Best small home printers: HP OfficeJet 250 Review – RTINGS.com

The 4 Best Home Printers

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  1. Office
  2. Home office

Photo: Marki Williams

FYI

From the beginning of Wirecutter’s existence, we’ve been testing printers, totaling nearly 500 hours of research and trying dozens of models.

The reliable, simple-to-operate HP OfficeJet Pro 9015e, an all-in-one color inkjet, is a good choice for most people who need to print regularly at home. It’s easy to set up and cheap to run, it works with all kinds of devices, and it produces beautiful prints, from tax forms to glossy photos.

The research

  • The best all-around home printer: Inkjet all-in-one
  • A home office powerhouse: Color laser printer
  • Affordable and reliable: Monochrome laser printer
  • Gallery-worthy prints at home: Photo printer

The best all-around home printer: Inkjet all-in-one

Our pick

HP OfficeJet Pro 9015e

This business-class machine checks all the boxes for a home office or small business: It’s faster, sharper, more durable, and more secure than our other picks.

Buying Options

*At the time of publishing, the price was $230.

Who this is for: Families—particularly those with school-age kids—or anyone who needs a machine that can reliably do it all.

Why we like it: The OfficeJet Pro 9015e isn’t HP’s most powerful inkjet all-in-one, but it is the best one for most people. It is remarkably easy to set up and use, hitting a sweet spot of speed, print quality, and reliability that other printers can’t match. Its running costs are reasonable at 2.4¢ per page for black-and-white pages and 8.8¢ for color, with the option to join HP’s Instant Ink program for set-and-forget refills and cheaper color printing. And its sleek design helps it stand out from stodgy-looking competitors, which is almost enough to make us forgive its tiny touchscreen and flimsy output tray. Ultimately, though, our concerns are small. Printers still suck, but this one is a marked improvement over the dinosaurs of yore.

Photo: Ben Keough

The 9015e is plenty fast for just about anyone who would use it in a home or home-office setting. HP rates it at up to 22 pages per minute with black-and-white documents and 18 ppm with color. In our testing, it got pretty close: With a text-only Word document, we saw 19.6 ppm single-sided. Switching to PDF documents, we saw the typical drop-off in speed at 15 ppm in monochrome and 11.5 ppm in color. (These figures include the lag time between our hitting the print command on our computer and the first sheet being fed.) Printing two-sided documents slowed things to 12.8 ppm with Word files and 10 ppm with PDFs, which is still just fine. Scanning was similarly brisk at 9.5 ppm, single-sided, from the 35-sheet automatic document feeder. Duplex scanning dipped to 4.5 ppm, though, mostly because the ADF has to pull each sheet through twice to scan both sides.

Flaws but not dealbreakers: The OfficeJet Pro 9015e’s biggest shortcoming is probably its single 250-sheet paper tray. Although that’s a standard size for a home printer, it may be less than what some people want for home and home-business purposes. Since there’s only one tray, you need to manually swap out your plain letter paper whenever you need to print on something else—whether it’s legal, labels, glossy photo stock, or résumé paper.

We’re less than enamored with HP’s dinky slide-and-fold output tray, which extends out of the front of the printer. One of the best things about the OfficeJet Pro 8720, our previous pick, was that it had a self-contained output tray behind its huge touchscreen display; the upshot was that your documents were less likely to fall out and end up strewn about your office floor. Not so with the new model.

Speaking of displays, the 9015e has a much smaller one than those on the previous generation of HP printers. It still works fine, but the reduced real estate does make it harder to hit the smallest on-screen buttons, such as the gear icon that takes you to the settings menu. Be prepared for a few frustrating mis-taps.

Dimensions: 19.4 by 16 by 12.8 inches

Weight: 24 pounds

Pages per minute (stated, monochrome/color): 22/18

Cost per page (monochrome/color): 2.4¢/8.8¢

A home office powerhouse: Color laser printer

Photo: Marki Williams Photo: Marki Williams

Our pick

HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M283fdw

This model produces crisp text and vibrant graphics, and has a low operating cost. But you can only use HP toner with it, so be prepared to pay full price come replacement time.

