Best Home Printer UK 2026: Laser Beats Ink, Every Time

Last updated: 15 May 2026

By Stiv · Design, technology and personal finance

Affiliate disclosure: this post contains affiliate links. If you buy through them we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only recommend kit we would put on our own desks.

Printers are the one piece of tech that has somehow got worse over the past 20 years. They jam, they run out of ink the moment you need them, and they cost more per millilitre than vintage champagne. So when we set out to find the best home printer UK buyers can actually live with in 2026, we started from a position of mild rage and worked outwards.

Here is the short version. For most homes the best home printer UK answer is a small Brother mono laser. It is boring, reliable, cheap to run, and the toner never dries out. If you genuinely need colour at home, skip ink cartridges entirely and buy a refillable ink tank such as an Epson EcoTank or a Canon PIXMA MegaTank. That is the whole guide in two sentences. The rest is the working.

01 / The case for laser

Why laser beats ink, and it is not even close

Inkjet printers are sold cheap so the manufacturer can sell you ink at roughly the price of liquid gold. Laser printers, by contrast, cost more upfront and then cost almost nothing to run. For the typical UK home that prints school forms, parcel labels, recipes and the occasional tax document, laser wins on every metric that matters. Indeed, after two years of testing both at home, we are no longer neutral on the question.

"Ink cartridges are the biggest scam in consumer technology. Laser toner lasts longer, costs less per page, and doesn't dry up between uses."

Toner does not dry out

First and most importantly, laser toner doesn't dry out. It doesn't clog. It doesn't mysteriously deplete itself while you sleep. Furthermore, you can leave a laser in a cupboard for six months and it will print first time. Try that with an inkjet and you will instead spend the morning running cleaning cycles that drink the very ink you bought them for.

Cost per page is dramatically lower

Secondly, the running cost is in another league. For instance, a genuine high-yield Brother TN-2510XL toner produces roughly 3,000 pages for about £75, which works out to around 2.5p per page. By comparison, a cartridge inkjet typically costs three to four times that. Speed also favours laser: a basic Brother mono laser fires out 30 pages per minute, while most home inkjets crawl along at 10 to 15. Reliability is the final pillar. Notably, consumer surveys from Which? and PC Pro have ranked Brother top for printer reliability for the better part of a decade.

The one honest concession

However, lasers are genuinely rubbish at photo printing. If you want gallery-quality prints of your holiday snaps, you want a dedicated six-ink photo printer like the Canon PIXMA G650 or Epson ET-8500. For everything else, though, laser is the answer.

02 / The non-negotiable

The physical power switch rule

A short cautionary tale. Our last printer was an HP Colour Laser 150nw. Within a year, the power button failed. As a result, the unit still drew current, still made noises, but could no longer be turned off properly without yanking the plug. Consequently, we are recycling it. Full review coming soon. Spoiler: 1 out of 5.

Since then, we have a rule. Any printer entering this office must have a proper mechanical power switch you can feel under your thumb. Membrane buttons, capacitive panels and so-called "smart" power controls are all banned. After all, if a manufacturer cannot be bothered to fit a real switch, we cannot be bothered to recommend them.

This rule disqualifies a surprising amount of current HP LaserJet stock. Specifically, the M110w, M209dw and M234dw families all use flat membrane buttons rather than a true rocker. Meanwhile, Brother, Canon i-SENSYS, Xerox, Kyocera and Pantum all still fit physical switches, which is partly why this guide tilts so heavily in their direction.

03 / The mono lasers

The best mono laser printers for UK homes

For most households, a small mono laser is the right answer. Therefore, we have put these picks at the top of the guide. Each one has been verified for UK availability, current pricing, and the all-important physical power switch.

Pick 01 / The default answer

Brother HL-L2400DW

If you ask us which is the best home printer UK shoppers should buy without overthinking it, this is the one. The Brother HL-L2400DW prints 30 pages per minute, supports dual-band Wi-Fi and AirPrint, and does automatic duplex out of the box. Moreover, it is small enough for a domestic shelf, quiet enough to live in a bedroom, and runs on TN-2510XL toner at roughly 2.5p per page. After a decade of Brother home lasers across multiple staff households, none of us has ever seen one fail.

Specs: 30 ppm, Wi-Fi, AirPrint, auto duplex, no scanner, 356 by 356 by 183 mm.

Price: £115 to £149 on Amazon UK.

Cost per page: ~2.5p mono with TN-2510XL.

Physical power switch: YES (recessed rocker, rear-left).

Limitation: the single-line LCD is small and dim, and Brother keeps trying to upsell you to its EcoPro toner subscription during setup.

