You'll want the best A3 printers for your budget if you need something that can handle larger documents, such as posters and promotional displays.
Even the best printers typically only handle paper sizes up to A4, whereas the best large format printers and A3 printers are ideal. These machines are capable of handling unconventional paper sizes without compromising on quality. After all, there's no point printing out large documents if they aren't going to look good.
When choosing the best A3 printer that can produce excellent large-scale printouts, be prepared to spend a bit of money. Unfortunately, these printers can be quite costly. However, that doesn't mean you need to spend a fortune – there are a few out there that offer a brilliant price to performance ratio so you get a lot of value for your money.
To help you identify the right tool for the job, we went hands-on with the best A3 printers on the market. We've compared these printers across numerous factors, like their printing speed, printing quality, footprint, connectivity features, and running cost. We assessed their duplex printing capabilities, security features, and pricing, among other points.
Best A3 printer overall
This feature-packed large-format printer raises the bar for office inkjets. Like the rest of Brother’s business-oriented X-Series, it comes with all the tools the average SMB needs, such as duplex printing and scanning, high ink and paper capacity etc, but adds a significant new skill.
The ability to print and cut banners on rolls of paper puts the Brother MFC-J6959DW in a league of its own. If you need to produce signage or eye-catching marketing material at the point of sale, this thing makes it easy. But even if you don’t print on roll paper, this four-in-one MFP would serve well as workgroup printer in a shared office.
With room for 750 sheets of paper in its twin paper trays and compatibility with Brother’s huge high yield cartridges, it has the paper and ink capacity for a heavy workload. There’s also an NFC module for secure printing and big touchscreen interface to make operation easier. It’s not as fast as a laser, but it does offer way more functionality.
Read our full Brother MFC-J6959DW review
Best A3 printer for working from home
Epson’s A3-sized WorkForce color printer is perfect for the small office that needs to print on anything up to 13-in x 19-in paper. Conveniently, it has two 250-sheet paper trays, so you could fill one with A4 and the other with A3. Being an inkjet, you can also load photo paper, not to mention envelopes, labels and thin card.
It prints quite quickly, with a top speed of 25ppm (pages per minute) in black and white, and it can automatically print both sides of an A3 page – quite a feat for such a compact printer. Print resolution and connectivity are also strong suits.
The price is competitive, so don’t expect luxuries like a touchscreen interface, or USB Host port on this budget model. And it’s not part of Epson’s EcoTank line, sadly, so you’ll have to buy replacement cartridges. Thankfully, the four DURABrite Ultra inks are available in individual carts and are not especially expensive.
Best compact A3 printer
What looks like your typical A4 printer turns out to be the smallest A3 printer on the market with accessories available to make it one of the largest. It can hold 300 sheets of paper in its main paper tray and 100 in its multipurpose tray, but add three more drawers and that expands the capacity to 2,540 sheets.
It comes with four huge pre-installed toner cartridges that can print around 2,500 pages. What's even better is that you can replace these with cartridges that offer a higher yield of up to 10,000 pages.
You can choose the banner tray upgrade for printing on rolls of paper. It can auto duplex print and has Wi-Fi built in as standard. It uses LEDs rather than laser, but with similar effect.
Read our full Oki C844dnw review
Best A3 laser printer
This high-end laser printer will take big bites out of your office space and your budget, but there’s nothing the VersaLink C7000DN can’t do exceptionally well. For a start, it can duplex print on A3 paper and do it at a resolution of 1200 x 2400 DPI.
It can also scan, copy, and fax with all that functionality simplified by a sophisticated five-inch colour touchscreen.
Text is exceptionally sharp and colours particularly bold and with plenty of optional modules available for boosting the paper capacity, this is a printer that will suit the demands of any medium-sized office.
But keep in mind that this is a heavy printer that takes up a lot of space — you'll need at least a square meter of floor space because opening the bypass tray adds around 40cm to the width.
Read our full Xerox VersaLink C7000DN review
Best A3 printer for workgroups
If you’re looking for a workgroup printer that can handle A3 paper and a heavy workload, the Brother MFC-J6955DW could be the answer. It’s a four-in-one inkjet printer that comes with every business feature we can think of and specifications that will trump most lasers. It prints quickly, especially in duplex mode, and it can hold a ream of A3 paper in its twin paper trays, while holding a hundred more in its multi-purpose tray and ADF.
It also prints very well using extra large cartridges of Brother’s Innobella ink that have such a high yield, the cost per page is lower than any other cartridge-based inkjet and some lasers. It’s a little on the large size, and somewhat expensive, but it’s well designed and easy to use, thanks to the excellent touchscreen interface. With a reasonable amount of ink in the box and very high capacity cartridges available, this inkjet means business.
Read our full Brother MFC-J6955DW review
Best A3+ printer
Canon’s uncompromising photo printer uses no less than eight individual dye inks to achieve an exceptionally smooth and realistic color tone, and it can do this on any size of paper up to A3+.
Whether you are a professional looking for a production printer for the office, or an enthusiast photographer based at home, Canon is aiming this model at you. It prints slowly in order to achieve its high print resolution and the printer itself is quite large and heavy. We should also warn you that your ongoing consumables cost is going to be high, but if you want great photos, it is well worth the expense.
There is no inbuilt scanner as this is a print-only device, so for everyday printing and scanning jobs, we recommend buying a second, more economical all-in-one printer.
Best entry-level A3 printer
Printers aimed at the home office that can handle A3 paper are not common, but ones that can automatically print on both sides of an A3 page are downright rare. The WorkForce WF-7210DTW is one such beast and it does so quite successfully.
Print quality is impressive, be that monochrome text, or a glossy photo. The long list of features includes both Wi-Fi and NFC connectivity and the two paper trays can hold 500 sheets combined.
