printing via Alexa, Google and Siri. On iOS, the iPhone app has an "Add to Siri" button on the main page with four choices: Print the last photo I took, scan this document, run document capture, and show me my printer's ink levels. I used the first option with a “print photo” command, and my latest snapshot printed successfully.

Startup time was roughly average. The ET-5850 took 14 seconds to power up and display its home screen menu. Making a black-and-white copy immediately took just 9 seconds, compared to 6.7 seconds during regular testing.

Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5850: Verdict

Extremely low ink costs and exceptional performance make the ET-5850 a great fit for a busy office. With a document feeder, duplexer, three paper trays, and two-sided scanning, the ET-5850 is likely to meet the demands of most busy offices.

If your print volume warrants a workhorse like the ET-5850, it's unlikely you'll be disappointed. In every test we ran it through, the ET-5850 delivered high image quality at record speed. Print quality was excellent, copy quality was top-notch, document scans looked sharp, and two-sided operations were all quickly accomplished. The only disappointments were that scans of photographs came out too dark at default settings, and that the included scanning software does not offer automatic cropping. 

Compared to our previous Editor’s Choice, the Canon Maxify MB5420, the ET-5850 offers dramatically lower ink costs—even when the MB5420’s high-yield cartridges are installed. The time it takes to recoup the higher initial investment in the EcoTank will depend on your office’s print volume—the more you print, the faster the return on the investment.

The EcoTank Pro outperforms the Maxify in most categories—and doubles the Maxify’s speeds at color printing and scanning, all while delivering high image quality. 

If your office equipment budget can accommodate the price, the fast and feature-rich ET-5850 is definitely worth a serious look.

The Canon Pixma TR8620 is an inkjet all-in-one with home office features. It has a 20-page automatic document feeder (ADF), a duplexer for two-sided printing, and two paper trays for keeping two types of paper at the ready.

Unlike many of the best all-in-one printers, the TR8620 uses five ink cartridges, with two types of black: one for documents (pigment-based) and the other for glossy photo prints (dye-based). The other three inks are the standard cyan, magenta and yellow.

The TR8620 is also outfitted with a duplexer for two-sided printing, and supports smart home integration with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. We like it so much, we've consisntely ranked ti among the best printers ever since it launched.

Canon Pixma TR8620 review: Design

The TR8620 has a big 4.3-inch color touchscreen on its control panel, which hinges upward 90 degrees. There are no physical buttons for operation (only the power button), however, I found the touchscreen responsive and the menus intuitive to navigate. At the bottom left of the front panel is an SD card slot, so you can print directly from a camera's memory card.

Both the primary paper cassette and rear paper tray can hold up to 100 sheets of plain paper. The rear paper tray, which should be used for photo prints, can hold up to 20 sheets of photo paper. The paper cassette sits at the bottom of the unit, beneath the output tray. 

To use the ADF atop the unit, you open the cover, which hinges outward to serve as a paper input support. The TR8620 is outfitted with a duplexer for two-sided printing, but automatic two-sided scanning is not supported. That is, to make copies or scans of a two-sided document, you will have to run the document through the ADF twice, scanning one side at a time. The LCD offers a graphic to ensure you place the document properly to ensure a successful scan of the second side. 

The TR8620 has a Hi-Speed USB port, and you can put it on a network via its Ethernet port or via Wi-Fi (both 2.4GHz and 5GHz are supported). Wireless connectivity via Bluetooth 4.0 is also available. 

The body measures 17.3 inches (w) by 13.8 inches (d) by 7.5 inches (h). This is fairly typical of a home inkjet all-in-one. Although the official depth with paper loaded is 14.4 inches, I found that with the rear tray tilted back and loaded with paper, and the output tray extended with the catch folded forward, the total depth increased to 26 inches. In addition, opening the ADF for use increases the height by an inch. But, most importantly, you will want to have adequate vertical clearance for raising the lid to place documents on the flatbed scanner glass.

The TR8620 can send faxes via its 33.6 kbps modem, and can store up to 99 fax numbers and a maximum of 250 pages in its memory. 

Canon Pixma TR8620 review: Print speed 

Print speeds on plain paper were slightly faster than average. The TR8620 printed our five-page text document in 32.6 seconds (or, 9.2 ppm) versus the average of 8.8 ppm for comparable models. Similarly, the TR8620 printed our six-page document of mixed text and color graphics in 1 minute, 52 seconds (or,  3.2 ppm) compared to the average of 2 minutes, 13 seconds (or, 2.7 ppm).

The most impressive print speed was on glossy photos. The TR8620 printed a letter-sized photo on glossy paper in just 2 minutes and 4 seconds—roughly half the average time of 4 minutes and 3 seconds. Only a few models have been faster (all Canon printers), including our Editor's Choice, the Canon Pixma TS9120, at 1 minute and 57 seconds.

Using its automatic duplexer, the TR8620 made two-sided text prints at a respectable pace of 3.1 ppm. After printing the first side, the TR8620 paused for 14 seconds to let the ink dry before proceeding, taking a total of 3 minutes and 12 seconds to print the 10-page document on five sheets. By comparison, the HP Envy 7855 printed two-sided text documents at a brisker 3.7 ppm, while the Brother MFC-J995DW did so even faster, at 4 ppm.

The TR8620 made two-sided prints of our color PDF at 2.3 ppm. As with two-sided text prints, there was a 14-second pause before printing began on the second side of each page. Again, the Brother MFC-J995DW was faster, making two-sided text/color graphics prints at 3 ppm, while the HP Envy 7855 was substantially slower, at 1.2 ppm.

Canon Pixma TR8620 review: Copy and scan speed

Quick copying is arguably the TR8620's best office skill. From the flatbed, the TR8620 copied a color document in 20.5 seconds—much faster than the 28.7 second average. It copied a page of text in 10.8 seconds, which was significantly faster than the average of 16 seconds. By comparison, the Editor's Choice TS9120 was slower at making a text copy (at 14 seconds), but faster to make a color copy, at 17.3 seconds. The HP Envy 7855 was slower in both tests, at 15.7 seconds and 24.1 seconds, respectively, while the Brother MFC-J995DW, was slower to copy text (12.7 seconds), but faster to copy color documents (15.1 seconds). 

Using its ADF, the TR8620 copied a five-page text document in 45 seconds, or 6.7 ppm. The Brother MFC-J995DW was slightly faster, at 7 ppm. 

The TR8620 does not offer automatic duplex scanning and copying. Rather, it offers manual duplex copying and scanning, whereby the user places the document in the ADF twice: Once for each side. It's easy to follow the on-screen LCD instructions, which show you how to orient the document so the second scan is properly oriented. 

The Pixma TR8620 copied a 10-page text document (five double-sheets) in 5 minutes, or 2 ppm, not counting the time it took to reinsert the document in the ADF. By comparison, the Brother MFC-J805DW, which does offer automatic duplex copying, was significantly faster, making two-sided text copies at 3.1 ppm.

The TR8620 was faster than the average at scanning both color photos and documents. It scanned an 8-by-10 photo and saved it as a 600 dpi JPEG in 59 seconds, faster than the average of 65.8 seconds. By comparison, the Canon TS9120 and Brother MFC-J995DW were significantly faster, at 37.8 and 38.5 seconds, respectively.

The same was true of black-and-white scanning to PDF format at 300 dpi. The TR8620 captured a scan in 8.8 seconds, which was faster than the average of 11 seconds. The Canon TS9120 made the same scan in 7.7 seconds.

Canon Pixma TR8620 review: Print quality

The TR8620 offers high print quality overall, printing text that is sufficiently dark. Edges look fairly sharp, although the letterforms could be sleeker. Color graphics are attractive, with accurate colors and textures, although some mild banding was visible in dark areas.

Glossy photos print with high-quality accuracy: Natural-looking colors, sharp details and smooth transitions. 

Copy quality was good overall. Copies reproduced the details and colors of the original documents fairly well: Graphics closely resembled the originals, and text looked slightly lumpier around the edges. Copies of text documents fed via the ADF, in particular, came out with letterforms that looked fatter and had edges that were not as sharp as the reproductions placed on the flatbed.

One anomaly to copy quality, however, was that when copying from the control panel, the magnification function offered no option to prioritize an edge or select the copy area. As a result, the top portion of my document got cut off in the copies, instead of excluding the empty white space from the copy. To properly copy this particular document, I used the Canon IJ Scan utility on my PC, which offers this feature.

Similarly, to conduct our scan tests required doing so from a PC, where we could set the resolution in the scanning software. The on-screen menus of the TR8620 do not offer scan resolution settings.

Scan quality was high. Details looked sharp and colors were captured accurately from the originals. In particular, the scans of a photograph with dark shadow areas retained a lot of detail—more detail than the Editor's Choice Canon TS9120 did.

Canon Pixma TR8620 review: Ink cost and yield

The TR8620 uses five ink cartridges. The three color (cyan, magenta and yellow) inks and one of the black inks are dye-based. In addition, the pigment-based black ink is used for printing documents on plain paper, while the dye black is mostly used on glossy photo prints.

