Best budget printers 2023: top cheap home printers to buy for your office

First, it’s helpful to determine what you actually mean by affordable. Are you after a printer that’s affordable to buy – or affordable to run (for example, purchasing ink and toner cartridges)? There’s a difference.

Picking an affordable printer for your home can be confusing. You’d think being on a budget would limit your options, but even excluding some of the more expensive models from your list, there’s still a lot of choices out there to sift through.

Consider how often you’ll hit that ‘Print’ button before opening your wallet. If you only print documents once every month or so, then picking up something with a low initial cost might be better, even if it’s not the most economical option out there.

On the flip side, if you’re printing documents frequently, whether that’s for homework, coursework, or newsletters, posters and pamphlets, you’ll want a printer with the lowest possible cost-per-page that your budget can accommodate.

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Picking a printer that has a low price tag could end up burning a hole in your pocket in the long run, so it might be better to pick something with a slightly higher RRP if it turns out to be a long-term saver. That’s true of even the more budget options.

Depending on your needs, you might want to consider a laser printer instead of an inkjet – we’ve covered the pros and cons in our inkjet vs laser printers article.

But in this round-up, we’ve picked the top affordable printer options, mainly looking at printers around the £100 price range, some cheaper than that, some slightly more expensive than that, but included here because they’re very cost-effective.

For our top picks for all budgets, head to our best printer round-up.

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Best affordable printers at a glance

How to choose a cheap printer

Look at the cost-per-page

Keeping an eye on running costs is a key consideration when shopping around for the best budget printer in 2023.

In terms of which printers have the most affordable ink, HP has some of the lowest prices going for HP 305 black ink and tri-colour (cyan, magenta, yellow) cartridges. These cost £10.99 per cartridge and come with enough ink for roughly 120 and 100 printouts, respectively. That works out at a cost-per-page of 9p and 10p.

That’s about the standard per-page price you can expect from an affordable inkjet printer, but it’s by no means the cheapest option available to you.

For example, a single HP 44A black toner cartridge is priced at £52.99, far more expensive than the HP 305 ink cartridges, but it promises enough toner for around 1,000 printouts – which means that the cost-per-page falls to around 5p.

Even better value for money in terms of running costs is bottled ink. Printers like the Epson EcoTank ET-2750 – excluded from this round-up because it costs £349.99 – are cheap to run, with cost-per-page working out to be less than a penny.

Likewise, going for bigger XL ink cartridges will always be more expensive up-front, but your money is highly likely to go further in the longer run. Think about how many pages you will realistically be printing every month before making your choice.

Remember to check out our guide to the best printer paper, too.

Research which ink subscriptions are the cheapest

While it’s useful to weigh up the cartridge prices and ink yields, consider that a lot of printers these days are covered by subscription plans, which can save you money, not to mention the hassle of having to order fresh cartridges yourself.

These are typically only offered if you’re buying a printer that can be connected to the internet because services like HP’s Instant Ink and Epson’s ReadyPrint work by the printer monitoring the device’s ink levels and alerting the manufacturer when ink levels are getting low. Fresh cartridges are then popped into the post and sent out to you in advance of you running out of ink. It’s a helpful aspect to consider.

The HP Instant Ink and Epson ReadyPrint subscription prices are based on how many pages of paper you print in a month. Here’s a breakdown of the current pricing:

HP Instant Ink subscription prices

PagesPrice15 pages99p/month50 pages£1.99/month100 pages£3.49/month300 pages£9.99/month700 pages£22.49/month

Epson ReadyPrint subscription prices

PagesPrice30 pages£1.29/month50 pages£1.99/month100 pages£3.49/month300 pages£9.99/month500 pages£16.49/month

Check out the upfront printer price

If running costs are less of a consideration, then your job is made slightly easier by the fact that you’ll mainly, if not exclusively, be looking at the initial price tag.

At the same time, consider what you need the printer for. If it’s just for documents, then get a mono printer, even if that’s not as cheap as a colour version, purely for the fact that you’ll only ever have to buy blank ink to replace it. By the same token, if you want to print out the occasional photo or document with colour images, then there’s absolutely no point in buying a mono printer, even if it does have a lower RRP.

Best affordable printers to buy in 2023

Canon Pixma TS205, from £29.76

Best budget colour printer

Pros:

• Very cheap to buy and run
• Good overall print quality
• Easy to set up and use

Cons:

• Slow printing speeds
• Ink smudges easily
• No Wi-Fi or mobile app support

The Canon Pixma TS205 is a cheap and cheerful colour inkjet printer. Very cheap to buy at around £30, the TS205 is about as bare-bones as it gets – it’s just a printer, there’s no scanner and no photocopy function, and there’s no internet connectivity, so it can’t accept print jobs over Wi-Fi, and it can’t be controlled via a smartphone – working with Windows and Mac desktop and laptop PCs, the Pixma TS205 accepts print jobs over a USB connection, and that’s it. This is a rather no-frills option.

