The 4 Best All

We’ve added the Brother MFC-J4335DW as our new budget pick for those who don't want to spend much or don't need to print, scan, or copy often.

Most people don't really need an all-in-one printer—a good scanning app and a cheap, print-only laser machine can handle occasional jobs. But if you have a school-age kid or do work that requires a lot of copying and scanning, an all-in-one might make sense.

The HP OfficeJet Pro 9015e is your best option because it's easy to set up and cheap to run, it works with all kinds of devices, it produces beautiful prints and scans, and it has a long two-year warranty for added peace of mind.

Easy-to-use software, affordable ink, a long warranty, and plenty of thoughtful touches make this inkjet all-in-one less annoying than the competition. Results look sharp, too.

The HP OfficeJet Pro 9015e remains one of the easiest printers to set up. It quickly prints crisp text documents and glossy photos at an affordable cost of 2.4¢ per page in black or 8.8¢ per page in color with its high-yield cartridges.

You can subscribe to HP's Instant Ink program (a six-month trial is included with your initial purchase), which brings the cost of each color page to as little as 3.5¢, including glossies. Plus, enrolling in the Instant Ink program extends the warranty to two years.

This inkjet printer doesn't sacrifice performance when scanning documents, and it looks great in any office, thanks to a clean, compact design.

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This model produces crisp text and vibrant graphics, and it has a low operating cost. But you can use only HP toner with it, so be prepared to pay full price come replacement time.

The HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M283fdw has an easy-to-use, smartphone-style touch interface and a 21st-century mobile app that together make daily use of this printer far less frustrating in comparison with other models we’ve tried.

It produces sharp black text, vibrant full-color graphics, and even photos good enough for a school report. Our inkjet pick can make slightly better photos, but this laser printer won't clog if you use it infrequently.

It's also fast, topping out at around 22 pages per minute, and it can print on envelopes, labels, and other odd-size media thanks to a handy bypass slot.

If you don't print often, or if you need a basic color printer that can also scan, this inkjet printer is a relatively inexpensive model that gets a variety of print jobs done.

The Brother MFC-J4335DW is the printer to get if you don't have big productivity demands and need a cheap multifunction printer with affordable supply costs.

It comes with a year's worth of ink out of the box, and upgrading to Brother's high-yield cartridges lets you print at a cost of 1¢ per page for monochrome and 4.7¢ for color, which makes this model significantly cheaper to run than our other picks.

In our tests, this printer reliably produced crisp text down to a font size of 3 points, as well as sharp, realistic glossy images. But its slower scan speeds and easily smudged copy-paper photo prints can be bothersome when you’re on deadline and need to produce a clean copy stat.

Like most Brother printers, the MFC-J4335DW is clunky to install because it comes with unintuitive website installers that are difficult to navigate. The archaic design of its tiny display screen and navigation buttons marginally adds to the setup stress, and the printer needs up to 25 minutes before it's up and running, in contrast to our main pick's 10-minute install.

This business-class machine checks all the boxes for a home office or small business: It's faster, sharper, more durable, and more secure than our other picks.

manufacturer's warranty w/purchase

Upgrade to a business-oriented color laser AIO like the HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M479fdw if your work finds you printing and scanning all day, every day. It prints and scans faster, sharper, and more reliably than inkjet alternatives.

It includes robust admin and security settings designed for situations that may involve sensitive data, such as faxing legal documents or emailing a scanned driver's license over Wi-Fi.

Though most home offices don't need this kind of upgrade, the M479fdw hits the sweet spot if you run a business with modest printing and paper-handling needs, or if you’ve grown exasperated with your inkjet AIO's failings.

Easy-to-use software, affordable ink, a long warranty, and plenty of thoughtful touches make this inkjet all-in-one less annoying than the competition. Results look sharp, too.

This model produces crisp text and vibrant graphics, and it has a low operating cost. But you can use only HP toner with it, so be prepared to pay full price come replacement time.

If you don't print often, or if you need a basic color printer that can also scan, this inkjet printer is a relatively inexpensive model that gets a variety of print jobs done.