Using a standard cartridge, cost per text page is 8 cents. This calculation includes only the pigment black ink. The XL black cartridge reduces text printing to 6.2 cents per page, and the XXL cartridge reduces it further, to 5.8 cents.

The total ink cost for mixed color graphics pages is 21.9 cents, using standard cartridges. For this total cost of a text/mixed color graphics page, we included the cost of the dye-based black ink. It's barely used on plain paper prints, only adding 0.7 cents per page, at most. Using XL cartridges, cost per color page goes down to 18.9 cents, and down to 16.4 cents when using XXL cartridges.

In general, costs per page were slightly higher than the average for printers in its class (excluding models with refillable ink tanks). By comparison, the category average with standard ink cartridges was 7.7 cents per text page, and 20.7 per color graphics page. Using high-yield cartridges, the category averages were 5.9 cents and 14.9 cents, respectively. 

Take a look at our Canon promo codes for the latest discounts and ways to lower the cost. 

Canon Pixma TR8620 review: Setup and software

Setting up the TR8620 was simple: Remove a few pieces of tape, press the power button, and  install ink cartridges and paper. Following the on-screen instructions guide, you print a printhead alignment page, and scan it. The printed quick start guide directs you to the Canon website to download and install the software.

Putting the TR8620 on my wireless network was quick and convenient. After going to the Wi-Fi setup in the LAN settings on the TR8620's LCD screen, I selected WPS (push-button method) and pressed the corresponding button on my wireless router.

Connecting my iPhone to the printer was similarly easy. The TR8620's LCD menu for Wi-Fi Direct includes a QR code. I simply captured it with my iPhone, which triggered a prompt to join the Wi-Fi Direct network with the printer.

Startup is quick, at just 3.7 seconds. Making a black-and-white copy immediately only took 10 seconds longer than normal, delivering a copy before many models even offer you a home screen to begin operation.

Canon Pixma TR8620 review: Verdict

With a document feeder and duplexer, the Canon Pixma TR8620 delivers office features for a reasonable price. It makes copies quickly and prints on plain paper at better-than-average speed. You also get fax capability.

In addition, the TR8620 does not disappoint on image quality. Prints and copies on plain paper look good, as are glossy photo prints. Scans were captured with fine detail. 

However, for office duties the TR8620 may not be your best choice at high volume: Ink costs are above the average for comparable models. For example, the comparably priced Brother INKvestment MFC-J995DW (our top-ranked all-in-one printer) offers much lower costs per page, and faster document printing, but the Canon Pixma TR8620 is much faster for glossy photo prints. If you're buying a printer primarily to print snapshots, the Canon Pixma TR8620 is the better choice.

Nonetheless, if your printing duties are light enough, and you rarely need double-sided copies, the sub $200 and versatile Canon Pixma TR8620 will likely keep you happy with its high image quality and fast performance.

The security-news website Cybernews announced today that it had "hacked" nearly 28,000 printers worldwide in a stunt to "raise awareness of printer-security issues."

That's a worthy cause, as many owners and administrators of networked printers don't properly secure them. But Cybernews' "hack" wasn't a hack at all, actually. Instead, Cybernews used common printing commands to print documents on remote printers, exactly as the printers had been designed to do.

• 'Hundreds of millions' of smart home devices and PCs can be hacked remotely
• The best antivirus software to keep your PC clean
• New: Microsoft Word just got a killer feature that puts Google Docs to shame

This was possible because these networked printers were set up to receive print jobs over the internet without any authorization. So Cybernews commanded the printers to print out a five-page document instructing the printers' owners and operators on the basics of printer security.

If this sounds familiar, it's because this has been done before. In 2016, the notorious internet troll Andrew Auernheimer, aka "Weev," used similar methods to get 20,000 printers (his number) to spit out a one-page racist manifesto, complete with giant swastikas. 

In 2017, a pseudonymous hacker called "Stackoverflowin" did the same thing, only sending a brief message to close open internet ports instead of a racist screed.

Like Cybernews and Stackoverflowin, Auernheimer scanned the internet for printers that were open to the internet and would receive remote commands. However, he told Vice Motherboard that he "did not hack any printers," but instead "sent them messages, because they were configured to receive messages from the public."

Now despite the warnings in Cybernews' blog post, just because your printer can receive print jobs over the internet doesn't mean it can be completely hacked. But exposing your printer to the internet does make that easier.

To make sure your printer isn't accessible online, tweak the firewall settings on your home (or office) router to block port 9100, the most commonly used port of internet printing. If you can find a similar setting in your printer's administrative interface, block the port there as well.

Cybernews adds two more tips to protect your printer from miscreants, whether it's connected to the internet or not. 

First, make sure your printer's firmware is up to date. You may have to poke around on the manufacturer's website to find new updates. Second, see if you can change the default administrative password for the router.

The Canon Pixma TR150 is a compact, portable inkjet printer offering basic features and solid performance. The TR150 is a single function printer; it does not copy or scan. What it does offer, however, is a compact size that can be carried in a standard backpack.

The printer alone uses a standard wall outlet. For off-the-grid printing, you can purchase the bundle with printer and mobile battery for under $250. The battery should last up to 330 sheets on a full charge.

Canon Pixma TR150 review: Design

The TR150 is small, measuring 12.7 x 7.3 x 2.6 inches, when closed for travel. The lid lifts up to serve as a 50-sheet input paper tray, dropping a front flap to reveal the output slot. The vertical paper tray increases the depth to 12.1 inches, and the height to 9.7 inches.

At 4.5 pounds, the printer is rather lightweight for a portable model. Attaching the optional battery to the back of the unit increases the weight to 5.1 pounds. By comparison, the HP OfficeJet 250 weighs 6.7 pounds, with battery.

Opening the lid reveals the control panel on the top of the body. There is a four-way control, a small 1.4-inch monochrome OLED display, and a wireless connectivity button. 

There are no memory card slots. The USB port is on the right panel, near the back, next to the power port.  It offers Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi Direct support, and comes with a USB-C cable. In addition to AirPrint, Google Cloud Print, and Mopria support, the TR150 also offers support for voice commands via Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, and supports the pairing of devices using IFTTT (If This Then That).

Canon Pixma TR150 review: Print speed 

The Pixma TR150 performed well in our testing, printing a five-page text document in 40.5 seconds. or 7.4 pages per minute (ppm). The average for portable printers is 6.9 ppm. By contrast, our top-ranked portable printer, the HP OfficeJet 250, was faster, printing text at 9 ppm.

The TR150 was quick to print text from an iPhone 7, turning in the fastest times we've recorded on this test. The TR150 printed a single page in just 10.3 seconds, and a five-page document in 38.7 seconds, or 7.8 ppm. Other portable models averaged 14.6 seconds on a single page, and 1 minute and 3 seconds (or, 4.8 ppm) on the five-page document. By comparison, the HP Tango X printed a page of text in 11.3 seconds. Several other models were significantly slower to print the five-page text document, such as the Epson WorkForce EC-C110, at a much slower 54.3 seconds, or 5.5 ppm.

The TR150 was slightly faster than the average on mixed text and color graphics. It printed our six-page PDF in 2 minutes and 22 seconds, or 2.5 ppm. That's just a hair faster than the category average (2.4 ppm), but lagged behind the  HP OfficeJet 250, which printed the same document in just under 2 minutes, at 3.1 ppm.

Photo printing speed also was faster than the category average. From a Windows PC, the TR150 made a 4-by-6-inch glossy photo print at default settings in 1 minute and 4.8 seconds, versus the average of 1 minute and 11 seconds. Printing at high resolution, the TR150 made the same glossy print in 1 minute and 45 seconds, which was significantly faster than the category average of 2 minutes and 6 seconds. The HP OfficeJet 250, however, was twice as fast at default and high-resolution settings, making 4-by-6-inch glossy prints in 37.6 and 49.5 seconds, respectively.

Printing from an iPhone 7, the TR150 printed at comparable speed to printing from a PC, making a 4-by-6-inch glossy at default settings in 1 minute and 5 seconds. The Canon iOS app did not offer a high-resolution setting.

Canon Pixma TR150 review: Print quality

Text printed a little on the light side, rather than in a rich black. Edges of letterforms looked a little rough, and not razor sharp. Color graphics printed on plain paper looked a little washed-out, and banding was visible. The graphics also lacked the sharper details, stronger contrast and richer color saturation of better-looking prints, such as from the HP OfficeJet 250. Pixels were more visible in the TR150's graphics prints.

Glossy photo prints, however, were top-notch. Details looked very sharp and color saturation was very pleasing. In particular, the colors in our landscape photo looked very natural. By comparison, the same print made by the HP OfficeJet 250 looked a little unnatural due to hyped-up yellow shades.

Canon Pixma TR150 review: Ink cost and yield

The printer takes two ink cartridges: A dye-based ink cartridge with three colors (cyan, magenta, yellow), plus black. The second cartridge holds a pigment-based black ink.

