The best compact printers can allow you to print photos, documents, and more, in high quality without taking up a lot of space. That's great when you're working out of a small home office, and also helpful if you need to take your printer with you out on the road or to another venue. Some can connect wirelessly to a laptop or tablet, and some even come with rechargeable batteries, so you can use them away from a socket.
To help you find the right one for you, we've tested and reviewed a wide range of options on the market for this guide, and we've chosen the best compact printer for different needs. Compact printers use ordinary A4/Letter-sized paper and will do pretty much everything a larger printer can, just in a more space-efficient way. For even smaller printers, you may want to check out the best portable printers, which smaller, specialized paper sizes.
We found this to be a hugely useful compact printer. Able to handle glossy photo paper as easily plain A4, it has a rechargeable Li-ion battery allowing use without a socket.
This printer is of a similar size but produces five-ink prints for even better quality on both ordinary or photo paper. It packs in a lot of technology for a device that can fit inside a backpack.
If your main priority is photos, this is our pick for a compact photo printer. The XP-8600 is a six-ink printer, and those inks are carefully formulated to enable realistic photo output.
This scaled-down version of a desktop printer enables full-sized printing on letter-sized plain paper and glossy photo paper. And it comes with a built-in color scanner and copier too.
We found this to be a great value compact multifunctional printer. In our tests, the combination of pigment ink plus four dye-based inks delivered well for both mono and color printing.
For a budget-friendly, compact home printer, we recommend this all-in-one, which can print, copy and scan in colour, including automatic two-sided printing and mobile and wireless printing.
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Footprint: 31 x 6.1 x 15.5cm / 12.2 x 2.4 x 6.1in /
Weight: 1.6kg / 3.53lb
Battery: 1 x Li-ion
Compatibility: iOS/Android/Windows/Mac
Available colors: Black
Reasons to buy
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Top-notch print quality for text and graphics on plain paper
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Wi-Fi direct and AirPrint connectivity
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Comes with battery
Reasons to avoid
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Expensive inkjet cartridges
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A little slow
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Not so good for photos
This is our top pick as the best compact printer overall thanks to its versatility and portability. We found it to be a hugely useful compact printer that can handle glossy photo paper as easily as it does plain A4.
It has a rechargeable Li-ion battery built in, so you can use it without a mains connection, and you can connect it to your laptop via Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi Direct. It's a good option for MacBooks because AirPrint is supported too. It's also so compact that it can fit inside a standard backpack, making it ideal if you're looking for a printer that you can take out on the road while still printing standard A4 size.
When we tested it, we found it very easy to set up and get started with. We also liked the results of the pigment-based inks on plain paper, with smudge-resistant crisp black text and vibrant color in graphics. However, while they can print on glossy paper, the results for photos are less impressive. Pigment inks in general are less suited to glossy paper, and the total of four inks isn’t enough for the best photorealistic output. The printer was also a little slower than some other compact printers, and its inkjet cartridges are on the pricey side, so it's probably not the best option if you're going to be printing large numbers of photos or documents.
Footprint: 32.2 x 18.5 x 6.6cm / 2.6x 7.3 x 12.7in
Weight: 2.1kg / 4.63lb
Battery: Optional
Compatibility: iOS/Android/Windows/Mac
Available colors: Black
Reasons to buy
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Optional battery power
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High quality prints
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Fits into a bag
Reasons to avoid
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Battery is optional extra
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No NFC for mobile printing
The second compact printer on our list is of a similar size, although it's a little heavier. It also has a similar price, but it has the advantage of using five inks, which produces great results for colour printing on photo paper. Again, we found it easy to connect to a laptop via USB or Wi-Fi, and it can manage up to nine pages per minute in black and white, which is not too shabby at all for a portable device (color pages are delivered at 5.5 pages a minute).
The downside is that while this can be bought with an optional battery pack, it doesn't come as standard. In some territories you can buy it with a battery as a bundle, while in others the Canon LK-72 battery is sold separately.
Print size: Up to A4/US Letter (15x10cm / 13x18cm for glossy photos)
Connectivity: Wi-Fi, USB
Dimensions: 39.4 x 34 x 14.2cm / 15.4 x 13.3 x 5.6in
Weight: 6.8kg / 14.9lb
Battery: No
Compatibility: Windows/Mac
Reasons to buy
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Quality photo output
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Fast worker
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Six individual inks
Reasons to avoid
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‘Photo paper’ tray has limited size
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Heavier than the printers above
Based on our tests, we think this is the best compact printer for photos. It's a six-ink printer, which already gives it an advantage for creating more precise colour prints, and those six dye-based inks are carefully formulated to enable realistic photo output. Epson even claims the colours will last 300 years if you put your prints in an album.
