Should I buy a Laser Printer for home use?

Best colour laser printer: HP Colour LaserJet Pro M254dw

We are convinced that HP Colour LaserJet Pro M254dw is the best choice for a full-featured color laser printer. This hp printer is one of the cheapest laser printers to run.

M254dw is the most reliable and versatile to use, and it can print just about anything that most people want, with beautiful results.

Specifications:

HP M254dw display is a 2.7” color touchscreen interface with 54x 40.7 mm display area (metric), the number of print cartridges you get is 4 (1 black, cyan, magenta, yellow), processor speed is 800 MHz, weight 14.8 kg.

The HP printer comes with a non-expandable memory of 256 MB. It supports PCL and PostScript printing languages. It is standard for USB, Ethernet, and wireless connectivity. Users can print using HP e-Print, Apple Air-Print, or Mopria-certified apps from their smartphone devices.

Positives

• Top-panel USB socket
• Multi-purpose paper feed
• Quiet when printing
• Great Color Print Quality
• Wi-Fi Direct
• Auto 2-sided printing
• Fast, Reliable printing
• Long-Lasting Toner
• Large Paper Tray (250 Sheets)

Negatives

• Short cord for plugging in
• The printer is slow to wake up at times
• Slow Eco-mode print
• Flimsy USB socket cover

Conclusion:

The HP LaserJet Pro M254dw is an affordable printer for small offices with its wireless connectivity, 250-sheet capability, portable printing, and high-yield cartridges. It is designed primarily for small businesses that require little printing. The Printer has a lot to like, ranging from its smart look to its versatile wireless connection and duplex printing. In Wirecutter results, this model is included as it proved the best.

We would like to see a higher-capacity paper tray–or a second tray option–but other than that, it’s a very good choice for anyone who needs high-quality black and color laser printing without a high purchase cost.

*See detailed research at the bottom of the page.

Cheap printer: Canon Pixma MG6320 Wireless all in one colour laser printer

The Canon Pixma MG6320 Wireless all in one colour laser printer is a cloud printer with a scanner, Copier and it is also Airprint Compatible which makes it an overall good featured printer. The best feature we liked is it is AirPrint enabled which means you can print wirelessly and effortlessly from your compatible iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch- no drivers needed.

It has excellent output quality and also includes an auto-duplexer for double-sided prints, it is very easy to set up and connect with a wireless network and mobile devices. Refillable ink printers can cost a considerable amount, but in comparison to ink cartridge printers, they promise to provide you with large savings on your cost per page.

The ink that is used in tank printers costs less than cartridges, the prints last longer and hold more, but it is difficult to find the link anywhere and it is not easy to refill. If you are looking for home use, an ink tank printer is the best choice as they are easy to use and could be installed easily. It gives flawless performance while effectively reducing costs.

Connectivity – Wi-Fi

Compatibility – Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows XP, and Windows Vista and Mac.

Consumables – Canon Original Individual/Combo CLI-251 XL Ink Tanks (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) & PGI-250 XL Pigment Black Ink Tanks.

Features

New panel design for easier operation: The user-friendly 1.2-inch panel design makes the printer perform various copies or scans simply.

High-quality photo and document printing: With the help of Canon’s Hybrid Ink System, it prints amazing borderless photos and crisp black text documents up to A4 size.

High-page yield ink bottles: Users can enjoy printing with high-page yield ink bottles up to 7000 pages without having to worry about the cost of low ink or ink supplies.

Device compatibility: It is compatible with MacBook, windows OS.

Build quality: This opening mechanism is very cool compared to other printers where you press a button and yank the part hoping it won’t break apart. The built quality is good. It looks very firm and classy.

Conclusion

The Canon Pixma MG6320 printer is renowned for its ability to print copies and scan high-volume and low-cost. It has high capacity and it’s very easy to set up and with an attractive set of features, but the cost of consumables is pretty high. But we still think this printer is good to buy.

Second-best colour laser printer: Brother Compact Monochrome Laser Printer HL-L2395DW

Colour Laser printers are still in demand just because they give good output, low cost per page, and fast print speeds. They can manage heavy printing as well. It could serve two or three users at a time, making them perfect for offices. But they’ll cost you a lot more than inkjet printers in general.

Specifications:

This Brother printer comes with Duplex Printing (two-sided printing or scanning) allows you to print B&W documents of high quality in a matter of minutes. The duplex printer automatically saves paper. It is capable of Copy & Scan, Wireless Printing, NFC, and Cloud-Based Printing & Scanning. This model is the best duplex laser printer.

