The best photo printers (2023)

The best photo printers are perfect for making hard copies of your digital photos at home. 

Like all the best printers on the market, when it comes to printers for photos, you'll find lots of different models. These include everything from heavy-duty, office-based devices to portable printers that fit right on your desk at home or in your photography studio. 

To help you find the right model, we've tested over a hundred different printers to find the best photo printer for you. As part of our comprehensive review process, we've compared each model's set-up, performance, and print quality across a broad range of uses, from professional photo printers for the studio to the best ones for the home. We've also assessed price to see if it offers value for money.

We've shortlisted inkjet photo printers only - this is because liquid ink is best to achieve high resolutions and color gamut for photography printing. And only inkjets can print on dedicated glossy photo paper. 

For alternatives, see our round up of the best laser printer and the best all-in-one printers. 

The quick list

Below, you’ll find our picks of the best photo printers for a quick reference and to help you make the right choice. If you’re interested in one, simply click on “Read more below” to jump to a more detailed review along with our price comparison tool to help you find the best price available. 

The best photo printers 2023

The best photo printer overall

The Canon PIXMA G620/G650 lacks too many features for us to recommend it as an all-round all-in-one for everyday use, but as a photo printer, it’s hard to beat. It prints monochrome pages slowly and only offers manual duplex so you have to turn the paper over yourself to print the other side. There’s no touchscreen, no memory card slots, no Ethernet port and no main paper tray. All blank paper has to go in via the rear tray, which can only hold a maximum 100 sheets of plain paper. 

This is where the good news starts because it can accept a very wide range of paper including magnetic photo paper, card stock and printable fabric. It performed beautifully during our time with it as well, printing extremely well on coated photo paper, thanks to its set of six vivid dye-based inks. We found the extra red and grey extra helpful in achieving superior color fidelity, and the enhanced print resolution resulted in superb print quality. 

Best of all though, this is a MegaTank printer which means the bottled ink refills are a fraction of the cost of cartridge ink and there’s loads of ink in the box.

Read our full Canon PIXMA G620/G650 review

Best budget photo printer

This humble three-in-one can print, scan and copy, but it is most at home when turning out surprisingly vibrant photos. As is often the case with budget inkjet printers, the supplied starter cartridges are somewhat light on ink. However, if you replace them with high-capacity carts, the running cost is also quite competitive. 

Four individual cartridges combine to give bright images on glossy photo paper up to A4 in size. It can also duplex print regular text documents, albeit at a fairly slow print speed. Frustratingly, there’s no Ethernet or USB port for printing from a flash drive, and it churns very slowly, but the results are better than you might expect from such a small and affordable AOI.

We have yet to put this budget photo printer through the paces, but what we do know is that it's enjoyed lofty 4+ rating from verified customers on HP and Amazon. The only thing about this printer is that it has been discontinued and now has limited stock. The good news is that we might be replacing this with a newer, more available budget option soon.

Best professional photo printer

This must be the ultimate A3 photo printer. For starters, it’s a sleek, practical design with a large tilting touchscreen interface and the ability to print on any kind of paper up to A3+. Secondly, it uses six individual inks to create superior quality prints. Best of all, it’s an EcoTank, which means you’re not tied to cartridges, and you’ll find enough bottled ink in the box to print 2,300 photos. 

Yes, it is rather expensive for an inkjet, but Epson’s bottled ink is not, so you will soon see that money back if you plan to print lots of large photos. The printer itself is also very well specified, with excellent connectivity, high print, and scan resolution, and a surprisingly prompt print speed.

More importantly, the Epson EcoTank ET-8550 performed well during our tests, faring particularly well when printing photos on glossy photo paper, thanks it large part to the 180 nozzles per colour and 360 black nozzles that deliver very finely detailed prints. Each print is vibrant and well-contained on coated paper, and if you're looking for colors that truly pop, this one's a winner and worth the steep price.

Read our full Epson EcoTank ET-8550 review

Best A3 photo printer

The Epson Expression Photo HD XP-15000 uses six high-quality Claria ink cartridges to achieve a more lifelike color palette when printing photos. Combining dye and pigment-based inks means bright colors are possible, while black-and-white text documents remain long-lasting and smudge resistant.

Its ability to handle A3+ sized paper makes it the best large-format printer when printing super-sized photos or collages on a single sheet of A3 photo paper. It also functions very well as a regular A4 printer thanks to a surprisingly fast output of 29 black and white A4 pages per minute and the ability to print on both sides of the paper (auto duplex).

Though we're still in the process of testing this photo printer, we're pre-emptively adding it to the list due to its features and initial impressions. Keep an eye out for our review to discover more about its real-world performance.

