Best budget printers 2026: Cheap home printers to buy for your office
If you’re after a decent home printer but you don’t have too much cash to spend, here are the best affordable printers available to buy in 2026.
Buying an affordable printer it can be confusing, so we've put together this round-up of the best budget printers and some tips on how to find an affordable printer which matches your needs. To start, it's helpful to determine what you consider to be affordable. This will depend on personal budget but it's also worth thinking about whether the printer you want to buy is cost-effective to run. Ink and toner cartridges are where printer companies make a large chunk of money, so consider how often you’ll hit that ‘Print’ button before opening your wallet. If you only print documents once every month or so, then picking up something with a low initial cost might be better, even if it’s not the most economical option out there – we're thinking about cost-per-page here. On the flip side, if you’re printing documents frequently, you’ll want a printer with the lowest possible cost-per-page that your budget can accommodate. Depending on your needs, you might also want to consider a laser printer instead of an inkjet. In our round-up below, we've picked printers which are around the £100 price mark. Some are cheaper and some are slightly more expensive, but the more expensive printers are cost-effective in the long run. Jump to: Best budget printers UK at a glance How to choose a good budget printer Best cheap printers to buy in 2026 Best budget printers UK at a glance: Best printer for home use with cheap ink: HP ENVY 6132e £79.99 £49.99 (save £30.99 or 36%) Best budget laser printer: HP LaserJet M110w, £109.99 £84.98 (save £25 or 22%) Best budget photo printer: Epson Expression Photo XP-8700, £120 Best budget inkjet printer: Canon Pixma TS3750i , £49.99 £34.99 (save £15 or 30%) Best budget wireless printer: HP DeskJet 2820e, £59.99 £50.99 (save £9 or 15%) Best sustainable budget printer: HP ENVY Inspire 7220e, £99 Best all-in-one with HP Instant Ink: HP DeskJet 4220e, £69.99 £39.98(save £30.01 or 43%) Best affordable Epson: Epson Expression Home XP-4200, £74.99 £57.99 (save £17 or 23%) How to choose a budget printer As in all of RadioTimes.com Technology team's best lists, such as best budget projectors and best budget laptops, we've put together top tips to help you secure the best printer for you as cheaply as possible. Look at the cost-per-page Keeping an eye on running costs, such as ink and toner costs, is a key consideration when shopping around for the best budget printer in 2026. In terms of which printers have the most affordable ink, HP has some of the lowest prices going for HP 305 black ink and tri-colour (cyan, magenta, yellow) cartridges. These cost £13.09 per cartridge and come with enough ink for roughly 120 and 100 printouts, respectively. That works out at a cost-per-page of 10p and 13p. That’s about the standard per-page price you can expect from an affordable inkjet printer, but it’s not the cheapest option available to you. For example, a single HP 934 black toner cartridge is priced at £46.49, far more expensive than the HP 305 ink cartridges, but it promises enough toner for around 1,000 printouts – which means that the cost-per-page falls to below 5p. As we mentioned, sometimes it's better to opt for a more expensive printer to save money in the long run. Even better value for money in terms of running costs is bottled ink. Printers like the Epson EcoTank ET-2750 – excluded from this round-up because at £349.99 it's outside of the cheap price range – are cheap to run, with cost-per-page working out to be less than a penny. Research which ink subscriptions are the cheapest A lot of printers these days are covered by subscription plans, which can save you money, not to mention the hassle of having to order fresh cartridges yourself. These are typically only offered if you’re buying a printer that can be connected to the internet because services like HP’s Instant Ink and Epson’s ReadyPrint work by the printer monitoring the device’s ink levels and alerting the manufacturer when ink levels are getting low. Cartridges are then popped into the post and sent out to you in advance of you running out of ink. The HP Instant Ink and Epson ReadyPrint subscription prices are based on how many pages of paper you print in a month. Here's a breakdown of the current pricing: HP Instant Ink subscription prices Epson ReadyPrint subscription prices Consider what you'll be printing If you are buying a printer just for documents, then get a mono printer. This means the printer will only print in black and white. Even if the mono printer is not as cheap as a colour version, it's a good choice purely for the fact that you’ll only ever have to buy black ink to replace it. However, if you want to print out the occasional photo or document with colour images, then there’s absolutely no point in buying a mono printer, even if it does have a lower RRP. Best affordable printers to buy in 2026 HP ENVY 6132E Best printer for home use with cheap ink Pros: Comes with HP+ and Instant Ink Compact and good for home use Automatic duplex printing Cons: Dependence on HP's ecosystem Limited paper tray capacity If you're after a compact yet feature-rich printer to support you with your moderate printer needs at home, then this is the one for you. The HP Envy 6132e is multifunctional, acting as a scanner and photocopier with wireless features, and is recommended for people printing between 100 and 400 pages a month. For a budget printer, it offers impressive resolution and clarity of both text and images, and you'll save on paper thanks to the duplex printing. You can also use features such as AirPrint, enabling you to print directly from your phone! Buy HP Envy 6132e: HP | HP ENVY 6132e, £79.99 £49.99 (save £30.99 or 36%) Currys | HP ENVY 6132e £79.99 £49.99 (save £30.99 or 36%) undefined Epson Expression Home XP-4200 Best affordable Epson Pros: Helpful LCD screen Fast and lightweight Cons: Delicate With a price point of around £60, this budget printer is a great choice if you are a fan of Epson models and want to save money. The Epson Expression Home XP-4200 is a stylish choice, with the ability to print, scan and copy in black/white and coloured ink. We like that it has an LCD display on the front, too, so you can easily navigate the settings once it's connected to your device, whether that’s a phone, tablet or computer. It is one of the lightest models on our list, weighing in at just over a kilogram, so can be moved as you please. Its compact design also means it won't take up much space. Ink replacement is not too expensive and you can buy the colours separately so you only need to replace each colour when you run out. Buy the Epson Expression Home XP-4200: Amazon | £74.99 £57.99 (save £17 or 23%) Very | £74.99 £57.99 (save £17 or 23%) Latest Deals HP LaserJet M110w Best budget laserjet printer Pros: Easy to use Quick at printing Cons: Expensive toner and ink This is a black and white LaserJet printer and is 'perfect for home office'. The small but mighty printer is designed for high-speed and high-volume printing. It can spew out 20 pages per minute and is compatible with computers, phones and tablets. Due to the speed and reliability of this type of printer, they use toner and are more expensive than inkjet models. This one comes with enough toner for up to 300 pages. It is an easy-to-set-up printer and is a dynamic security enabled printer. Buy the HP LaserJet M110w: Amazon | £109.99 £84.98 (save £25 or 22%) HP | £109.99 £84.98 (save £25 or 22%) undefined Canon Pixma TS3750i Best budget inkjet printer Pros: Very cheap to buy and run Good overall print quality Easy to set up and use Cons: Slow printing speeds Ink smudges easily No Wi-Fi or mobile app support The Canon Pixma TS3355 is a reasonable and cheerful colour inkjet printer. Very cheap to buy at around £27.99, the TS3355 is a no-frills option, with basic printing, scanning, and photocopying functions. Aimed at buyers who want a cheap, sub-£50 printer to use every so often, the TS3355 is included as it’s one of the cheapest colour printers on the market. It’s very easy to set up and use and is suitable for running off homework, letters, boarding passes and the like. Despite its low price, the Canon Pixma TS3355 can even print photos on glossy photo paper. The print quality is generally very good, and, in fact, a lot better than you might expect from such a cheap printer. Buy the Canon Pixma TS3355: Currys | £49.99 £34.99 (save £15 or 30%) Latest Deals HP DeskJet 2820e Best budget wireless printer Pros: Cheap and easy to use Good all-rounder Cons: No two-sided printing Small capacity If you need a new home printer, the HP DeskJet 2820e should be able to handle any basic task you throw at it – including both black/white and colour documents. It is a wireless model, too, so that cuts down on fussing over wires to your main device, whether that’s a laptop or smartphone. You get three months of HP Instant Ink included and automatic ink detection, so if you subscribe you'll be sent ink before you run out. It has print, scan and copy features, but does have a smallish capacity compared to other printers on our list with space for just 60 sheets of paper. Buy the HP DeskJet 2820e: Amazon | £59.99 £50.99 (save £9 or 15%) HP | £59.99 £50.99 (save £9 or 15%) undefined HP DeskJet 4220e Best value all-in-one printer with HP Instant Ink Pros: Good at printing graphics and photos Lightweight Easy to install Cons: Text quality is middling Alignment issues Not cheap to run without Instant Ink The HP DeskJet 4220e hits a lot of tick boxes for buyers in the market for a cheap colour all-in-one printer. It’s capable of printing on glossy paper as well as regular A4, it can print over Wi-Fi and USB, and quality is very good, considering it’s a sub-£100 device. Text quality on the default setting is admittedly pretty average, but move things up to higher quality settings, and you get higher quality results. The HP DeskJet 4220e uses the HP 305 Black (£13) and HP 305 Tri-Colour (£13) cartridges, which promise 120 and 100 pages’ worth of ink, which comes to a cost-per-page of around 10p and 13p each. The HP DeskJet 4220e is also not the fastest printer on the market, which is perhaps understandable given the price. On the plus side, it’s lightweight and doesn’t hog desk space, so it’s ideal for home offices that are on the small side. Buy the HP DeskJet 4220e: Amazon | £69.99 £39.98(save £30.01 or 43%) undefined Epson Expression Photo XP-8700 Best for printing photos Pros: Great for printing photos Touchscreen Fast printing speed Cons: On the more expensive side The Expression Photo XP-8700 is great if you're looking for an A4 printer that can cater for both everyday printing and producing glossy photographs. It aims to make everyday tasks easy and includes options to print straight from your mobile and tablet. It has a large touchscreen which makes printing, scanning and copying easy to control. The printer is on the more expensive side compared to most of our budget picks but is a great option if you're looking to print photos. Pairing the printer with Claria Photo HD Inks, Epson promises that photos can last up to 300 years in a photo album and have a real professional feel. Buy the Epson Expression Photo XP-8700 from: Amazon | £120 Latest Deals HP ENVY Inspire 7220e Best sustainable budget printer Pros: Decent tray capacity Sustainably made 3-months free ink Cons: Not the fastest printing speed The HP ENVY Inspire 7220e is a great sustainable choice and is an impressive printer as well as being environmentally conscious. The printer is made from 45% recycled materials and HP promises net zero-deforestation prints and closed-loop cartridge recycling. At just over £100 is fairly expensive for a budget printer but you do get three months of free ink for this price using HP's instant ink subscription, so this can make it worth the price if you plan on printing a lot. The printer has a good tray capacity of 125 pages and can also print photos well with its built-in photo tray. The only drawback is the printer's printing speed which is below average at 15 pages per minute for black text. Buy the HP ENVY Inspire 7220e from: John Lewis | £99 Latest Deals For news, reviews and deals, check out the RadioTimes.com Technology and Gaming sections.
