Looking for a solid printer for an extra low price is like panning for gold: A real pain in the neck. But we’re here to help. Our favorite pick is the Canon Pixma iP8720 which sports excellent features at an affordable price. After reviewing over 60 of today’s best printers, this stands out as one of the best! However, if you’re looking for an especially lower price or a more office-friendly model, be sure to look at all our suggestions.
If you’re not sure what you want from a printer, we recommend you choose an affordable one with multiple connectivity options. That includes wireless connectivity so you can print from any device (or gadget) in your home. You also need a USB connection on the side, and an easy setup process so all you do is connect and print. Features like Google Cloud Print, Apple AirPrint, and NFC-based connectivity are great benefits: If you can live without the bells and whistles, however, any of the following models should suffice.
Canon Pixma iP8720
The Pixma iP8720 is an excellent showing by Canon, a home-friendly printer that combines excellent features with an affordable price. The printing quality is good enough for photo printing if necessary, and the printer can accommodate 13×19 prints if you need to work with wider formats. The paper tray holds 120 sheets, and our tests showed that printing speeds were around 13.3 ppm for black and white, while Canon claims up to 10.4 ppm for color.
The printer supports both USB connections and Wi-Fi, with added support for Apple AirPrint and Google Cloud Print if you use those services. Overall it’s a remarkable printer: If you’re a professional photographer or earnest amateur, you’ll probably want to pick something a bit higher up in the image quality department, but for everyone else this printer is a great pick, especially those who need to print flyers and other slightly larger materials.
One of the most affordable printers in this guide, the HP DeskJet 3755 might look less impressive and imposing than its contemporaries. However, its compact sizing and high-print quality make it one of the best choices for a low-cost printer today. It’s fully Wi-Fi compatible for wireless printing and weighs just 5.13 pounds, making it easy to squeeze into pretty much any space.
With this kind of price tag you do have to make some sacrifices, most notably in copier and scanning resolution limitations. The on board display and button-controls aren’t the most expansive either, but you don’t buy the DeskJet 3755 for its ability to do everything better than most. It can do what most others do and it does a passable job at all of it, but it’s far from class-leading. When it comes to photo printing, though, we were impressed with its detail and color reproduction in our own testing.
It’s not fast, it is a little loud, but it’s very affordable, and if you need to save space with your printer, this one’s a great choice.
The WorkForce Pro WF-3720 is Epson’s take on the all-in-one printer in the sub-$100 bracket. This model packs a 35-page auto document feeder, automatic two-sided printing, and a 2.7-inch color touchscreen for navigating and changing the printer’s settings with just a finger. It includes a fax component too in case you still need that old-fashioned document transport technology.
What makes this printer stand out is its support for NFC technology. That means if your mobile device packs an NFC component (and it probably does), all you need to do is touch that device to the printer’s surface for a direct connection. Otherwise, you can print to the WF-3720 using a USB cable, through your wired/wireless network, or directly through Apple’s AirPrint or Wi-Fi Direct.
As we noted in our full review, this scan, copy, fax and printer Brother model offers plenty of great features at an affordable price and a nicely compact form, ideal for fitting under a desk or on a shelf (at the slight cost of a smaller 20-sheet automatic document feeder and 100-sheet main paper drawer).
Connectivity options vary from USB and Wi-Fi to NFC tap-to-printer and an Ethernet port. Controls on the printer provide an easy-to-use LCD touchscreen. Printer speed is around 12ppm in monochrome and 10ppm in color.
Finally, if you’re looking for a simple printer that only deals with black ink, Dell’s E310DW may be the affordable solution you need. It’s the only monochrome unit in our batch, capable of cranking out up to 27 pages per minute. There’s no built-in LCD panel for touch-based navigation, but it does include automatic two-sided printing and a cassette input paper tray to keep dust off your paper.
On a connectivity front, you can tether this printer to your PC using a USB cable, tether it to the network using a wired Ethernet connection, or throw it on your wireless network for cable-free printing. It’s backed by the Dell Document Hub cloud service suite for printing your files and pictures from cloud services including Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and more. You can also use this suite to print files, pictures, and documents straight into these services.
Kyocera ECOSYS P5026cdw
If you run a marketing business, nonprofit, or similar organization from home, then you might need a different kind of printer–a heavy-duty model capable of handling larger printing jobs at high speeds. This Kyocera model will give you business-level printing at an affordable price with 27ppm speeds in both black and color with multiple paper types supported. There’s wireless printing and Wi-Fi Direct for larger files, as well as USB host interface options for print on the go. AirPrint, Google Cloud Print, and Kyocera’s own Mobile Print options are all supported.