Buying Options

$549* from HP

*At the time of publishing, the price was $0.

Who this is for: Home- and small-business owners, or people who simply don’t want to deal with the clogs that can plague inkjets.

Why we like it: The HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M283fdw offers an easy setup process, great printing quality, and reasonable operating costs for your home office or small business needs. This laserjet was up and running in no time thanks to an intuitive touchscreen that walks users through the process in under 10 minutes. Plus, mobile Wi-Fi printing and optional HP Smart app make printing sans computer a breeze. In our tests it printed out clear, crisp text down to a font size of 3 points, so even the tiniest of subscripts in legal documents and footer text in charts remain legible. It also printed high-quality, vibrant graphics on both copy and glossy paper. Upgrading to the high-yield ink toners ensures printing costs remain low, at just 3.3¢ per black and 16.3¢ per color print—but a full set of replacement toner costs $440.

The intuitive touchscreen walks users through the setup process in less than 10 minutes.

The main paper tray can hold up to 250 sheets.

The bypass slot lets users print labels, envelopes, postcards, and glossy prints. Photos: Marki Williams

The intuitive touchscreen walks users through the setup process in less than 10 minutes.

Flaws but not dealbreakers: Like most laser printers, the M283fdw comes with a skimpy set of “starter” toner cartridges good for 800 black-and-white and 700 color pages. High-yield replacements (HP 206X) are rated for 3,150 monochrome and 2,450 color pages, but a full set costs around $440. Be prepared to shell out for replacement toner within the first year or so. And this model weighs more than twice as much as our budget laser pick (the Brother HL-L2350DW), takes up significant space on a desk, and it probably won’t fit on a bookshelf, due to its 19-inch depth.

Dimensions: 16.5 x 16.6 x 13.2 inches
Weight: 41.2 pounds
Pages per minute (stated, monochrome/color): 22/22
Cost per page (monochrome/color): 3. 3¢/16.3¢

Affordable and reliable: Monochrome laser printer

Photo: Marki Williams

Budget pick

Brother HL-L2350DW

Don’t really need a printer, but want to have one around for occasional jobs? This Brother is simple to set up, reliable, and affordable to operate.

Who this is for: People who don’t need a printer on a daily basis, but still appreciate having one for the few times a year when they need to print.

Why we like it: The Brother HL-L2350DW is simple, fast, dependable, easy to set up, and affordable to operate. And because it’s a laser printer, it can sit for weeks or months between print jobs and start up again without trouble. But although it’s a budget model, it’s not short on features. For the $100-ish asking price, you get automatic duplex printing capability, a large 250-sheet paper tray, reliable Wi-Fi connectivity, and the option to use high-yield toner cartridges—which means you don’t have to buy them very often. This printer works with Windows, MacOS, Linux, ChromeOS, iOS, and Android. As for print quality, in our testing to choose the best laser printer, we found that this model is more than good enough for any text-based document, but it might need a few settings tweaks to produce a graphics-heavy document you’d want to hand out to other people. It’s also extremely compact, which means it can fit in tight spaces (like a bookcase shelf) where other printers can’t go.

Though it’s half the price of our color laser pick, the HL-L2350DW matches that model’s paper capacity with a roomy 250-sheet tray.

The HL-L2350DW can spit out up to 32 pages per minute, making quick work of large print jobs.

The HL-L2350DW’s single-line monochrome display isn’t the easiest to work with, but it is standard for an inexpensive monochrome laser printer, and it gets the job done. Photos: Marki Williams

Though it’s half the price of our color laser pick, the HL-L2350DW matches that model’s paper capacity with a roomy 250-sheet tray.

Flaws but not dealbreakers: It’s a little flimsy and the packaging isn’t great, so if you buy one, be sure to check for any plastic parts that might have gotten bumped out of place in transit. We don’t recommend printing via Brother’s iPrint&Scan software, because it results in excessive, detail-destroying contrast. And if you use a Chromebook, you should be aware that the printer’s default settings might prevent it from working with Google Cloud Print; to get it working, you need to disable IPv6 in the Networking section of the printer’s Web control panel. Lastly, just a reminder that this prints in only black-and-white ink—it can’t copy, scan, or fax either.

