Looking for the best wireless printer for home working or for a small office? This guide will help you pick the right model for you – and show you the best prices available right now.
An upside of working from home is that you’re not stuck behind the same desk all day long. Thanks to your home Wi-Fi network, you can stay in bed a little longer in the morning and still check out your emails, do a little work at the kitchen table over a leisurely breakfast, maybe create a few documents with your feet up on the sofa, and even chill out with some work in the garden, if it’s not actually too chilly.
Naturally, your newfound freedom can be somewhat limited if you need to be tethered to your printer via a USB cable. Thankfully, pretty much all of the current range of leading printers comes complete with built-in Wi-Fi connectivity. This enables you to hook up the wireless printer to your home network without the need for cables, and to print from anywhere around the home. Some go further still, with companion apps for printing direct from smartphones and tablets, from anywhere around the world.
The same printer won’t suit everyone. Some of us need a printer just for working from home, whereas others might want one mainly for printing photos, with just some occasional document printing on the side. We’ve picked out the best wireless printer models on the market to suit a wide range of requirements and preferences. Read on to find your perfect printing partner.
The best wireless printers in 2020
Canon has a long and illustrious history in manufacturing 5-ink printers. They feature pigment-based black for crisp, high-quality mono text documents, along with dye-based cyan, yellow, magenta and black inks which are specially formulated for delivering superb color photo quality. The TS6320/6350 builds on the rich PIXMA heritage to give excellent performance with brisk print and copy speeds. Smart handling touches include a motorized output tray that extends automatically when you print, an internal input cassette that’s ideal for regular paper, and a rear-feeder which is perfect for slotting in photo paper as and when you need to. Automatic duplex is also featured. You can wirelessly print, copy, scan and access the cloud with the Canon PRINT app, with the proviso that you need to use genuine Canon ink cartridges for scanning to the cloud and email to be enabled. Wireless printing via AirPrint (iOS) and Mopria (Android) is also available.
There’s no point spending a lot on a fast, flashy printer if you only need to print the occasional few pages or photos. This entry-level PIXMA printer is relatively cheap to buy and it’s quite compact too, so doesn’t take up much space. Unlike most PIXMA printers, it only uses four inks, which are contained in just two cartridges - one for black and the other being a tri-color cartridge holding cyan, magenta and yellow. This can increase running costs if you print a lot of one particular color, but at least XL (extra-large capacity cartridges) are available. Print speeds are a bit on the slow side and duplex printing can only be done manually but, overall, it’s a neat budget printer that produces good-quality output. It also enables printing and scanning to the cloud via Canon’s PRINT app, with AirPrint or Morpria.
Amazingly compact and lightweight, this is the world’s smallest all-in-one printer. Despite its diminutive dimensions, it can create anything from 3x5-inch to full A4 or 8.5x14-inch documents. However, due to the downsized design, there’s no flatbed scanner. Instead, you need to feed individual pages for scanning through a motorized transport system at the top. The printer is available in white, or white with either blue or ‘sea foam green’ accents, to fit in with your home décor. Ink is housed in a pigment-based black cartridge and tri-color dye-based cartridge. A neat Wi-Fi advantage is that HP’s Instant Ink program is available which, for a small monthly fee, automatically alerts HP when you’re running low on ink, triggering the sending of replacement cartridges in the post. Further Wi-Fi bonuses include easy printing from your smartphone or tablet, and HP’s mobile solutions including AirPrint, Wi-Fi Direct, HP ePrint and HP AiO Printer Remote app, which includes scanning to email.
Building on the versatility of most all-in-one printers that feature a built-in scanner for photocopying or scanning documents and pictures, this Epson model adds a 30-sheet auto document feeder. This makes it much less of a chore to scan or copy multi-page documents or a stack of pictures. What’s more, it also has built-in fax capability, so it can send and receive faxes directly via a phone socket, rather than needing to operate through a mobile or desktop app. The printer makes the most of Wi-Fi too, with Wi-Fi Direct. You can also send documents to print from smart devices using Epson’s iPrint app, while Epson Email Print makes it possible for the printer to receive files from almost anywhere around the world. With only four inks on tap, it’s not ideal for photo printing but does a good job of both mono and color documents.