The Oppo Find X3 Pro offers buyers after a premium Android smartphone experience plenty to brag about. Find out more in our full review.
The Oppo Find X3 Pro is the flagship device from the Oppo Find X3 series, offering buyers after a premium Android smartphone experience plenty to brag about. Boasting a detailed, colour-rich AMOLED display with an eyebrow-raising refresh rate, a huge battery, support for wireless charging and super-fast wired charging, 256GB of internal storage, 12GB of RAM, and an eight-core processor, the Oppo Find X3 Pro’s spec sheet reads more like that of a laptop than a smartphone. However, the real icing on the cake comes in the form of ‘Colourful Future’, an exclusive ringtone written by legendary film score composer Hans Zimmer. How many phones can boast that? It’s not just about the glitz and glamour though, like the entry-level Oppo Find X3 Lite 5G, the Oppo Find X3 Pro comes with a camera with four lenses, fast charging, and, naturally, 5G support. Make no mistake; the Oppo Find X3 Pro is a seriously good phone. But is it £1,099 good? Jump to: Oppo Find X3 Pro review: summary What is the Oppo Find X3 Pro? How much is the Oppo Find X3 Pro? Oppo Find X3 Pro features Oppo Find X3 Pro battery Oppo Find X3 Pro camera Oppo Find X3 Pro design and set-up Our verdict Where to buy Oppo Find X3 Pro review: summary The Oppo Find X3 Pro is a powerful, polished smartphone for buyers with cash to burn but want to turn some heads. If you want to stand out from the pack and not just pick up the latest iPhone, or Samsung, the Oppo Find X3 Pro is what you should be looking for. The standout feature here is the display. Mobile phone displays have been excellent for years, with even the cheapest phones coming with Full HD resolution screens these days, so it takes something truly special to stand out from the pack, and the Oppo Find X3 Pro does that, with style. After watching a few shows on Netflix and iPlayer on the Find X3 Pro, you probably won’t want to stream content on anything else. The cameras are also excellent, and the battery is heroically good, especially when you consider the calibre of the display. The fact that the Oppo Find X3 Pro can be charged up in less than 40 minutes is another selling point. It is expensive, though; there’s no getting around that, and Oppo’s guarantee to only provide two years of software support diminishes its value. If your budget is tight, but you want a semblance of the Find X3 Pro experience, you’re better off turning your attention to the Oppo Find X3 Lite, which gives you the basics for a fraction of the price. Pros: Fantastically rich and vibrant display Long-lasting battery that charges up in 40 minutes Camera captures accurate and detailed stills and video Cons: Expensive No software support after two years The Oppo Find X3 Pro is available on the Oppo store and Amazon, priced at £1,099. What is the Oppo Find X3 Pro? The Oppo Find X3 Pro is the most expensive phone from Oppo’s flagship Find X3 series. For your money, you get a dazzling array of powerful and eye-catching features, including a 6.7-inch touchscreen display, a top-of-the-line Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 processor, a huge 256GB of storage, and a massive 4,500mAh battery. Announced in March 2021, along with the Oppo Find X3 Lite 5G, the Oppo Find X3 Pro is available to buy now. What does the Oppo Find X3 Pro do? The Oppo brand has been synonymous with great value budget phones for years, but the Find X3 Pro is a very capable – and expensive – Android phone. In addition to boasting a high-resolution display with a high refresh rate, it’s a 5G device and features a Wi-Fi 6 antenna, which means it can connect to some of the fastest network and Wi-Fi speeds available. SuperVOOC 2.0 fast charging means that with the supplied charger, you can be fully charged in under an hour, and wireless charging is supported too. Key features: Dimensions: 163.6 x 74 x 8.26 mm Weight: 193g 6.7-inch AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate Quad-camera set-up including twin 50MP wide and ultra-wide sensors 32MP front-facing selfie camera with facial recognition 65W SuperVOOC 2.0 fast charging 30W wireless charging 10W reverse wireless charging In-screen fingerprint scanner Type-C USB port – data, charging, and audio through one connection NFC included for contactless payments How much is the Oppo Find X3 Pro? The Oppo Find X3 Pro is available to buy now SIM-free and unlocked directly from Oppo for £1,099, or Amazon, Carphone Warehouse, also for £1,099. If you’re less keen on buying the Oppo Find X3 Pro outright, you can pick it up on a range of pay monthly contracts from EE, O2, Three, and Vodafone. Oppo Find X3 Pro features The Oppo Find X3 Pro is positively packed with features, but chief among these is the display. Forgive me for waxing lyrical about the display again, but it really is pretty fantastic. Measuring 6.7-inches, this is an AMOLED-type panel with a resolution of 3,216 x 1,440, which gives you a PPI (pixels per inch) count of 525. Oppo says that the Find X3 Pro’s display can produce over a billion colours and kick out up to 1,300 nits of brightness. That’s on par with a high-end laptop like a MacBook Pro or Dell XPS. It also boasts a variable refresh rate and is capable of refreshing at a rate of up to 120Hz. In lay terms, all of this means that images will look detailed, colours will look rich, vibrant, and accurate, and gaming and video playback will look silky-smooth. The high levels of brightness mean you’ll be able to use the Oppo Find X3 Pro anywhere, even on bright, sunny days. Day-to-day operations are as smooth as the visuals, thanks to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 processor. The Oppo Find X3 Pro never feels like it’s struggling to run anything. With 256GB of onboard storage, you’ve got acres of room for photos, selfies, videos, and games. In terms of connectivity, there’s a Type-C USB port at the base. No 3.5mm headphone jack is present here, sadly, so if you’ve got some old-school headphones, you’ll have to shell out for an adapter or consider picking up some Bluetooth headphones. There’s no slot for a memory card, but the SIM tray has room for two SIMs here if you need to have a business and personal number on the go. Oppo Find X3 Pro battery The Oppo Find X3 Pro has a 4,500mAh battery which is easily capable of giving you a day’s worth of juice, and if you pushed it, it could almost last for another one. After eight hours of typical use, including calls, browsing, social media, and streaming, you can expect to have around 55-60% left in the tank, good going, considering how vibrant the display is. During testing, the longest I was able to go without reaching for the charger was one day, five hours, and 28 minutes, but that was with me actively using the phone, constantly playing music through the external speakers, or streaming it to a portable Bluetooth speaker. You can enable several battery saving modes that shut down things like GPS and Bluetooth or any applications that are draining resources, so in a pinch, you can buy yourself some extra time if you’re nowhere near a mains socket. What's really impressive, though, is the speed with which the Oppo Find X3 charges back up – from flat to full in just over 40 minutes, using the supplied 65W charger. The Oppo Find X3 Pro also supports 30W AirVOOC Wireless Flash Charging, which lets you keep the battery topped up while freeing up that USB port. You can also use 10W reverse wireless charging to keep things like earbuds topped up too. Oppo’s wireless charging solution is based on the Qi open interface standard, and so it should work with any Qi-enabled charging pads or headphones – not having any of those to hand, I can’t comment on how well this works. Oppo Find X3 Pro camera Like the Apple iPhone 12, Samsung Galaxy S21 and OnePlus 9, the Oppo Find X3 Pro’s main camera unit features a cluster of lenses and sensors which allow you to take a wide range of shots, from wide panoramas to super close-up macro shots. The main wide and ultra-wide sensors are 50MP Sony IMX766’s, which do a very good job of capturing detail and natural colour without everything looking oversaturated. In both well-lit and poorly-lit locations, the Find X3 Pro does a good job of creating natural, balanced shots. There’s also a 13MP telephoto sensor, which affords you 2x optical zoom, and 5x ‘hybrid’ zoom, which uses software trickery to capture virtually lossless images from a distance. You can push things further – up to 20x – but beyond 5x zoom, all you’re really doing is enlarging the image and not actually zooming per se. Needless to say, at 20x zoom, you lose a lot of detail. The fourth sensor is a 3MP lens which allows for a fun ‘microscope’ mode – hold the Oppo Find X3 up to leaves, flowers, and pieces of paper, and you’ll be able to take detailed close-ups. The software is very easy to get to grips with, and there’s an ‘expert’ mode as well, which lets you tinker with things like white balance, ISO (sensitivity), and shutter speed. Other tools at your disposal include a Night mode, panorama, document scanner. The 32MP selfie camera is good, too, pulling in plenty of information. In areas where there’s low ambient light, the Find X3 Pro will use the phone’s display as an ad hoc light source, filling blank areas of the panel with white pixels, which is actually pretty effective – again, that super-bright display comes into its own. You can also record in 4K, 1080p, and 720p at 30 or 60 fps (frames per second). Other film modes available to you include slow-motion (720p or 1080p at 30fps), time-lapse, and as with the Oppo Find X3 Lite 5G, dual camera video, which records with both front and rear cameras at the same time. Oppo Find X3 Pro design and set-up The Oppo Find X3 Pro is available in two colour versions, blue, with a matte finish, and shiny gloss black – the model I was sent was the latter version. While the reflective surfaces were pleasant to look at and cool to the touch, like all glossy phones, it has the tendency to pick up fingerprints. Luckily, Oppo includes a protective case in the box to give you some extra protection and grip. It measures 163.6 x 74 x 8.26mm, which is impressive given all that’s going on underneath the hood, although the camera unit rises up out of the rear surface a bit, which means that the lenses are prone to damage. Again, using a case means that the phone feels flat and uniform, and the lenses are given a degree of extra protection. Setting the Oppo Find X3 Pro up is a breeze. If you’ve used an Android phone before, you’ll import all your contacts as normal when you enter your Google Account details, and you’ll also be given the option to transfer any previously downloaded apps from your old device. You can also set up things like the Google Assistant voice controls and Google Pay if you wish, but you can skip those if you don’t want to use them. Our verdict: should you buy the Oppo Find X3 Pro? The Oppo Find X3 Pro is impressive and powerful. The cameras produce stunning stills, the battery will easily last you all day, and the display is simply marvellous to behold, but it’s expensive, and the fact that there’s no guarantee of support after two years is a strike against it. If you’re the kind of person who upgrades at the end of a 24-month contract anyway, this is less of a big deal, but people who prefer to buy phones outright might think twice. Rating: Features: 4/5 Battery: 5/5 Camera: 5/5 Design and set-up: 4/5 Overall rating: 4.5/5 Where to buy the Oppo Find X3 Pro Available upfront at Amazon | £1,099 Available at Carphone Warehouse | £1,099 Available upfront at Oppo | £1,099 Available on contract at EE | from £59 a month, £30 upfront Available on contract at O2 | from £43 a month, £30 upfront Available on contract at Three | from £68 a month, £29 upfront Available on contract at Vodafone | from £35 a month, £29 upfront undefined Still searching for the right handset? Don't miss our guides to the best smartphone of the year, best Android phone and best Sony phone.