Dimensions: 14.0 by 7.2 by 14.2 inches
Weight: 15.9 pounds
Pages per minute (stated): 32
Cost per page: 2.7¢

Gallery-worthy prints at home: Photo printer

Also great

Epson SureColor P700

The P700 consistently delivers excellent-quality prints with long-lasting pigment inks. It also offers a color touchscreen and other appealing features. The premature need to replace the ink, however, is not so user-friendly.

Buying Options

$828* from Amazon

*At the time of publishing, the price was $770.

Who this is for: Serious photographers, or those who aspire to be.

Why we like it: The Epson SureColor P700 is capable of delivering gallery-quality prints up to 13 inches wide, and it can print panoramas up to 10 feet long. It can also print on a huge variety of media, including metal and CDs. Though its color photos caught our eye while we were testing for the best photo printer, we especially loved the black-and-white output; it’s as close as you can get to traditional darkroom prints at home. Those prints will last you a long time, too: The P600’s UltraChrome HD pigment ink is one of the longest-lasting consumer inks. The touchscreen interface is a cut above what you’d get from most rivals. Ink costs are reasonable, and you can get extra-large-capacity tanks, so you’ll need to fill up less often. In addition to Wi-Fi, this printer has USB and Ethernet connections for faster printing.

The Epson SureColor P700 is the only printer we tested with a tilting color touchscreen, which makes it simple to change paper type and sizing. It’s also fun to watch as your image progress displays on screen while the print is being made. Photo: Erin Lodi

Flaws but not dealbreakers: Although the physical installation of the printer is pretty straightforward, we found installing the drivers to be a challenge since there wasn’t a lot of instruction after “connect the printer to your computer.” The primary paper feeder had a hard time with glossy paper, and the only way we got it to work was by inserting one sheet at a time. Lastly, the starter ink cartridges included with the printer are not completely filled, but the machine doesn’t indicate this when you install them. You’ll know they’re almost done only when the printer starts to give the “low ink” warning.

Dimensions: 20.3 by 14.5 by 17.3 inches
Weight: 35.3 pounds
Cost per mL of ink: $1.52

Meet your guides

Kaitlyn Wells

Kaitlyn Wells is a senior staff writer who advocates for greater work flexibility by showing you how to work smarter remotely without losing yourself. Previously, she covered pets and style for Wirecutter. She’s never met a pet she didn’t like, although she can’t say the same thing about productivity apps. Her first picture book, A Family Looks Like Love, follows a pup who learns that love, rather than how you look, is what makes a family.

Ben Keough

Ben Keough is the supervising editor for Wirecutter’s working from home, powering, cameras, and hobbies and games coverage. He previously spent more than a decade writing about cameras, printers, and other office equipment for Wirecutter, Reviewed, USA Today, and Digital Camera HQ. After four years testing printers, he definitively confirmed that they all suck, but some suck less than others.

Further reading

  • The Best All-in-One Printers

    by Ben Keough and Kaitlyn Wells

    The HP OfficeJet Pro 9015e is our favorite all-in-one thanks to its ease of use, great print quality, and low cost of operation.

  • The Best Laser Printer

    by Ben Keough and Kaitlyn Wells

    The fast, reliable, and easy-to-use HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M283fdw is our favorite laser printer.

  • The Best Cheap Printers

    by Phil Ryan

    If you’re looking for an inexpensive printer, we think the Brother HL-L2350DW or the Brother MFC-J4335DW is your best option.

  • The Best Photo Printer

    by Erin Roberts and Amadou Diallo

    Photo printers make sense only for experienced photographers, but if you are that serious about photography, the Epson SureColor P700 is your best bet.

Wirecutter is the product recommendation service from The New York Times. Our journalists combine independent research with (occasionally) over-the-top testing so you can make quick and confident buying decisions. Whether it’s finding great products or discovering helpful advice, we’ll help you get it right (the first time).

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  • Staff demographics
  • Jobs at Wirecutter
  • Contact us
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The 2 Best Cheap Printers of 2023

We independently review everything we recommend. When you buy through our links, we may earn a commission. Learn more›

  1. Electronics
  2. Home office

Photo: Marki Williams

FYI

We’ve added the Brother MFC-J4335DW as our favorite cheap all-in-one printer pick.