You'll need plenty of space for the printer because it's more than 300mm high and at 567 x 424mm, its footprint is more than an A2 sheet's. The printer has an Ethernet port and a USB port, but there are no cables provided. There's also a 56mm non-touchscreen LCD panel that offers basic information about the printing status.
Read our full Epson WorkForce WF-7210DTW review
Best A3 ink tank printer
Epson has an EcoTank model for every occasion and this is the one to buy if you need to print on 13-in x 19-in (A3) paper and value for money is a factor. It has all the features you could ask of a premium four-in-one office printer.
That includes a 35-sheet ADF (automatic document feed) a fax facility, a touchscreen control panel and Wi-Fi with Wi-Fi Direct connectivity.
There’s plenty of room for paper with 250 sheets in the main tray and another twenty in the rear tray and plenty of room for ink. It ships with four bottles that should give you up to 6,200 black and white pages and 5,200 color, so you won’t need to worry about buying more for a while.
The Epson EcoTank ET-15000 comes in ice white in the US and black in the UK.
Best A3 photo printer
Epson’s second generation of EcoTank printers have refined the refillable ink system which is deployed here by a highly capable inkjet MFD. Photo quality is excellent and the ability to print on A3 paper is a real boon.
The interface lacks a touchscreen and printing is slow, but the pages are well worth waiting for. If the price tag appears prohibitive, that’s because there are two sets of ink bottles in the box. Enough to print a claimed 3,600 photos!
You'll find a square USB input and an Ethernet port at the rear, and an SD card slot and USB port at the front. Unfortunately, there's no USB data cable included with the package.
There's no NFC support, but there's Wi-Fi Direct and support for Apple AirPrint and Google Cloud Print.
Read our full Epson EcoTank ET-7750 review
Best A3 printer for businesses
The Brother MFC-J6945DW (known as the MFC-J6945DW in the UK) is an inkjet that’s aimed at a role in a busy office more usually filled by a laser printer.
The impressive print speed is only a little slower than the average laser, while offering all the advantages of an inkjet, such as the the ability to print on photo paper at a higher image resolution.
It also comes with an unusually generous amount of ink — enough for a whole year apparently. The most impressive feature, however, is its ability to duplex print and scan not just A4 paper, but A3 as well.
Make sure you have enough space to house the printer because it has a large footprint, especially when the rear and front trays are pulled out to accommodate A3 sheets.
Read our full Brother MFC-J6947DW review
Best A3 printer for documents
Canon PIXMA iX6850 looks rather smart for an A3-sized office printer and its specifications are no less impressive. It uses five inks instead of the usual four to achieve superior quality images and each one comes in an individual cartridge for more cost-effective replacement.
It can’t print both sides of a page automatically (duplex), but this machine is well connected with an Ethernet port, Wi-Fi, and AirPrint compatibility. If you need to print large spreadsheets, large photos, and high-resolution posters, this printer can handle any size paper up A3+ (329 x 483mm).
The Canon PIXMA iX6850 is excellent at printing text. The print quality's clear, well-defined, and readable, even at lower point sizes. Despite being wide, this printer has a fairly small footprint for an A3 printer, making it suitable for use at home.
Read our full Canon PIXMA iX6850 review
Best A3 printer for small businesses
The Epson EcoTank Pro ET-M16600 is the largest in Epson’s expanding line of supertank printers, and it’s big enough to handle A3-size paper. It can also hold well over a ream of paper in its two drawers with room for 50 more sheets in the automatic document feed.
The ink tanks are also larger than usual and can hold enough bottled ink for 4,500 monochrome pages and 2,800 color. It also prints quickly with a first-page-out time just over five seconds and a monochrome print speed of 32ppm (pages per minute), or 25ipm (imprints per minute).
The printer comes with Epson's DURABrite Inks (four bottles). These pigment-based inks ensure all your monochrome and color prints are crisp and vibrant and dry instantly. You'll also benefit from the zero cartridge waste and low energy consumption features.
How to choose the best A3 printers for you
Whether it's a home printer or a business printer for your office, the best printers on this page can help you quickly and easily print off documents perfectly, all while keeping running costs low.
One of the biggest choices to make is whether you're looking for the best inkjet printer, best laser printer, or the best ink tank printer. Each have their pros and cons. Inkjet models are cheaper to buy initially, but cost more in ink cartridges over time. Laser models are usually faster and cheaper to run in the long-term, but they are expensive to purchase making them better suited to businesses.
However, when deciding on the particular model of A3 printer that would be best for you, your main considerations are probably going to be your budget, as well as other factors such as print quality and print speed. It's also worth checking on the features you'll need. The best all-in-one printers are ideal for when you need to add scanning, faxing, and photocopying tools, but may not be best if you're looking for a dedicated print-only machine.
Wireless connectivity might be an additional deal-breaker - it's convenient being able to print direct through an app or over Bluetooth, but it comes at the cost of print speeds. For those remote working size and weight might also be important considerations so as to not have the printer take up too much space in the home office.
How we test the best A3 printers
We've tested a range of printers for all kinds of use, including the best photo printers, the best small business printers, and best wireless printers.
Each A3 printer we source for testing is measured on our test bench, and the results are critically compared with every other printer we've reviewed. Rather than relying on the manufacturer’s quoted figures, we time the first page out and print speeds in single sheet and duplex mode using a standard ten-page document and a stopwatch app.
To compare print quality, we print out the same set of test documents on every machine. These twelve test pages include text of varying font sizes and colors, mixed image and text pages, a set of photos, and a series of test patterns designed to assess sharpness, color fidelity, contrast, and grey scale. We also calculate running costs, compare functionality and consider each product’s versatility, design, and build quality.
Read more on how we test, rate, and review printers.