Looking for a compact and budget-friendly printer for your home? The HP Envy Pro 6420 might be for you.
HP has been making printers and scanners for years, but a lot has changed since the days of the boxy office printers of the ‘80s – now, we get lightweight and minimalist-looking wonders like the HP Envy Pro 6420. Instead of your typical grey cuboid, the HP Envy Pro 6420’s dimensions have been pared down so that each of its key functions – printer, scanner, and copier – are housed in their own discrete and easily recognisable sections. Looks aside, the HP Envy Pro 6420 is a wireless all-in-one colour printer aimed at families and home office workers. Like the HP DeskJet Plus 4120, it’s a cartridge-based inkjet printer running on just two cartridges. The HP Envy Pro 6420 is also covered by HP’s Instant Ink automatic cartridge replacement subscription service. This means ink-hungry households and busy home workers should be able to find a price plan that’ll let them run the HP Envy Pro 6420 much more economically than just buying cartridges outright – although less demanding users might find it cheaper to buy cartridges on an as-and-when basis. Our review of the HP Envy Pro 6420 below covers everything you need to know, from ease of use to print quality and running costs – also, don’t forget to read our best printers round-up feature to see how this compares. Jump to: HP Envy Pro 6420 review: summary What is the HP Envy Pro 6420? How much is the HP Envy Pro 6420? How fast is the HP Envy Pro 6420? HP Envy Pro 6420 print quality HP Envy Pro 6420 running costs HP Envy Pro 6420 ease of use Our verdict Where to buy HP Envy Pro 6420 review: summary Price: £89.99 Key features: Prints on A4, A5, B5, DL, C6, and A6 paper Double-sided printing Reads images at 1200x1200dpi and copies at 300x300dpi Pros: Fast print speeds Excellent text and graphics quality Low, compact design Cons: Occasional paper jams Problems printing on glossy paper Expensive without an Instant Ink subscription What is the HP Envy Pro 6420? The HP Envy Pro 6420 is an all-in-one colour printer/scanner/copier with a space-efficient and stripped-down design that’s priced at around £90. In fact, the HP Envy Pro 6420 is so stripped back that there’s no display on the control panel – besides basic controls and status lights, all of the commands will be issued from your devices. As the HP Envy Pro 6420 is able to run print jobs issued from phones, laptops, and desktops over Wi-Fi, and desktop devices via a wired USB connection, there’s no essential need for a control panel with a display, as all of the printing, scanning, and copying jobs will be issued from another device. In addition to printing on plain A4, the HP Envy Pro 6420 can print on A5, B5, DL, C6, and A6 paper, too. Double-sided printing (aka auto-duplexing) is supported, and an automatic document feeder (ADF) holds up to 35 sheets of A4, so you can create copies of large, multi-page documents easily. The HP Envy Pro 6420’s scanner reads images at 1200x1200dpi and copies at 300x300dpi. It prints black ink at 1200x1200 and prints in colour at up to 4800x1200dpi, allowing for very sharp graphics on plain paper. What does the HP Envy Pro 6420 do? Here are the main specifications for the HP Envy Pro 6420 all-in-one colour printer/scanner/copier: Ink type: Cartridge (HP 305 Black, Tri-Color, HP 305XL Black, Tri-Color) Cost per page: 9-10p / 8-9p Print resolution: Up to 4800x1200 dpi Scanner resolution: Up to 1200x2400 dpi Print speed: 12.04ppm Paper tray capacity: 100 plain A4 (main tray) / 35 (ADF) OS: Windows, Mac OS, iOS, Android Dimensions: 194 x 432.5 x 511.5 mm Weight: 6.16kg How much is the HP Envy Pro 6420? The HP Envy Pro 6420 is available to buy now at Amazon with an RRP of £89.99. Skip to view the deals How fast is the HP Envy Pro 6420? The HP Envy Pro 6420 is quick off the mark, printing out single pages of text in under five seconds and 20-page documents in just over a minute and a half. It’s quick to print on both sides of a sheet, too, with 20 pages’ worth of text being printed on 10 sheets in under three minutes. The Envy Pro 6420 is faster overall than the HP DeskJet Plus 4120, although it took almost the same amount of time to print a photo on plain A4 – around two minutes. Despite the spec sheet promising that the HP Envy Pro 6420 has the ability to print on glossy photo paper, we were unable to do so during testing. It’s quick to scan, with documents and images being read in under 20 seconds. Copying and printing out a single page takes around 35 seconds while copying and printing a colour image takes under 50 seconds. HP Envy Pro 6420 speed test – text and graphics HP Envy Pro 6420 speed test – photos HP Envy Pro 6420 speed test – scanning and copying HP Envy Pro 6420 print quality Text, graphics and photos printed on plain paper all look good, even on the default settings, though naturally, if you push the quality all the way to the max, things look even better. Serifs are crisp and defined, the colours of graphs are rich and bold, and skin tones look warm and natural on photos. Colours are neither overblown nor washed out; everything just looks as it should. In testing, the HP Envy Pro 6420 was not able to print on glossy paper. In theory, it should do in theory, but in practice, the printer would always pull up a sheet of glossy paper from the tray, only for it to become stuck halfway, the roller wheels unable to pull the sheet all the way through, resulting in a paper jam. HP Envy Pro 6420 running costs The HP Envy Pro 6420 uses the HP 305 and HP 305 XL cartridges, meaning running costs range from as little as 8p per page to 10p – in other words, about the standard for printers in this category. The right HP Instant Ink subscription could, however, work out being much better value for money. As with the HP DeskJetPlus 4120, the HP Envy Pro 6420 uses two cartridges, one for black ink and the other for colour (cyan, magenta, yellow). Both the standard-sized HP 305 cartridges and the higher-volume HP 305XL cartridges can be installed in the HP Envy Pro 6420. The bigger XL cartridges are, as you’d expect, better value for money overall, but only just: Costs per page of around the 10p mark is about the norm – here’s where HP’s Instant Ink service comes in. With an active Instant Ink account, the HP Envy Pro 6420 will automatically tell HP to pop some fresh cartridges in the post when it detects that you’re running low on ink. HP Instant Ink subscriptions are based on usage and have a sliding price scale. You pay by the month, as with Netflix, and there’s no long term obligation, so you can cancel, sign up again, or move down to a cheaper Instant Ink deal as and when it suits. Prices are as follows: The value of these prices depends greatly on how often you and people in your household will be printing documents and pictures. Still, when comparing purely on price, it’s worth noting that the most expensive subscription is roughly equivalent to buying a set of standard-sized HP 305 cartridges. You get roughly seven times as much use for the same money. HP Envy Pro 6420 ease of use The HP Envy Pro 6420 takes little time at all to set up and is generally easy to use, although the compact design and low profile of the paper in-tray mean that sometimes the rollers can grab two or three sheets at a time, which can lead to paper jams. Setting up the HP Envy Pro 6420 requires the use of one of the HP Smart apps for Windows, Mac OS, iOS or Android, a few sheets of paper, so the printer can run alignment tests and connect to your home network. While in theory, any platform will work for the set-up process, if you can, you’re best off using either a Windows or Mac device and a USB cable – all other processes require that you use Bluetooth, which can be prone to interference and dropped connections. This way will work, but in the interests of time, stick to the wired method if you can. Once you’re all set, and you’ve connected the HP Envy Pro 6420 to your Wi-Fi network, and you’ve run the alignment tests, you’re then free to start sending print requests from anywhere in the home over Wi-Fi. Windows users will likely need to download and install drivers from HP’s site first, but Mac OS users won’t need to do this, as the HP Envy Pro 6420 is Apple AirPrint compatible. The apps are all easy to use and primarily designed to allow for quick prints. Images can be tweaked with filters before being printed, and there’s a quick link to the HP Printables activity centre baked into the app as well. Both mobile apps let you print files and photos downloaded and stored on your device, as well as print from cloud storage services including Dropbox, Facebook, Google Drive, and Apple iCloud (iOS only), whereas the desktop apps only print PDFs – you can simply run print commands from The main purpose of the HP Smart desktop apps is to complete set-up, re-run any realignment tests, and perform troubleshooting tasks, as you can’t currently do this from either of the mobile apps. Our verdict: Should you buy the HP Envy Pro 6420? The HP Envy Pro 6420 looks a treat, saves on space, prints text quickly and sharply, and can print on two sides of A4. Image print quality and speed are also good, but as we weren’t able to print on glossies, it’s impossible to comment on its ability to photo paper. Occasional paper jams, and more than one sheet being picked up from the paper tray, are also things you’ll need to be mindful of if you snap this up. As with the HP DeskJet Plus 4120, the HP Envy Pro 6420 is relatively cheap to run but to enjoy the biggest savings, you'll need to sign up for an Instant Ink plan. Where to buy the HP Envy Pro 6420 £89.99 at Amazon undefined Still undecided? Check out our best printers guide. Looking for a printer on offer? Head to our printer deals round-up for this month's best prices.
Looking for an economic printer for your home? The HP DeskJet Plus 4120 might be for you.