We found that the colours were actually a little too vivid when we left the default ‘auto corrections’ function on, but after disabling this, we thought prints looked great when using the standard settings. We recorded print times of 13 seconds at standard quality and 52 seconds at high quality for 15x10cm borderless prints. A4 borderless prints took either 50 seconds or 2 minutes 17 seconds. That’s quite quick.
While it's geared towards photos, we found it to do well printing out documents too. You can print wirelessly and from mobile, and we found the touchscreen nice and intuitive to use. There are dual paper trays (one for A4, another for photo paper) and even a built-in scanner, so photocopying is also an option. And it all comes in at an affordable price.
The best all-in-one compact printer for scanning and copying
Our expert review:
Specifications
Paper type: Plain paper / photo paper
Print size: Up to A4/letter
Connectivity: USB, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
Footprint: 38 x 40 x 27cm / 14.97 x 15.8 x 10.6in
Weight: 2.96kg / 6.51lb without battery
Battery: 1 x Li-ion
Compatibility: Windows/Mac
Available colors: Black
Reasons to buy
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Includes a built-in scanner
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Built-in color screen
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Rechargeable battery
Reasons to avoid
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Bigger than most compact printers
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Photo print quality is mediocre
We found the OfficeJet 250 to be effectively a scaled-down version of an all-in-one desktop printer. It allows full-sized printing on letter-sized plain paper and glossy photo paper and comes complete with a built-in color scanner and color screen, enabling easy photocopying on the fly.
We found it to be useful for portable printing and copying since it has its own rechargeable battery pack like our top pick. The printer uses a pigment-based black ink cartridge and a tri-color dye-based cyan, magenta and yellow cartridge. We found that combination made for good results in olor documents but the best for photo output on glossy paper.
Dimensions: 35.9 x 37.6 x 14.1cm / 14.2 x 14.9 x 5.6in
Printer weight: 6.3kg / 13.8lb
Battery: No
Compatibility: Windows/Mac
Reasons to buy
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Lightweight
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Quality inkjet
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Good cloud printing options
Reasons to avoid
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Not very portable
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Cartridges can be pricey
For value for money, we highly recommend the Canon Pixma TS6350. It's a serious inkjet printer that uses Canon's Chromalife100 inks, making for durable, high-quality results whether you're printing documents or photos. We think the price is very good when you consider the quality and speed, and the fact that the device provides printing, scanning and copying, although the inks aren't the cheapest to replace, so the cost will start to add up if you print a lot.
When we tested it, we found print speeds to be impressively quick: around 15 pages per minute for mono documents and 10ppm for color, while 6x4-inch photo output at optional quality settings took 19 seconds (normal) or 43 seconds (high). The automatic duplex printing worked well for double-sided output flipped on either the long or short edge. We also found it very easy to use for cloud printing, with the option to choose between the Canon PRINT app, AirPrint on iOS and Mopria on Android.
Dimensions: 43.2 x 51.1 x 13.2cm / 17.03 x 20.14 x 5.2in
Printer weight: 5.22kg / 11.5lbs
Battery: No
Compatibility: Windows/Mac
Reasons to buy
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Scan, print and copy
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Great value
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Easy to set up
Reasons to avoid
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Not as small and light as some compact printers
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Not the fastest
If you're looking for a budget friendly, compact home printer that all the family can use, we think the HP Envy 6020e offers great value. It allows you to print, copy and scan in colour and has automatic two-sided printing and mobile and wireless printing.
The price includes six months of Instant Ink, which allows you to print up to 700 pages a month for free when you enrol. We think that makes this a great buy for a family that's likely to use it a lot. On the downside, we found the printing speed of around seven or eight pages per minute is quite slow, and photo printing isn't the best quality.
