Best Printers of 2026

Thirty-six pages per minute is the number that makes the Brother DCP-L2640DW worth a look for a home office. It pairs that speed with a 50-page automatic document feeder, automatic duplex printing, and a 250-sheet tray — the paper-handling set that turns a stack of contracts, school forms, and return labels into a short job. It prints black only, so it is not the machine for color photos or school projects that need color, but for text-heavy work it is the fastest printer in this group.

We like the Ethernet port as much as the speed. It gives a home office a fixed connection when several computers share the printer, and dual-band Wi-Fi and USB are there for everything else. The 250-sheet tray means fewer refills, and the 50-page ADF turns a stack of pages into a scan job instead of a manual routine. Text output is crisp at 1200 x 1200 dpi, which is what matters for invoices, labels, and anything that has to look sharp in black and white.

The obvious limit is color. If your printing includes photos, color-coded schoolwork, or client presentations, this is the wrong tool no matter how fast it is. Long-term durability is less certain than the speed and print-quality story, so the one-year warranty is worth keeping in view. For a home office that prints a high volume of black-and-white pages, those are acceptable trade-offs for the speed and paper handling. It is the printer we reach for when the job is text, not color.

Four refillable tanks replace the cartridge habit in the Epson EcoTank ET-2900, and that is the reason to consider it. Epson rates the included ink for up to 3,600 black pages and 6,500 color pages, a buffer that makes color printing feel ordinary rather than precious. At 11 ppm black and 6 ppm color, it is not fast, and it is a simplex printer, so double-sided jobs mean flipping and reinserting paper yourself. Those are real concessions, but they are the price of the low running cost.

We think the tank design is the whole reason to buy it. The keyed EcoFit bottles are meant to make refilling clean and hard to mix up, and the 1.44-inch color screen and 100-sheet tray cover the basics for a home or small office. Print quality is sharp for documents and respectable for casual photos, and the compact 9.3-pound body is easy to move when the desk needs reorganizing. The trade-off is that you are buying into Epson's ink system rather than a printer that excels at speed or paper handling. If you print a lot of color, the lower cost per page quickly outweighs the slower output. If you print double-sided reports every day, the Brother laser or the HP OfficeJet is the better fit.

An automatic document feeder changes what a home-office printer can do, and the HP OfficeJet Pro 8135 pairs one with fax and color output. It prints at 20 ppm black and 10 ppm color, holds 225 sheets, and adds a 2.7-inch touchscreen plus dual-band Wi-Fi and Ethernet. That is a small-office feature set in a body that still fits on a credenza.

For a small team, the ADF is the feature that earns the space. It scans and copies multi-page sets without babysitting each sheet, and automatic duplex printing keeps two-sided documents from becoming a manual job. Print quality is strong for color documents and business graphics, and the 225-sheet tray means fewer interruptions during a long print run. We also appreciate that HP includes a starter set of ink and a three-month Instant Ink trial, though the trial is a subscription hook, not a free lifetime supply.

We rank it below the Brother for pure text volume because a mono laser is the simpler long-run tool for black-and-white pages. The color output is the reason to choose it, and the ADF and fax are the reason to choose it over the cheaper Canon TS6520. If your office prints color presentations, scans client paperwork, and wants a fax line without adding a separate machine, this is the right shape. Just go in expecting ink to be a recurring budget line, and keep the one-year warranty in mind.

Five individual ink tanks are the reason the Canon PIXMA TR8620a belongs in a photo-friendly roundup. The five-tank setup lets you replace ink color by color instead of throwing away a combined color cartridge, and the printer handles borderless images up to letter size. The 20-sheet ADF and fax capability make it more than a photo printer, and automatic duplex printing covers two-sided documents. For a home that prints both family photos and paperwork, that combination is useful in a way a mono laser cannot match.

We like the five-tank system because it lets you replace only the color that runs out, which is a real advantage over the two-cartridge Canon TS6520. Print quality is a strength: text is sharp, and photos have the depth and color separation you expect from a dedicated photo ink set. The 15 ppm black and 10 ppm color ratings are fine for a home, not for a busy office.

Wireless is where this one gives us pause. The connection can be fussy, and it is the most common reason we hesitate to recommend it as the only printer in a household that depends on phones and tablets. Put it on a strong Wi-Fi signal or use USB, and the rest of the package holds up. The TR8620a makes the most sense as a second printer for photos and scanning, or as a home all-in-one where color and image quality matter more than bulletproof networking.

Space is the first constraint in a small apartment, and the HP Envy 6155 is built around it. It weighs 11.2 pounds and is noticeably smaller than the office-oriented models here, with a 2.4-inch touchscreen, automatic duplex printing, and a 100-sheet tray. For a dorm room, a small apartment, or a desk that has to do double duty, that smaller footprint is the feature that matters most. We like that HP did not strip out two-sided printing to get there.

The trade-off is speed. At 10 ppm black and 7 ppm color, it is one of the slowest printers in this group, and the 100-sheet tray means more refills if you print in batches. For light home printing — school forms, tickets, the occasional photo — those limits are easy to live with. For a home office that prints every day, the Brother laser or the HP OfficeJet is the more productive choice. The small body also makes it a better fit for a shared living space than a full-size office machine.