The Pixma TR150 offers low ink costs for a portable printer. At 7.5 cents per text page, it is well below the 8.9 cents category average. By contrast, the HP OfficeJet 250 offers an estimated cost of 9 cents per text page. 

The same is true for color pages: At 14.8 cents, the TR150 offers the lowest color page cost of the portable printers we've tested. Buying an ink cartridge bundle should lower that cost to roughly 12.7 cents. By comparison, the HP OfficeJet 250 has the highest estimated color page ink cost we've seen, at 23 cents, and only lowers that cost per page to 17.3 cents when using high-yield cartridges (which are not available for the TR150).

Canon Pixma TR150 review: Setup and software

Setting up the TR150 was simple. You only need to remove a couple pieces of packaging tape. You lift the lid to reveal the cartridge bay, and first install the print head, which you insert in a similar way to the two ink cartridges, which follow. You download the software online, or insert the installation disc in your PC. I used my iPhone to capture the included QR code in order to launch the online setup instructions. After the printer performs a print head alignment, and you print a test page, you're ready to go. 

To ease the wireless setup, the TR150 has a dedicated wireless connect button on its control panel. Following menu instructions on the 1.4-inch OLED screen, I used the WPS connect method; pressing the WPS button on my wireless router put the TR150 on my network.

Alternatively, you can use Wi-Fi Direct and setup the TR150 as the wireless network connection on your mobile device. I had trouble with my first attempts to do this with my iPhone 7; one possible culprit is that my home wireless network was set to “auto join” and thus interfering with the printer connection. After turning off “auto join”, I connected successfully and printed to the TR150 over Wi-Fi Direct.

The TR150 starts up quickly, displaying its home screen menu in just 4.2 seconds.

Canon Pixma TR150 review: Verdict

The Canon Pixma TR150 performed solidly across our tests. Text printing, in particular, was fast—both from a PC and an iPhone. Color graphics and photo print speeds were faster than the average, and a quick startup time under 5 seconds will get you working quickly. Low ink costs make this portable Pixma very attractive to the pocketbook, and the high quality of the photo prints is tough to match. Text and color graphics quality on plain paper, however, left a little bit to be desired. 

By comparison, the top-ranked HP OfficeJet 250 is faster, makes copies and scans, and offers superior plain-paper print quality—but it's also larger and much more expensive.

Browse through our Canon promo codes to find the latest discounts from the retailer. 

We review a lot of printers here at Tom's Guide, and the best all-in-one printers we recommend are generally made up of multifunction inkjet products that offer pretty good printing and reasonable ink prices. The Canon ImageClass MF743Cdw color laser printer on the other hand, delivers superb print quality, excellent print speeds, and does it all without a drop of ink.

From the large, easy to read touchscreen controls to the giant 550-page paper cassette, the Canon ImageClass MF743Cdw is not only one of the best small business products around, it's also one of the best printers, period.

It's fast for printing and scanning alike. It's convenient, with handy features like a 50-page automatic document feeder for seriously easy paper handling, and the laser printer quality is sharp and crisp, whether you're printing pages of black text or full-color graphics in presentation quality.

It's also pretty affordable printing, as well, with regular toner cartridges averaging 4.1 cents per page and dropping to 2.1 cents per page when you buy high-capacity toner.

Built for small offices, the Canon can crank through as many as 4,000 pages per month, so it's not the best choice for home users. But if your office needs print, copy, scan and fax capability that is consistently fast and high-quality, there's no beating the Canon ImageClass MF743Cdw color laser printer.

Every home office needs a laser printer and if you've been waiting for the right home office deal — Staples has one of the best printer deals we've ever seen.  

Today only, Staples has the Brother MFC-L2750DW on sale for $174.99 via coupon code "81126". (Add the coupon code during checkout and you'll see the discount at the final checkout stage). That's $25 off and the cheapest price we've ever seen for  this printer, which is one of the best laser printers you'll find. In fast, it's even $5 cheaper than it was over the holidays. 

Brother MFC-L2750DW is a monochrome laser printer that delivers pretty much everything you want in an all-in-one. Made for small office use, this unit has a monthly duty cycle of 15,000 pages, with some of the best print speeds we've seen. Printing costs run as low as 2.7 cents per page.

The MFC-L2750DW is also loaded with handy features like scanning and copying, fax capability, and a second paper tray. Two-sided copies are extra quick, thanks to two-sided scanning that captures the front and back of a page simultaneously and an automatic duplexer for two-sided printing. 

In a nutshell, this printer offers the best combination of print quality, speed, and value , which is why it's our Editors' Choice — especially now that it's at its lowest price ever. Staples' coupon is valid through end of April 10. 

No work from home office is complete without a printer. So if you're lacking printer, but don't want to spend too much — this cheap printer deal scores you a wireless all-in-one printer for just $49. 

For a limited time, you can get the HP DeskJet 3755 Wireless All-in-One Printer on sale for $49.99. That's $40 off and one of the most affordable all-in-ones you can get. 

• Best all-in-one printers you can buy right now
• Cheap laptop deal at Walmart drops Samsung Chromebook 3 to $159

The HP 3755 is perfect for small work spaces since it doubles as a copier and scanner. It can also be used to print photos from your tablet or smartphone, thanks to its built-in Wi-Fi. 

It supports HP's Easy Replenish feature, which means the printer can monitor its own ink levels and order ink when you're running low. Additionally, it works with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Cortana so you can print out shopping lists, Google Calendars, or more. 

In terms of specs, its print resolution is 4800 x 1200 dpi. It can also print at speeds of up to 8 ISO ppm in black or 5.5 ISO ppm in color. It comes with one black and one tri-color print cartridge. 

The HP Smart Tank Plus 651 ($449) is an inkjet all-in-one printer designed to dramatically lower ongoing ink costs. Rather than using ink cartridges – which is common even on the best all-in-one printers – you buy the four inks by the bottle and pour each ink into the corresponding high-capacity tank. The ink tanks are visible through four windows on the front panel, so you can always see your ink levels.

This ink-saving design is similar to those of competing printers, such as the Epson EcoTank, which also uses refillable ink tanks that deliver lower prices per page. As HP does for the Smart Tank Plus, Epson ships bottles of ink with its EcoTank printers for easy refills and plenty of upfront value. The Brother INKvestment line, by contrast, uses high-capacity ink cartridges instead of hand-refilled ink tanks, but that printer also aims to reduce operating expenses. It's a trend we're glad to see, since it addresses two of the biggest headaches of printer ownership: ink costs and downtime for ink replacement.

HP Smart Tank 651 design

The printer comes with four full-capacity bottles of ink, valued at $62 total. The black ink is rated to last 6,000 pages, while the color inks (cyan, magenta and yellow) are rated to last 8,000 pages. If you stick to the recommended monthly page volume of 200 to 500 pages, it will be quite some time before you need to buy replacement ink.

Other than the ink tanks, which offer dramatically low ink costs, the features are what you'd expect for an inkjet all-in-one printer. The Smart Tank Plus 651 prints, copies, scans and faxes. It has a vertical 100-sheet paper input tray on the back and a 30-sheet output tray on the front, at the bottom. When you pull out the tray, a catch springs up to prevent printouts from falling on the floor. 

The control panel consists of a 2.2-inch monochrome touch screen and a few touch-sensitive buttons surrounding it. There is no 10-key pad for entering fax numbers, though you can use the small touch screen. Given the lack of physical buttons, you may want to fax using the HP Smart app on a computer. You also can fax using the app on an iOS or Android device.

The Smart Tank Plus 651 has an automatic document feeder (ADF) built into the scanner lid and can hold up to 35 sheets. (The slightly less-expensive HP Smart Tank Plus 551 has no scanner but is otherwise identical to the model we reviewed.) The scanner glass can accommodate letter-size documents, and legal-size documents can be scanned via the ADF. The lid's hinges do not hold the lid at an acute angle; for the lid to support itself, you need to lift it the full 90 degrees. There is no duplexer for making two-sided prints. 

The Smart Tank Plus 651 is somewhat large for an inkjet printer, measuring 17.6 x 14.7 x 7.8 inches without the paper trays extended. You also will want vertical clearance for lifting the scanner lid. In addition to dual-band Wi-Fi, there is a USB 2.0 port on the back.

HP Smart Tank 651 print speed 

The Smart Tank Plus 651 printed our five-page text document in 35.1 seconds. This was slightly slower than the average of 34 seconds. The Epson EcoTank ET-4750, which also features refillable ink tanks, printed the document in 26.1 seconds. 

The Smart Tank 651 took 3 minutes and 30 seconds to print a six-page color PDF of mixed text and graphics. That's an extremely slow rate of 1.7 pages per minute (ppm). This time was more than a minute slower than the average. By comparison, the Epson EcoTank ET-4750 printed the same document in just 1 minute and 22 seconds, or 4.4 ppm.

Photo printing also was slower than the average. Our letter-size test photo printed in 4 minutes and 45 seconds — 8 seconds slower than the average. The Epson EcoTank ET-4750 was even slower, at 5 minutes and 4 seconds. 