This business-class machine checks all the boxes for a home office or small business: It's faster, sharper, more durable, and more secure than our other picks.

manufacturer's warranty w/purchase

Wirecutter has been testing all-in-one printers (also sometimes referred to as multifunction printers) since 2012. Collectively, we’ve spent a ridiculous number of hours researching models, squinting at test documents, eyeing stopwatches, and fiddling with menus. In addition to our own testing, we’ve polled readers and gathered feedback from comment sections. In short, we’ve done a lot of legwork to learn about what people want in a printer.

All-in-one (AIO) inkjet printers are a one-stop shop for home document-production needs. But they may not be right for everyone. Inkjets have been known to dry out and clog if they sit idle for too long between uses, and to get them going again you need to run cleaning cycles that waste ink and drive up your operating costs.

All-in-one laser printers can sit unused for weeks or even months on end with no printing downside. But they can cost twice as much as inkjets, and they take up more desk space because of their large toner cartridges.

To figure out if an all-in-one is right for you, ask yourself a few questions:

Our criteria have remained largely unchanged since we first began reviewing AIOs in 2012. We consider both inkjet and laser all-in-one printers, including monochrome and color models. We favor models with reportedly excellent print and scan quality, automatic document feeders (ADF), fast operating speeds, low operating and printing costs, and duplex printing, scanning, and copying capabilities. We also look for strong third-party reviews.

Over the years, we’ve reviewed more than 20 AIOs. We test our contenders with both Windows and Mac computers, as well as with Android and iOS phones. We place them in homes and offices with varying Wi-Fi strength and reliability.

We note which machines have complex installation packages, connectivity issues, and convoluted mobile apps.

We tackle a variety of text- and graphics-heavy documents to assess print quality and speed. With the inkjets, we also print several colorful, glossy shots to evaluate photo quality. And we scan the documents we print to test each machine's ability to capture the fine details of each kind of print.

We also run large print and scan jobs to check for jams and slowdowns caused by overtaxed onboard memory.

Finally, we calculate the cost of each printer's replacement ink or toner cartridges to see how they stack up.

Easy-to-use software, affordable ink, a long warranty, and plenty of thoughtful touches make this inkjet all-in-one less annoying than the competition. Results look sharp, too.

The HP OfficeJet Pro 9015e is remarkably easy to set up and use, hitting the sweet spot of print quality, speed, and reliability in a way that other printers can't match. And this printer's sleek design helps it stand out from stodgy-looking competitors, which is almost enough to make us forgive its tiny touchscreen and flimsy output tray.

It offers a seamless setup process. An on-screen keyboard makes it trivially easy to connect the 9015e to Wi-Fi to complete the install process. During testing, we were up and running in less than 10 minutes, including the ink cartridge install. The process is smooth and modern enough that it makes other printer makers’ comparably clunky installers feel decidedly last-generation.

From your smartphone, you can download the HP Smart app (Android, iOS) and add the printer in just a couple of steps.

There's no need to second-guess maintenance levels. The HP Smart software suite lets you check ink levels, order replacement ink, adjust settings remotely, and access the printer's Embedded Web Server—a control panel designed for power users. In HP's all-in-one approach, few functions are more than a click or two away.

It makes printing at home cost-effective. The 9015e comes with enough ink in the box for roughly 850 black-and-white pages or 420 color pages. A full set of high-yield cartridges runs about $160 and lasts for approximately 2,000 monochrome pages or 1,600 color pages. That works out to a reasonable 2.4¢ per page for printing in black or 8.8¢ for color.

HP offers an Instant Ink subscription service. The tiered program is based on how much you expect to print each month, from 10 to 700 pages. (A six-month trial is included with your printer purchase.) With Instant Ink the cost per page is 9.9.¢ at worst and 3.5¢ at best—but the great thing about the program is that printing color pages costs the same as printing in black. When your ink runs low, the service automatically ships new cartridges. Unused pages roll over, up to three times your plan amount, and if you burn through your allotted pages (and your rollover) in a given month, extra "sets" of 10 to 15 pages cost $1 each.

Plus, enrolling in the Instant Ink program extends the machine's warranty to two years.