See on Amazon

Pick 02 / If you also scan

Brother DCP-L2660DW

The DCP-L2660DW is the HL-L2400DW with a flatbed scanner, a 50-sheet automatic document feeder and a colour touchscreen bolted on top. Crucially, it still uses the same cheap TN-2510 toner, still prints at 34 pages per minute, and still has the proper power switch. For households that occasionally need to scan ID, post receipts to HMRC, or shovel a stack of paper into a PDF, this is the obvious upgrade.

Specs: 34 ppm, dual-band Wi-Fi plus Ethernet, ADF, AirPrint, auto duplex print.

Price: £239 to £269.

Cost per page: ~2.5p.

Physical power switch: YES.

Limitation: the ADF is single-sided only, so duplex scanning means flipping the stack.

See on Amazon

Pick 03 / The Brother alternative

Canon i-SENSYS LBP243dw

Canon's mono laser line has always lived in Brother's shadow, but the LBP243dw is genuinely good. It prints 36 pages per minute, has Wi-Fi plus Ethernet plus Wi-Fi Direct, and supports AirPrint. Additionally, the 071H high-yield cartridge brings cost per page down to around 3.6p, which is competitive without quite matching Brother. Buy this if your household already runs Canon cameras or you simply prefer the industrial Canon aesthetic.

However, there is one thing we cannot explain. Canon have bolted what looks like a 1990s Casio scientific calculator to the top of this printer. There is no touchscreen and no graphical display, just a small mono LCD surrounded by a grid of physical buttons that would not look out of place on a GCSE maths exam. We have absolutely no idea why. The printer works perfectly well without it. Meanwhile, it just sits there, calculator-shaped, doing calculator things while the printer prints.

Specs: 36 ppm, Wi-Fi plus Ethernet, auto duplex, AirPrint, no scanner.

Price: £199 to £249.

Cost per page: ~3.6p with 071H.

Physical power switch: YES.

Limitation: toner is pricier than Brother. Also, the calculator.

See on Amazon

Pick 04 / The one that outlives you

Kyocera Ecosys FS-1061DN

Kyocera ECOSYS printers are built for the kind of person who reads the warranty terms before buying. Notably, the drums are rated for tens of thousands of pages, which is roughly the entire printed output of a small accountancy practice. For a home that prints heavily and does not care about looks, the FS-1061DN is one of the cheapest-to-run lasers you can sensibly buy in the UK. Furthermore, TK-1125 toner produces 2,100 pages for around £40, dropping the cost per page below 2p.

It also looks exactly like a printer Mitsubishi would have made in the early 2000s. Beige-adjacent, boxy, slightly utilitarian, with the kind of industrial Japanese restraint that suggests it will still be working in 2046. Granted, there is no aesthetic upside here. However, there is considerable durability upside.

Specs: 25 ppm, USB 2.0 plus Ethernet, auto duplex, no Wi-Fi, no scanner, no AirPrint.

Price: £150 to £180.

Cost per page: ~1.9p with TK-1125.

Physical power switch: YES, a proper old-fashioned button on the front.

Limitation: no Wi-Fi, so it has to sit next to your router on Ethernet, or behind a print server.

See on Amazon

04 / The colour lasers

The best colour laser printers, if you genuinely need colour

First, be honest with yourself. Most homes do not actually need colour. School projects use a couple of pages a term, and party invitations get sent on WhatsApp anyway. However, if you genuinely print colour every week, here are the two we would buy.

Pick 05 / Sensibly priced colour

Brother HL-L3240CDW

Eighteen pages per minute in mono and colour, auto duplex, Ethernet plus dual-band Wi-Fi, and AirPrint. Importantly, the TN-248XL cartridges bring colour down to around 12p per page, which is roughly half what a cartridge inkjet inflicts on you. Overall, it is the smallest, simplest, most home-friendly colour laser Brother sells.

Specs: 18 ppm colour, Wi-Fi plus Ethernet, AirPrint, auto duplex.

Price: around £282.

Cost per page: ~3p mono, ~12p colour with XL toner.

Physical power switch: YES.

Limitation: colour pages per minute is modest compared with the MFC-L3760CDW.

See on Amazon

Pick 06 / The colour all-rounder

Brother MFC-L3740CDW

Add a scanner, an ADF, a fax module and an 8.8 cm colour touchscreen and you arrive at the MFC-L3740CDW. In short, this is the printer for the household running a side business, freelancing from a spare room, or printing the kids' school project covers in colour. Gigabit Ethernet, single-pass duplex print, and proper Brother build quality round it out.

Specs: 18 ppm, ADF, Wi-Fi 5 GHz plus Gigabit Ethernet, AirPrint, fax.

Price: £399 to £449.

