1. Best overall
2. Best for refills
3. Best for running costs
4. Best on a budget
5. Best all-purpose
6. Best for photos
7. Best high-capacity
8. Best all-in-one
9. Best refill on a budget
10. Best budget for photos
11. FAQs
12. How we test
For most people, the best inkjet printers fulfil almost every need. But which one is right for you? Our review team checked out top models from HP, Canon, Epson, and more to see which ones are best for your next print job.
Inkjets are a popular choice for the home, home office, or even a small business workplace. These printers are usually cheaper to buy, especially compared to the best laser printers, and while ink cartridges are more expensive to run than the best ink tank printers, you can pick them up almost anywhere. If you're chiefly printing photos and images on normal or glossy paper, and the occasional letter or document, they're ideal.
Our team of reviewers went hands-on with some of the best inkjet printers and pored over the specs to find the top models. Our review process sees us time printing speeds, compare output quality and measure performance across a range of tests. Alongside measuring estimated running costs, we checked over extras like the automatic document feeder (ADF), scanning, and wireless printing to find out which inkjet printer is best.
The best inkjet printers of 2024 in full:
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Best inkjet printer overall
If the value for money is important to your business, this plain, pale grey box could be the all-in-one printer you are looking for. It has few features to keep the purchase price down, so there’s no auto-duplex mode, multipurpose tray, fax, or display of any kind. There’s just a scanner bed for copying documents one side at a time and a paper tray that can hold 150 sheets of A4.
What it does have is the ability to accommodate unusually large inkjet cartridges, which is why the bodywork bulges on the right-hand side. Brother calls this an INKvestment Tank printer, which is its answer to rival supertank printers. These high-capacity carts have higher yields, making them more economical to run than most cartridge-based inkjets. It also prints to a consistently high standard on both plain and photo paper.
Read our full Brother DCP-J1200W review.
Best inkjet printer with refillable tank
Here we see Epson’s refillable EcoTank system refined and integrated into this four-in-one printer. With a fairly deep 250-sheet paper tray, a fax facility, and Wi-Fi with Wi-Fi Direct, this machine would be well suited to a busy home office. It prints reasonably quickly and consistently, and the initial price includes enough ink for up to 14,000 mono and 11,200 color pages.
Best inkjet printer for running costs
It might seem like a lot to pay for such a basic mono print-only device, but that £266 (around US$350) includes enough ink to print up to 6,000 pages. Epson’s EcoTank system allows you to top up with black ink from affordable refill bottles that can be recycled more easily than cartridges. The printer is equipped with Wi-Fi and duplex printing, and it can manage a reasonable speed of 15 crisp and consistent pages per minute.
Best budget inkjet printer
The Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4820DWF is a fine example of how much you can get out of a mid-priced office-oriented inkjet all-in-one these days. This is a full-color printer with an auto duplex, an automatic document feed, a high-res flatbed scanner, and a fax modem. It can print faster than some laser printers in its fastest monochrome mode, but being an inkjet, it can also print decent-quality photos onto glossy paper. The ink cartridges cost should be considered as they are not the cheapest. However, this model is still competitive, especially if you sign up for Epson’s ReadyPrint subscription ink service, which mails replacement cartridges to your door.
Best all-purpose inkjet printer
This talented four-in-one inkjet printer can dual-scan and auto duplex, which makes it a very useful copier. It can do this with wide format A3 paper, as well as A4, which sets it apart from the crowd. It is aimed at the business user, so there’s a fax facility and an NFC module to use a smartphone to trigger and pick up your own private print jobs in a shared office. There’s an ADF (automatic document feed) for copying a stack of documents and room for plenty of paper in the main paper tray, be that A4 or A3. There’s even a handy USB Host port at the front for walk-up printing from a flash memory drive. And all this for a very competitive price.
Read our full Epson WorkForce WF-7715DWF review.
Best inkjet printer for photos
Canon’s MegaTank printers go from strength to strength, and this print-only device proves that refillable ink tanks are the future for inkjet printers. The Canon PIXMA G5050 can duplex print color documents, and there’s room for half a ream of paper in the main tray. It can also print detailed photos onto coated photo paper, but it can do all this at a much lower cost per page than any cartridge-based inkjet. Moreover, the box includes enough black ink for 18,000 pages and color ink for 7,700 pages.