A relatively compact laser printer for home offices
Our expert review:
Specifications
Paper type: Plain paper
Print size: Up to A4/US Letter
Connectivity: Ethernet, USB
Dimensions: 41.6 x 39 x 34.3cm / 16.2 x 15 x 13.5in
Printer weight: 16.6kg / 36.6lbs
Battery: No
Compatibility: Windows/Mac
Reasons to buy
+
Prints quickly
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Large sheet capacity
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Economic per sheet
Reasons to avoid
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Heavy and definitely not portable
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Premium price
Laser printers are faster and can be more economical in the long run if you print a lot of text documents. Fortunately, business printers no longer have to be enormous. There are now some great professional laser printers out there that won't take up much space, and this is our top pick if you run a small office.
We should qualify that a little. We've included the Kyocera Ecosys P3155dn here because it is relatively compact for a laser printer. That said, it's still much heftier than the other printers on this list and can't be described as portable in any way. However, we found that it can print clear, crisp and precise pages in black-and-white, and very quickly: 55 per minute to be exact. With a maximum capacity of 2,600 sheets, it's a great choice when you need to print a lot of documents, or documents with lots of pages. And although it's a big initial investment, the cost per page does turn out to be very economical.
The best compact printer for you will depend on your priorities. You will need to decide whether you want a printer purely for printing text documents or whether you also want to be able to print decent-quality photos. You will also need to decide how compact you want to go. Some compact printers are small and light enough to carry from place to place with relative ease, while some are much bulkier.
You'll also need to decide if you want the additional functions of scanning and copying. The most compact of small printers tend to only print. However, there are some reasonably compact multifunctional devices available. If you do need these functions, you might want to sacrifice some portability since an all-in-one works out cheaper and has a smaller footprint than separate devices.
Most compact printers are inkjet, but we have also included a laser printer in our list. Laser printers tend to be bulkier and more expensive to buy, but they are much faster, which makes them a better option for businesses that need to print large volumes of text documents. They can be more economical in the long run since they usually work out cheaper per page.
We test as many compact printers as we can get our hands on, and we look at the speed and quality at which they can print documents and photos. We test using a range of printing jobs, from monochrome A4 documents to full-color photographs, and assess the level of detail and color rendition the printer achieves as well as the print speed.
We also consider the printer's running costs – how quickly it burns through ink, and how much its cartridges cost to replace – to get an idea of how good a buy it is in the long term. We also asses build quality and how easy the printer is to use – how easy its menus are to navigate, and the options it provides for connectivity (USB, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc). For compact printers specifically, we have also taken into account size and weight for ease of portability.
Our test procedure begins with installing the latest software drivers and running nozzle check and print head alignment routines. We then create test prints from mono documents, mixed text and graphics color documents, and a wide range of digital photos that include landscapes, portraits, and black & white images. We also create prints from our own specially created test chart to test the printer's accuracy in terms of color reproduction, tonal range, retention of detail in bright highlights and dark shadows, and the ability to deliver smooth gradations in subtle color variations
During testing, we make sure to try the various available quality modes, including optional image enhancement features. For output speed, we record the time taken to produce various sizes of prints at different quality settings. Ink costs are calculated on typical page yield against average prices for the manufacturer’s own-brand cartridges or bottles. The printer manufacturer’s own-brand inks and papers are used throughout the entire testing procedure.
The definition of 'compact' can vary. However, by 'compact printer, we're talking about printers that still use A4/Letter-size paper but are small enough to more easily transport between different workplaces and to put away on a shelf or in a drawer or cupboard when you're not using them.
We've included devices up to a maximum of around 45cm / 17in in width. This is not something you'll want to be carrying around all day on a regular basis, but it's a size of printer that is feasible to put in a large bag for transport while still producing full letter-size prints. Some will connect wirelessly to your laptop or tablet, and some come with rechargeable batteries, so you can use them away from a wall socket.
Naturally, some devices are more compact than others, but while small, these are still designed to be used on a surface such as a desk or shelf. If you want an even smaller printer for using on the go, see our guide to the best portable printers, which use smaller paper sizes.
What is an all-in-one printer?
A couple of the devices in our guide are what are referred to as all-in-one printers, or multifunctional devices. As well as printing, they can also scan and copy. For more options, we have a dedicated guide to the best all-in-one printers for home offices.
Tom May is a freelance writer and editor specializing in art, photography, design and travel. He has been editor of Professional Photography magazine, associate editor at Creative Bloq, and deputy editor at net magazine. He has also worked for a wide range of mainstream titles including The Sun, Radio Times, NME, T3, Heat, Company and Bella.