Aimed at buyers who want a cheap, sub-£50 printer to use every so often, the TS205 is included as it’s one of the cheapest colour printers on the market.

It’s very easy to set up and use and is suitable for running off homework, letters, boarding passes and the like. Despite its low price, the Canon Pixma TS205 can even print photos on glossy photo paper. Print quality is generally very good, and in fact a lot better than you might expect from such a cheap printer.

This budget printer is not without its drawbacks, though, and the main drawback is the fact that text printouts are very prone to smudging. Images, too, take a long time to dry out, so you need to be extra careful when lifting pages up off of the Pixma TS205’s tray, lest you smudge something and need to print it out again.

It’s also quite slow, something you’ll only really notice if you’re printing out multiple copies of the same document, or long homework-style essays.

That said, if time is not of the essence, and you only print things every so often, the Canon Pixma TS205 is one of the best cheap printer options currently going.

Read our full Canon Pixma TS205 review.

Buy the Canon Pixma TS205:

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HP DeskJet 2720e, from £39.99

Best all in one wireless budget printer

If you need a new home printer, the HP DeskJet 2720e should be able to handle any basic task you throw at it – including both black/white and colour documents. It is a wireless model, too, so that cuts down on fussing over wires to your main device, whether that’s a laptop or smartphone. Six months of HP Instant Ink is included.

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Canon Pixma MG3650S, from £44.99

Best budget printer for ease-of-use

With a price point of around £40, the Pixma MG3650S is a great budget option from Canon. It’s an all-in-one budget printer, so can be used to produce both documents and photos between 4×6 inch and A4. This printer is compatible with PC and Mac, and comes with a scanner and copier. A top addition to your home office setup.

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HP Envy 6020e, £59.99

Best budget printer for most homes

The 6020e is not only affordable, but does pretty much everything you need from a home model: producing documents and colour photographs, alongside copying, scanning and double-sided printing. The easy setup means it’s a top choice if you don’t want to fuss over settings, and there’s six months of HP Instant Ink included.

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Pixma TR4550/TR4551, from £39.99

Best value all-in-one budget printer

Pros:

• Low upfront cost
• Versatile all-in-one device
• Lighter than the Canon Pixma TS7450

Cons:

• Neither cheap nor expensive to run
• Not covered by ink subscription
• Bigger than the Canon Pixma TS7450

The Pixma TR4550 is a cheap-to-buy colour inkjet all-in-one printer that offers similar functionality to the impressive Canon Pixma TS7450. It’s available in two colours, the Pixma TR4550 (black) and the Canon Pixma TR4551 (white).

For your money, you’ll get an all-in-one colour printer, scanner, copier which gives 8.8ppm (pages per minute) printing speeds for black text, 4.4ppm for colour images on plain A4, and 4×6-inch colour photos in around 65 seconds.

Weighing in at 5.29kg, the Pixma TR4550 is lighter than the Canon Pixma TS7450, which weighs a more considerable 8.2kg, although the TR4550 is also bigger, so despite being easier to move around, it will take up more desk space.

Running on Canon’s PG-545 (£18.49) and CL-546 ink (£21.99) cartridges, which both promise around 180 pages’ worth of ink, the Canon Pixma’s running costs are 10p and 12p respectively, which is about the norm for most cheap inkjet printers.

As always, the bigger PG-545 XL (£25.49) and CL-546XL (£25.49) cartridges give you more ink, 400 and 300 pages’ worth respectively, and so the cost-per-page here falls to 6p and 8p. The Canon Pixma TR4550 is not covered by any subscription plans, which may make it cheaper to run for busy households, but it is ultimately an all-in-one colour printer that’s reasonably inexpensive to run and costs £50.

Buy the Canon Pixma TR4550/TR4551:

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Canon Pixma TS7450/1, from £99.99

Best quality all-in-one printer

Pros:

• Excellent overall print quality
• Fast printing and scanning speeds
• Reasonably cheap to run

Cons:

• Photos need to be printed on glossy paper
• Double-page printing is slow
• Only economical with XL cartridges

The Canon Pixma TS7450 is an excellent all-round colour budget printer, scanner, and copier which can be had for around £80 RRP.

Like a lot of printers in this price range, it’s not especially speedy, but the quality is high, and the Pixma TS7450 is versatile, able to print on plain paper and glossy photo sheets, as well as print on both sides of plain A4, so it’s handy at producing letters, essays and homework, as well as high-quality holiday snaps.

You can connect to the Canon Pixma TS7450 via Wi-Fi or USB, and control is with iOS and Android apps, as well as Windows and Mac machines. It supports Apple AirPrint, so getting up and running on a Mac OS device takes no time at all.

It’s pretty heavy at 8.2kg, and at 206 x 403 x 364mm takes up a bit more room than some cheap printers. Running costs are about average, with the standard-sized Canon PG-560 (£17.49) and CL-561 (£17.49) cartridges, which give you 180 pages’ worth of ink each work out at 9p per page each.