The 9015e's print prowess is on point. In our tests, text came out dark, and it was sharp and readable down to about 4 points in most fonts. Graphics were crisp and vibrant on default settings. And we saw minimal banding when printing full-page graphics on copy paper.

Glossies popped under the Best quality setting. This optional print setting helped our borderless 8.5-by-11-inch glossies look fantastic on the fridge despite having colors that skewed slightly bluer and with more contrast than the source photos.

This printer is plenty fast. HP reports that it can print up to 22 monochrome pages per minute or 18 color pages per minute. Those figures make it the fastest inkjet we recommend.

Scanning was similarly brisk in our tests, averaging 3 to 5 seconds on the automatic document feeder. AIOs like the Brother MFC-J4335DW (our budget pick), the HP Envy Inspire 7955e, and the Brother MFC-L2750DW (a monochrome pick in our laser printers guide) took about 7 seconds to scan.

But duplex scanning dipped as the feeder had to pull each sheet through twice to scan both sides. If you have more demanding needs, consider a printer that can handle single-pass duplex scanning, such as our laser upgrade pick.

It's less likely to malfunction. In our testing, the 9015e's paper handling was nearly flawless. It dealt with both full and nearly empty trays, it didn't balk at scanning crumpled paper, and it never grabbed two pages when it was supposed to grab one. And our scans from the ADF came out almost completely straight, a rarity among printers we’ve tested.

It's an attractive addition to a workstation. We prefer the clean, sharp, and modern look of the OfficeJet Pro 9015e to the bulbous design of the previous generation of OfficeJet machines. Aesthetics are less than a tertiary concern when it comes to office equipment, but if your printer is going to live in your home office for at least a couple of years, why not pick one that's easier on the eyes?

This model produces crisp text and vibrant graphics, and it has a low operating cost. But you can use only HP toner with it, so be prepared to pay full price come replacement time.

The HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M283fdw offers an easy setup process, reasonable operating costs, and great printing quality for your home-office or small-business needs. Plus, it doesn't clog the way an inkjet does if you don't use it often.

The setup process is seamless. During our tests, this laser printer was up and running in no time thanks to an intuitive touchscreen that walked us through the process in under 10 minutes.

The printer is expensive, but its per-print costs are low. The $450-plus price tag is a lot to swallow, but for a small business the M283fdw is the most reliable multifunction laser printer we’ve found.

Upgrading to the high-yield ink toners ensures that printing costs remain low, at just 3.3¢ per black page and 16.3¢ per color print—but a full set of replacement toner costs $440.

You’re locked into HP toner. Because of HP's new firmware measures, only genuine HP toner works in this printer, so don't expect to save money by buying knockoff cartridges. (But if you do try to get it to print with generic ink, keep in mind that doing so voids the warranty.)

It produces crisp text and vibrant graphics. In our tests the M283fdw printed clear, crisp text down to a font size of 3 points. Even the tiniest of subscripts in legal documents and footer text in charts will remain legible.

It printed high-quality, vibrant graphics on both copy and glossy paper, nearly mirroring the print quality of the HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M479fdw—only slightly more pixelated.

It offers versatile printing support. No need to finagle the main paper tray to size—this model features a bypass slot for printing labels, envelopes, postcards, and glossy prints.

Plus, mobile Wi-Fi printing and the optional HP Smart app make printing sans computer a breeze.

It takes up a lot of room. The M283fdw is more than twice as heavy as our budget all-in-one pick, the Brother MFC-J4335DW. It also needs significant space on a desk, and its 19-inch depth prevents it from fitting on most bookshelves.

If you don't print often, or if you need a basic color printer that can also scan, this inkjet printer is a relatively inexpensive model that gets a variety of print jobs done.

The Brother MFC-J4335DW doesn't cost a lot and has cheap running costs, and its strong print quality compensates well for its slower performance, middling scan quality, and clunky button-based interface.

It's ideal for low-print-volume households. Priced at $180 at this writing, the MFC-J4335DW is one of the cheapest all-in-one models we’ve tested, and it doesn't ratchet up the printing costs in exchange. This model comes with 1,080 pages’ worth of black ink and 720 pages’ worth of color in the box, which should last you about a year by Brother's estimates.