Cost per page: ~3p mono, ~12p colour.

Physical power switch: YES.

Limitation: the 50-sheet ADF is single-sided only.

See on Amazon

05 / The ink tank exception

The refillable ink tank exception

If you print high volumes of colour, or you print photos, or you simply cannot stomach the look of a laser on your desk, refillable ink tanks are the only sensible inkjet option in 2026. Crucially, note the language. You are buying bottles, not cartridges. Furthermore, the bottles cost a few pounds and last for hundreds of pages each. As a result, running costs drop to roughly 0.3p per mono page and around 0.9p for colour.

Pick 07 / The household favourite

Epson EcoTank ET-2850

Epson invented the consumer ink tank category, and the ET-2850 is the model most British homes end up with. Wi-Fi, AirPrint, auto duplex, flatbed scanner, and ink bottles that genuinely last years if you only print occasionally. Critically, the power button is a real switch. Additionally, the printer works perfectly well without registering an Epson account.

Specs: 10.5 ppm mono, Wi-Fi, AirPrint, auto duplex, flatbed scanner.

Price: £260 to £310.

Cost per page: ~0.3p mono, ~0.9p colour.

Physical power switch: YES.

Limitation: rear paper feed only, which feels less premium than a front-loading tray.

See on Amazon

Pick 08 / The home office step-up

Epson EcoTank ET-4810

The ET-4810 adds an ADF, fax and Ethernet to the EcoTank platform. Indeed, it is the model TechRadar repeatedly names its best home printer overall, and we are inclined to agree if you need an inkjet all-in-one rather than a laser.

Specs: 15 ppm mono, Wi-Fi plus Ethernet, AirPrint, ADF, fax, auto duplex.

Price: around £330.

Cost per page: ~0.3p mono, ~0.9p colour.

Physical power switch: YES.

Limitation: only a 3.7 cm mono LCD where rivals offer touchscreens.

See on Amazon

Canon PIXMA G3570 Series All-in-One MegaTank Printer

Pick 09 / Epson's tidy rival

Canon PIXMA G3570 MegaTank

Canon's MegaTank G-series uses pigment black for crisp text and dye colour for photos. Consequently, it makes a slightly better photo printer than the equivalent EcoTank. Furthermore, the G3570 is the entry model that most UK homes will actually buy.

Specs: 11 ppm mono, Wi-Fi, AirPrint, flatbed scanner.

Price: £175 to £230.

Cost per page: ~0.2p mono, ~0.5p colour.

Physical power switch: YES.

Limitation: no auto duplex, no ADF, and a tiny 1.3-inch mono LCD.

See on Amazon

Pick 10 / Value pick with caveats

HP Smart Tank 5105

Trusted Reviews names this the best overall printer of 2026, and on running costs it is hard to argue. However, the power button is a flat membrane affair rather than a mechanical rocker. Additionally, HP's setup flow nudges you firmly toward an HP account and the HP Smart app. Workable, but worth knowing.

Specs: 12 ppm mono, Wi-Fi, AirPrint, flatbed scanner.

Price: £150 to £180.

Cost per page: ~0.2p mono, ~0.7p colour.

Physical power switch: Technically yes, but membrane-style, not a true rocker.

Limitation: HP Smart app and HP account pushed during setup.

See on Amazon

06 / The brands

The brands, a quick guide

Not every printer brand belongs in a UK home in 2026. Some are dominant, some are coasting, and some have quietly left the building. Here is the lay of the land.

The brands worth buying

Brother. Japanese, family-friendly, and dominant in UK home printing. Reliable, cheap to run, and fits a proper power switch. Moreover, it was voted best printer brand by PC Pro readers ten years running. Consequently, this is the default recommendation.

Canon. Strong on i-SENSYS mono lasers, dominant in refillable ink with MegaTank, and unbeatable for photo printing. Overall, the credible second choice to Brother, calculator notwithstanding.

Epson. Invented EcoTank. Therefore, if you need colour at home and refuse to use laser, this is where you start.

Kyocera. Office-grade longevity, with drum life rated up to 100,000 pages on the bigger ECOSYS models. Notably, it offers the lowest cost per page in the market. Less polished than Brother, but built to outlast everything else here.

Xerox. Better known for the photocopier in your old office. However, the Xerox B230 is a genuinely viable compact home laser at around £85.

The complicated ones

HP. Mixed feelings. On one hand, some genuinely good lasers. On the other, they are undermined by membrane power buttons, dynamic security firmware that has blocked third-party toner, and the HP+ programme. In short, buy the non-"e" models only.

Lexmark. Solid hardware, increasingly enterprise-leaning, and acquired by Xerox in 2024. Another team member remembers a Lexmark inkjet from the early nineties that announced "printing started" through a tiny speaker before vibrating the entire desk like a small earthquake. Thankfully, those days are gone.