HP has been in the printer business for decades, and for many buyers, the brand is synonymous with desktop and office printers and copiers. The HP DeskJet Plus 4120 is one of the cheapest home printers HP has released to date. It combines the functions of a typical inkjet colour printer with a flatbed scanner and photocopier with an automatic document feeder (ADF). Like most modern home office printers, the HP DeskJet Plus 4120 is wireless, meaning print jobs can be queued over Wi-Fi from your phone, tablet, laptop, or desktop, as well as the more traditional USB. Running on two cartridges for black and colour ink, the HP DeskJet Plus 4120 is relatively inexpensive to run, but, as it’s covered by HP’s rolling Instant Ink automatic cartridge replacement service, it could be just the thing for busy homes printing hundreds of pages every month. Read our in-depth review of the HP DeskJet Plus 4120 below, as well as our out best printers round-up and comparison feature to see how the HP DeskJet Plus 4120 compares. Jump to: HP DeskJet Plus 4120 review: summary What is the HP DeskJet Plus 4120? How much is the HP DeskJet Plus 4120? How fast is the HP DeskJet Plus 4120? HP DeskJet Plus 4120 print quality HP DeskJet Plus 4120 running costs HP DeskJet Plus 4120 ease of use Our verdict Where to buy HP DeskJet Plus 4120 review: summary Price: £55.99 Key features: All-in-one colour printer Prints on plain and glossy paper Ability to scan and print Pros: Good at printing graphics and photos Lightweight Easy to set up and use Cons: Text quality is middling Alignment issues Not cheap to run without Instant Ink What is the HP DeskJet Plus 4120? The HP DeskJet Plus 4120 is a cheap entry-level all-in-one priced at around £60. Aimed at buyers on a budget, the HP DeskJet Plus 4120 is cheap to buy and, when paired with an HP Instant Ink subscription, can be cheap to run as well if you’re going to be printing lots of reports, essays, or contracts every month. Households and families who want the flexibility of being able to scan travel documents and passports will appreciate the flexibility the HP DeskJet Plus 4120 offers, as well as the low cost barrier. Able to print on standard weight plain A4 as well as thicker glossy photo paper, the HP DeskJet Plus 4120 is versatile, too. Essentially, the HP DeskJet Plus 4120 is a cheap multifunction all-in-one colour printer. What does the HP DeskJet Plus 4120 do? Here are the main specifications for the HP DeskJet Plus 4120 all-in-one colour printer/scanner/copier: Ink type: Cartridge (HP 305 Black, Tri-Color, HP 305XL Black, Tri-Color) Cost per page: 9-10p / 8-9p Print resolution: Up to 4800 x 1200 dpi Scanner resolution: Up to 1200 x 2400 dpi Print speed: 7.53ppm Paper tray capacity: 60 plain A4, 20 photo (main) / 35 plain A4 (ADF) OS: Windows, Mac OS, iOS, Android Dimensions: 200 x 428 x 332 mm Weight: 4.82kg How much is the HP DeskJet Plus 4120? The HP DeskJet Plus 4120 is priced at £55.99 from most retailers. Cartridge People had the best price at the time of writing, selling the DeskJet Plus 4120 for slightly less at £57.99. You can pick the HP DeskJet Plus 4120 for £55.99 from Ryman and Amazon, and a slightly different model with a green plastic accent from Argos called the HP Deskjet Plus 4122 also for £59.99. John Lewis also sells the HP DeskJet Plus 4120 for £59.99, but no stock was available at the time of writing. Skip to view the deals How fast is the HP DeskJet Plus 4120? The HP DeskJet Plus 4120 prints text quickly, producing single pages of text in under six seconds and larger, 20-page documents in under three minutes. Text documents with pie charts and bar graphs and presentations with big colour graphics take a little longer to produce, with single pages taking around 13 seconds and half a minute, respectively. Larger presentations can take around 4-6 minutes. It’s not so fast at printing photos – when printing on plain A4 or glossy 10 x 50mm sheets, expect printing to be done in around two minutes while printing on glossy A4 takes just over seven minutes. The HP DeskJet Plus 4120 takes around 25 seconds to scan a document or colour image. Copying and printing a single page of text on A4 taking around half a minute, while copying and printing colour images takes around 50 seconds. It’s one of the faster printers we’ve tested, but it’s not quite as quick off the mark as the Epson XP-7100, Epson EcoTank ET-2750, or the Brother MFC-L3710CW. HP DeskJet Plus 4120 speed test – text and graphics HP DeskJet Plus 4120 speed test – photos HP DeskJet Plus 4120 speed test – scanning and copying HP DeskJet Plus 4120 print quality Print quality of the HP DeskJet Plus 4120 is something of a mixed bag. Graphics and photos look strong and vibrant, but text quality, on the Normal print setting, is average. For essays, first drafts, or documents that aren’t of high importance, the quality will likely be fine, but it might not cut it for formal letters, finished articles and final drafts. Text only really looks rich and sharp when printed on the highest quality setting – which uses more ink and therefore makes the HP DeskJet Plus 4120 less economical to run. On more than one occasion during testing, images weren’t always aligned squarely on the page either, which is particularly annoying when you’re printing out something on a full page, and even more annoying when printing on glossy photo paper, which isn’t exactly cheap. You can correct this by running an alignment test, which can be actioned from the desktop version of the HP Smart apps, but that’s both time and ink-consuming. That said, when images are aligned properly, they generally look fantastic, benefitting from rich detail and vibrant colours, whether printed on plain paper or shiny photo sheets. HP DeskJet Plus 4120 running costs The HP DeskJetPlus 4120 costs per page work out at around 9p-10p, based on the standard cartridge prices and average page yield. That’s about as expensive to run as most printers in its price range – In fact, the HP DeskJet Plus 4120 uses the same cartridges as the HP Envy Pro 6420, which means that the running costs are roughly the same. The HP DeskJetPlus 4120 uses two cartridges, one for black ink and the other for colour (cyan, magenta, yellow) inks. Both the standard-sized HP 305 black and tri-colour cartridges are used, as well as the bigger HP 305XL cartridges. The XP cartridges are only slightly better value for money, according to the prices on HP’s site: At these prices, if you’re only going to be printing once every blue moon, this won’t likely break the bank. However, some households may find it economical to sign up for an HP Instant Ink subscription. The Instant Ink service sees the HP DeskJetPlus 4120 monitoring your ink levels and usage, and detecting when it thinks you’re close to running out and instantly ordering fresh cartridges when it thinks you’re low. HP Instant Ink subscriptions are based on the number of pages you print every month and are priced as follows: Compared with the standard prices for the HP DeskJetPlus 4120 cartridges, these subscriptions represent good value for money for busy households. Instant Ink contracts are rolling, so you can cancel at any time or downgrade to a cheaper plan to better reflect your usage. HP also runs a recycling scheme with all Instant Ink subs, which sees old cartridges picked up to be reused when your new ones are delivered. HP DeskJet Plus 4120 ease of use The HP DeskJet Plus 4120 is both easy to set up and use and lets you print files stored locally on your devices or from the cloud. The HP DeskJet Plus 4120 is designed to be able to pick up print requests via Wi-Fi from virtually anywhere in the home, from a desktop PC to a cheap Android smartphone. However, when setting the HP DeskJet Plus 4120 up for the first time, you’re better off doing so with a laptop or desktop machine plugged into the printer’s USB socket. Download the HP Smart app for Windows and Mac OS on your device, connect everything up and follow the on-screen prompts to connect the HP DeskJet Plus 4120 to your home Wi-Fi network. You can then easily start issuing print instructions to the HP DeskJet Plus 4120 via the HP Smart iOS and Android apps. If you want to send print jobs to the HP DeskJet Plus 4120 over Wi-Fi from a Windows laptop or desktop, you’ll probably need to download and run the latest drivers from HP’s site first. As the HP DeskJetPlus 4120 is Apple AirPrint-compatible, Mac OS users won’t have to do this. The mobile apps are easy to use and well-designed, and in addition to letting you print files stored locally on your phone, they will let you print documents and photos stored in cloud drives, including Google Drive, Google Photos, Dropbox, Facebook. The iOS app is a little better in this respect, as it lets you print from Evernote and Box, as well as Apple iCloud. You can also access a range of fun templates, including birthday cards, colouring sheets, and homework exercises from HP Printables. For more practical things like running print nozzle cleaning cycles and realigning the print heads, you’ll need to use the desktop apps, however, as the iOS and Android apps both lack this functionality. The only other issue with the desktop apps is that they’re not so good for printing and scanning – you’re far better off printing from specific programs and using the default scanner software – and they’re also prone to crashing, so be patient when you use them. Our verdict: should you buy the HP DeskJet Plus 4120? The HP DeskJet Plus 4120 is cheap to buy, and it’s relatively cheap to run, too. In terms of printing speed, it’s not as fast as the HP Envy Pro 6420, and text quality is also middling. A few snags, such as occasional misalignment images, prevent this from being the sale of the century, but if you can learn to live with its shortcomings and find a pricing plan that suits, the HP DeskJet Plus 4120 could be just what you need. Where to buy the HP DeskJet Plus 4120 Amazon Argos Cartridge People John Lewis Ryman Latest Deals Still not sure? Check out our best printers guide. After a printer on sale? Head to our printer deals round-up for this month's best prices.
After a cost-friendly and easy-to-use printer? The Canon Pixma TS205 might be the best fit for your everyday use.