It won't blow your budget if you suddenly have high printing demands. An upgrade to high-yield print cartridges that can print up to 6,000 black-and-white pages and 5,000 color pages costs roughly 1¢ per page for monochrome and 4.7¢ per page for color. So it's cost-effective to print the occasional book report or even a full manuscript draft at home rather than schlepping your print jobs to your local office-supply store.

It outshines many competitors in print quality. Astonishingly, during our tests this model reliably printed crisp text down to 3 points. That's important when you’re dealing with complex legal documents that include tiny superscript. In contrast, our former budget pick, the Brother MFC-J805DW, could clearly print text only down to a font size of 6 points.

Images popped, but less so than with our top pick from HP. Still, the MFC-J4335DW printed glossy photos with a sharpness and a realistic saturation and contrast level that rivaled results from printers twice the price. But it fell flat at producing seamless image prints on copy paper, and it often created banding, or horizontal lines across the page, which is a common defect among inkjet printers.

Its scans are sluggish and flat. This all-in-one model posted some of the slowest scan speeds in our tests, averaging 7 seconds in contrast to the 3 to 5 seconds that we got from half the printers in our test group. In isolation that's a small difference in speed, but it can feel like an eternity when you’re working against a deadline and have dozens of pages to scan.

And don't expect the MFC-J4335DW to produce a carbon copy of your favorite photos. In our testing, this printer overcompensated in its scans by adding too much contrast, destroying detail in darker areas.

The installation process is outdated. The Brother MFC-J4335DW has unintuitive website installers that are difficult to navigate, and the archaic design of its tiny display screen and navigation buttons adds to the setup stress. Overall, in our tests this printer's setup took about 25 minutes, compared with the HP OfficeJet Pro 9015e's five-minute install process.

Brother backs this printer with a two-year limited warranty.

This business-class machine checks all the boxes for a home office or small business: It's faster, sharper, more durable, and more secure than our other picks.

manufacturer's warranty w/purchase

Small-business owners who print frequently should opt for a great color laser all-in-one like the HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M479fdw.

The M479fdw is expensive, but it still ranks among the most affordable color laser printers that offer all the same productivity features as our favorite inkjet model. It's fast, reliable, and capable of producing beautiful documents, whether printing in color or in black only.

It produces outstanding results. The M479fdw can crank out up to 28 pages per minute, versus the HP OfficeJet Pro 9015e's average of 20 pages per minute, per the manufacturer.

This color laser model also prints sharper text at small font sizes than any inkjet we’ve tested, which may be important if you need to print a lot of legal documents. And its graphics are crisper—if a touch less saturated—than what you’d get out of a printer like the 9015e.

The M479fdw spools up faster than most inkjets, and its recommended duty cycle of 4,000 pages per month—nearly triple the 9015e's 1,500 pages—should be plenty for even the busiest home office and could satisfy many small businesses with multiple employees.

And when you’re in too big a rush to fire up a laptop for a print job, just use the printer's USB port. It's capable of printing JPEGs, PDFs, and Word files, and it can also save scans as PDFs, JPEGs, or TIFF files.

It easily handles odd-size print jobs. The foldout bypass paper tray prints letter, legal, executive, and postcard-size media. The automatic document feeder can handle legal-size documents, too.

It's more secure than other printers we’ve tested, inkjet and laser alike. The M479fdw features secure boot, firmware integrity, and runtime code integrity to ensure that the printer is drastically less likely to be hijacked by bad actors. (That sounds absurd, but it has happened.) It also allows for PIN-encrypted print jobs, so you can make sure that no one else is intercepting your documents. And role-based access control for multiuser environments allows you to choose who can access which printer features. If your work involves sensitive material, these are legitimately helpful additions.

It's cheap to operate over time. Per-page prices for the M479fdw hover around 2.5¢ for printing in black and 15¢ for color, higher than the costs for the 9015e but on a par with many of the other laser printers we’ve tested.

The up-front cost to replace all of the toner cartridges comes to an eye-popping $970. Still, the real-world costs might not be so different. Laser printers waste only a bit of toner, while inkjets can squander a lot of ink depending on how many cleaning cycles they have to run. Thus, the advertised cost is the maximum you’re likely to pay with a laser printer, while the stated cost per page for an inkjet is the bare minimum you have to pay.

