Best Printer for Home 2026: Tested Picks for Every Budget

The best printer for home use in 2026 is an ink-tank all-in-one for most families, a compact mono laser for anyone who prints mainly black text, and a cartridge inkjet only for people who print a handful of pages a year and want the smallest possible outlay. That is the whole answer, and everything below is the reasoning, the specific models, and the running costs that make one choice cheaper than another over the three to five years you will actually keep the machine.

We do not take affiliate placements from manufacturers, and we spend most of our working week fixing printers that people already own. That shapes these picks: reliability and cost per page matter far more than headline print speed, and models with a track record of clogged heads or firmware that rejects third-party ink do not make the list no matter how cheap they get on sale.

Quick picks

How we chose

We ranked on four things, in this order.

1. Cost per page over three years, including the ink in the box. A printer that costs $90 and burns $45 cartridges every two months is a $700 printer.
2. Failure modes we see in support tickets. Clogged printheads on lightly used inkjets, cartridge-recognition errors after firmware updates, and Wi-Fi dropouts are the three biggest sources of misery. See printer offline for how often these come up.
3. Setup that a non-technical person can finish alone, ideally from a phone app, without a USB cable.
4. Consumable availability in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and India, including whether third-party supplies exist.

Epson EcoTank ET-2900: the default home printer

Epson refreshed the EcoTank line in mid-2026 with a seventh generation, and the ET-2900 is the model most homes should buy. It is a print, scan and copy all-in-one with a 1.44-inch colour screen, a 100-sheet tray, Wi-Fi plus USB, and AirPrint and Mopria support. Rated speed is 11 pages per minute black and 6 colour, which is unremarkable and completely adequate for homework, forms and boarding passes.

Running cost. The box includes enough ink for roughly 3,600 black and 6,500 colour pages. Replacement EcoFit bottles cost around $15 to $20 each and, in normal use, work out below one cent per black page and around one to two cents for a mixed colour page. Against a cheap cartridge inkjet at 20 to 30 cents a colour page, the ET-2900 has paid its purchase premium back inside about 1,200 colour pages.

Pros. Ink cost is effectively a non-issue. Refilling is a clean, keyed bottle system with no gloves needed. Epson Smart Panel is the least annoying of the four big manufacturer apps. Heat-Free PrecisionCore heads do not need a warm-up, so first page out is quick from sleep.

Cons. No automatic duplex, no ADF, and the scanner is a plain flatbed. The 100-sheet tray is shallow. Build quality is light; this is not a machine to move around.

Who it suits. Families, students living at home, anyone printing 20 to 200 pages a month with some colour.

Known issues. All EcoTanks share two: printheads clog if the machine sits idle for months, and the maintenance ink pad eventually reaches its counter limit. Both are manageable. Print a colour page every week or two, and read Epson ink pad end of service life before that message ever appears so you know your options.

Epson EcoTank ET-1910: cheapest route to cheap ink

New for 2026 and, at around $160 in the US and AUD 299 in Australia, the most affordable Supertank Epson has made. It prints only: no scanner, no copier. Same 11 ppm black engine, same 5760 x 1440 dpi output, same three-years-of-ink claim as the ET-2900.

Running cost. Identical to the ET-2900, which is the point. Under a cent a black page.

Pros. Very hard to beat on total cost of ownership. Small footprint. Nothing to break that is not a printer.

Cons. No scanning at all, which most households eventually want, and phone cameras are only a partial substitute when you need a flat, straight PDF of a signed form.

Who it suits. A second printer, a bedroom or study, or a household that already owns a scanner. If you are unsure, spend the extra $80 on the ET-2900.

Brother HL-L2460DW: the reliability pick

If your printing is school essays, tax forms, recipes, shipping labels and the occasional contract, a mono laser is objectively the right machine and this is the one to buy. Around 34 pages per minute, automatic duplex, Wi-Fi and Ethernet, a proper 250-sheet tray, and toner that sits on a shelf for years without degrading.

Running cost. A TN830XL high-yield toner runs roughly $70 to $90 for about 3,000 pages, so 2.5 to 3 cents a page. The starter toner in the box is about 700 to 1,200 pages depending on region, which is stingier than it sounds. Drum units last around 15,000 pages and cost roughly $100 to $130.

Pros. It cannot clog, because there is no liquid ink. Text is crisp. It handles being ignored for six months and then asked to print 80 pages. Brother drivers are stable on both Windows and macOS, and there is a genuine third-party toner market.

