Printers

Go straight to our pick of 2009

Whether you need a printer for your home or office, 2009 has seen the arrival of several new features that might encourage you to upgrade.  They include WiFi, touchscreen interfaces, separate cartridges for each colour, and finally high capacity cartridges to produce more economic printing.  In short, those are the big trends that we've seen this year!  And just so you know, when we talk about printers, what we mean most of the time is multifunction printers.  They usually take the form of an A4 printer with a scanner on top, working together to produce a colour copier.  Printers that only work on 4 x 6'' photo prints have fallen out of fashion and are now too expensive to consider.

WiFi in printers has finally reached maturity, by which we meant it's much easier to set up and there are far fewer bugs, on inkjet printers at least.  Strangely, it's nowhere near as popular on laser printers as we thought it would be.

The other big news of this year comes in area dominated by HP and Lexmark, who have gradually been replacing physical buttons with touchscreen interfaces.  And it's a lot better--we are big fans of this new way of interacting with our printers.

All of the manufacturers now produce separate cartridges for different colours of ink, including HP and Lexmark, who were historically the strongest opponents of this system.  They're cheaper to produce, easier to recycle and lead to less wasted ink, so everybody's a winner.  Consumers do even better when they can use XL size consumables.  They're more expensive to buy, but keep going for a lot longer.

Finally, let's take a look at some received wisdom: the more expensive the printer, the better the quality.  This is entirely false.  With Lexmark, for instance, the quality of printed documents is the same whether you pay £50 or £400 for your printer.  All that happens is that as you move up through a given manufacturer's range, you gain extra features: double-sized printing, fax facilities or a touchscreen interface for instance.

For Professionals

Businesses have traditionally used laser printers, which have a reputation for producing better quality documents at a lower cost-per-page.  That's not true any more though, and just about any inkjet printer, even a bargain £50 model, will be able to match a laser for office printing and produce much better photos.  On the other hand, it is still true that laser printers are in general cheaper to run.  A black-and-white A4 document might cost around 2-3 p per page on a laser, but it will be three times as expensive on an inkjet printer.

There's just one exception: the all-in-one Lexmark Platinum Pro905 has a black cartridge that costs just £4 and brings printing costs down to under 1 p a page.  And that's not the only good news.  Like the S605, the Pro905 has a huge touchscreen that's connected to the Internet, allowing you to remotely control your print jobs.  For instance, you can have it automatically scan a document (a bill or a letter say), at a predefined resolution, and the file will be stored exactly where you want on your computer without you having to do anything.

Laser printers do have a weakness though: they use a lot more power than inkjets, with the anywhere between 400 and 800 W a typical figure, compared to just 20 W for the latter.

Note: we are currently testing a new batch of inkjet printers.  Although we haven't yet published the reviews, we already have the results, which we've used to compile this guide. 

---

Our Icons

Best value

We love it

Green

Best of the best

---

Printers for the home ...

Our Favourite
Touchscreen interface, double-sided printing, WiFi, separate XL cartridges, customisable ...

Lexmark S605

 

Best value Canon MP270	Low price touchscreen HP Photosmart C4680	Demanding users: Canon MP640
This printer is fast and accurate for documents and photos without any extra fuss.  There's no WiFi and no card reader.  We can't give it a green icon either, as it uses combined cartridges for every ink colour.	The touch-based interface on the right-hand side of the screen replace buttons.  We also like the XL cartridges, which are much cheaper than the standard options.  There's also a wireless version.	This all-in-one, double-sided WiFi printer is fast and skilled at all sorts of printing, especially photos, where the results are up what you'd expect from a professional developer.

... and office

Best value Samsung ML-1630W	Quality laser Canon LBP 7200	1p per page Lexmark Pro905
Can you get all-in-one laser printing over WiFi for £100?  Yes, but you'll pay the price when it comes to running costs, but it's still cheaper per page than using an inkjet.	The LBP 7200 is a double-sided printer which produces sharper documents than average.  It's not cheap though, and is definitely an option for those who put quality ahead of price.	This might be an inkjet printer, but it's three times cheaper than a laser, with exceptional quality, a touchscreen and excellent macros.  It's revolutionary!
Prices unavailable Recommended alternatives Editor's Choice Canon Pixma MG5350 Touchscreen, Connected Inkjet HP Photosmart 7510 e-All-In-One Affordable Photo Printer Epson Stylus Photo PX730WD

---

Printers at a glance:

	Wireless	Speed	Office Printing	Photo Printing	Energy Use
Canon MP270
HP Photosmart
Canon MP640
Lexmark S605
Samsung ML-1630W
Canon LBP 7200
Lexmark Pro905

Our Icons

Best value

We love it

Green

Best of the best

Watch out