HP's warranty is short, but the coverage is good. HP's one-year warranty for the M479fdw is shorter than what some rivals offer—Canon, in particular, provides a three-year guarantee on its home-office machines—but HP's coverage may actually be better. That's because the warranty provides on-site service within one business day, while other printer makers require you to ship your printer to a service center, sometimes at your own cost.

Ink-tank printers usually come with bottles that you must inject into reservoirs inside of the machine. These printers tend to cost $50 to $100 more than non-ink-tank models, and they also provide fewer features.

But the print cost per page is unmatched. They print at fractions of a cent for both black-and-white and color pages, compared with 2¢ to 10¢ per page for typical inkjets.

Still, we can't recommend any of these machines. During our testing, ink-tank-style printers were much slower than the HP 9015e in both printing and scanning. None of the ink-tank models we tested could scan two-sided documents, either. The machines’ build quality was flimsy in comparison with most other inkjets. And although ink-tank models are cheaper to operate in the long run than our inkjet picks, we think many people wouldn't use enough of the included ink to make the higher up-front price worth paying.

This list does not include discontinued printer models.

The Brother MFC-J1170DW and the Brother MFC-J5855DW offered relatively poor print and scan quality.

Setup of the Canon Maxify MB5120 was a grueling affair, and its scan quality was relatively poor.

In our tests, the HP Envy Inspire 7955e was painfully slow at printing images, though it produced some of the richest photos among all the printers we tried. It couldn't print text-heavy documents with much sharpness, and it failed to consistently print clean documents when we sent print jobs from a computer or a mobile device.

The HP OfficeJet Pro 8025e and the HP Envy Photo 7855 are expensive to operate, and we experienced performance issues with both models during our tests.

The HP OfficeJet Pro 9025e performs very much like the OfficeJet Pro 9015e, but it typically costs $100 more, and all you get for that is an extra paper tray.

The Brother MFC-J995DW and the Canon Pixma G7020 suffered from slow print and scan speeds and fiddly user interfaces.

The Brother MFC-L3770CDW, the Canon Color ImageClass MF743Cdw, and the Canon ImageClass MF644Cdw had clunky interfaces, finicky touchscreens, and problematic software.

This article was edited by Phil Ryan and Erica Ogg.

An all-in-one printer is a machine that can not only print but also scan, copy, and fax. This type of equipment is a good option for anyone who doesn't have the space or budget for a dedicated printer, scanner, and/or fax machine.

All of our picks can fax, and in general most all-in-one printers can either fax or have a fax kit (an accessory that adds a faxing feature) installed.

A good-quality all-in-one printer will print decent-looking photos, and each of our picks can print great-looking photos for sticking to a fridge, though the colors won't be totally accurate. If photo quality or color accuracy is important to you, however, consider getting a photo printer.

Ben Keough

Ben Keough is the supervising editor for Wirecutter's working from home, powering, cameras, and hobbies and games coverage. He previously spent more than a decade writing about cameras, printers, and other office equipment for Wirecutter, Reviewed, USA Today, and Digital Camera HQ. After four years testing printers, he definitively confirmed that they all suck, but some suck less than others.

Kaitlyn Wells

Kaitlyn Wells is a senior staff writer who advocates for greater work flexibility by showing you how to work smarter remotely without losing yourself. Previously, she covered pets and style for Wirecutter. She's never met a pet she didn't like, although she can't say the same thing about productivity apps. Her first picture book, A Family Looks Like Love, follows a pup who learns that love, rather than how you look, is what makes a family.

by Ben Keough and Kaitlyn Wells

The fast, reliable, and easy-to-use HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M283fdw is our favorite laser printer.

by Phil Ryan

If you’re looking for an inexpensive printer, we think the Brother HL-L2350DW or the Brother MFC-J4335DW is your best option.

by Arriana Vasquez

Our pick for the best instant photo printer is simple to use, and it's light and small enough to carry. It uses easy-to-find, affordable film, too.

by Phil Ryan

The HP OfficeJet Pro 9015e is an all-in-one printer that does what HP says it does, which is more than most printers can do.