• Best photo printers of 2020

The Smart Tank 651 printed a 4 x 6-inch glossy photo in 2 minutes and 4 seconds. This was faster than the Epson ET-4750's time of 2 minutes and 13 seconds. However, the diminutive (and significantly less expensive) HP Tango X printed a 4 x 6-inch snapshot much more quickly, in 1 minute and 15 seconds.

HP Smart Tank 651 copy and scan speed

Copy speeds were disappointing. It took the Smart Tank a whopping 3 minutes and 25 seconds to copy a single page of a color document — more than five times the average. It didn't matter if the document was a full-page color graphic or a much-less-dense text page with a smaller color graphic; it always took roughly 3.5 minutes to make the copy. This was very disappointing compared to the average of just 37 seconds.

Copying documents in black and white was not any faster; in fact, it was more than six times slower than the average. The Smart Tank copied a text page in 2 minutes and 12 seconds, whereas competing models did the same task in a brisk 20.8 seconds, on average.

The Smart Tank 651 was also slow when using the ADF to copy a five-page text document. It took the Smart Tank almost 11 minutes to copy five text pages. That's less than half a page per minute. Imagine trying to make a meeting in 5 minutes and simply needing a copy of your five-page handout — never mind needing multiple copies. By comparison, the Epson EcoTank ET-4750 reproduced five pages in 1 minute and 12 seconds, for a rate of 4.2 ppm. The Brother INKvestment J805DW was even faster, delivering five pages in 44.2 seconds, for a rate of 6.8 ppm.

Color scanning was roughly half the average speed. The Smart Tank 651 needed 2 minutes and 16 seconds to make a 600-dpi scan of an 8 x 10-inch photo. The average is almost half that, at 1 minute and 11 seconds. The Epson EcoTank ET-4750 was a little faster than the HP but still slower than average, at 1 minute and 42 seconds. The Brother INKvestment J805DW was quicker than the average, making the scan in 42.5 seconds.

• Epson Vs. Canon Vs. HP Printers: Who Makes the Best All-in-One?

Considering the high price tag, the Smart Tank is significantly slower than much-less-expensive models. Compared with the $150 Canon Pixma TS9120 (an Editors' Choice pick), the Smart Tank 651 was significantly slower on every test — in some cases, several times slower. The Canon Pixma TS9120 made a color copy in 17.3 seconds, and the HP took 3 minutes and 25 seconds. Copying a five-page text document took the HP an astounding 11 minutes.

Scanning in black and white at 300 dpi to PDF was the one test where the Smart Tank beat the average. The HP printer made the scan in 8.3 seconds, besting both the Epson EcoTank ET-4750 (12.4 seconds) and the Brother INKvestment MFC-J805DW (9.6 seconds). The average was 12.2 seconds. 

HP Smart Tank 651 print quality

The Smart Tank's print quality was high across the board. Text documents looked attractive. Letterforms were adequately dark, with sharp edges. By comparison, the Epson EcoTank ET-4750 produced text that looked a little lighter and slightly gray. 

Graphics printed with strong darks and well-saturated colors. Fine details looked sharp. The Epson EcoTank ET-4750 and the Brother INKvestment MFC-J805DW made prints that didn't look quite as sharp as the HP's in some areas. These two models also lacked the HP's stronger dark shades that created a pleasing contrast. In particular, the HP printed a strong black in boxes surrounding white text, giving its prints extra pop.

Glossy photos printed with natural-looking colors and plenty of fine detail. By comparison, the Epson and Brother models made prints that looked warmer, with brighter reds and yellows. 

• Best laser printers 2020

The copy quality was a little disappointing, however. Copies of text pages came out with grayish letterforms, not as boldly dark as copies made by the Epson EcoTank ET-4750. The same was true of color graphics. The HP Smart Tank reproduced magazine pages with less color saturation than copies made by the Epson and Brother printers. 

The Smart Tank 651 made high-quality scans. Scans of photographs looked very sharp, with natural-looking colors, although some fine details got lost in dark shadow areas. 

HP Smart Tank 651 ink cost and yield

The Smart Tank's dramatically low costs per page are impressive. The dye-based black ink costs $16.99 and is rated to last 6,000 pages. The cyan, magenta and yellow inks cost $14.99 each and are rated to last 8,000 pages. The cost per page is just 0.3 cent for text and 0.8 cent for color pages. 

The Epson EcoTank ET-4750 offers similarly low costs per page: 0.3 cent for text and 0.9 cent for color. The Brother INKvestment MFC-J805DW offers a cost per page of 1.2 cents (text) and 5 cents (color), with high-yield ink cartridges installed. 

These ink costs are a fraction of the averages for inkjet printers. Even with high-yield cartridges installed, text pages use up an average of 4.6 cents' worth of ink, and color pages cost 12 cents to print.

Even so, the question remains of whether those low print costs justify spending $450 on the Smart Tank Plus 651 rather than  a less-expensive model. (The Epson EcoTank is similarly expensive, at $500, while the Brother INKvestment MFC-J805DW costs $160.)  

• Inkjet vs. Laser: Which Printer Is Right for You?

The Smart Tank Plus 651 has a recommended duty cycle of 200 to 500 pages. If you print 500 pages per month (roughly 16 pages daily), it will take roughly a year for you to recoup that initial investment. If you print only text pages, it will take almost 4,150 pages to see real savings (a little over eight months, at 500 pages per month). If you print color pages, it will take just over 6,900 pages to reach that same point. (The Brother's color pages cost 4.2 cents more each.) At 500 pages per month, printing all color pages will take you almost 14 months to see the return on investment.

HP Smart Tank 651 setup and software

Setting up the Smart Tank Plus 651 was simple. After removing packaging tape and materials, I followed instructions to download an easy setup program online. The full software installation includes OCR program and HP Photo Creations for making calendars, books and other photo projects. 

The installation on Windows 10 created desktop icons for HP Scan and HP Photo Creation, as well as for troubleshooting and ordering supplies.

The Wi-Fi setup wizard prompted me to enter my network password to put the Smart Tank Plus 651 on my network. Entering the password on the small touch screen was a little cumbersome; I had to cycle through multiple entries on the buttons for three number or letter selections. I was not offered WPS setup, whereby you simply press the WPS button on your router. 

• Best printer deals in February 2020

You can use the HP Smart app for iOS and Android devices. TheSmart Tank Plus 651 also supports Apple AirPrint and is Mopria-certified. 

The Smart Tank was slow to start up, taking 40 seconds to offer menu selections on its touch screen. Making a black-and-white copy took longer than the typical 2 minutes and 12 seconds, however; it took an additional 3 minutes and 26 seconds to produce the copy.

Bottom line

The biggest selling point for HP's Smart Tank Plus 651 is its extremely low ink costs. Whether the savings justify the initial investment may depend on how much you print. For the price, you might expect a duplexer to cut down on paper use with two-sided printing — something this Smart Tank doesn't have. The Epson EcoTank ET-4750, on the other hand, offers a very quick duplexer. 

Despite the high price tag, the Smart Tank Plus 651 is significantly slower than much-less-expensive models — in some cases, several times slower. Recouping your initial investment through ink savings is going to take a lot of time and patience. 

Top-quality prints and scans may make the wait worth it, however. Across the board, the Smart Tank Plus 651 produced high-quality prints of text and graphics, as well as impressive glossy photos. Scans looked attractive, with lots of fine detail. The quality on some copies, however, was lackluster. 

If high image quality and low ink costs are your top priorities — and you have a very high tolerance for slow performance — the HP Smart Tank Plus 651 might be worth a try.

The Canon Pixma TS3320 is a basic, no-frills, inkjet all-in-one printer. Priced at just $39, this entry-level model offers printing, scanning and copying. The TS3320 keeps operation simple, using just two ink cartridges (black and tri-color) instead of individual cartridges. You won't find any of the fancy extras you'll see on the best printers. For example, there isn't a second input tray for photo paper, an automatic document feeder (ADF) for multipage copying, nor a duplexer for making two-sided prints. 

You can connect to the TS3320 wirelessly, or via the USB port. The printer is compatible with mobile devices by using the company's Android/iOS app, although I was unable to get an iPhone 7 to work (more on that later).

Design

The Pixma TS3320's control panel is at the top of the device's body, to the left of the scanning bed. There are a few physical buttons: Two of them initiate a wireless connection to either a network or smartphone, respectively. Two additional buttons bring up – on the small liquid-crystal-display (LCD) screen – either the settings menu or status information. The small, 1.5-inch monochrome screen does not have a light, and can be difficult to read in a dimly lit space. Other than the simple Copy function, you'll most likely want to operate the TS3320 from a PC, and not standalone. 

Paper is loaded into the 60-sheet paper tray at the back of the unit. The tray also can hold up to 20 sheets of 4-by-6-inch photo paper or 10 sheets of 5-by-7-inch photo paper. You will have to use glossy photo paper; the printer does not support matte paper, though it does work with the more exotic magnetic and restickable varieties.