Not bank-breaking, but not cheap either, and while the bigger XL cartridges work out at 6p and 7p, respectively, there’s no option to go for a subscription, meaning it’s less economical for heavy use. This probably won’t matter if you only print once in a blue moon or can pick up bundle deals on cartridges for cheap elsewhere.

The Pixma TS7451 is the same model but in the colour white.

Read our full Canon Pixma TS7450 review.

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HP Envy Pro 6420e, from £99.99

Best for fast colour jobs

Priced around £100, the Envy 6420e may be a bit more expensive than other budget models on this budget list, but it has a number of great features that will make it a fantastic addition to your home. It has cloud connectivity that makes sure it has the latest software updates installed, alongside built-in WiFi that means you can print documents straight from your laptop or phone. Six months of HP’s Instant Ink subscription service means you will remain topped up before ever running dry.

There is another model in the series, the 6430e, which is another fantastic option. It’s another all-in-one that will handle colour and black/white documents and is also priced around £100.

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HP LaserJet MFP110we, from £89.98

Best affordable mono laserjet

This is a black and white LaserJet printer that can spew out 20 pages per minute and is compatible with computers, phones and tablets. Due to the speed and reliability of this type of printer, they use toner and are more expensive than inkjet models. This one has six months of Instant Toner included with the HP+ subscription.

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Brother HL-L2350DW, £144.99

Cheapest high capacity mono laserjet printer

Pros:

• Very low cost-per-page
• High-capacity paper tray
• Automatic double-sided printing

Cons:

• High yield toner cartridges are expensive
• No subscription plans are available
• Relatively large and heavy

Priced around £130, the Brother HL-L2350DW is an outlier in this round-up, as it’s priced slightly above the £100 mark, but it’s included here largely because it’s got a bigger capacity tray than the HP LaserJet Pro M15W – 250 sheets of A4 vs 150 – and promises a much higher top printing speed of 30 pages per minute.

The Brother TN-2410 and TN-2420 black toner cartridges are higher yield, coming with approximately 1,200 and 3,000 pages’ worth of black toner each.

These are expensive, mind, costing £44.39 and £81.59 each, but this works out at an incredibly low cost-per-page of 3p. For buyers wanting to keep tabs on the bottom line, the Brother HL-L2350DW represents a very economical choice.

The Brother HL-L2350DW may therefore be better suited to home office users who need to print several copies of multi-page documents and don’t want to be having to reload the paper in-tray as frequently.

Print jobs can also be queued from both iOS and Android devices via the Brother iPrint&Scan app and over Wi-Fi and USB from Windows and Mac devices; It’s AirPrint-compatible too, so Mac users can get up and running without having to install any drivers. Measuring 519 x 438 x 283mm and weighing 8.3kg, heavy and won’t be suited for anyone with a small office set-up. Otherwise, it’s a powerful, and cheap to run unit that does one thing – print text documents – very well.

Buy the Brother HL-L2350DW:

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Epson Expression Home XP-4200, £69.99

Best affordable Epson

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With a price point around £70, this budget printer is a great choice if you are a fan of Epson models and want to save money. The Epson Expression Home XP-4200 is a stylish choice, with the ability to price, scan and copy in black/white and coloured ink. We like that it has an LCD display on front, too, so you can easily navigate the settings once it’s connected to your device, whether that’s a phone, tablet or computer.

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HP DeskJet Plus 4120, from £64.99

Best value all-in-one printer covered by HP Instant Ink

Pros:

• Good at printing graphics and photos
• Lightweight
• Easy to install

Cons:

• Text quality is middling
• Alignment issues
• Not cheap to run without Instant Ink

The HP DeskJet Plus 4120 hits a lot of tick boxes for buyers in the market for a cheap colour all-in-one printer.

It’s capable of printing on glossy paper as well as regular A4, it can print over Wi-Fi and USB, and quality is very good, considering it’s a sub-£100 device.

Text quality on the default setting is admittedly pretty average, but move things up to higher quality settings, and you get higher quality results.

The HP DeskJet Plus 4120 uses the HP 305 Black (£10.99) and HP 305 Tri-Colour (£10.99) cartridges, which promise 120 and 100 pages’ worth of ink, which comes to a cost-per-page of around 9p and 10p each. Not especially cheap, but also terribly expensive, unless you’re printing lots every month, in which case, you’re better off looking at an HP Instant Ink subscription plan – £9.99/month will cover you for 300 pages’ worth, so that’s automatically a money-saver if you’re a heavy user.

The HP DeskJet Plus 4120 is also not the fastest printer on the market, which is perhaps understandable given the price. On the plus side, it’s lightweight and doesn’t hog desk space, so it’s ideal for home offices that are on the small side.

Read our full HP DeskJet Plus 4120 review.

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