Canon has been in the printer business for decades, making high-quality printers and copiers for the office and home, alongside its range of digital cameras and camcorders. The Canon Pixma TS205 is one of the cheapest home printers Canon’s produced and has been going strong since 2018. Very much a budget device designed for buyers who only want the bare necessities, the TS205 is still on sale now. Unlike a lot of entry-level home printers, which feature built-in scanner beds and photocopiers, the Pixma TS205 is a straightforward colour inkjet printer, which connects to desktop and laptop computers via a USB cable. A simple plug-and-play printer, no Wi-Fi passwords or network configuration is required here. Using just two cartridges, the Canon Pixma TS205 is as easy to refill as it is to use and is capable of printing on high-quality glossy photo paper as well as plain old A4. In our full review, we look beyond the RRP and running costs to see if there’s more to the Canon Pixma TS205 than an attractive price and if it remains a bargain three years down the line. Jump to: Canon Pixma TS205 review: summary What is the Canon Pixma TS205? How much is the Canon Pixma TS205? How fast is the Canon Pixma TS205? Canon Pixma TS205 print quality Canon Pixma TS205 running costs Canon Pixma TS205 ease of use Our verdict Where to buy Canon Pixma TS205 review: summary Price: £35.49 Key features: Not wireless Prints on office paper and glossy paper Uses two cartridges Pros: Very cheap to buy and run Good overall print quality Easy to set up and use Cons: Slow printing speeds Ink smudges easily No Wi-Fi or mobile app support What is the Canon Pixma TS205? The Canon Pixma TS205 is a USB colour inkjet printed priced at the extremely affordable £35 mark. Very much a budget printer, the Canon Pixma TS205 is aimed squarely at people who only need to print a few documents and photos from their laptop or desktop every so often and aren’t fussed about scanning and copying. As it’s not a wireless printer – you can’t connect to it via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth – you can’t print anything directly from your phone. This is a super-basic, no-frills, cheap-as-chips printer. Like the Canon Pixma TS7450, the TS205 uses two cartridges, one black ink and another with colour inks (cyan, magenta, and yellow). While the standard-sized cartridges don’t have an especially high yield, for a bit more money, you can pick up bigger XL cartridges, which are much better value. As well as being cheap to buy and reasonably cheap to run, the Canon Pixma TS205 is capable of printing on both plain office paper and glossy photo paper, so you can run off boarding passes and then print out your holiday snaps in high definition when you get back. What does the Canon Pixma TS205 do? The Canon Pixma TS205 is an inexpensive colour printer that has the following key features and specifications: Ink type: Cartridge (PG-545 black, CL-546 cyan, magenta, yellow ink) Cost per page: 9-11p / 5-7p Print resolution: Up to 48001 x 1200 dpi Scanner resolution: n/a Print speed: 7.85ppm Paper tray capacity: 60 plain A4 OS: Windows, Mac OS Dimensions: 131 x 426 x 255mm Weight: 2.5kg How much is the Canon Pixma TS205? Canon sells the TS205 for £35.49. At the time of writing, the BT Shop has the best deal of them all, selling the TS205 for £24.42, while Amazon currently has it for £48.59. Skip to view the deals How fast is the Canon Pixma TS205? The Canon Pixma TS205 is quick enough if you’re printing off a couple of sheets at a time, but it’s by no means a fast printer – something you’ll notice when you come to print off big documents with 20+ pages. That said, it’s quick to pick up print requests, with jobs beginning a couple of seconds or so after the request was sent. Given that it’s intended to be a printer for personal home use and not a home office printer, this is fine. Just be warned that if you need to print off a presentation, or multiple copies of a single-page document, you could be waiting a while – put the kettle on before you start printing. When printing off a series of test documents and images, we recorded the following speeds: Canon Pixma TS205 speed test – text and graphics Canon Pixma TS205 speed test – photos Canon Pixma TS205 print quality Document text printed by the Pixma TS205 looks nice and well-defined, better than you might expect from a £35 printer – but be warned that the ink takes a few seconds to dry. Documents are very prone to smudging as they emerge from the printer. If you so much as brush a paragraph with your thumb, you’ll ruin a perfectly good printout. Graphics are less nice-looking, with solid blocks of colour on pie charts and graphs looking grainy and having that stratified look you sometimes get with inkjet printers. Thankfully, while photos don’t look great printed on plain paper, they look excellent on glossy photo paper. We printed the same test image on Canon’s GP-501 4 x 6 (10 x 15) photo paper and the PP-201 A4-sized photo paper and got some nice results, on par with what we saw produced by the Canon Pixma TS7450 and Epson EcoTank ET-2750. Canon Pixma TS205 running costs The Canon Pixma TS205 costs about the same to run as most inkjet printers. You’ll be looking to pay about £15-£20 per cartridge, and you get the same sort of mileage as you would out of the cartridges used by printers like the TS7450. While the standard-sized cartridges promise you around 180 pages’ worth of ink, if you want to make a saving, your best bet is to go for the XL cartridges, which promise 300-400 pages’ worth. The prices listed below are the standard RRP taken from Canon’s UK site. Note that Canon sometimes bundles cartridges together, so you can make savings there, as well as shopping around on Cartridge People and Ryman. Canon Pixma TS205 ease of use The Canon Pixma TS205 is small and lightweight, weighing just 2.5kg and measuring 131 x 426 x 255mm. Not only does it not take up much desk room at all, but it’s also very easy to shift around. Everything feels pretty solid, too, with the exception of the cartridge cradle. Not only is it quite hard to slot the 545/546 cartridges into place, but the cradle itself also doesn’t feel terribly robust. While the TS205 is quite light overall, it looks quite premium. The cartridge cradle is the only thing that really feels ‘cheap’. Setting up the Canon Pixma TS205 is relatively easy. Windows users can make use of the supplied CD or download drivers from Canon’s site. Mac users can follow the same link – the page will detect which operating system and which version you’re using and offer the relevant files to download. Downloading and installing everything should take between 5-15 minutes, depending on your internet connection speed. Controls on the device are very limited – there’s no LED display – but despite that, the TS205 is easy to operate. There’s an on/off switch, a control for running a quick print levels/head alignment test, and a control that lets you manually switch print settings if you’re using different sized paper. Nine times out of ten during testing, the Canon Pixma TS205 would automatically detect when we were using different sized paper and adjust settings anyway. The only other thing to note is that no USB cable is supplied with the TS205, so it’s not ready to go out of the box. Luckily, the kind of USB cable you’ll need – one with the squarish Type-B USB connection – is cheap and easy to come by. Our verdict: Should you buy the Canon Pixma TS205? The Canon Pixma TS205 is easy to use, is reasonably cost-effective to run, and produces better results than you might expect from a £35 printer. That said, it’s not without its flaws, namely that freshly-printed documents are prone to smudging and that its graphics are of so-so quality. For personal use, this will likely not matter, but for professional-grade results, you’ll need a professional-grade printer. Where to buy the Canon Pixma TS205: Amazon BT Shop Still not sure? Check out our best printers guide. After a printer on sale? Head to our printer deals round-up for this month's best prices.
Looking for an office-style printer and scanner for your home? The Brother MFC-L3710CW might be for you.
Brother has been in the home and office printing business for decades. Like fellow Japanese consumer electronics institutions Canon and Epson, it's perhaps best known as a maker of printers. The MFC-L3710CW first launched back in 2019 but is still going strong and has seen its RRP take a welcome tumble since then. Part of the ‘MFC’ range, the MFC-L3710CW is, as its designation suggests, a multi-function printer, combining the features of a colour laser printer, scanner, and photocopier. Larger and heavier than most consumer all-in-one printers and more business-like in terms of design, it’s perhaps best thought of as an ‘office printer for the home’, rather than a home office printer. For home users who need something that can print quickly and in high volumes without having to keep changing ink cartridges all the time, the Brother MFC-L3710CW may well be better suited than smaller all-in-one inkjets. Jump to: Brother MFC-L3710CW review: summary What is the Brother MFC-L3710CW? How much is the Brother MFC-L3710CW? How fast is the Brother MFC-L3710CW? Brother MFC-L3710CW print quality Brother MFC-L3710CW running costs Brother MFC-L3710CW ease of use Our verdict Where to buy Brother MFC-L3710CW review: summary Price: £349.99 Key features: All-in-one colour laserjet printer Scanner and copier Holds up to 250 A4 papers Pros: Very fast in all operations, printing, scanning, copying Easy to set up and use High-yield cartridges are good value Cons: No auto duplexing Can't print on glossy paper Cartridges are expensive What is the Brother MFC-L3710CW? The Brother MFC-L3710CW is an all-in-one colour laserjet printer that’s priced at £280. Aimed at home office users, the Brother MFC-L3710CW uses toner instead of ink cartridges. As such, the Brother MFC-L3710CW has a number of advantages over typical inkjet prints – pages are dry as soon as they come off the press, and toner cartridges also promise a much higher yield. The cartridges used by the MFC-L3710CW promise up to a thousand pages’ worth on average, far higher than what you get with ink-based cartridges. On top of this, the Brother MFC-L3710CW features a much larger paper in-tray that can hold up to 250 sheets of plain A4 paper. If you need a home office printer primarily for running off multiple copies of documents, reports, and newsletters regularly, the higher printing bandwidth on offer here will be very attractive. In addition, the Brother MFC-L3710CW combines a scanner and copier with an automatic document feeder (ADF), which holds up to 50 sheets of A4. It’s a little larger, and quite a lot heavier than your typical home printer and is therefore probably best kept next to your desk, rather than on it, but if you’ve space for something with a little more horsepower, why not level up your home office? What does the Brother MFC-L3710CW do? The Brother MFC-L3710CW’s main specifications and features are as follows: Ink type: Cartridge (TN-243, TN-247 black, cyan, magenta, yellow toner) Cost per page: 5-6p / 3p-4p Print resolution: Up to 600 x 2400 dpi Scanner resolution: Up to 1200 x 2400 dpi Print speed: 16.18ppm Paper tray capacity: 250 plain A4 OS: Windows, Mac OS, iOS, Android Dimensions: 414 x 410 x 475 mm Weight: 22.5kg How much is the Brother MFC-L3710CW? Brother lists £346.80 as the RRP of the Brother MFC-L3710CW. The best place to pick up the MFC-L3710CW online is Cartridge People, currently listing it for £276.90. Other retailers, including AO, Argos, and John Lewis, are selling the printer for £279. Skip to view the deals How fast is the Brother MFC-L3710CW? The Brother MFC-L3710CW is very quick off the mark, producing single pages and copies in a matter of seconds. It’s very quick to scan documents and photos, too, with scans being dumped on our desktop in under five seconds at 300dpi, which is incredibly quick. Scanning straight to a desktop via USB usually takes printers around 5-10 seconds to warm up before the actual scanning begins. The MFC-L3710CW was ready almost instantly. During large print runs, the Brother MFC-L3710CW tends to pause for a few seconds every fifth page or so. Despite this, we were still able to print a 20-page text document in just over a minute and a 20-page presentation in under three and a half minutes, so while it has to stop to take a breather every so often, it’s no slouch. While it’s capable of printing photos on plain A4 quickly, sadly, the Brother MFC-L3710CW lacks the functionality to print on glossy paper. It also can’t automatically print on both sides of sheets either. Having said that, with fast print times like these, manually duplexing shouldn’t take up too much more of your time. Brother MFC-L3710CW speed test – text and graphics Brother MFC-L3710CW speed test – photos Brother MFC-L3710CW speed test – scanning and copying Brother MFC-L3710CW print quality Print quality of the Brother MFC-L3710CW is generally very high but is also of varying quality. Text, in particular, looks fantastically sharp and rich. As the printer uses toner, there is zero bleed – everything comes out looking razor-sharp every time. Graphics generally come out looking bold and crisp, although, on some pie charts and bar graphs, areas with darker colours sometimes look grainy. Photos printed on A4 generally