The output tray pulls out from the front of the printer, beneath a large recess in the body. To swap ink cartridges, you reach inside this cavity and fold down a cover to reveal the ink cartridge bay.

The TS3320 is neither compact nor extremely large for an inkjet all-in-one. With the paper trays retracted, it measures 17.2 inches wide by 12.5 inches deep; it's 5.8 inches tall. With the trays extended, the TS3320 becomes 21.8 inches deep and 8.4 inches tall. Lacking a duplexer and ADF, this unit is quite lightweight, at eight-and-a-half pounds.

This model comes in black, white or red.

Print speed

The TS3320 printed our five-page text document in 43.7 seconds (or 6.9 pages per minute [ppm]). This was significantly slower than the category average of 33.5 seconds, or 9 ppm. The device was extremely slow at printing in color, turning in one of the slowest times to date on our six-page PDF of mixed text and color graphics: The TS3320 took 4 minutes (1.5 ppm) to print the document. Comparable models printed the same PDF at nearly double that speed, taking just 2 minutes and 7 seconds on average, or 2.8 ppm.

The TS3320 was unable to complete our photo printing speed test, for which we make a full-page print onto letter-size photo paper (more on that later). So, I made 4-by-6-inch photo prints instead, for comparison.

• The best Canon printers available now

The TS3320 made 4-by-6-inch glossy prints in 2 minutes and 1 second. By comparison, most models we've tested were faster, though some were slower. Among speedier models were the Canon Pixma MG3620, which printed a 4-by-6 in just 43 seconds, and the HP Tango X, at 1 minute and 15 seconds. However, we've seen slower printing, such as the now-discontinued Epson XP-420, which took nearly 3 minutes to complete the same task.

Copy and scan speed

Color copying was slow. The TS3320 is the second-slowest inkjet model at color copying we've tested in this category. At 47 seconds, it was far behind the average of 27.8 seconds. Only the HP Tango X was slower, at 1 minute and 11 seconds. The Editor's Choice Canon Pixma TS9120 made a color copy in just 17.3 seconds in our tests—almost three times faster than the TS3320.

Black-and-white copying was more within range, but still somewhat slow at 19.2 seconds, compared to the category average of 15.8 seconds.

The TS3320 made a 600 dots-per-inch (dpi) color scan to JPEG format at roughly average speed. At 1 minute and 1.7 seconds, it came in under the average of 1 minute and 7.7 seconds. By comparison, the Editor's Choice Canon TS9120 made the same scan in just 37.8 seconds.

The printer scanned quickly in black-and-white to PDF format at 300 dpi. It captured a scan in just 7.5 seconds, compared to the average of 11 seconds; the TS9120 was similarly fast, at 7.7 seconds.

Print quality

Text prints were not extremely sharp, but adequate. On close examination, letterforms in text documents had soft edges, with errant ink spray around them. Letterforms in our PDF test document looked sharper, by comparison.

Graphics printed onto plain paper looked attractive, with sharp details and smooth mid-tone transitions. Banding, however, was clearly visible across all of our graphics prints.

Because the TS3320 would not print onto letter-size glossy paper, we were left to judge photo quality on 5-by-7 inch and 4-by-6-inch glossy prints. These prints looked very attractive, with sharp details and natural-looking color saturation. Although the device does not support matte paper, I was pleased with the look of the print I made on to matte paper using the plain paper setting.

Copy quality was similar to print quality: Text looked a little rough around the edges, and graphics looked very attractive — but mild banding was distracting on some prints. The banding was more pronounced on photographs or artwork with depth, versus illustrations with a flat appearance. The same was true in color and black and white.  

Scans of photos in JPEG format and documents in PDF format looked very true to the originals – sharp overall. Color photos were reproduced with accurate exposure and well-saturated colors, although some fine details in shadow areas got lost. Black-and-white scans of graphics also lost some details from the original, in dark areas.

Ink cost and yield

The TS3320 uses two ink cartridges: a pigment black and a tri-color cartridge of dye-based inks. Three tiers of ink cartridges are available, but the least expensive of them comes with a very high cost per page. Using the PG-243 black and CL-244 color cartridges, costs per page are 16 cents for text and 37 cents for graphics. Ouch.

Bumping up to the PG-245 black cartridge brings the text page cost to 10 cents — but that's still way north of the average of 7.2 cents for a standard cartridge. Using the CL-246 color cartridge, costs per color page are 22.8 cents, versus the average of 19.8 cents using standard cartridges.

Using XL high-yield cartridges, the TS3320 has costs per page of 8.7 cents for text and 18.7 cents for color. The averages for competing models using high-yield cartridges is 5.6 cents (text) and 14.4 cents (color). If you do a lot of printing, those ink costs will add up.

• Inkjet vs. laser: which printer is right for you?

Using the basic cartridges, printing a 4-by-6-inch photo costs a whopping 67.5 cents (if you buy them individually). Using the CL-246 color and PG-245 cartridges, a 4-by-6 requires 43 cents' worth of ink. The XL cartridges print a 4-by-6 for 34.3 cents.

Combo packs could lower those costs per page a little — in theory. The PG-243 (black) and CL-244 cost a total of $36.98 individually, and a two-pack costs $26.99. However, the high costs per page of these 100-page-yield cartridges already makes them difficult to recommend.

Disappointingly, a two-pack of the higher-capacity cartridges will not lower printing costs. The PG-245 black (180 pages) cartridge and the CL-246 XL color cartridge (300 pages) cost $54.99 when bought with 50 sheets of 4-by-6-inch photo paper. But buying them individually costs only $47.98. The Canon online store does not make clear if the pack includes standard photo paper or Photo Paper Plus Glossy II. But either way, it's not a deal. A 100-pack of 4-by-6-inch Photo Paper Plus Glossy II costs $10.99. The same pack of regular photo paper costs $5.99. The math doesn't add up.

Setup and software

The first step in setting up the TS3320 is simple. You remove a handful of tape and packaging material, and install the ink cartridges. Setting up a USB connection with a Windows 10 laptop, I was directed to download the software online at ij.start.canon. 

On my first attempt to print, however, I got an error message, because one cartridge was not fully seated. The ink cartridge bay is quite deep inside the body, behind a fold-down door. Reaching inside and installing the cartridges is a little cumbersome:You must press the cartridge in (forward) and angle it up slightly. 

As mentioned in the print speed section, the TS3320 could not make a full-page photo print onto letter-size glossy paper (nor smaller sizes, such as 4-by-6 and 5-by-7). Trying to print onto letter-size photo paper caused a conflict with another print setting — but it did not specify which one — and caused the print driver to switch the paper size setting to 4-by-6. Changing other settings such as Shrink to Fit, Borderless and Glossy Paper type did not resolve the issue. 

The company sent us a second test model, but the same test was still unsuccessful. I tried making a 4-by-6-inch photo print onto letter-size glossy paper, but received an error message saying that the media type and paper size were not set correctly. 

It is worth noting, for photo-printing enthusiasts, that the TS3320 does not support printing onto matte paper.

To set up the device with an iPhone 7, I scanned the QR code in the printed manual, which took me to the iOS app download (there is also a QR code on a sticker on the printer body). Scanning that took me to a page in Safari and initiated the setup process. However, the Canon app said that the printer could not be found. Holding down the mobile-connect button on the printer was also unsuccessful. 

Oddly, the TS3320 did show up in my WiFi network list of printers in iOS. But the connection failed each time I entered my network password. The printer's LCD said “E36”, which I had to look up online; the definition simply said  that the wireless connection failed. A second test unit also failed to show up in the Canon app. And, although the printer showed up in iOS, I was still unable to print to it from the iPhone 7.

The TS3320 supports Mopria on Android devices, although we did not test this. The specifications say that the device also supports Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant–and IFTTT (If This Then That) integration. 

The device started up slowly, taking roughly 12.8 seconds before printhead-priming sounds wound down and the power light stopped blinking. Making a black-and-white copy right out of the gate took a little longer than usual, which isn't surprising. Instead of making the copy in the usual 19.2 seconds, the first copy took roughly 25.5 seconds to make.

Bottom line

The TS3320 keeps it simple, foregoing many features aimed at photo-printing enthusiasts and busy home offices. The low up-front price is enticing, considering that you get high-quality photo prints and scans. But, text and plain-paper graphics printing was middle-of-the-road. 

Mediocre performance makes the TS3320 far from versatile. The device scans quickly in black-and-white, but is otherwise slow across the board, and suited for only occasional duty. The problems we encountered with two test units suggest that this all-in-one might be too error-prone for comfort. Neither test unit would print a photo onto letter-size glossy paper. And, neither test unit would work with an iPhone 7, even when the phone was able to detect it. Standalone operation is a little irksome, relying on a tiny, 1.5-inch segment LCD with no light to help you read it.

Ink costs are handily above the average with the standard and XL cartridges. But, if you make the mistake of buying the lowest-capacity ink cartridges, costs per page are really high. You'd think a combo pack of cartridges and photo paper would save you money, but it won't. 

