Brother Color Laser Printer Best Buy
The best printers make it easy to print all your documents, photos and other hardcopies. Whether you want basic document printing for homework assignments, high-grade photo printing for frameable portraits, or something that handles scanning, copying and even faxing, there's a printer out there that fits the bill. Do you want an all-in-one inkjet or a black-and-white laser printer? In this article we'll help you decide what you want, and find the printer that best fits your needs.
brother color laser printer best buy
There's much more to the cost of a printer than just the purchase price: Ink costs can eat away the savings you expected from your affordable device. If you want one of the best home printers with the most affordable ink, we recommend the Brother INKvestment MFC-J995DW. The all-in-one inkjet printer features extra-large ink cartridges, and comes with an estimated years' supply of ink in the box, which adds up to the lowest per-page ink costs we've seen.
The Canon Pixma TR8620 offers plenty of office features, from scanning and faxing to a 20-page automatic document feeder (ADF), a duplexer for two-sided printing, and two paper trays for keeping two types of paper at the ready. A big 4.3-inch color touchscreen makes it easy to control, and the printer supports smart home integration with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.
It's also a great home printer, with faster-than-average print speeds and high print quality overall. Text and color graphics all look great, but we noted that glossy photos printed impressively fast, and the use of a 5-ink cartridge system with two types of black ink resulted in photos with high-quality accuracy: Natural-looking colors, sharp details and smooth transitions. Really, our only big complaint with the Pixma TR8620 is the above average cost of ink, due partially to the expense of the extra ink cartridge.
The Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5850 combines impressively low ink costs with an abundance of business-friendly features to take its place as the best small business inkjet printer we've reviewed. The EcoTank design uses refillable ink tanks and comes with enough spare ink bottles to print thousands of pages. A small business printer rated to print more than 3,000 pages per month, it's more than capable of handling whatever your team might throw at it. The printer boasts scan, copy and fax capability, dual 250-page paper cassettes, a 50-sheet automatic document feeder and a large, easy-to-use 4.3-inch touchscreen for convenient operations.
In timed printer tests, the Epson ET-5850 delivered some of the fastest printing we've seen, and produced crisp, clear text that nearly rivals laser printer quality. That same quick, high-quality performance was also seen in copying and scanning, making it the printer of choice for offices that need a full featured multifunction printer. But the real draw is the ink savings, extremely low per-page costs of 0.4 cents for text pages, and 1.6 cents per color page. The upfront price may be high, but the combination of quality, features and super-low operating expenses make this one of the best investments you can make for your office.
The Canon ImageClass MF743Cdw is an all-in-one color laser printer that offers great performance and plenty of features, like a large touch screen and duplex printing. But with a monthly page volume of up to 4,000 pages, it's meant for the office rather than the home. Business users will love the built in 50-sheet automatic document feeder, 550-sheet paper cassette, and work-friendly features like two-sided scanning and low printing costs.
The performance is also top notch, with sharp text, clear graphics and faster-than-average printing of mixed text and graphics. Fast scan and copy speeds are a plus, and the color laser printer has one of the easiest setup options available. That's enough for us to declare the Canon ImageClass MF743Cdw one of the best all-in-one printers and our favorite laser printer for small business users.
The Brother HL-L2390DW is a monochrome all-in-one printer that offers one thing rarely seen in a laser printer: a low price of entry. And while the cost may catch the eye of home and small-office users, its performance and feature set are nothing to scoff at, either. Prints are sharp and faster than average; this printer handles scans and copies quickly, as well. And while the printer is monochrome, the full-color scanner delivers true-to-life color capture and fast scanning.
But it's not just affordable at purchase; operating costs are low, too, with a cost per page of 3.7 cents using standard-capacity toner cartridges and just 2.7 cents with high-capacity toner. If you want the benefits of a laser printer without the usual expense, the Brother HL-L2390DW is our best budget pick for you.
The Pixma TR150 made high-quality photos faster than other competing portable printers, and delivered excellent color and detail. It can also handle larger photo prints, but unlike some of our photo printing favorites, there is no copy or scan capability. You do get a solidly built portable printer with optional battery and even support for Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant voice controls, but we love it for the great photos and low ink costs it offers.