Cons. No colour, no scanner. Toner-low warnings arrive early; you can usually keep printing well past them.

Who it suits. Anyone whose honest answer to "do you print photos?" is no. Also the best pick for people who print in bursts. See inkjet vs laser printers if you are still deciding.

Known issues. Very few. When toner runs out you may need a reset sequence on the control panel before the printer accepts the new cartridge. The HL-L2480DW is the same engine with a slightly different feature mix and is worth buying if it is cheaper on the day.

Brother MFC-L2900DW: laser with a scanner

The all-in-one version of the above: same mono laser engine, plus a flatbed scanner, a 50-sheet automatic document feeder and copying. Around $250 to $300, sometimes under $220 on sale.

Running cost. Same TN830/TN830XL toner economics, 2.5 to 3 cents a page.

Pros. The ADF is the feature people underrate. Scanning a ten-page signed agreement to PDF takes 20 seconds instead of ten lid-lifts. Duplex printing is standard.

Cons. Bulky. Mono only, so anything with a colour chart or a child's project goes to a print shop.

Who it suits. Home offices, landlords, anyone dealing with paperwork. If you need colour too, the small business guide covers the MFC-L3780CDW.

Canon PIXMA G3270: tank ink with better photos

Canon's MegaTank equivalent to the EcoTank, typically $230 to $270. Print, scan, copy, Wi-Fi, and a dye-based colour set that produces noticeably warmer, glossier photo output than Epson's four-colour EcoTanks on photo paper.

Running cost. GI-21 bottles at roughly $13 to $20 each. Canon quotes around 6,000 black and 7,700 colour pages from the in-box fill, so again well under a cent per page.

Pros. Best photo output of the mainstream tank all-in-ones. Front-facing tanks are easy to read. Canon's app handles borderless 4x6 prints well.

Cons. Slower than the Epson on plain text. Canon's tank models are more prone to the 5B00 absorber counter appearing after heavy cleaning cycles.

Who it suits. Households that print family photos monthly as well as documents.

HP Smart Tank 5101 and the HP question

HP's Smart Tank line is a genuine tank printer with genuine cheap ink, and the 5101 at $200 to $250 is fine hardware. The caution is not the printer, it is the ecosystem. HP's cartridge models push HP+ enrolment during setup, which permanently restricts the printer to HP cartridges and requires an internet connection; Smart Tank models are not HP+ but the HP app still pushes subscriptions hard.

Pros. Excellent app and mobile printing. Good scanning software. Widely stocked at Best Buy, Currys, Officeworks and Staples.

Cons. Firmware updates have historically tightened supply restrictions on HP's cartridge printers. Read third-party ink and toner before assuming you can buy cheap supplies for any HP machine.

Who it suits. People who value the HP app and want tank ink without leaving the brand.

Canon PIXMA TR4720: only if you truly print rarely

An $80 to $110 cartridge all-in-one with an ADF and a fax modem, which is still occasionally required for medical and legal paperwork. It is on this list as the least-bad cheap option, not as a recommendation.

Running cost. PG-275/CL-276 cartridges are expensive per page, roughly 8 to 12 cents black and 20 cents plus in colour. If you print more than 30 pages a month you are lighting money on fire.

Known issues. Like every low-use inkjet it will clog. If you buy one, print a colour test page fortnightly.

What to avoid

• Sub-$60 cartridge printers. The setup cartridges are half-full, the replacements cost more than the printer, and the printhead is inside the cartridge.
• Enrolling in HP+ to get a discount unless you have read the terms. It is permanent for the life of the printer.
• Colour lasers for photos. They are excellent for charts and marketing pages, poor for skin tones and glossy paper.
• Buying on speed. The difference between 11 ppm and 22 ppm is irrelevant at home; the difference between one cent and 25 cents a page is not.
• Wi-Fi-only models in a house with poor signal in the study. If the printer will sit near the router, fine; if not, buy one with Ethernet.

Verdict

Buy the Epson EcoTank ET-2900 if you want one printer that does everything for a family and never think about ink again. Buy the Brother HL-L2460DW if you print text and want the machine to simply work for a decade. Buy the Canon PIXMA G3270 if photos matter. Everything else on this page is a variation on those three decisions, and any of them beats the $69 doorbuster that will cost you $200 a year in cartridges.

Once it arrives, our wireless printer setup walkthrough covers the first ten minutes, and if it fights you, a specialist can take it over remotely through our support plan.