4 Best Printer for 2022

Over the last few years, the need to have a printer at home has come and gone. Before the pandemic, people were beginning to use printers less and less. Cloud printing and storing photos online became the norm, and the only time you needed a printer was to scan your passport or print out a ticket. When the coronavirus hit and a lot of office workers had to work from home, it was important to have hard copies of documents again. Because of this, printers are having something of a renaissance right now, so it’s important to know which one is best for you.

All of the printers described below can do basic printing tasks. For example, they can print from a phone or any PC, Mac, or Chromebook wirelessly or from a phone. They can also print using a wired connection or a wireless connection. (Note that not all printers support Apple’s AirPrint and Google’s Cloud Print protocols, which are usually easier to use than the printer vendors’ own systems.)

But the right model for you will depend on what you want to print. If you mostly print shopping lists, concert tickets, or travel plans, speed and price might be more important than quality. If you want to print professional documents or photos, the most important things to look for in a printer are accurate colors, good printing quality, and features like borderless printing.

Another thing to think about is the cost of ink and making sure you have enough to print everything you need. (There’s nothing worse than having a printer but not enough ink to print.) Laser printers use toner cartridges that have powder in them, while inkjet printers use liquid ink. So even if you find a great deal on a printer, make sure you look into how to refill the ink. There are also some new printers that come with ink subscriptions, which may be something to think about as well.

We have tested and written about the best printers for home and small office use from Brother, Canon, Epson, and HP. We have the best printer for you, whether you print for work or for fun, at home or in an office. Several of the models on this list are no longer available or are way too expensive because there aren’t enough of them. We are currently testing a new set of printers and will soon update this list with our new favorites. Check back soon to see our most up-to-date suggestions for the best printers for this year.

Best Printer for 2022

1. HP DeskJet 3755

Even if you don’t need a printer very often, you really need one when you do. This HP DeskJet will be there for you. It is a cheap portable printer that is small and doesn’t stand out. This HP printer doesn’t have a flatbed scanner or copier bed, so when it’s folded up, it’s about the size of a large loaf of bread and measures 16 by 7 by 5.5 inches. It has a paper tray in the back that folds up, a scanner on top, and an output tray, but it’s small enough to fit on a desk or shelf. If you sign up for an HP instant ink subscription when you set up your printer, you won’t have to worry about running out of ink while printing. When you run out of ink, a new HP instant ink cartridge is sent to you automatically. You can stop paying for the service at any time.

The point is not about quality. It doesn’t get the job done. The quality of the print isn’t very good. But the HP DeskJet 3755 is cheap, doesn’t take up much space, and can do simple tasks when you need it.

2. HP LaserJet Pro M15w

This is the right machine for you if you don’t have much room but need to print shipping labels, shopping lists, or homework assignments a few times a month, which is becoming more likely as the pandemic era drags on. The HP LaserJet Pro M15w is a small printer that works well for simple tasks. Its small footprint, which is about 8 inches deep and 14 inches wide, makes it a good fit for a bookshelf. And since it only weighs 8.4 pounds, it’s a great portable printer for small jobs. It’s a wireless printer, so it can connect to almost any device through Wi-Fi, so you can even print from your phone. If the students in your family don’t need a scanner or color output (since most scanning jobs can be done with a phone camera these days), the LaserJet Pro M15w is a great choice at a good price.

3. Brother HL-L2395DW

If you don’t care about printing in color, you should buy a black-and-white printer: Since there is only one toner or ink cartridge to refill, your cost per page will be lower.

Dan Ackerman reviewed this Brother printer in 2018, and he said that it stood out because it was cheap (at least when it was on sale), easy to set up and use, and almost all of its customers liked it. The Brother HL-L2395DW is a monochrome laser printer, so you can’t print photos or images in color with it. However, it will handle any black-and-white laser printing job with ease. (Its brother, the HL-3170CDW, can print in color but doesn’t have a scanner or a touch screen.)

This black-and-white printer is easy to connect to a Wi-Fi network, and it works with both a PC and a Mac. It also supports Google Cloud Print and printing over a network. And it’s quick: It took a MacBook 27 seconds to print 10 pages. On a Windows laptop with the Edge browser, it took 36 seconds to load a page with seven pages. It took 9 seconds to make a copy of a single sheet of paper.

Brother says that the “starter” black toner that comes with the system should be good for printing 700 pages. This printer, like a few others we’ve tested, works with Amazon Dash Auto Replenishment. This means that it will automatically order more toner when it runs out, unless you turn off the feature in your Amazon settings.

4. Epson Workforce Pro WF-3730 (alternatives available)

Update: The Workforce Pro WF-3730 is hard to find and costs a little more than it should, but the WF-3820 and the WF-4820 are good replacements that are easy to find and cost a lot less.

The Epson Workforce Pro WF-3730 has enough features for a home office, but it’s not as easy to use as some other printers. It’s also a big printer with two paper trays that hold 250 sheets each. So, you can put a lot of paper in it or use one tray just for envelopes or labels.

This multifunction printer has good print quality for the price. On plain paper and photo paper, and especially on Epson’s own stock, the photos are bright, colorful, and subtle in ways that surprise you. The Workforce is also fast. It printed an 8.5-by-11-inch photo faster than any other printer we tested that cost about the same. And this option for a home office printer is cheaper than many others.

The comparison below is based on what we found in our last round of testing. As we try out new printers, this will be changed to reflect that.

Printers, compared