I want to print about 5 pages a week of basic black and white text. That's it. I just want the darn thing to work when I hit the button without have to gingerly feed in the paper just right or clean the head or reconnect to the router or any of that mess. Just. Print.
Bonus if it feeds cardstock well. Also bonus if it connects to multiple computers wirelessly. Also bonus if it doesn't take up much space. But I am willing to give up on those details if the damn thing will just print.
I presume that I want a basic black&white laser printer, but I'm not sure exactly what one to go for. Most of the recommendations that I am finding when I search this group are for larger all-in-one printers that have more bells and whistles than I need.
EDIT: Surely it goes without saying, but it is becoming harder to find in printers: I absolutely, positively, 100% do not want something that requires me to maintain a subscription or even a working email with the printer company. I want to hand them money and then have nothing else to do with them other than buying new toner every few years.
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What Type of Printer Is Best for Home Use?
What kind of printer you get for your home depends on what you plan on printing. As a general rule, if you print text only, or text and graphics that don't need color, a mono laser printer will do the trick. If photos are on your agenda, you need an inkjet or dedicated small format photo printer. If the only color output you print is graphics, you probably want an inkjet as well, but if you print infrequently, an inexpensive color laser may be the better choice. Laser printers have the advantage of being able to sit for months without being used, and then simply turn on and work, without the clogged nozzles or wasted ink for cleaning them that inkjets sometimes need. If you plan on doing any scanning or copying, but not so much that you need a standalone scanner, you should look to an all-in-one or multifunction printer. Decent AIOs aren’t that much more expensive than their printer-only counterparts.
Ready to Buy the Best Cheap Printer for You?
Each family or home office has unique print and copy volume needs. Since we're focusing on cheap single-function and AIO printers here, this roundup assumes you won't be printing or copying more than a couple hundred pages monthly. This is plenty for most families and homebound office workers, but demand is rising as we're seeing more printing from home.
We scrutinized all of the printers PC Labs has tested in the last few years that are still on the market, focusing on home-office or business models (both laser and inkjet) and photo-centric models (all inkjets among desktop printers). Usually, you'll see significant differences in features between machines tweaked for office use and photo printing. Low-cost office inkjets, for example, often include automatic document feeders, while their photo-centric counterparts don't.
Meanwhile, photo-minded inkjets offer better photo quality, with some higher-priced models employing five or six ink colors instead of the standard four (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, often called CMYK). The extra inks don't guarantee better photo quality, but they make designing a printer with better color accuracy easier. By contrast, the cheapest inkjets sometimes use old-school dual-cartridge (black and tricolor) designs, which work fine but are more wasteful as you must throw away the color cartridge once one of its three hues runs dry.
We've also included two niche classes of printers widely available for under $200: label printers (both for hobbyists and for folks shipping lots of items from home) and portable photo printers (for quick snapshots from your smartphone). The very smallest of the latter use an inkless technology known as Zero Ink (Zink) that applies heat to specially treated paper. However, their output quality falls short of inkjet and dye-sublimation photo printers.
Finally, we can't recommend any color laser printers for less than $200 (or anything close to it). The laser machines in this price class are monochrome.
It's important to note that you can find some very cheap printers nowadays—some under $50—at the bottom of most manufacturers' product lines. But it rarely makes sense to buy a slow printer with scanty features and replacement cartridges that typically cost as much or more than the printer. It's smarter to look for printers that will save you money in the long run and check your possible choices against reviews that assess features and cost of ownership, as ours do.
What's the Best Printer for Occasional Use?
As always, it mostly depends on what you need to print; if photos, probably a low-cost inkjet, but if only text documents, possibly a one-cartridge mono laser. But sometimes, you can tell by the printer's duty cycle.
If you print only a few pages a day, you don't have to worry about how much a printer is designed to print, as defined by its recommended (not maximum) monthly duty-cycle-rating. To define those terms? Maximum duty cycle is the absolute most a printer should be allowed to print per month without affecting the maximum number of pages it can print in its lifetime. The recommended duty cycle is usually how much it can handle on a regular basis and still last as many years as it was designed for. It may also be based on the paper capacity and how frequently you can conveniently refill the trays.
If you print enough for the duty cycle to matter, don't buy a printer that doesn't include that information in its specifications. (Many cheap printers meant for occasional use don't provide duty-cycle ratings at all.) Figure out how much you print by how often you buy paper and in what amounts. If you usually print on both sides of the paper, count each sheet as two pages in your calculations. Then pick a printer designed to print at least that much.