Printers are not our favorite household gadget, but sometimes they’re necessary. If you run a home business that has to generate receipts, shipping labels, or tax documents, for example, or if someone in your household is in school, you probably need a basic printer. Here are a couple of relatively inexpensive models that we recommend based on our tests for our guides to laser printers and all-in-one inkjets.

The research

  • The best cheap laser printer: Brother HL-L2350DW
  • The best cheap all-in-one printer: Brother MFC-J4335DW
  • What about cheap photo printers?

The best cheap laser printer: Brother HL-L2350DW

Photo: Marki Williams

Our pick

Brother HL-L2350DW

Offering low operating costs, quick printouts, and useful features, this is the best laser printer you can get for around $150.

Who this is for: Anyone who needs a basic monochrome printer for straightforward print jobs.

Why we like it: Laser printers are well suited for people who don’t need to print often. That’s because toner cartridges don’t clog like ink tanks do, so you can go months between print jobs without any issue. Laser printers also print faster and produce sharper text, and their output doesn’t run or smear if it gets wet, the way some inkjet prints might. The Brother HL-L2350DW is no exception—it’s a simple, straightforward printer that delivers great print quality reliably and quickly.

Setting up the printer is a breeze because it has native Mac and Windows drivers. It works automatically with AirPrint on iOS, too, and you can add it with the Brother Print Service on Android. Print jobs start within seconds of your sending them, and they print fast. Plus, at just 7.2 inches tall, this model can easily fit on a bookshelf or in a tight desk area.

Though it’s half the price of our color laser pick, the HL-L2350DW matches that model’s paper capacity with a roomy 250-sheet tray. Photos: Marki Williams

The HL-L2350DW can spit out up to 32 pages per minute, making quick work of large print jobs. Photo: Marki Williams

Though it’s half the price of our color laser pick, the HL-L2350DW matches that model’s paper capacity with a roomy 250-sheet tray. Photos: Marki Williams

The HL-L2350DW comes with a starter toner cartridge that yields about 700 pages and an imaging drum that yields around 12,000 pages. A new toner cartridge costs about $80 at this writing, so the cost per page, including drum wear, comes out to about 3.3¢, right in line with the cost per page for other laser printers we’ve tested.

Out of the box, the HL-L2350DW produced decent prints in our tests. With a little tweaking of the toner density and resolution settings, however, we managed to get great-looking prints that were sharp, contrasty, and readable all the way down to 2-point font sizes. This model’s one-year warranty is unexceptional but standard for printers.

The HL-L2350DW’s single-line monochrome display isn’t the easiest to work with, but it is standard for inexpensive monochrome laser printers, and it gets the job done. Photo: Marki Williams

Flaws but not dealbreakers: The display on the HL-L2350DW is just a one-line monochrome LCD surrounded by a few rubberized buttons, which makes changing settings (and especially typing in Wi-Fi passwords) a bit of a pain. Note too that Brother uses cheaper plastic parts in this model: The unit we received for testing was a little banged up during shipping, and we had to call customer service to get it fixed. Thankfully it was a quick fix, and we were back to printing in no time.

Learn more about other printers we recommend in our full guide to the best laser printer.

The best cheap all-in-one printer: Brother MFC-J4335DW

Photo: Marki Williams

Our pick

Brother MFC-J4335DW

If you don’t print that often, or if you need a basic color printer that can also scan, this inkjet is a relatively inexpensive model that handles a variety of print jobs.

Who this is for: People who don’t require much from a printer and want to keep their printing costs to a minimum, but who also need a scanner.

Why we like it: The Brother MFC-J4335DW is cheap to run, and in our tests it produced sharp text and good glossy prints. This model comes with 1,080 pages’ worth of black ink and 720 pages’ worth of color ink in the box, which should last you about a year (by Brother’s estimates). Or, you can upgrade to high-yield print cartridges that can print up to 6,000 pages’ worth of black ink and 5,000 pages’ worth of color ink. The cost works out to roughly 1¢ per page for monochrome and 4.7¢ for color.