All of these shortcomings make the TS3320 difficult to recommend. However, if the $39 price tag still entices you, it could work out in favor of your pocketbook. Compared to the $150 Editor’s Choice Canon Pixma TS9120, the TS3320 averages 2.1 cents more in ink costs per page. If you don’t print much, this may work out in your favor: To eat up the $111 difference in price, you’d have to print almost 5,300 pages.

The Canon Pixma TS8320 ($129) is a compact, inkjet all-in-one that is best suited for photo-printing enthusiasts. It has an SD card slot on its front panel, can print on specially coated CD/DVD discs and offers two paper trays so you can keep plain as well as photo paper loaded. 

Most important for photographers, the TS8320 is outfitted with six individual ink cartridges, offering the possibility of a wider color gamut in photo prints by employing a photo blue ink cartridge in addition to two black inks and the traditional cyan, magenta and yellow.

The TS8320 comes in black, white and red, and offers some fun features aimed at smart home enthusiasts: support for Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa and IFTTT (If This Then That).

Design

With its paper trays retracted and the touch-screen control panel folded down against the body, the TS8320 is very compact, measuring roughly 14.6 x 12.5 x 5.5 inches. However, the depth increases to 14 inches when you extend the paper cassette beneath the body to hold letter-size paper. The rear input tray significantly increases the depth; it angles backward when lifted for use, making the total depth about 25 inches. The rear paper tray also increases the height to roughly 11.5 inches.

To operate the TS8320, you use the large, 4.3-inch color touch screen, which makes a big first impression and worked well in our testing. There are not any physical buttons on the control panel other than the power button. The big touch screen offers large virtual buttons for the three main functions (copy, scan and print) and smaller icons along the bottom for making changes to settings. We found the menus well organized and intuitive to navigate. 

The SD card slot is on the front panel, at the bottom left next to the paper cassette. This allows you to print photos directly from a camera's memory card, without having to plug it into a PC. There is no USB Direct print port for printing files from a thumb drive.

There is a paper cassette at the bottom of the body and a vertical paper tray on the back. The paper cassette holds up to 100 sheets of plain paper. The rear paper tray can hold up to 100 sheets of plain paper, 20 sheets of 4 x 6-inch photo paper, or 10 sheets of 5 x 7-inch photo paper. Both trays offer automatic paper detection; after removing the cassette or loading paper into the rear tray, the touch screen asks you to confirm the paper type detected. The output tray sits atop the paper cassette and extends automatically (if it's not already extended) when a print job is started.

Beneath the output tray, there is a storage slot for the CD/DVD disc holder. Before printing onto a coated disc, you push in the output tray, remove the disc holder and insert it into a dedicated disc slot above the output tray. 

The ink cartridges are easy to load. The bay sits behind a door on the front panel. Three capacities are offered: standard, XL high yield and XXL high yield. 

The TS8320 has a duplexer for making two-sided prints. It does not have an automatic document feeder for making multipage copies or scans. The flatbed scanner can accommodate documents up to 8.5 x 11.7 inches (letter/A4); the scanner lid's hinges do not offer any resistance and you will need to lift the lid a full 90 degrees for it to support itself.

You can connect wirelessly to the TS8320 using Bluetooth or Wi-Fi (both 2.4 and 5.0 GHz are supported). If you have Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa, you can use it to send voice commands to the TS8320, although the printer's manual offers no instructions on this feature. On an iPhone 7, telling Siri to "print a document" launched the Canon Print app. The printer also supports the IFTTT web service, which allows you to set up actions based on changed conditions in another web service, such as Gmail, Facebook and the like.

The USB port allows you to connect directly to a PC. The port is on the back panel and is recessed in a narrow cavity, which makes it a little difficult to access. It took me a few tries to connect the USB cable.

Print speed

Text printing was roughly average in speed. The TS8320 printed our five-page test document in 34.4 seconds, or 8.7 pages per minute (ppm), versus the category average of 9 ppm for comparable models. The Editor's Choice Canon Pixma TS9120 printed the same document in just under 27 seconds (11.2 ppm).

Our six-page, mixed-text and graphics PDF printed more quickly that average, arriving in 1 minute and 52 seconds, or 3.5 ppm, versus the average of 2 minutes and 14 seconds, or 2.7 ppm.

Photo printing was impressively fast. Our letter-size, high-resolution glossy print emerged in 2 minutes and 2 seconds — less than half the average time of 4 minutes and 15 seconds. The Canon TS9120 was similarly fast, printing the photo 5 seconds faster than the TS8320. The Epson Expression XP-640 was slower, taking 2 minutes and 33 seconds.

Using its duplexer, the TS8320 printed a two-sided 10-page text document in 3 minutes and 13 seconds, or 3.1 ppm. This was nearly identical to the Canon TS9120 and the average for comparable duplex inkjet models. The Epson XP-640, however, was much faster, at 5.5 ppm.

The TS8320 made a two-sided print of our six-page color PDF in 2 minutes and 37 seconds, or 2.3 ppm. (This was, again, nearly identical to the TS9120's speed on this test.) This was faster than the category average of 1.8 ppm on this test.

Copy and scan speed

The TS8320 made a color copy in 23 seconds, which was faster than the category average of 27.7 seconds. By comparison, the TS9120 made a color copy in 17.3 seconds; but the fastest model to date, the HP OfficeJet Pro 9025, made a color copy in just 12.5 seconds.

The TS8320 made black-and-white copies at roughly average speed, making a copy in 14.6 seconds, compared with the category average of 15.8 seconds. (The fastest model on this test is the HP OfficeJet Pro 9025, at 8.7 seconds.)

• Epson Vs. Canon Vs. HP Printers: Who Makes the Best All-in-One

The TS8320 made high-resolution color scans quickly, creating a 600-dpi JPEG in 44.6 seconds — significantly faster than the average of 1 minute and 8 seconds. 

The TS8320 was slower than the average at making black-and-white scans, however, creating a 300-dpi PDF in 14.4 seconds, versus the average of 11 seconds. The Canon TS9120 made the same scan in 7.7 seconds.

Print quality

Text prints from the TS8320 looked good, but not great. Letterforms looked adequately dark, but up-close edges looked somewhat bumpy. 

Graphics looked more impressive, printing with well-saturated, natural-looking colors and accurate contrast. Details looked sharp and midtone transitions looked smooth. Some very mild banding was evident in flat areas, as were the borders of text boxes in our test PDF. Duplex prints looked just as good as single-sided prints.

Glossy photos had plenty of detail and accurate textures. I liked the prints I got on glossy and matte papers. Colors looked well saturated and very natural. There were differences, however, compared with glossy prints from the Epson XP-640, for example: Our test portrait's light complexion looked "cooler" and was not "warmed up" like the Epson's, with reds and yellows more saturated in the skin tone.

On our landscape photo, however, this same tendency of the Epson model added warmth and brightness to some green shades that, when set next to the Canon print, would look a little unnatural to some eyes. In the Canon print's favor, however, was the appearance of more detail in dark midtones that looked slightly blocked up in the Epson's print. This phenomenon was the opposite, however, in our still life of richly colored food. The Canon's print hyped up the reds and yellows to create a very saturated but arguably slightly unnatural-looking print, while the Epson XP-640's treatment of reds and yellows looked slightly less saturated and arguably more natural.

The TS8320 made attractive, accurate copies of graphics. Copies of magazine pages produced text that didn't look quite as sharp as the original. Overall, copies of graphics looked very close to the original, with attractive colors and plenty of detail, although there was some mild banding in copies of both color graphics and black-and-white graphics.

• Best Photo Printers in 2019

Scan quality was high, capturing natural-looking colors and producing smooth midtone transitions. Shadow areas in scanned color photographs tended to be too dark, however, losing fine details. Black-and-white scans to PDF looked sharp in general, with accurate reproductions of graphics, although they tended to look a little too dark overall, with blocked-up dark shades losing some detail.

Ink cost and yield

The TS8320 uses six ink cartridges: a pigment black (primarily for text), a dye-based black (primarily for graphics) and four dye-based colors (cyan, magenta, yellow and photo blue). Three capacities of ink cartridges are offered: standard and two levels of high yield (XL and XXL).

Overall, according to our calculations, the TS8320's ink costs are higher than the average for comparable inkjet printers we've tested. For the following costs, we calculated using the cost of individual ink cartridges.

Using standard cartridges, the TS8320 offers costs per page of 9.5 cents and 23.6 cents for text and graphics, respectively, versus the averages of 7 cents for text and 19.6 cents for graphics. By comparison, the Epson XP-640 has lower-than-average costs per page of 5.8 cents and 18.8 cents, respectively.

Using high-yield XL cartridges, costs per page are an estimated 7.1 cents for text and 19.5 cents for graphics, respectively, compared with the averages: 5.4 cents for text and 14.1 cents for graphics. Using the XXL cartridges drops the text-page cost to 6.4 cents, and graphics pages to 16.8 cents, but this is still higher than the average for regular high-yield cartridges. Using high-yield cartridges, the Epson XP-640 prints text for less than half the cost per page, at 3.1 cents, and color graphics at a much lower cost of 10 cents per page.