look OK, although they lack the definition and detail that other inkjets can give – and as you can’t print on glossy paper, photo quality isn’t going to get any better. A big plus is that pages don’t warp in the middle, the same way that they would when groaning under wet ink, and as sheets are always dry when they come out, there’s no chance of any smudging. Whatever you’re printing, everything comes out with a crisp, even feel. Brother MFC-L3710CW running costs The Brother MFC-L3710CW uses four toner cartridges, black, cyan, magenta, and yellow, which, while large and quite heavy, are easy to replace. What they are not, however, is cheap. A black TN-243 cartridge will set you back £53.99, while any of the colour ones cost a bit more, £57.59. Therefore, replacing a full set would cost you £226.76 – although Brother also sells a full set of TN-243 cartridges for £189.59, a nice saving of £37.17. While this makes it sound like the Brother MFC-L3710CW is expensive to run, remember that the TN-243 cartridges promise you something in the region of 1000 prints. So a typical ink cartridge may cost between £10-£15 – or roughly a fifth of the price of one of these toner cartridges – they’ll also give you around 100-120 pages, or one-tenth of what you’d get from a TN-243. Note that the price breakdown below is based on the prices Brother sells the TN-243 cartridges at – if you shop around, you’ll be able to pick up the same for less – Cartridge Shop and Cartridge People have some good deals on (costs per page rounded up): If you’ve got the budget to stretch, you can also pick up larger TN-247 cartridges, which promise up to 3000 (black) and 2300 (colour) prints’ worth. Naturally, these are more expensive but work out better value overall: Brother MFC-L3710CW ease of use There’s no getting around the fact that the Brother MFC-L3710CW takes up a lot of room and is pretty heavy to boot. When you consider that it’s packed into that 414 x 410 x 475 mm frame, that’s perhaps not surprising. Either way, this is a lot heavier than your typical inkjet home printer. Setting up the Brother MFC-L3710CW is relatively straightforward, though it’ll take a bit of time, depending on the quality and speed of your Internet service. Windows users will need to head to Brother’s site to download the relevant drivers, while Mac users can sit pretty because, like most home printers, the Brother MFC-L3710CW works with Apple AirPrint, which means once you’ve connected the printer to your Wi-Fi network, you can simply select the device in System Preferences on your Mac OS device, and use it right away. Connecting to your Wi-Fi network manually is made easy by virtue of the control panel’s 3.6-inch touchscreen display, which, while this still requires a bit of hunting and pecking for all those special characters and upper and lower case letters, is a lot easier to use than some printers’ control panels. The large panel and sensible layout of the menu mean that it’s also easier to get acquainted with the general functions of the printer, whether that’s checking toner levels or setting it up so that you can send copies of scans to colleagues via email, an FTP server, Microsoft SharePoint or the cloud – Microsoft OneNote, OneDrive, DropBox, Google Drive, Evernote, Box are all supported. The Brother iPrint & Scan apps for iOS and Android are a little rudimentary but are functional and allow you to action prints and scans on the go quickly, plus give you an at-a-glance view of toner levels. As well as printing locally stored files and photos, you can also print files stored in cloud services, including iCloud (iOS only) and DropBox, Evernote, Google Drive and OneDrive. Our verdict: Should you buy the Brother MFC-L3710CW? If you want something that’s a bit more ‘of the office’ in your home office set-up, then the Brother MFC-L3710CW will suit. As well as being able to print high volumes of sheets without you having to change the paper in-tray every five minutes, it gives you sharpness and quality that you can only really get from a laserjet printer, and it prints, scans, and copies documents quickly and without fuss. Then again, the ink bottles of the Epson EcoTank ET-2750 provide even more mileage for a lower upfront cost, so if you’re less sold on the notion of a laserjet printer and would like to be able to print on glossy photo paper too, this will be better suited to your needs. Where to buy the Brother MFC-L3710CW Amazon AO Argos Cartridge People Currys PC World John Lewis Still browsing? Check out our best printers guide. Looking for a printer on sale? Head to our printer deals round-up for this month's best prices.
We put the pricey Epson EcoTank ET-2750 through its paces. Find out if it's worth the cost.
Epson is one of the world’s oldest manufacturers of printing equipment, and like Canon, it is a Japanese company that’s perhaps best known for producing home and office printers and scanners. The Epson EcoTank ET-2750 is one of the latest EcoTank colour printers from Epson, which, unlike most home printers that use cartridges, uses ink drawn from bottled refills. The main attraction to this from a customer’s perspective is that compared with cartridges, bottled ink goes a lot further, while a typical cartridge will offer you hundreds of pages’ worth of ink, a set of EcoTank bottles will give you enough ink for thousands of pages. For buyers in busy homes or home office workers who will be running off hundreds of copies of documents, presentations, and copies of photos for portfolios every month, the economics of an EcoTank-based printer are hard to argue with. Cheap running costs aside, what else does the Epson EcoTank ET-2750 have to offer? It’s a colour printer that’s also capable of scanning documents. There’s no automatic document feeder (ADF), so you can’t use it as a photocopier. You can connect the Epson EcoTank ET-2750 to your home Wi-Fi network for wireless printing via your desktop devices or your phones, through the Epson iPrint app, or if you prefer a wired connection, there’s a USB port as well. In our full review of the Epson EcoTank ET-2750, we go to town on all of its key features and weigh those up with the buying price and that low, low running cost before delivering our final verdict. Jump to: Epson EcoTank ET-2750 review: summary What is the Epson EcoTank ET-2750? How much is the Epson EcoTank ET-2750? How fast is the Epson EcoTank ET-2750? Epson EcoTank ET-2750 print quality Epson EcoTank ET-2750 running costs Epson EcoTank ET-2750 ease of use Our verdict Where to buy Epson EcoTank ET-2750 review: summary Price: £349.99 (often available around £259.99) Key features: Works with EcoTank 102, Pigment Black, Cyan, Magenta and Yellow bottles Printer and scanner Prints on plain and glossy paper Duplex printing Works with Wi-Fi Pros: Incredibly cheap to run Simple set up process Good overall speed and quality Cons: High upfront cost No automatic document feeder What is the Epson EcoTank ET-2750? The Epson EcoTank ET-2750 is a colour printer and scanner priced at £349.99. While that’s a lot more than most home office printers tested recently, Epson argues that the savings you’d make by using bottled ink instead of cartridges mean that the Epson EcoTank ET-2750 will eventually pay for itself. In addition to being very cheap to run, the Epson EcoTank ET-2750 is also flexible, allowing for documents and photos to be printed from a Windows or Mac OS desktop or laptop, an iOS or Android phone or tablet or straight from an SD card. Capable of printing on plain paper as well as photo paper, it’s ideal for running off multiple copies of contracts, homework, essays, and dissertations, as well as photos on high-quality glossy paper. It’s also capable of printing on two sides of the same sheet (aka duplex printing), so it’s ideal for printing off copies of multi-page contracts, too. The only feature the Epson EcoTank ET-2750 lacks compared with most other all-in-one printers is an automatic document feeder (ADF). You could, of course, manually scan each page of something individually, but if producing photocopies of multi-page documents is something that you need your printer to be able to do regularly, then the Epson EcoTank ET-2750 perhaps isn’t for you. What does the Epson EcoTank ET-2750 do? Here are the main specifications for the Epson EcoTank ET-2750: Ink type: Bottles (EcoTank 102, Pigment Black, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow) Cost per page: 0.01p Print resolution: Up to 5760 x 1440 DPI Scanner resolution: Up to 1200 x 2400 dpi Print speed: 10.21ppm Paper tray capacity: 100 plain A4 / 20 glossy A4 OS: Windows, Mac OS, iOS, Android Dimensions: 187 x 375‎ x 347 mm Weight: 5.5kg How much is the Epson EcoTank ET-2750? Epson lists the RRP of the EcoTank ET-2750 at £349.99, but thankfully most places are currently selling it for £259.99. You can get an Epson EcoTank ET-2750 from Argos for £259.99 with the option to add 3 years of breakdown cover for £59.99. John Lewis also sells the Epson EcoTank ET-2750 for £299.99 with a 2-year guarantee included. If you want to buy the Epson EcoTank ET-2750 outright with no extras, Amazon has stock and sells it for £259.99. Ryman and Cartridge People also sell the Epson EcoTank ET-2750, but both retailers were out of stock at the time of writing. How fast is the Epson EcoTank ET-2750? Like the Epson XP-7100, the ET-2750 is fast, one of the faster home printers we’ve tested, producing plain text print-outs, documents with a mixture of text and graphics, and presentations quickly. It’s not quite as quick to produce photos at the XP-7100, as it takes almost five minutes to print a photo on A4 glossy paper. Printing on plain A4, however, takes just under a minute. Double-sided printing is fast, taking four and a half minutes to print on both sides of 10 sheets – although that’s not as fast as the HP Envy Pro 6420 in this regard, which does the same in under three. It’s quick to scan and copy, with scans of documents and photos taking roughly 25 seconds and copying and printing taking approximately 30 seconds. Epson EcoTank ET-2750 speed test – text and graphics Epson EcoTank ET-2750 speed test – photos Epson EcoTank ET-2750 speed test – scanning and copying Epson EcoTank ET-2750 print quality The text, graphics, and photos produced by the Epson EcoTank ET-2750 are generally good, if variable, quality. Text is good, graphics are OK, but fonts and colours look muted and dull on Normal quality – crank everything up to Best for, well, the best results. Photos printed on plain paper similarly look a bit drab, but photos printed on high quality look incredibly vibrant, with natural skin tones, clothes, and artificial colours positively glowing as photos emerge from the printer. If anything, they may even be a little too vibrant for some tastes – adjust your final shots in Photoshop (or the picture editing software of your choice) before hitting the Print button. Only on one occasion did we encounter any smudging and bleeding, which was right at the end of a long 20-page print run, and even then, it was only slight. Images with high levels of contrast will be heavy with ink, so be careful when handling pictures as they come off. Epson EcoTank ET-2750 running costs Running costs of the Epson EcoTank ET-2750 are extremely low – the individual cost per page works out to be less than a penny – thanks to the thousands of pages’ worth that can be eked out of a single bottle. This is arguably the key selling point of the ET-2750, and indeed any printer from Epson’s EcoTank range. Bottles only come in one size – Epson 102 – and the most expensive bottle, the black bottle, is priced at £13.99, while colour ink bottles cost £8.49. While this means that replacing everything may appear more expensive upfront (£39.46 for a full set) than replacing ink for a typical two cartridge printer, it’s less wasteful this way, as you only have to buy what you need. Chances are, you’ll be replacing the black ink tank more often than any of the colours – because it’s used for everything – of the Epson ET-2750’s four discrete ink tanks, the black ink chamber is the largest for this reason. For the sake of comparison, here is how much all those bottles cost and how far you can expect your money to go: As you can see, the cost per page here is ridiculously cheap. Consider that a typical cartridge will give you something in the region of 100 pages’ worth of ink for around £10, which is roughly equivalent to 10p per page. The cost per page, worked out here by dividing the price of an Epson 102 ink bottle by the stated yield, is so low, it’s not even a whole figure. The flipside, of course, is the high entry fee you’re required to pay for the Epson EcoTank ET-2750 in the first place. If you don’t have £260-£300 to drop on a printer upfront, the potential cost savings are moot. However, if you are a high volume user, or live with people who will be printing hundreds of pages regularly, the eventual savings you’ll make here will be worth it. If you wanted to save even more money, you could also buy an EcoTank Unlimited Printing voucher. Costing £59.99, this gives you unlimited ink for up to two years. Like HP’s Instant Ink plans, this offer sees refills automatically posted out to you as and when you need them. Epson EcoTank ET-2750 ease of use The Epson EcoTank ET-2750 is reasonably lightweight at 5.5kg, so it’s easy to shift about on your desk, and measuring 187 x 375‎ x 347mm, it