The Best Home Printers Reviewed
The demands of a home printer and those of an office are different in several key ways. In an office setting, a printer is typically supposed to handle dozens of printing tasks per day from multiple users. This also means that the office printer must be able to handle all the printing within tight deadlines, and hence, speed is a very key aspect. Secondly, since there is a lot of printing taking place, the printer must also be able to deal with lots of papers with sufficient ink capacity to prevent inconveniencies that could arise in the form of ink running out or having to replace papers or clear out printouts so frequently to keep the printer running. These are just but some of the necessities that an office printer must meet. It’s also due to such demands that most office printers will usually end up being quite expensive.
When it comes to home printers, things are quite different. Unless you are running a busy home office, you have no business spending too much cash on a powerful printer with an insane ppm (pages-per-minute). Perhaps you are better off paying more attention to what the printer has to offer. Ideally, a home printer should offer the necessities as far as printing, scanning, and copying of documents go. Also, you may want to check out one that can handle photo printing. This should help make beautiful and highly-detailed photos of all the memories you are making out there. An office printer can get away with cabling, but for a home one, cables can be an aesthetic nightmare. Therefore, the best home printers should support various wireless connectivity options, and the good news is that wireless printing has gone viral and hence, that shouldn’t be a problem. Finally, we can all use with a compact printer. One that can be stacked on the shelf or desk without taking up too much space.
With that in mind, let’s get down into the real business:
What’s the best home printer?
The best home printer at the moment is the HP Envy 5660 Wireless All-In-One printer. This printer has everything you’d ever need in a home setting. Whether it is printing, photocopying, or scanning your term papers, the Envy 5660 has you covered. If you are just coming from Santorini and you want the physical copies of the beautiful sandy beaches, Envy 5660 will get the job down while keeping your photos as colorful as they are. What else could you need? Wireless printing? The HP Envy 5660 has all of that too. Talk of Wi-Fi direct, AirPrint, and HP ePrint app they are all supported in this compact but highly versatile printer.
Let’s take a deeper dive into this and some of the other incredible home printers in the market.
HP Envy 5660 Wireless All-In-One Printer
The HP Envy 5660 is not just ideal because it carries all the features you’d need for the usual official functions like you know, printing, copying, and scanning. Yes, having all these functions in a single unit is very compelling, but do you know what’s better than that? Being capable of handling all these tasks efficiently, and this is where HP has the upper hand over the competition. With the Envy 5660, you can expect printing speeds of up to 14 ppm for black prints and 9ppm for colored ones. That’s more than enough for any typical home. You will also get borderless printing and auto-duplex printing.
Scanning, copying, and performing the other functions has become much easier thanks to the 2.65-inch touch display. This allows you to intuitively navigate through the various functions and features of the printer with ease. You can also create your photos from a memory card very easily through this screen. Yes, the printer has a memory card slot.
Speaking of photos, you can print 4 by 6-inches photos from this printer, and you won’t have to change any papers thanks to the built-in photo tray. There is also the option of printing borderless photos that utilize the entire paper to deliver stunning photos without any trimming. When it comes to document printing, the printers accommodate legal, letter, No. 10 envelopes, 4 by 6 inches, 5 by 7 inches and 8 by 10-inches paper sizes.
The HP Envy 5660 supports various mobile printing options ranging from the HP ePrint app, Wi-Fi direct to AirPrint. It’s fair to say that you can print from virtually any smartphone, tablet, and PC regardless of the operating system.
Other Features
- Dimensions: 17.87 x 16.14 x 6.34 inches
- Weight: 15.04 lbs.
- HP Instant Ink eligible
- Scan-to-email
- Optional high-yield cartridges
- Two-side printing
- 1 USB 2.0 port
- Paper Input: 125 sheets main tray and 15 sheets photo tray
- Paper Output: 25 sheets
HP Envy 5055 All-In-One Printer
The HP Envy 5055 All-In-One printer has so much going for it. Not only is it more compact and lighter than the Envy 5660, but it also offers excellent performance to make sure that you are not missing out on anything.
Take advantage of the fast Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity to print documents from your smartphone, Google Drive, iCloud, or Dropbox more conveniently. The printer also supports borderless photo printing. We took our time and tried this out, and we have to tell you that the detailing of the photos was astonishing. The text is extremely sharp, colors look natural and face look stunning without any unnecessary beautification.
Of all the printer we tested the Envy 5055 could possibly be the most convenient to use on a day-to-day basis. This is due to various factors one of which is the dual-band Wi-Fi and its superb compatibility with other devices and platforms allowing you to scan documents from a camera, print from cloud storage services, and even print from different social media platforms. Through the 2.2-inch mono touchscreen, scanning, copying, and performing all other tasks will now take less effort. This should improve your productivity significantly.
The HP Envy 5055 supports various paper sizes. These include; legal, letter, No. 10 envelopes, 4 by 6 inches, 5 by 7 inches and 8 by 10 inches.
Other Features
- Dimensions: 17.52 x 14.45 x 5.04 inches
- Weight: 11.93 lb
- HP Instant Ink eligible. You can also use Amazon dash replenishment
- Print speed: 20ppm for black and 7ppm for black documents
- Paper input; 100 sheets
- Paper output; 25 sheets
- Auto two-sided printing
Canon TS5120 Wireless All-In-One Printer
The Canon TS5120 is yet another all-round printer capable of handling different tasks ranging from scanning, copying to the printing of documents, concert tickets, photos, and forms. This versatile printer harnesses the latest technology to provide different modes of printing for a more effortless experience. You can print wirelessly through AirPrint, Google Cloud Print, or Wi-Fi. The Canon Print App allows you to print more conveniently from your smartphone. Meanwhile, the Bluetooth connectivity isn’t just helpful in printing but in scanning as well. There is also the option of printing directly from the cloud as it is compatible with various cloud storage clients, including Google Drive. You could also go the old fashion way and utilize the USB port.
We’d like to take a moment and point out the FINE Hybrid Ink System used here. This technology has significantly improved the details of the documents and photos printed without affecting the performance of the printer and while keeping the costs down.
With the Canon TS5120, you can print 4 x 6-inches, 5 x 7-inches or square borderless photos at 5” by 5”. You can also print documents at different sizes from legal, letter to 8 by 10 inches.
The TS5120 also features two-sided auto printing, document removal reminder, versatile paper support, auto power on and off to save on power consumption, auto-scan mode, and attach to an email.
Other Features
- Dimensions: 16.8 x 14.2 x 5.8 inches
- Weight: 14.3 lbs.
- 2.5-inch LCD
- Mopria Device Printing
- PIXMA Cloud Link
- Quiet Mode
- Web template Print
- Hi-Speed USB port
- PictBridge or Wireless LAN