Canon does offer some multicartridge value packs that can cut ink costs. In all cases, these value packs do not include the photo blue cartridge, which must be bought separately. The five-pack offering includes all the other inks, while the four-pack combos include only the pigment black, not the dye black.

Based on our calculations, buying the five-pack bundle of standard cartridges should reduce color page ink costs from 23.3 cents to 19.6 cents, while the four-pack product, which does not include the pigment black ink, will only reduce color costs to 22 cents per page. The five-pack group, including the XL, pigment black and four standard-yield dye inks, has a cost per color page of 19.1 cents, compared with 21.6 cents when purchasing individual cartridges. The lowest color page cost is still 16.8 cents with the XXL cartridges, which were not available in multipacks at press time.

• Inkjet vs. Laser: Which Printer Is Right for You?

Using estimated yields, we also calculated ink costs for printing 4 x 6-inch glossy photos. As with plain paper printing, the lowest cost per 4 x 6 was with the XXL cartridges, at 31.6 cents. (A complete set of XXL cartridges costs $169.94.) Printing a 4 x 6 photo with standard cartridges is pricier, at 48.6 cents per print, though buying the five-pack set with the XL pigment black and four standard-yield dye inks reduces this to 41.2 cents. 

However, you should also consider the cost of paper — not just ink — for printing glossy photos. A pack of 100 sheets of Photo Paper Plus Glossy costs $10.99, or 11 cents per sheet.

Setup and software

Basic setup of the TS8320 was straightforward. You remove half a dozen pieces of orange shipping tape and some cellophane. Plug in the printer, turn it on and select your language on the touch screen, which then walks you through the ink cartridge installation, showing a graphic of each cartridge as you install it.

Although a CD-ROM comes in the box, the printed start guide's large print instructs you to go online (ij.start.canon>setup>go>start) to download the software. (The CD-ROM setup is covered at the bottom of the page, in small print.) 

The software download includes the printer driver, scan utility (Win/Mac) and a Scan Utility Lite option for Macs. The online download, however, did not include the Easy-PhotoPrint Editor application. I had to find that myself on the TS8320's Drivers & Downloads page. The same was true of the online software installation I ran for a Mac running OS 10.12 (Sierra). Easy-PhotoPrint Editor is used to create and print collages, calendars, cards, stickers and CD/DVD disc labels.

In addition, the TS8320 has a disc label copy function you can use from the touch screen, without having to use a PC. You place a printed disc on the flatbed scanner, insert a blank disc in the CD/DVD tray and follow the on-screen prompts. I used this to copy a disc I had printed on another inkjet, with a label of a color photograph. The TS8320's copy looked just as good as the original.

Wireless setup was easy to find in the touch-screen menu. Using the WPS method, I pressed the WPS button on my wireless router to initiate the connection and put the TS8320 on my network.  

For mobile devices, you do not have to use the Canon Print app. The TS8320 supports AirPrint for iOS and Google Cloud Print for Android, as well as the Mopria Print Service. However, when using AirPrint to print a document from an iPhone 7, it chose the rear paper tray rather than the main paper cassette (and offered no way to select between the two). The rear paper tray was empty on one occasion, and on another my document printed on the glossy photo paper in the rear tray, which I did not intend to do. Using the Canon Print app, selecting plain paper as the media type was sufficient for the TS8320 to choose the main paper cassette rather than the rear tray loaded with glossy photo paper.

• Best Printers: All in one printers for home and office

Canon also offers cloud printing and social media integration via its IJ Cloud Print service, which you initiate by going to a designated URL from your mobile device. IJ Cloud Print offers links for printing from various cloud services. You set up your account using FaceBook, Google or an email address, and then you can print from various social media accounts and cloud apps.

The TS8320 started up very quickly, illuminating its touch screen in just 3 seconds. Not surprisingly, making a copy right away took longer than usual. Rather than the test time of 14.6 seconds, it took 23 seconds for the unit to fully warm up and make the copy.

Bottom line

The TS8320 offers a lot of features for photo enthusiasts, including high photo print quality using six inks, a second specialty media paper tray and an SD card slot. The large color touch screen is handy, and the ability to print onto CD/DVD discs adds to the fun, as does the cloud printing integration of your social media accounts via mobile device. Photo printing and color scanning are fast, though other tasks are done at roughly average speeds. Two-sided printing adds a little versatility, although less-than-razor-sharp text prints don't make this model a good fit for a home office — nor do the higher-than-average ink costs, despite two tiers of high-yield ink cartridges. Take a look at our Canon promo codes for ways to save on your order. 

Our favorite photo printer, the Epson Expression XP-640, offers comparably high photo quality, faster color printing on plain paper and quicker black-and-white copying. Like the Canon, the XP-640's text prints are not quite razor sharp, and its scan quality was inconsistent in our testing. It also lacks a touch screen, and its photo printing is slower. If faster photo printing or a large touch screen justifies the higher ongoing expense, the photo-centric offerings of the TS8320 are likely to be a pleasure to use.

The HP Color Laser MFP179fnw ($299) is priced to attract budget-conscious small businesses, and offers a fair number of features for the price. This color laser multifunction printer offers an automatic document feeder (ADF) for copying and scanning multipage documents and has a 10-key pad for easy fax number entry. It does not offer a duplexer for making two-sided copies and prints. Rare among laser printers, the MFP179fnw can print on glossy laser brochure paper. 

The MFP179fnw is designed for a modest workload. Its recommended monthly volume is just 100 to 400 pages, compared with the 750-to-4,000-page volume of our Editor's Choice Canon ImageClass MF743Cdw. This HP  works with only standard-yield toner cartridges, and its 150-page input cannot be expanded with an optional paper cassette.

Design

The body is quite petite, measuring 16 x 14.3 x 13.6 inches. The 50-sheet output tray is a cavity within the body, with an extendable catch, and the 150-sheet input drawer juts out at the bottom of the chassis.

The control panel does not offer an elegant color touch screen, but a more basic two-line monochrome LCD and dedicated buttons. However, the menus are straightforward to navigate. The control panel includes a 10-key pad that comes in handy for entering fax numbers. Other buttons include ID Copy, contrast setting and fax dial.

The ADF sits on top of the scanner lid. In our testing, the ADF had a tendency to draw pages in at a slight angle, which resulted in scans and copies with some pages that were tilted, out of alignment. Scans in particular showed a high percentage of misaligned pages.

Also, this model lacks detection of documents on the flatbed scanner. So, if a forgotten document is sitting on the scanner glass, and you load a document into the ADF, the first page will be drawn into the ADF and get damaged in a paper jam.

Print Speed 

The MFP179fnw printed our five-page text document in 26.5 seconds, which is on a par with other color laser all-in-ones we've tested (monochrome models tend to be faster). This HP, however, was very slow to print our six-page PDF of mixed text and color graphics; it took 1 minute and 46 seconds to print it in grayscale, and took 3 seconds longer to print it in color. Our Editor's Choice, the Canon MF743Cdw, printed the same document in just 20 seconds in grayscale and 26.8 seconds in color. The HP printed a full-page letter-size grayscale photo on plain paper in 18.6 seconds, which is about average for color lasers we've tested; printing the same photo in color took 33.5 seconds. 

MORE: Best Laser Printers 2019

Using the HP Smart app on an Android phone worked fine for scanning and printing a text document (though the text in the print looked rather light), but not for printing our six-page PDF via WiFi Direct: The printer paused after the fourth page and again for the fifth page after about 2 minutes and 30 seconds. After more than 10 minutes the printer generated a page with a decoding error.

Copy and Scan Speed

Color copying was slow. The MFP179fnw took 31.9 seconds to copy a single color page, versus 13 seconds from the Canon MF743Cdw. The MFP179fnw made a black-and-white copy in 12.4 seconds; the Canon MF743Cdw was quicker, at 9.3 seconds. Using the ADF, the HP copied a  five-page text document in 24.1 seconds, or 12.4 ppm. The Canon copied the same document in 20.2 seconds, or 14.9 ppm. 

The HP was fast to scan in color, creating a 600 dpi JPEG in 17.7 seconds, much faster than the average of 34.7 seconds, as well as the Canon MF743Cdw, at 25 seconds. Scanning a page in black-and-white to produce a 300 dpi PDF, the HP did so in 11.9 seconds. The Canon MF743Cdw made the same scan in 9.5 seconds.

Print Quality

Text documents printed with very sharp, dark letterforms. Graphics printed with plenty of fine detail, and with bold, dark shades that added to the contrast and "pop" in both grayscale and color. Photographs printed with good detail and natural, well saturated colors. Interestingly, even on plain paper, HP's toner has a glossy sheen to it, compared with other laser printers we've tested. In grayscale, the toner had a slight bluish tinge. On our mixed-text-and-graphics PDF, the prints showed some banding and the boundaries of text boxes were visible when they were supposed to blend in with the background. This banding and differing text-box shades were more pronounced in color graphics prints than in grayscale.

