Best All-In-One Printers 2024

The best all-in-one printers do so much more than print. They also copy, scan and, in some cases, fax—all while taking up a lot less space than three or four separate machines. Thanks to their versatility, all-in-one printers provide a great deal of flexibility and convenience at home or in the office. Today, HP, Canon, Epson and many other brands have all-in-one printer options. So, which ones are worth buying?

Our team of tech and printer-testing experts narrowed down twelve of the best all-in-one printers available. Right now, our overall favorite is the Canon Maxify MegaTank GX7021. It’s a solid choice for a home printer or for families with a variety of printing needs. But if you’re looking for something more affordable, we like the value-packed Brother MFC-J5855DW printer. Read on to see more of our top picks and what to consider before buying your own all-in-one printer.

• Best All-In-One Printer Overall: Canon Maxify MegaTank GX7021
• Best Value All-In-One Home Printer: Brother MFC-J5855DW
• Best All-In-One Printer For Home Use: Epson EcoTank ET-3830
• Best Fast Inkjet All-In-One Printer: HP OfficeJet Pro 9015e
• Best All-In-One Printer For Families: Canon Pixma MegaTank G3260
• Best Budget All-In-One Printer: Brother INKvestment Tank MFC-J4335DW
• Best All-In-One Printer For Small Businesses: Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5850
• Best All-In-One Monochrome Laser Printer: HP LaserJet Tank MFP 2604sdw

How We Chose The Best All-In-One Printers

To assemble our list of the best all-in-one printers, we combined thorough research with hands-on testing. Several of the picks on this list were tested by our team, including the Canon Maxify MegaTank GX7021 (best all-in-one printer overall), the Brother MFC-J5855DW (best value all-in-one printer) and the HP OfficeJet Pro 9015e (best fast inkjet all-in-one printer).

As for the other picks on the list, we relied on our staff’s vast tech experience to determine what products made the cut. We carefully evaluated each printer’s price, speed, resolution, features, connectivity and brand reputability. We then checked that each printer had great customer reviews (no less than four stars).

How To Choose The Best All-In-One Printers

If you’re looking at all-in-one printers, this means you seek one device that serves as a printer, copier, scanner and potentially a fax machine. All-in-one printers vary widely according to make and model, so buyers should pay close attention to specs and printer design to get the best value and functionality for their money. Each model offers a slightly different assortment of features, functions and specifications.

“All-in-ones have large price gaps primarily based on technology and features,” confirms Valerie Alde-Hayman, senior analyst for printers at consumer research firm Gap Intelligence. When reviewing printer options, you can expect to “see higher prices for printers if they have faster print speeds, duplexing capabilities (especially for duplex scanning), larger paper handling capabilities and touchscreen displays.”

When shopping for an all-in-one printer, you may encounter different names for this hardware, such as Multifunction printer (MFP) or multifunction copier (MFC), but they mean the same thing: Whether they’re inkjet or laser printers, these units can print, scan, copy and fax. Below, we lay out how to choose a great all-in-one printer for your home.

Printer Type (InkJet Or Laser)

The first decision to make is whether you want an inkjet printer or laser printer. Overall, a laser printer’s print quality is superior to that of an inkjet printer. But for the average household, an all-in-one inkjet printer is more economical and versatile than a laser printer. Plus, inkjet print quality is better than ever—especially on printers that use pigment ink. See below for more information comparing the two.

• Laser: Laser printers are a good choice if you print a lot from a home office or have a large family with a lot of diverse printing needs. Monochrome laser printers are fast, reliable and inexpensive. However, they don’t do photos and business documents will miss that splash of color. A color laser printer would address that, but those models are a lot pricier than their monochrome counterparts.
• Inkjet: An inkjet printer is the way to go if your printing needs sometimes include color—or include printing photos. An inkjet printer with ink tanks is the least expensive option. Ink tanks don’t require frequent refills and the refills cost less than ink cartridges.

Home Or Business Use

A major consideration in your selection is where this printer will reside: your home, your office or another location. If you’re buying an all-in-one printer for your business, or you’re concentrating more on text than photos, a laser option is a great choice. Other printer accoutrements for an office environment may include fax, email and an automatic document feeder (ADF) to scan, copy or fax multipage documents. If you seek an all-in-one printer for home use, consider how well it prints photos. If photo printing is a large component of your home use, one with inkjet printer features is the best choice.

Printer Location And Appearance

All-in-one printers are great for the home because they can save space and serve a spectrum of purposes for different family members. Despite modern streamlined designs, home office all-in-ones can still be bulkier and more expensive than traditional, single-function document printers—often featuring large or multiple paper trays. They can also look ungainly in your residence if located in public spaces like the living room or a family room. Be sure to check the size and weight to make sure the machine doesn’t look overwhelmingly out of place or too hard to move.

Consider Your Computer OS

All printers work with Windows, but not all models support the Mac and Linux platforms. If you use multiple computer platforms in your home or office, make sure that the all-in-one printer you choose has drivers for all of them—and be sure to check for differences in features between the major platforms. Even if Mac and Linux are supported, some features may not be supported.

Buy Only What You Need

With all-in-one printers, more is better only if it’s needed, as it can dramatically increase its price. For example, in the age of networked communications, faxing may be the least of your priorities, so watch out for fax printers that can potentially add to the cost of the unit. If you rely on email, Dropbox or other forms of internet or cloud document sharing, you want to make sure that the printer you get has cloud sharing options. Likewise, if you never intend to print photos or in color, focus on what you intend to use the printer for—and get an all-in-one printer that maximizes your needs.