doesn’t take up a lot of room. All papers are loaded in at the back, and the adjustable guide clips make it easy to line everything up. Refilling the ink tanks is simplicity itself. The nozzles on the bottles are designed so that they can be slotted neatly into the printer and left to stand vertically, with the ink draining directly into the tank. No careful pouring or steady hands required – just lift up the middle section of the ET-2750, flip open the tank covers, unscrew the bottle cap, slot the bottle in, and let gravity do the rest. Once done, you’re ready to continue setting the printer up. The Epson EcoTank ET-2750 features a dedicated control panel with a 1.45-inch colour LCD display on the front, which makes doing things like setting the printer up, checking ink levels, running alignment tests and cleaning cycles a breeze. Once you’ve connected the Epson EcoTank ET-2750 to your Wi-Fi network, there are a number of apps and services at your disposal. The Epson iPrint apps for iOS and Android are simple and straightforward and are best used for printing documents and photos stored on your phone. There’s also a Print From Cloud feature that’ll let you print files stored in Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Evernote, Box, and DropBox. Printing documents and photos from your Mac via Wi-Fi on the ET-2750 is easy too – as it supports Apple AirPrint, all you’ll need to do is select the device as it appears in Printers & Scanners, under System Preferences. At the most, you may need to restart your machine. Windows users can install drivers directly from the supplied CD, or if you don’t have an optical drive on your machine, download them from Epson’s site. Windows and Mac users can also make use of Epson Connect, which will let you print emails. Our verdict: Should you buy the Epson EcoTank ET-2750? The Epson EcoTank ET-2750 boasts good print quality and speed. It’s very easy to use and set up, capable of printing and scanning quickly, and the super-low running costs make this a very attractive buy. The only real drawbacks here are that high initial cost, which will put off buyers on a budget, and the fact that there’s no auto document feeder. Rating: Speed: 4.5/5 Print quality: 4/5 Cost to run: 5/5 Ease of use: 4.5/5 Overall rating: 4.4/5 Where to buy the Epson EcoTank ET-2750 Buy from Argos Buy from Amazon Buy from Cartridge People Buy from John Lewis Buy from Ryman Still undecided? Check out our best printers guide, or take a look at our printer deals page for some of this month's best prices. Or, read our Canon Pixma TS7450 review and Epson XP-7100 review to compare.
We put the Epson XP-7100 through its paces in our review - find out how it performed.
Epson has been making printers for the office and home for decades, and the XP-7100 is the latest in a long line of compact, ‘does-everything’ all-in-ones. Part of Japanese powerhouse Seiko Epson Corporation’s ‘Expression Premium’ range, the XP-7100 multi-function printer promises to be as capable functioning as a home office hero – it can scan, copy, and automatically turn a piece of paper over to print on the other side – as it can an artistic hub. The Epson XP-7100 is capable of printing on glossy photo paper and printing on plain office sheets. It can also turn its hand to printing greeting cards, CD covers, colouring books, photo collages, and other fun, creative things. To suit its multi-purpose nature, Epson has built the XP-7100 with a multi-ink cartridge system which features two discrete black ink cartridges for printing photos and text, respectively. As well as meaning you shouldn’t have to change cartridges quite as often as you would with all the blank ink coming from one source, photos promise to benefit from richer contrast, while ink used for text has been designed to be more resistant to highlighters. As for how cheap the Epson XP-7100 is to run and how well it prints, read on for our full review. Jump to: Epson XP-7100 review: summary What is the Epson XP-7100? How much is the Epson XP-7100? How fast is the Epson XP-7100? Epson XP-7100 print quality Epson XP-7100 running costs Epson XP-7100 ease of use Verdict Where to buy Epson XP-7100 review: summary Price: £149.99 Key features: Works with 33 Claria and 33XL Claira cartridges All-in-one colour printer, scanner and copier Prints on plain and glossy paper Auto-duplexing (automatic double-sided printing) Up to A4 size paper Works with Wi-Fi Pros: Prints, scans, and copies quickly Compact, space-saving design Economical to run Cons: A rather noisy customer Very heavy for its size Replacing five cartridges could get pricey What is the Epson XP-7100? The Epson XP-7100 is a colour all-in-one printer/scanner/copier for the home with an RRP of £149.99. As well as being able to take print instructions from a variety of desktop and mobile devices over Wi-Fi, USB and Ethernet ports mean you can connect to the Epson XP-7100 directly or on the network using a dedicated wired connection. You can also print files directly via an SD card or a USB flash drive, thanks to ports mounted on the front of the device. In addition to featuring a 1200 x 4800 dpi A4 scanner, there’s also a built-in automatic document feeder (ADF), so you can quickly run off copies of multi-page documents. Auto duplexing – aka automatic double-sided printing – is also supported. What does the Epson XP-7100 do? The main specifications and features of the Epson XP-7100 are as follows: Ink type: Cartridge (33 Claria, Pigment Black, Photo Black, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow) Cost per page: 2-5p Print resolution: Up to 5760 x 1440 DPI Scanner resolution: Up to 1200 x 2400 dpi Print speed: 16.18ppm Paper tray capacity: 100 plain A4 / 20 glossy A4 OS: Windows, Mac OS, iOS, Android Dimensions: 183 x 390‎ x 339mm Weight: 8.2kg How much is the Epson XP-7100? Epson prices the XP-7100 at £149.99. Jessops has the best price for the XP-7100 at the time of writing – it’s currently selling it for a bit less, at £139.99. After that, Amazon is selling the Epson XP-7100 for a bit more, £177.59. Other places, including Currys PC World, list the Epson XP-7100 at £149.99. Skip to view the latest deals How fast is the Epson XP-7100? The Epson XP-7100 is one of the fastest printers we’ve tested, kicking out single pages of text in under three seconds. That’s ever so slightly faster than the already speedy HP DeskJet Plus 4120 and Brother MFC-L3710CW. When it comes to larger, 20-page print runs, things do slow down a bit, as expected, but it still prints off text documents at a high rate. It’s as quick at producing images, too, with photos on A4 glossy paper being printed off in under a minute, which is really good going. Scanning and copying speeds are also fast. The only thing that’s slow is double-sided printing. In our tests, it took nearly 17 seconds to print two pages’ worth of text, one sheet of A4 and over four minutes to print on both sides of 10 sheets. Epson XP-7100 speed test – text and graphics Epson XP-7100 speed test – photos Epson XP-7100 speed test – scanning and copying, double-sided printing Epson XP-7100 print quality Print quality of documents, presentations, and photos produced by the Epson XP-7100 are all very high, although as is often the case with home office printers, photos look their best when printed on high-quality glossy photo paper. That’s not to say that photos printed on plain A4 look terrible, but pictures are noticeably less well-defined, and colours a lot more muted compared with results on photo paper. The quality of text is commendable when printed on the normal setting, with fonts looking crisp and distinct. Perhaps not quite as good as what you get from the Canon Pixma TS7450 on normal, or the Epson EcoTank ET-2750, but if you’re printing letters and documents to impress, then crank up the quality. Graphics, too, look perfectly presentable in normal, but if you really want those colours to pop out from the page, you’ll need to increase the quality. Upping the quality naturally increases the printing time, but as you can see from the speed test results, the Epson XP-7100 is very fast indeed, so you can probably afford to sacrifice a bit of speed for an increase in quality. As for how much ink you’ll burn through, we performed all of the above tests without having to worry about running out – and that was just with the standard-sized Epson 33 Claria cartridges. Epson XP-7100 running costs The Epson XP-7100 is very economical to run, but the cost of replacing a full set of cartridges is high. The five cartridge system means it’s easy to only replace what you need, so depending on your usage, it probably won’t break the bank. While most home printers typically use two cartridges, the Epson XP-7100 uses five Claria Premium ink cartridges – two black and three colour (i.e. cyan, magenta, yellow). The pigment black cartridge is used exclusively for printing text, while the photo black ink cartridge is only used for printing photos. As well as allowing for a deeper range of contrasts in photo prints this system means that, in theory, you won’t have to replace one if you’re mainly using the Epson XP-7100 for printing documents or photos. In addition to this, the 33 Claria and 33XL Claira cartridges the Epson XP-7100 uses also give you more miles to the gallon, so to speak, than typical home printer cartridges. Here’s how those costs per page work out: The XP-7100 is also covered by Epson’s ReadyPrint Go subscriptions, which start at £1.29/month. Like HP Instant Ink, this service will see you able to automatically order new cartridges whenever your printer detects that ink levels are low. ReadyPrint Go prices work out as follows: as always, the bigger cartridges work out better value for money, but replacing the full whack all in one go could hurt your wallet. Luckily, third-party retailers regularly have good bundle deals on 33 Claria cartridges, so you should be able to save a bit of money here. Epson XP-7100 ease of use The Epson XP-7100 benefits from having a big 4.2-inch colour touchscreen in its control panel. This makes setting up and getting acquainted with the Epson XP-7100 very easy going. On top of that, if you ever run into any issues, the printer will flash up a list of possible solutions on the control panel, along with animated instructions. Setting up the Epson XP-7100 takes between 5-15 minutes, depending on the strength of your Wi-Fi network. Snapping the ink cartridges in is easy, thanks to spring-loaded mechanisms and a clever cut-out within the hood, ensuring that the cartridges can’t be removed until the cradle has been moved into the correct position. The printer needs five sheets of A4 to perform an initial nozzle check and an alignment test, after which you’ll be free to input your Wi-Fi password, which you’ll need to do to send print jobs to the XP-7100 from your phones and tablets. Windows users will need to download drivers from Epson’s site if their system doesn’t have an optical drive – otherwise, you can use the supplied CD-ROM. Mac users won’t have to install any drivers because the Epson XP-7100 is Apple AirPrint-compatible – just connect to your Wi-Fi network, and add the XP-7100 to your list of devices in System Preferences. The Epson iPrint apps for iOS and Android are a little basic in their design, but they’re also super easy to use. As well as letting you print files stored on your phones and tablets, these let you print files stored in cloud lockers like Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Evernote, Box, and Dropbox. A clever feature of the XP-7100 is that there are two levels to the paper in-tray, a top deck for photo paper and a lower deck for plain paper. These hold up to 20 and 100 sheets of A4-sized paper, respectively. The advantage of this is, you don’t have to re-load the printer every time you want to switch between printing a document and a photo. A drawback of the XP-7100’s design is that the scanner roof isn’t supported by a slow-close mechanism, so if you don’t push this all the way back, it will come slamming down. Luckily, a slow-close is built into the main hood, so changing the ink cartridges is less of a hassle. It’s also quite a heavy device, weighing 8.2kg. While it measures 183 x 390‎ x 339mm, and so isn’t a massive desk space hog, you won’t be able to move it around as easily as other home printers. It’s also pretty noisy, both when preparing to print and when it’s actually printing. If your house has thin walls, your neighbours should perhaps invest in some ear defenders. Our verdict: Should you buy the Epson XP-7100? The Epson XP-7100 boasts high print, scanning, and copying speeds and produces good quality prints. It’s cheaper to run than your average cartridge-based printer, and there are several ways to keep you topped up with ink. On top of that, there are multiple ways to print, good app support, and it’s got a low profile. On the downside, it’s heavy, loud, and if you need to replace all five cartridges at once, that could hurt your wallet. Rating: Speed: 5/5 Print quality: 4.5/5 Cost to run: 4/5 Ease of use: 4.5/5 Overall rating: 4.5/5 Where to buy the Epson XP-7100: Buy from Amazon Buy from Cartridge People Buy from Currys PC World Buy from Jessops undefined Still undecided? Check out our best printers guide. Looking for printers on sale? Check out our best printer deals page. For a more affordable option, take a look at our Canon Pixma TS7450 review.