Cloud-based printing and scanning:

Wireless print from and scan to popular Cloud services directly, including Dropbox, Google Drive, Evernote, OneNote, and others. It features an output tray capability of 250 sheets and an input tray capability of 250 sheets. In addition, this printer can also be linked via a USB cable to your laptop or desktop and has a 2.7″ colour touchscreen for easy operations.

Design:

The Brother laser printer is sleek and stylish, measuring 15.7 x 16.1 x 10.7 in and weighing around 22.7 lbs. It has a compact design that saves room for your desk. You can readily move it from one location to another because of its lightweight. It features a 2.0 USB port that allows you to pair flash drives or other devices so you can print from the device straight.

Saves time:

Its speed of up to 36 ppm, makes it simple to efficiently finish any printing job. With high print speeds, you could save time for multiple users. Instead of waiting for their printouts, you can use your time more efficiently. Comfort, flexibility, and simple connectivity to various devices with intelligent integrated characteristics like mobile printing which increase efficiency.

Positives

• Functional-Printing Quality is very good with duplex printing. Duplex printing is fast, simple, and well-automated.
• Build Quality: The printer is robust and has great build quality.
• Printing tray capacity: 250 sheets.
• Cartridge: Long Lasting Cartridge with very easy installation. Guided by their Manual.
• Fast printing
• Duplex
• Cost, Print Quality, Customer Care

Negatives

• Little high printing cost
• 1 cartridge yield a maximum of 1200 pages
• Monochrome
• Expensive original cartridge, Single function

If you want to print fast even with the duplex feature, go with it. But it comes with a little upper cost. All in all, when it comes to low-end laser printers, this seems like a winner.

Conclusion:

The Brother HL-L2395DW monochrome printer is an affordable and safe option for your home and office. It has the capability to print on both sides of the pages. The printer is easy to set up and takes fractions of seconds to print a page. The printer comes with a toner – Brother genuine TN730 with a capacity of 1200 pages. The printer can print A4 and legal pages.

Upgraded pick: HP LaserJet Pro Wireless all in one colour laser printer (MFP M477fdw)

The HP all in one colour laser printer M477fdw is designed to allow you to concentrate your time on where your business is the most effective HP printer.

Screen Resolution:

HP resolution of LaserJet Pro MFP M477fdw is 600×600 bits per inch (dpi) but says it has 38,400x 600 enhanced dpi.

HP printers are less dependent on shading – they use small dots to produce different shades and colouring – and they use multi-level printing technology to produce more accurate images.

Performance:

This HP printer delivers unmatched print, scan, copy and fax performance plus comprehensive security for your small business and work groups of up to 10 users. Connectivity, standard: Hi-Speed USB 2.0 port; built-in Gigabit Ethernet 10/100/1000 Base-TX network port; Easy USB access

Furthermore, with double-sided printing of up to 25 pages per minute, this HP wireless laser printer provides easy wireless connectivity to your mobile devices and laptops. With Jet Intelligence, specially engineered HP Toner cartridges help to print faster with more pages and less energy. Inc.com says “This is the best printer ever made, hands down”.

Positives

• Great specs on paper.
• Quick to print
• Quiet when the fan isn’t running
• Touchscreen
• Good form factor

Negatives

• Scanned documents are slightly skewed unless the documents are loaded perfectly.
• Setup reports/documents are printed instead of displayed. Wastes a bit of paper
• Not sure about the long-term durability of the scanner feed mechanism (the first device was fine, but the second device is a little loud).
• The loud fan runs for about 1 minute after any activity before shutting down
• The scan resolution when using the automatic document feeder is limited to 300 dpi.

Conclusion:

Providing enough speed, functionality, and text quality to handle the busiest office work, this HP all-in-one printer is a good choice.

Not only does it provide the speed and impeccable text quality of a laser printer, it somehow manages to produce vivid and crisp color graphics as well. The hp printer can meet the requirements of the versatile and ever-evolving workplace in order to complete a variety of print, copy, scan and fax tasks.

On top of that, it has an attached fax/scanner with a 50-page automatic document feeder, so you can digitize long documents in a flash and scan to your heart’s content, without ever compromising the quality of the output.

How we picked

We have listed our top 4 picks of the latest and most versatile printers available in the market for your specific purpose and requirements.

For each device, we compared

• Prints of a high-resolution photograph;
• Colour copies of two watercolour paintings;
• Prints of watercolour painting scanned at high resolution by Kinko;
• Scans of the same painting (compared on-screen);
• A B&W document is scanned through the document feeder (screen and print comparisons).
• Connectivity
• Mobile printing
• Paper handling
• Duplexing

After, comparing each of these sub-categories, on the basis of print/colour/scans we have given our impartial review to satisfy our reader’s needs. On the basis of the above, we arrived at these 4 printer models that checked off all our testing and requirements.