The HP Envy 7855 lives up to its jealousy-tinged name as a stylish all-in-one inkjet printer. It's one of the best home office printers, offering solid print performance across the board. But in addition to printing documents, scanning and copying on the flatbed scanner, and even faxing, the Envy 7855 is also a very good photo printer, handling everything from small, wallet-sized photos to borderless 8 x 10s.
Finding the right printer starts with defining what you need that printer to do. There's a drastic difference between a large multifunction printer that will copy, scan and fax and a pocket-sized photo printer that's perfect for printing snapshots on the go. The best place to start is to narrow down what functions you want, and what aspects of printing are most important to you.
Inkjet or Laser: Inkjet printers are generally better at producing the full range of colors, making them more suited for printing graphics and photos. Laser printers, on the other hand, can quickly produce professional looking text documents often at a lower cost per page.
Print quality comes down to how well the printer lays ink on the page, and whether it produces sharp details and legible letterforms. Most inkjet printers deliver "good enough" levels of quality, but if you want crisp looking text every time, you'll probably want a laser printer. And photo printing varies widely between general use printers, so check out the recommended models on our best photo printers list.
Ink costs are an ongoing concern for any printer, since ink refills are part of the operating expenses for any printer. Ink can get very expensive, but some new models are designed to reduce both the expense and the hassle of finding the right ink cartridges. And this isn't purely an issue for inkjet printers, as laser printers use toner cartridges. Look for a lower cost-per-page and check out our reviews for a detailed discussion of how print costs might make one printer better than another.
Three ways to cut printing costs to a minimum include: Switching to a laser printer, opting for a tank-based inkjet printer, or signing up for a subscription ink service. (See our articles Inkjet vs. Laser: Which printer is right for you? and HP Instant Ink vs. Canon vs. Epson: Are ink subscriptions worth it? to learn more.)
Every printer we review is extensively tested to give us a clear idea of how well it performs, both in print capability, but also general ease of use and expense over time. Our testing procedures include timed print tests to determine print speeds, with a set of standardized documents that have a mix of text and graphics and color photos.
These specific tests are adapted as needed to handle all sorts of printers, from monochrome laser printers and portable snapshot printers to full-featured all-in-one inkjets. Wherever possible, we make sure that the tests are done in such a way that they can not only be compared within a specific category, but also across all printer types generally.
All-in-one printers come in a vast range of sizes and prices, as well as print technologies (like inkjet and laser). What these devices can do, along with their print quality, print speed and how much each cost to maintain varies. For example, color all-in-one laser printers can quickly print color pages, but these tend to be rather costly to both purchase and maintain.
The front of the printer has a 1.8-inch color touchscreen display and a full touchpad. You can also control it using the Brother Mobile Connect app or Amazon Alexa voice commands. Print wirelessly from Apple iPhone, iPad or Mac devices using Apple AirPrint, or use Wi-Fi Direct to print from Windows PCs and Android-based devices. You can also scan and print directly from popular cloud storage services, including Google Cloud, Dropbox and OneDrive. This model has automatic two-sided printing, but not scanning. The automatic document feeder can handle 20 pages at a time.
The Brother L-2710DW a low-cost, monochrome, all-in-one laser printer which even includes fax capabilities. This model is a good choice for quickly printing multi-page documents with crisp, easy-to-read text. This model has a fast 32 ppm print speed. The printer works with paper sizes up to 8.5 x 14 inches, but also prints on envelopes and labels.
While it works best with 20-pound laser paper (or multipurpose copy paper), it can handle up to 24-pound paper in the paper tray or up to 61-pound paper in the manual sheet feeder. A Brother TN730 standard yield toner cartridge ($45) will produce about 1,200 pages, while a Brother TN760 high-yield cartridge ($80) will produce up to 3,000 pages.
The first decision to make is whether you want an inkjet printer or laser printer. Each uses a different printing technology, with laser printers typically generating printed documents with a professional-level quality and crisp, sharp text. Inkjet printers, however, are much better at generating photo lab-quality prints from your digital images. And for the best photo prints, look for an inkjet with a six-color ink system and that prints at a higher resolution. 041b061a72