Looking for a budget-friendly printer for your home? The Canon Pixma TS7450 might be for you.
Canon may be better known for its award-winning compact and digital SLR cameras, but it’s also a well-established manufacturer of printers for the office and the home. Canon is one of the main home printer brands, and the Pixma TS7450 is an excellent value proposition for home workers and families. Despite being very much an entry-level device, it’s versatile, combining the functions of an office scanner and copier as well as a standard colour printer. First released in October 2020, the Canon Pixma TS7450 remains a solid value option. Running off of two cartridges – black and tri-colour, i.e. cyan, magenta, and yellow – means that it’s easy to keep the Canon Pixma TS7450 topped up. How does the Canon Pixma TS7450 perform in the real world, and is it suitable for home office use in 2021? Read on for our in-depth review of the Canon Pixma TS745. Jump to: Canon Pixma TS7450 review: summary What is the Canon Pixma TS7450? How much is the Canon Pixma TS7450? How fast is the Canon Pixma TS7450? Canon Pixma TS7450 print quality Canon Pixma TS7450 running costs Canon Pixma TS7450 ease of use Our verdict Where to buy Canon Pixma TS7450 review: summary Price: £79.99 Key features: Works with PG-560, PG-560XL, CL-561 and CL-561XL cartridges All-in-one colour printer, scanner and copier Prints on plain and glossy paper Able to print and copy two sides of the same sheet Up to A4 size paper Works with Wi-Fi Pros: Excellent overall print quality Fast printing and scanning speeds Reasonably cheap to run Cons: Photos need to be printed on glossy paper Double-page printing is slow Only economical with XL cartridges What is the Canon Pixma TS7450? The Canon Pixma TS7450 is an all-in-one colour printer, scanner, and copier priced under the £100 mark. It’s an entry-level all-in-one aimed at families, students, or anyone who wants a multi-function printer. Capable of printing on plain paper and glossies, the Canon Pixma TS7450 is a versatile machine. It can scan and print paper up to A4 in size and print on A5, B5, and the ANSI Letter-sized sheets. The ability to print and copy two sides of the same sheet will appeal to anyone putting together a physical newsletter, programme, pamphlet or exercise book. Or, if you mainly want a colour printer that can scan the occasional document, like a passport, then the Canon Pixma TS7450 will suit. It’s reasonably cheap to run, too. Like most modern home printers, the Canon Pixma TS7450 can also receive print requests over Wi-Fi, either from a laptop or desktop PC or an iPhone or Android smartphone. What does the Canon Pixma TS7450 do? Here is a run-down of all of the Canon Pixma TS7450’s specs: Ink type: Cartridge (PG-560, PG-560XL, CL-561, CL-561XL) Cost per page: 9p / 6-7p Print resolution: Up to 4800 x 1200 dpi Scanner resolution: Up to 1200 x 2400 dpi Print speed: 12.17ppm Paper tray capacity: 200 (100 x 2) plain / 20 photo OS: Windows, Mac OS, iOS, Android Dimensions: 206 x 403 x 364mm Weight: 8.2kg How much is the Canon Pixma TS7450? Canon lists £79.99 as the RRP for the Canon Pixma TS7450. Argos has exclusive rights to sell the black Canon Pixma TS7450. It’s now back in stock, having been unavailable for a while, still priced at £79.99. Other retailers instead sell a white version, called the Canon Pixma TS7451. Except for the slightly different number and colour, the Canon Pixma TS7451 is the same device, to all intents and purposes. Currys PC World is currently selling the white Canon Pixma TS7451 for £79.99. You can pick up the Canon Pixma TS7451 from Amazon and eBay, too, although it was priced slightly dearer at £115 from both vendors at the time of writing. Skip to view the deals How fast is the Canon Pixma TS7450? The Canon Pixma TS7450 prints large documents quickly, delivering 20 pages of text in around a minute and a half. It’s a little slower to produce single pages of text, graphics, or photos – but still not what you’d call slow. Text and images are scanned at around 15 and 20 seconds respectively, and the Canon Pixma TS7450 is quick to copy documents and pictures, too, producing copies of both at around 23 and 27 seconds. Double-sided printing takes a little longer to finish, largely because of the time it takes for the TS7450 to print on one side, draw the sheet back in, and start printing on the other side. Canon Pixma TS7450 speed test – text and graphics Canon Pixma TS7450 speed test – photos Canon Pixma TS7450 speed test – scanning and copying Canon Pixma TS7450 print quality The print quality of text, graphics and photos is very high on the Canon Pixma TS7450 – depending on the media you use. Even on Normal print quality, fonts look laser-sharp, with crisp, distinct serifs and legs standing out from the page with virtually no bleed. The Canon Pixma TS7450 really likes to pump the ink out, though, so be sure to allow a few seconds for pages to dry before taking them off of the out-tray. While bar graphs and pie charts, and indeed any flat colour printed on plain paper looks similarly good, photos printed on plain A4 are not that great, as colours tend to look muted and flat. Fortunately, photos printed on photo paper look pretty stunning — you could maybe print some ‘dry runs’ of your holiday snaps on plain paper before printing a final, finished article on glossy A4. Canon Pixma TS7450 running costs The Canon Pixma TS7450 is fairly cheap to run – costs are about the norm for a printer of this kind. As is always the case, the bigger, more expensive cartridges work out to be far better value for money than the standard-sized ones, so if you can pick up both the Canon PG-560XL and the Canon CL-561XL as part of a bundle deal, you’ll make big savings. Here’s how much you can expect to pay for each type of cartridge, as well as how far each one will go. Prices are taken from Canon’s UK site: Canon Pixma TS7450 ease of use Setting up the Canon Pixma TS7450 is straightforward, but the mobile apps aren’t always the easiest to navigate. Cartridges are easy to install and replace, thanks to spring-loaded cartridge locks and the rather heavy lid held open by a sturdy slow-close mechanism. Once the ink cartridges are in, the Pixma TS7450 will then print out a couple of test pages. After that, you’ll be able to connect the Pixma TS7450 to your home Wi-Fi network, which you’ll need to do to send print requests from your phones and laptops wirelessly. Unfortunately, this is a bit of a pain because the 1.4-inch control panel isn’t touch-sensitive, so inputting your Wi-Fi network password can take a while. However, once that’s done, you can then start telling the Pixma TS7450 to print your documents, photos, and selfies. There are quite a few Canon apps at your disposal, but the ones you’ll likely use the most are Canon Print Inkjet/Selphy app (iOS, Android) and Canon Easy-PrintPhoto Editor app (iOS, Android). These are best suited to printing documents and photos, respectively. Canon Print Inkjet/Selphy is a fairly standard printer app. You can print documents stored locally on your phone or print documents saved in cloud lockers, including Apple iCloud, Dropbox, Evernote, and Google Drive. The app also lets you scan and copy documents remotely and see how much ink is left in the tank, although not all printer features, like auto duplexing, are available on the mobile apps – stick to a desktop machine if you want to do that. Canon Easy-PrintPhoto Editor lets you tinker with your snaps and selfies and make use of templates for fun things like greetings cards and calendars, as well as more practical things like business cards and passport photos. There’s also Canon Creative Park, which is packed with fun and creative printable ideas, including nets for cute paper animals, rosettes, bookmarks, and party invitations. These are free to download, but you’ll need to create a Canon ID account to use this app. Windows desktop and laptop users will need to download drivers from Canon’s site to complete set-up. As the Canon Pixma TS7450 supports Apple AirPrint, Mac users don’t have to install any additional software. Once it’s connected to your home Wi-Fi network, just head to System Preferences, Printers & Scanners on your Mac, and add it to your list of devices as you normally would. Our verdict: Should you buy the Canon Pixma TS7450? The Canon Pixma TS7450 is a flexible and versatile all-in-one colour printer that produces good, high-quality documents, graphics, and photos at a reasonable speed. Copying and scanning speeds are good, too, although it’s slow at running off double-sided prints, and unless you fork out for the XL-sided cartridges, it’s not super economical to run. Rating: Speed: 4/5 Print quality: 4.5/5 Cost to run: 3/5 Ease of use: 4.5/5 Overall rating: 4/5 Where to buy the Canon Pixma TS7450 Buy from Argos Buy from Currys PC World Buy from Amazon Buy from eBay Still undecided? Check out our best printers guide. Looking for a printer on offer? Head to our printer deals round-up for this month's best prices.