MORE: Best Photo Printers of 2019

Scans looked sharp, with accurate colors overall and good detail in shadows.  Fine details were not quite as sharp as from some other models, such as from the Canon MF743Cdw. However, the HP's scans showed fewer dust specs and photo paper texture. Scans were not, however, automatically cropped and included extra border space (more on this in the Software section).

Scans of multipage documents fed through the ADF were disappointing. A high percentage of the pages were askew, with text slightly tilted rather than horizontal. The same inaccuracy was seen in multipage copies, but less common.

Toner Cost and Yield

This printer with toner cartridges is rated to print 1,000 pages (black), or 700 pages (color). There are no high-yield cartridges offered. At 5 cents per text page, the cost of toner is on the high side. The Canon MF743Cdw, for example, comes in at 4.1 cents with standard toner cartridge, but drops to 2.1 cents per page with a high-yield black toner cartridge.

Color printing on the MFP 179fnw is also a little expensive, at 29 cents, compared with 19 cents (standard) and 12.9 cents (high-yield) for the Canon MF743Cdw.

Setup and Software

The box includes an instructional poster on how to remove tape and packaging, such as folding down the front panel and pulling out the input tray to remove protective styrofoam and packaging tape. The toner cartridges come preinstalled. There is no DVD-ROM disc or printed manual. You are instructed to go to 123.hp.com and search for the model in order to download the software. 

The included scanning software is HP MFP Scan. Unlike several other scanning software applications we've tested, MFP Scan does not automatically crop its scans; it requires the user to select the scan area size, even if you perform a pre-scan. Our test scans of a magazine cover included extra border space on the right side, and scans of photos included extra white space on one or two sides, depending on the size of the original. After saving a scan, the software asks if you want to transfer the scan to another location; if you don't, this may get tedious.

Using this printer on a wireless network requires that you use 2.4GHz. The printer is not compatible with 5GHz Wi-Fi.

MORE: Wi-Fi 6 Routers: What You Can Buy Now (and Soon)

Startup is about average, and takes about 25 seconds. However, a black-and-white copy won't show up in the typical 12.4 seconds thereafter. In our tests, it took 1 minute and 4 seconds to start up the MFP179fnw and to make the copy.

The MFP179fnw supports Wi-Fi Direct, Apple AirPrint and Google Cloud Print, so you can print wirelessly from compatible devices. Using the HP Smart app for Android, you can also initiate a copy or scan to email. There is also a "camera scan to email" feature, which is just taking a picture, really; my photo of a document came out so blurry it was completely unreadable.

Bottom Line

The HP Color Laser MFP179fnw is well-suited for modest duty in a small office. It delivers high image quality, though performance is a bit mixed. While most speeds were in the acceptable range, printing of mixed text and graphics was slow, as was color copying. The ADF is fast, but alignment troubles in copies and scans were disappointing. The lack of automatic cropping on scans made by the included software also left a little to be desired. 

Considering its price tag, this multifunction printer offers a lot for an entry-level color laser, though it falls short in a few categories, including its significantly higher cost per page compared with our Editor's Choice, the Canon ImageClass MF743Cdw. That model, however, is significantly larger, which may be a non-starter for some small offices. 

In the smartphone era, where more people carry cameras and take photos than ever before, and sharing those photos online is a huge aspect of social media, mobile photo printing is an analog niche that many want to fill. For a legacy camera and film company like Kodak, it's a natural fit, and the new $99 Kodak Smile photo printer aims to be the pocket-size photo printer you throw in your bag, whether it's for a day at the beach or a week-long vacation.

The Kodak Smile quickly prints 2 x 3-inch photos and also boasts a simple and fun app with augmented-reality support. But the photo printing niche is crowded, and it's harder to distinguish yourself when competing products like the Polaroid Zip and the HP Sprocket also use ZINK inkless printing technology. Overall, this compact printer is very good for making quick prints on the go.

Kodak Smile price and printing costs

The Kodak Smile photo printer itself costs $99 and is available on Amazon, Walmart and through other retailers.

Refills of the Kodak Smile-specific Zink photo paper are on the pricey side, selling in packs of 20 or 50 sheets.

On Kodak's website, you can buy the 20-pack for $9.99, which works out to 50 cents per photo. Similarly, a 50-pack sells for $24.99, also averaging 50 cents per photo. However, prices may be slightly better through another retailer, like Amazon or Best Buy.

Kodak also gives you the option of signing up for a refill subscription, which drops the prices of these refill packs by a dollar or two. The 20-pack is only $8.99 via subscription, and the 50-pack is $22.49, giving you per-photo costs of 45 cents each. In our research, this was the most affordable option, but you'll need to use the photo printer regularly to make the subscription worthwhile. 

Design

The pocket-size Kodak Smile is small and battery-powered, so you can take it anywhere. The printer measures 4.6 x 3.2 x 0.9 inches overall, but has rounded corners to more easily slip in or out of a pocket. A rubber foot on the bottom of the device gives it some grip on slick or slanted surfaces. The printer is available in white, black, blue, green or red.

The design of the Kodak Smile has a distinctive pop-up panel that opens to reveal the printer's output slot. The pop-up portion is spring-loaded, and opens by sliding a small grooved latch on the back end of the printer. This turns the printer on, making it ready for pairing with your smartphone and printing.

MORE: 12 Instant Cameras, Ranked from Best to Worst

While this pop-top action does distinguish the Kodak printer from other similar pocket-printer designs, the overall design is otherwise extremely similar to competing devices. Both the Polaroid Zip and the HP Sprocket have the same oblong shape and external features.

The Smile connects to your phone via Bluetooth, much like the Zip and the Sprocket. On the side of the Smile printer is a micro USB connector for charging the battery, along with a charging indicator light and a small reset button that erases the previous pairing and photo information on the printer.

Loading paper

Loading and unloading new paper into the Smile printer is a bit easier on this model, thanks to a removable end cap that slides off easily and secures with magnets. The magnets hold everything securely enough to not worry about it coming off in a purse or backpack, but slide open easily enough to make it the best paper-reloading experience I've had with a mobile printer. Given the space constraints of pocket-size designs, reloading paper will often involve prying off lids.

Included with the Kodak Smile is a five-pack of 2 x 3-inch ZINK photo papers. That's half as many as we saw included with either the Zip or the Sprocket. The individual papers also have a sticker backing, so you can peel and stick the photos anywhere you want.

App

To use the printer you'll need to download the Kodak Smile photo app to your phone. This app not only handles the pairing and communication between the phone and the printer, it also gives you the tools to select, edit and share photos, and even lets you print photos instantly from the phone's camera.

The app (available for Android and iOS) also lets you embellish photos. You can apply tinted color filters, put borders around photos, and even add captions, emojis and stickers to your pictures. You can also tie the app to your social media accounts, which lets you share your personalized photos or print pictures from social media.

But the best feature is probably the addition of AR, letting you take a short video, then print a single image from it. Point a Kodak Smile app-enabled smartphone camera at this photo, and you'll get a neat little moving image, displaying the GIF-like video in place of the photo.

Performance

The Kodak Smile printer uses ZINK inkless printing, which relies on photo paper treated with thermoreactive crystals instead of laying ink down onto the paper. As a result, there's no waiting for photos to dry or develop, and the result is smudge-proof, water-resistant and even resists tearing. It does mean, however, that you'll have to use the specific ZINK paper that is sold for the Kodak Smile.

This is a substantial change from the last Kodak mobile printer we reviewed, the Photo Printer Mini, which uses a more traditional four-pass printing process.

In our tests, the photo quality was decent for a portable photo printer. Images printed with good color and detail, and none of the print artifacts we've seen show up in prints from competitors. Colors were fairly accurate, but a little dull, and the low resolution of the photos means that your printed photos won't match the crisp detail they may have had on your camera phone. 

That said, photos printed pretty quickly, with individual photos printing in 30 to 40 seconds. Single images averaged 36.2 seconds, while batches of two or more images came out slightly quicker, averaging 34.6 seconds a piece.

MORE: The 10 Best Photo Storage and Sharing Sites

That's actually faster than both the HP Sprocket and the Polaroid Zip, which both averaged 55 seconds per photo, and faster than the older Kodak Photo Printer Mini, which took an average of 83 seconds per print.

Because the Kodak Smile is portable, it uses an internal battery. Kodak claims the battery will provide up to 40 prints on a single charge, and our testing confirms this claim.

Bottom Line

The Kodak Smile instant photo printer is a solid entrant into the mobile photo printing category, but the use of Zink printing makes it very similar to other products already on the market. 

Our favorite photo printer is still the Kodak Photo Printer Mini, which has a more complicated printing process, but produces slightly better prints. That said, none of the smartphone photo printers we've seen offer particularly great photos — they all output to small, low-resolution prints. For this style of printer, however, the Kodak Smile offers faster printing than the Polaroid Zip and better print quality than the HP Sprocket (2nd Edition), making it a great choice for hassle-free, smartphone-friendly printing.