Check Print And Scan Quality

Always observe and judge the quality of prints, scans and copies from printer models you’re considering. Whereas in the past, the axiom held that laser printers performed better than inkjets at printing crisp, clean text, that is not universally true anymore. Inkjet technology has improved over the last 20 years so that text output is roughly comparable to lasers, at least for some models.

Differences between the two printer types specifically emerge when printing photos: Inkjets support borderless prints—applying ink right to the edge of the paper—something lasers don’t do. Moreover, inkjets can print on a greater variety of paper stock as compared to lasers, which handle a more limited selection of paper types that are formulated to work with laser toner.

Check Your Speed

Print speeds vary widely even among simple printers of roughly the same class, but when it comes to all-in-ones, check the specs carefully if you print in high volume. If you print only occasionally, speed will factor less into your decision. Many printers calculate two speeds: The time it takes for the first print to move out of the printer and the time it takes to complete a print job, quoted in pages per minute (ppm). If a printer features a draft mode, that is designed to boost print speed, but it will also diminish print quality by consuming less ink or toner.

Monochrome laser printers typically turn out text at a rate of 20 to 30 ppm. Inkjets vary widely in terms of print speed from 10 ppm upwards, depending on the quality of the printer. Black and white documents print the fastest while full color documents are slower. Even today, inkjet printers are generally slower than lasers.

Multipage Document Feeders

While most all-in-one printers feature flat beds for scanning photos or single-sheet documents, an automatic document feeder (ADF) lets you scan, copy, fax or email multipage documents. For all-in-ones with letter-size flatbeds, some but not all ADFs may also let you scan legal-size pages too, so make sure the ADF you’re considering handles the page formats you need.

Printing, Scanning And Duplexing

Many all-in-one printers can scan both sides of a page—known as duplexing. Some all-in-ones that support duplexing operate manually by scanning one side of the document first, and then turning it over and scanning the other side. Others provide a faster one-pass scanning feature, which scans both sides of the page simultaneously. Some all-in-ones feature a print duplexer, which lets you copy both single- and double-sided originals to single- or double-sided copies.

If copying is a major part of your work, be aware that some all-in-one printers require a computer for copy functionality. To use the copy function without a computer, make sure the all-in-one printer can work as a standalone copier. Some all-in-ones can scan only via a USB connection, so if you need networked scanning, make sure your printer supports that feature. Note that some printers may offer auto-duplexing for printing, but not for scanning or copying.

Ink Cost-Per-Page

Ink is generally the most expensive consumable for all printers. The most economical way to keep your printer ready to print the highest quality documents is to consider an inkjet all-in-one printer with ink tanks, like the HP OfficeJet Pro 9015e, or a monochrome laser printer like our pick, the HP LaserJet Tank MFP 2604sdw. Inkjet printers that rely on high-capacity ink tanks instead of color ink cartridges are more economical and can last for years. When they run out, replacement ink is cheaper than traditional color cartridges.

A monochrome laser printer’s toner cartridges are the least inexpensive. A high-capacity toner cartridge can print up to 12,000 pages before it needs replaced, and the HP LaserJet Tank MFP 2604sdw can print up to 5,000 pages—still an impressive number. Color laser toner cartridges are the most expensive of all.

Color Printing And Photos

Color printing becomes major a factor if you intend to print photos on your all-in-one printer, as inkjets are the overwhelming choice for both color printing and photos. Photo-oriented all-in-ones may be able to print from multiple sources like memory cards, USB thumb drives, cameras, slides, negatives and original photo prints. If you specifically need to scan photographic slides or transparencies, make sure those features are listed as functions in the printer documentation.

Inkjet color all-in-ones, like our top pick, the Canon Maxify MegaTank GX7021, feature refillable ink tanks may cost more initially, but are less expensive to maintain over time than printers and run on individual color cartridges that must be individually replaced. Ink tanks not only hold more ink but tend not to dry out as quickly as cartridges.

Among inkjet printers that rely on ink cartridges, consider printer models that store each color in its own cartridge, so that when one color runs low, only one cartridge must be replaced. Printers that use combined tri-color (cyan, magenta and yellow) combo cartridges may be more expensive to operate and maintain, because if one color runs low, you must discard the entire cartridge along with the remaining ink.

Determine Your Networking Requirements

In addition to a USB-A or USB-C port (depending on the model), many all-in-one printers support Ethernet, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Some all-in-ones include Wi-Fi Direct (a peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connection between devices that enables fast data transfer), which allows compatible devices to connect without a wireless router. Some printers now offer near-field communication (NFC) capabilities, which lets you print from a compatible mobile device by tapping the printer with your phone or tablet. Networked printing or scanning will introduce security considerations, so plan to safeguard your network with encryption and password protection.

Most all-in-ones support wireless printing protocols like Apple’s AirPrint for printing from Apple hardware or Mopria-enabled printers that facilitate printing from Android devices. Many printers can also print directly from cloud-based services like Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive or Dropbox.

Why Trust Forbes Vetted

The Forbes Vetted team has years of experience reviewing and writing about the latest and greatest in tech. This includes hand-on testing and thorough research on the best printers for your home, whether that be a laser printer, a photo printer or a 3D printer. In fact, several of the printers featured in this guide were tested firsthand by our tech experts.

Speaking of tech experts, the co-authors of this story, Jason R. Rich and Jackie Dove, have reviewed countless other devices like the best keyboards and the best laser printers. We’ve also built relationships with some of the biggest tech brands and industry experts to help us in-the-know on recent developments. For this article, we spoke to Valerie Alde-Hayman, senior printer analyst at consumer research firm Gap Intelligence, who explained the price gaps between all-in-one printers.

This story is updated frequently to ensure it’s as current and accurate as possible. It was last refreshed in January 2024 to include buying advice on how to choose the best all-in-one printer for your home.

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