Best budget A3+ photo printer

A more affordable A3+ printer than the Epson Expression Photo HD XP-15000 is the Canon Pixma Pro-100S.

Aimed at professional and enthusiast photographers, this high-quality photo printer achieves superior color fidelity by drawing on eight individual inkjet cartridges to create detailed prints on photo paper sizes up to A3+. And instead of pigmented inks, Canon has specified brighter dye-based inks for prints that look good enough for gallery display. Pigment ink is more durable, but you can expect to display dye-based photos for around thirty years before fading occurs.

The Canon PIXMA Pro-100S is a sizable and solid desktop design that uses metal components in its print engine to guarantee accurate high-resolution results on large sheets of paper. It prints quickly on anything from individual 6x4” photo paper to borderless A3+ posters. 

On test, it churned out borderless A3 prints on Canon's glossy Photo Paper Plus around six minutes per print at maximum quality and A4 media around three minutes and 14 seconds. We also found that disabling the borderless feature sped things up to one minute and 25 seconds. That's not even to mention the fact that it delivers impeccable and stunning prints every time.

Read our full Canon Pixma Pro-100 review

Best photo printer for home

Despite its sleek dimensions, this smooth 3-in-1 inkjet device can print on A3-size paper and uses not four but six inkjet cartridges to achieve superior color accuracy. It means your ink costs are rather high, but it’s worth it if you want beautifully shaded results. 

The scanner is only A4-size, but it makes very high-resolution scans, and combined with the high print resolution, you can make nearly identical color copies. There is no fax, and print speeds are slow, but in all other respects, the Epson Expression Photo XP-970 is hard to beat. 

The main paper tray can hold 100 sheets with a maximum paper size of 8.5 x 11 inches. The second paper tray can hold 20 sheets of photo paper with dimensions of 5 x 7 inches. For an idea of its performance, you can read our review of the almost identical Epson Expression Photo XP-960.

Best compact 4-in-1 photo printer

This is Canon’s most affordable MegaTank model, making it cost-effective. You can expect a drastic reduction in your ongoing print costs by ditching cartridges for refillable reservoirs, especially as the box includes enough ink for 6,000 mono and 7,000 color pages. 

Behind that headline feature, this is a fairly basic four-in-one printer with just enough key features to make it suitable for home use or a small office. It prints very slowly and cannot automatically print on both sides of the page. And sadly, we found that it lacks the resolution to show all the detail in high-resolution images. '

However, the photos it churned out during testing were very bold in color, and if you don't need highly-detailed images anyway, this shouldn't be a deal-breaker. For anyone planning to run out of many color documents, this compact and pleasingly designed AOI will beat most of the competition on per-page running costs.

Read our full Canon Pixma G4510 review

Best photo printer with a supertank

The Epson EcoTank ET-2720, known as the Epson EcoTank ET-2715 in the UK, is the most affordable of the color Supertank printers in Epson’s extensive range and one of the most economical ways of printing photos available right now. And if that doesn’t tempt the bargain-hunters, it ships with enough ink in the box to last two years (or 4,500 color pages). 

With bottled ink costing around 80% lower than cartridge ink, you won’t need to worry about your ongoing consumables cost. This is great news for anyone intending to print lots of color photographs. The high image resolution makes this all-in-one well-suited to printing on glossy photo paper. It will also function well in a small office environment thanks to its fast print speed and sensible features.

We will be testing the Epson EcoTank ET-2720 soon so we can give you a more accurate idea of its photo printing performance.

Best budget photo printer for office

HP’s oddly shaped all-in-one comes with comprehensive features, although it is, first and foremost, a photo printer. The print resolution is high enough to make your photos look sharp and colorful when printed on glossy. There’s also a handy SD card slot for printing directly from your camera’s memory card. 

This four-in-one can auto-duplex print at a reasonable rate for regular monochrome text documents. It even has a fax facility. Thankfully, a touchscreen control panel can access all this functionality. The only catch is the high cost of its replacement cartridges. And with the three colors combined in one tri-color cartridge, you will certainly waste ink. 

You could reduce the cost of new cartridges by signing up for HP’s Instant Ink service, although we wouldn’t recommend it unless you can commit to printing regularly.

• We've also highlighted the best small business printers
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Best photo printers: FAQs

How we test the best photo printers

Each printer we source for testing is measured on our test bench, and the results are critically compared with every other model we have 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.

Specifically for photo printers, we looked at their versatility (both in terms of management and media handling), paying closer attention to the print output and the cost of the consumables (ink cartridges, etc.). 

You can find out more about our comprehensive testing process in How we test, review and rate printers on TechRadar Pro.

• Best small business printers: From a mono laser to a high-end multifunction printer