Printers: How to buy the best printer Buying the best inkjet printer

An all-in-one inkjet printer can do a bit of everything and prices start as low as £30.

Inkjet printers are the most common type of home printer. They tend to be smaller than laser printers, so they're more convenient for small home work surfaces.

Inkjets are cheaper

They're generally cheaper than laser printers. You can get an all-in-one inkjet colour printer (that can print, copy and scan) for as little as £25. All-in-one colour laser printers cost upwards of £100 and take up more desk space.
A4 inkjet printers that only print - sometimes referred to as 'single function printers' - are rare now.
You can still find a couple of models in high street stores, but with the low price of all-in-ones, even if you think you'll rarely use the copier function you won't be paying any more up front to have a copier in your printer.
Manufacturers make money from sales of ink, so they want to you use more of it, whether that's by printing or copying.

Inkjets are better for photos

If you want to print photos, an inkjet printer is your best option - they generally print better photos than laser printers.
Text speed isn't likely to be as fast as with a laser printer though.
You can find out which are the best inkjet printers in our inkjet printer reviews.

What makes a good inkjet printer?

• Good print quality In our tests we print text, graphics and photos to find the best printers. 
• Good print speed The average inkjet printer can print high quality text pages at around six or seven pages per minute.
• Low ink costs The price of the printer is only the beginning. Ink cartridges can be expensive. We test the running costs of printers to find those that produce the cheapest prints.  Dismiss

Features to look for

• If you regularly print photos Look for an inkjet printer with dual paper trays - this way you won't have to keep swapping paper in and out of the printer when you switch from printing glossy snaps to web pages or documents. Many printers aimed at photo printing include a preview screen, memory card slots and a USB connection on the front
• Paper-saving measures Look for a printer with 'auto-duplexing'. This means you can set the printer up to automatically print on both sides of a page.
• Want to print from more than one device? If you want to be able to print from a tablet or smartphone, look for a wireless printer. If you want to print from an iPad or iPhoe look for 'AirPrint compatibility'. Wi-fi printers also make it simple to print from more than one computer or laptop without trailing cables around. 
• Scan to USB If an all-in-one printer has a USB connection, it's likely you can use the connection to print photos from a USB stick and also to scan documents on the printer directly onto the USB stick without having to turn on your computer. 
• Automatic document feeder Some all-in-ones have an automatic document feeder (ADF). If you're scanning or copying multiple page documents you can put them into the ADF as a stack rather than having to manually lay them on the scanner one page at a time. However, many ADFs can't automatically scan or copy double-sided (duplex copy/scan). Our reviews let you filter to show models that have ADFs which can duplex copy and scan.