This printer is available in a naked Tango edition, as well as a Tango X edition that includes a stylish wraparound cover. It’s purely a Wi-Fi printer a Wi-Fi printer so has no USB port, but it has a particularly good range of wireless features. Thanks to companion apps for tablets and smartphones, you can easily print from anywhere around the home, down the street or from the other side of the world. You can also use your smart device’s camera as an input device to scan documents and share them via the cloud, email them, or print them to your Tango. HP’s optional Instant Ink plan helps to ensure that you never run out of ink, and you can also receive notifications from your printer, sent direct to your smartphone. All in all, it’s a clever little device but, as with other 4-ink printers, photo quality isn’t the best.
The accepted selling model for inkjet printers is that manufacturers sell the hardware relatively cheaply and make their money on ink cartridge supplies. Epson EcoTank printers take a different approach. They’re pricey to buy but come with relatively huge bottles of ink, which pour into separate tanks, leaving cartridges out of the equation altogether. Indeed, this printer comes with enough ink for printing up to 4,500 mono pages or 7,500 color document pages. Other high-volume-friendly features include auto duplex printing, a 30-sheet auto document feeder and direct faxing with a 100-name/number speed dial memory. Wi-Fi Direct is featured, for peer-to-peer connectivity without a Wi-Fi router, and you can print from smart devices using the Epson iPrint app.
A step up from Canon’s 5-ink printers, this model goes one better with six separate ink cartridges. Along with the usual mix of pigment-based black and dye-based CMYK, it features an additional ‘photo blue’ ink for more vivid photo output with even smoother graduations. For our money, it’s the best A4/letter sized photo printer on the market, but it’s equally adept at document printing. Mono and color print speeds are fast and there’s an auto duplex facility. A motorized tilting front panel and output tray add refinement, along with auto paper width detection, which can save setup time when using different types of paper. Dual input paths include an internal cassette and rear feeder. You can control the printer from a smartphone or tablet, complete with print, copy and scan functions and linking to the cloud via the Canon PRINT app, or print with AirPrint and Mopria.
The vast majority of home Wi-Fi printers can only create Letter-sized A4 output, whereas specialist 13-inch A3+ professional photo printers are expensive to buy. This Epson printer strikes a good balance. It enables A3/11x17-inch printing, as well as panoramic or banner printing up to 11.7x44 inches in size. Meanwhile, the EcoTank system based on large ink tanks rather than conventional cartridges gives it plenty of stamina for the long haul. The printer is supplied with enough ink to create 14,000 mono or 9,000 color documents, or up to 3,400 6x4-inch photos. Scanning and photocopying is available but the built-in scanner is only a normal page size. Wi-Fi bonuses include the Epson iPrint app for remote printing and the Creative Print app for creating photo prints, greeting cards and coloring books from you Facebook photos.
Like other low-cost ‘laser’ printers, this Brother model is based on an LED array rather than actual laser technology. Even so, it’s a fast, high-performance printer, capable of delivering mono or color prints at up to 25 pages per minute. You can photocopy or scan to your computer, as well as sending direct faxes, all of which take advantage of a built-in auto document feeder. A 3.7-inch touchscreen makes for easy menu navigation. Running costs are fairly competitive for mono printing but a bit pricey for color. The printer is well-connected, adding NFC to the usual range of USB, Wi-Fi and Ethernet options. This makes it easy and secure to print from smart mobile devices.
This LED-based Color LaserJet Pro is very effective for a busy home working environment or for the small office. It has a 50-sheet auto document feeder and features auto duplex for copying, scanning and fax, as well as for scanning direct to email and PDF. The ‘fdw’ version is Wi-Fi enabled, with dual band Wi-Fi and supports AirPrint and Google Cloud Print. The printer boasts rapid print speeds of 27 pages per minute for both mono and color output, and the supplied cartridges should last for around 2,400 mono pages and 1,200 color pages. For high-volume printing, an optional 550-sheet supplemental paper input tray is available, taking the overall input capacity up to 850 sheets. Handling is enhanced by an intuitive 4.3-inch color touchscreen.
Read more:
• Everything photographers need to work at home
• The best large format printer
• The best photo printing online: top services from around the web
• The best photo printer 2020: desktop photo printers compared
• The best portable printers
• The best all-in-one printer
• The best film scanners