How we tested

We tested each of these devices closely from physical unboxing to wireless connecting each device to a Windows PC, Mac, and Android device.

We considered it a success when we are able to print from each device over Wi-Fi. Because it can be frustrating to simply get a print without the availability of a computer, we also tested other methods to communicate with these devices wirelessly.

We made sure that every printer worked with Google Cloud Print for Chrome book owners.

We have effectively printed from Google Cloud using a cell. Where available we checked out other portable printing standards as well, such as Mopria and HP ePrint.

In order to find which perform best, we printed several text-based reference papers. We also printed a couple of HD pictures because more content is always better and seeing how each printer handles content really tests the limitations of their device.

We also checked out the quality of each printer, including toner-density sliders and print-resolution settings available, to see what you can expect with toner-density alternatives, and to find out if we could have better-looking text. We also learned about print quality by experimenting with quality settings.

We’ve spent time in the standard print box, as well as the web-based control panels that most printers use for more technical modifications.

Results:

In both duplex (two-sided) and simplex (one-sided) modes, we ran four copies of the four-page ISO document to test print speed. We also did duplex printing for each printer in the best quality environment.

These experiments offer us an impression not only of how quickly a printer can spit out a 10-page book report but if the differences between them are sufficiently good to create a difference in daily life.

Finally, we tested all of our listed printer’s paper-feeding components, including not only the primary paper tray but also the bypass tray and document feeder, if the printer had them.

We overburden them with paper to see if they were going to jam, and we fed them with single sheets to see if they could pick up each. We were also handed a crumpled piece of paper. These printers passed all the rigorous tests and turn out to be a winner among others.

HP Color LaserJet M254dw

Connectivity and Communications:

Network capabilities: built-in Fast Ethernet 10/100Base-TX network port; Wireless authentication via 802.11n 2.4/5GHz

Increased Efficiency:

The automatic duplex printing feature is one of the points that make this laser printer one of the best office printers to use. This requires a lot less of the paper tray–which has 250 sheets. Not only this, but the printer features a 10.7-second ‘fast first page out’ speed for black and white prints and 12-second for colour prints.

The M254dw also boasts a printing speed of 21 pages per minute for both mono and colour prints, which means large documents, can be printed in no time. This, therefore, increases productivity and reduces the amount of time spent on worldly tasks. This HP laser printer is the best cheap laser printer.

High Quality:

You can create good-quality printouts that impress users alike by pairing your device with official HP toner cartridges. This is because HP toner cartridges feature Jet Intelligence, which means that your laser printer is precisely designed to reduce costs with high-yield options while ensuring that quality is not affected.

Print Quality and Costs:

This HP laser printer M254dw quality on black text is outstanding, with crisp, thick characters and no stain sign. Solid colours are just that too: bright and band-free, and black and colour registration are generally good.

Colour pictures come through well-detailed and with good general colours, although default settings make them slightly darker than the originals and some shadow details are lost.

The printer is quiet. We have calculated CPP on the basis of the high-yield numbers; it comes to 3 cents in black and 15 cents in colour. The price of colour printing is still a little high for a laser printer; however, by using the environmental features of the printer, such as duplex printing, companies can decrease their printing expenses.

HP Laserjet all in one colour laser printer M477fdw

Wireless connectivity:

The HP LaserJet Pro offers wireless connectivity to meet the demands of the modern work environment – making it easier to connect to the printer from other devices. Mobile printing from a tablet or smartphone can allow a greater number of users to access the printer’s function.

Quicker printing:

The HP LaserJet Pro M477fdw is well suited to office settings that rely on a large quantity of print output with print speeds of up to 27ppm in both monochrome and full colour.

Colour printing:

Since laser printers aren’t the best tools for reproducing colour images, HP recommends using its colour lock paper if you need to print photographs with this machine. If you use standard photo paper, images will come out blotchy because the toner won’t stick to the page, and it can damage your printer.

Usage:

The HP MFP M477fdw All-in-one printer is designed for handling a heavy workload with up to 4,000 pages monthly. It has a standard 250-page main paper tray and only 50 pages are held by the machine’s secondary paper tray.

However, only a few other printers have higher capacity trays, including the Xerox Work Center, which can hold in its secondary tray more than 500 pages.

Summary

There’s never been a better time to buy a printer than now. With new technology, quality is improving, prices are dropping, and more options are available than ever. Companies like Brother, Canon, and HP printers are continuously upgrading their devices and adding new features in their new product releases just to bring a smile to the face of their customers. These all in one colour laser printer won’t let you down and only speed up your daily life.