Best high-capacity inkjet printer
The Canon MAXIFY iB4150 is an inkjet printer for small businesses looking for prompt, reliable color prints with minimal time spent standing beside the printer. With room for a whole ream of paper in its two paper trays and high-yield ink cartridges available capable of delivering up to 2,500 mono, or 1,500 color pages, this printer will take a heavy workload in its stride. It can auto-duplex print and handle envelopes, photo paper, and any size media up to A4. The bundled setup cartridges might not contain much ink, but Canon’s XL cartridges work out at a competitive per-page print cost.
Best all-in-one inkjet printer
Canon’s slick three-in-one printer is user-friendly with its huge touchscreen display and one-touch NFC connectivity for your smartphone. There are convenient slots for an SD card and USB flash drive too. It prints and scans at high resolution, and instead of four, it uses six separate ink cartridges to achieve superior fidelity when printing color photos. It’s a somewhat expensive system, but worth it for the more professional finish.
Best budget inkjet printer for refills
Canon’s cartridge-free printers are particularly easy to top up whenever you see the ink in the window getting low, and they come with plenty more ink in the box, enough to print 7,700 full-color images or 18,000 in black and white.
It’s small enough to sit on a desk without taking over and big enough to hold 250 sheets of paper. Wi-Fi is built in, auto duplex printing is covered, and the print and scan resolutions are good and high. It also prints a beautifully bold photo and crisp text that won’t run, thanks to a pigment black ink.
To save some money on Canon products, check out our Canon coupon codes.
Read our full Canon Pixma G6050 review.
Best budget inkjet printer for photos
The inexpensive HP Envy 5055 (known as the Envy 5010 in the UK) all-in-one printer looks a little different from inkjet models costing twice the price and lacks features. It will print, scan and copy at high resolution and at a reasonable speed, and dual-band Wi-Fi is built-in. It can be controlled by a decent touchscreen or an excellent companion app for iOS/Android devices. A set of replacement ink cartridges costs more than the machine, but a subscription to HP Instant Ink keeps this cost down.
We've also tested the best 3D printers.
Best inkjet printers: FAQs
Which is best - inkjet printer or laser?
Whether it's the best home printer or a business printer for your office, when it comes to inkjet vs laser, there are some clear differences.
The best Inkjet printers are fairly inexpensive to buy, but they're slower to print and use ink cartridges that can be expensive in the long term.
Laster printers, on the other hand, are typically very expensive to buy - and are often aimed at professionals and business. However, they have excellent printing speeds and toners are cheaper to buy in the long run.
How to choose the best inkjet printer
When deciding which inkjet printer is best, there are a few considerations you'll need to maker. Firstly, is inkjet the right choice?
Inkjet printers are cheap to buy, but cost more over time when paying for ink, and they're not always fast when it comes to print speed. Conversely, laser printers are fast and cheap to run, but cost a lot more in the initial outlay.
For that reason, budget is another key consideration. You'll find plenty of the best cheap printers use this technology, and these inkjet models don't skimp too much on the print quality.
At the basic level, check your chosen printer's capacity (so you're not endlessly refilling the paper tray), print speed, and resolution, for maximum clarity and detail in your print-outs.
Functionality and features are important, too. Some of the best all-in-one printers are inkjet models, capable of scanning, photocopying, and much more. Also check for duplex printing tools if you're looking to print double-sided, and an auto-document feeder (ADF) if you're looking to save time. If you're a business, look for additional security settings, too.
Also consider what you're printing, and what size. Inkjet printers are particularly good for printing photographs, making them the best photo printers. However, most only allow prints up to A4 size, meaning the best A3 printers and the best large format printers may be a better choice for big print jobs.
Wireless connectivity might be an additional deal-breaker, and for those remote working size and weight might also be important considerations so as to not have the inkjet printer take up too much space in the home office.
Have a preferred brand? We’ve tested, reviewed, and rated the best HP printers, the best Epson printers, and the best Brother printers.
How we test the best inkjet printers
Our review team have tested many of the best printers, best small business printers, and the best printers for Mac. But whether it's inkjet, laser, or ink tank models, we undertake a full a rigorous review process.
Each inkjet printer we source for testing is measured on our test bench, and the results are critically compared with every other inkjet 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. The overall score reflects all of these parameters and overall value for money.
Find out more about how we test, review, and rate printers on TechRadar Pro.
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