The MFC-J4335DW reliably prints crisp, dark text and vibrant glossy photos, so it’s a solid choice for casual use, whether you’re printing documents, homework, or a family photo to stick on the fridge.

Photo: Marki Williams

Photo: Marki Williams

Photo: Marki Williams

Photo: Marki Williams

Photo: Marki Williams

This model works with Brother’s iPrint&Scan app, which is available on iOS and Android, or with AirPrint (iOS) and the Brother Print Service Plugin (Android). The mobile app lets you print from Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, and OneDrive, or you can choose documents and photos stored locally on your device. Brother covers this printer with a two-year limited warranty.

Flaws but not dealbreakers: Like many Brother printers, the MFC-J4335DW was a bit clunky to set up in our tests because its unintuitive website installers were difficult to navigate. The archaic design of the tiny display screen and navigation buttons marginally added to the setup stress.

This all-in-one model also posted some of the slowest scan speeds we’ve encountered, averaging at 7 seconds compared with the 3 to 5 seconds we saw from half the printers we tested, including our HP all-in-one pick, the OfficeJet Pro 9015e. That’s a small difference in speed, but one that can feel like an eternity when you’re working against a deadline and have dozens of pages to scan.

And don’t expect the MFC-J4335DW to produce a perfect copy of your favorite photos. In our testing, this printer overcompensated its scans by adding too much contrast, diminishing the detail in darker portions of our test images.

What about cheap photo printers?

If you need to print a photo or two to stick on your fridge, our cheap all-in-one pick, the Brother MFC-J4335DW, is more than capable of handling the job. If you’re looking to print art or photography and you’re on a budget, consider sending your images off to a print lab, because you won’t find a photo printer that can give you high-quality, color-accurate images in large format for less than $700.

This article was edited by Phil Ryan and Erica Ogg.

Meet your guide

Phil Ryan

Phil Ryan is Wirecutter’s senior staff writer for camera coverage. Previously, over 13 years he covered cameras and other photo-related items for CNET and Popular Photography. As the latter’s tech editor and then senior tech editor, he was responsible for maintaining and refining the lab testing for cameras, and as the main camera tester,  he used and wrote reviews of many of the cameras released in that timeframe.

  • The fast, reliable, and easy-to-use HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M283fdw is our favorite laser printer.

    The Best Laser Printer 

  • The HP OfficeJet Pro 9015e is our favorite all-in-one thanks to its ease of use, great print quality, and low cost of operation.

    The Best All-in-One Printers 

  • We’ve tested dozens of online photo printing services, and we’ve consistently found that Nations Photo Lab is the best place to get prints.

    The Best Online Photo Printing Service 

  • Photo printers make sense only for experienced photographers, but if you are that serious about photography, the Epson SureColor P700 is your best bet.

    The Best Photo Printer 

Further reading

  • The Best Home Printers

    by Kaitlyn Wells and Ben Keough

    Run a home business? Have a student in the house? Depending on your needs, we have a few recommendations for the best printer for you.

  • Why All Printers Suck (Even the Best Ones)

    by Liam McCabe

    Printers frustrate us all. Networking failures, sky-high ink costs, and interfaces out of the ’80s plague even the best ones. But we’ve got a few helpful hints.

  • The Best Instant Photo Printer

    by Arriana Vasquez

    Our pick for the best instant photo printer is simple to use, and it’s light and small enough to carry. It uses easy-to-find, affordable film, too.

  • The Best Cheap Scanner

    by Ben Keough

    After years spent testing cheap scanners, we’re certain that the Canon CanoScan LiDE 300 strikes the best balance between image quality, speed, size, and price.

Wirecutter is the product recommendation service from The New York Times. Our journalists combine independent research with (occasionally) over-the-top testing so you can make quick and confident buying decisions. Whether it’s finding great products or discovering helpful advice, we’ll help you get it right (the first time).

  • About Wirecutter
  • Our team
  • Staff demographics
  • Jobs at Wirecutter
  • Contact us
  • How to pitch
  • Deals
  • Lists
  • Blog
  • Newsletters
  • Make a Plan: Moving

Dismiss

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