Pantum. Chinese-made, very cheap, and the hardware is fine. However, the toner is only meaningfully cheaper if you buy third-party compatibles, and the Wi-Fi setup and mobile app get consistently middling reviews. Acceptable for low volumes. Even so, not our first call.

The brands that moved on

Samsung. One of us had a Samsung laser that was genuinely excellent. Then Samsung sold their printer division to HP in 2017 for $1.05 billion, and that was that. RIP. Legacy units still exist on eBay. However, we cannot recommend buying a dead brand for a 2026 home.

Ricoh and OKI. Both have largely retreated to office and managed-print contracts. Additionally, the OKI B412dn is officially discontinued. Skip.

Dell. Exited the printer business in 2018. In fact, many old Dell-branded units were rebadged Lexmark or Samsung hardware anyway. Move on.

07 / Apple's printing legacy

An Apple aside

Apple no longer makes printers, which is a shame. After all, in 1985 they made the one that invented an entire industry. The Apple LaserWriter shipped in March 1985 at $6,995. Paired with the Macintosh and Aldus PageMaker, it created desktop publishing as a category. However, Steve Jobs killed the printer division on his return, and the last unit, the LaserWriter 8500, shipped in 1997.

Today, Apple's printing legacy lives on through AirPrint, the wireless protocol that lets your iPhone print to a compatible printer without installing a single driver. Indeed, every printer in this guide supports it (except the Kyocera, which is too old to know what AirPrint is). Meanwhile, Tim Cook is still Apple's CEO as of May 2026, though Apple announced in April that John Ternus, currently SVP of Hardware Engineering, will take over on 1 September 2026. Consequently, we will hold out hope that somewhere in Cupertino, someone is sketching a brushed-aluminium LaserWriter for 2027. Probably not. But hope is free.

08 / The maths

The cost-per-page maths

Here is what you actually spend, once you have bought the hardware. For this comparison, we have assumed a household that prints 1,000 pages a year, of which 200 are colour.

Type	Upfront	Cost per page	1,000 pages/yr total
Cartridge inkjet	£40 to £80	8p mono, 25p colour	~£114 per year
Refillable ink tank	£170 to £330	0.3p mono, 0.9p colour	~£4 per year
Mono laser	£115 to £270	1.9p to 2.5p mono	~£20 per year
Colour laser	£280 to £450	3p mono, 12p colour	~£48 per year

How we calculated this. Cost per page is the current UK price of a high-yield replacement cartridge or ink bottle divided by its official manufacturer page yield. All page yields follow the relevant ISO standards: ISO 19752 for mono lasers, ISO 19798 for colour lasers, and ISO 24711 for inkjets. These assume 5% page coverage for mono (and 20% combined for colour), printed on standard A4.

Cartridge and bottle prices were verified against Amazon UK, John Lewis, Currys and Printerbase in May 2026. The mono laser figure is anchored on the Brother TN-2510XL (around £75 for 3,000 pages, or 2.5p per page) and the Kyocera TK-1125 (around £40 for 2,100 pages, or 1.9p per page). The refillable ink figure uses official Epson EcoTank bottle yields and Canon MegaTank pigment-black bottles. Cartridge inkjet figures use standard-yield HP, Canon and Epson cartridges from current Amazon UK listings.

For an independent cross-check, both TechRadar's running-cost analysis and Printerbase UK's EcoTank vs laser comparison arrive at broadly the same conclusions.

The cartridge inkjet, in short, pays for itself in resentment within 18 months. Meanwhile, everything else is dramatically cheaper to live with. Specifically, refillable ink wins on raw running cost, while laser wins on convenience, longevity and the fact that toner never dries out.

"The most sustainable printer is one that still works in five years. Buy quality, buy once."

09 / How to choose

What to look for when buying

Physical power switch. Non-negotiable. After all, membrane buttons fail. If you cannot find a clear photograph of a mechanical switch, then assume the manufacturer omitted it.

WiFi and AirPrint or mobile printing. AirPrint covers iOS and macOS without drivers. Similarly, Mopria covers most Android phones. Both should be standard in 2026.

Auto duplex. Saves paper, saves time, and saves you flipping stacks at midnight.

Toner or ink cost per page. Above all, this is the single number that matters most. Calculate it before you click buy.

Page yield. Standard cartridges are tiny. By contrast, high-yield (XL) cartridges typically halve your running cost.

Scanner only if you need it. Adding an ADF and a flatbed adds £80 to £120, plus a lot of desk footprint.

Size and noise. First, measure the shelf. Anything over 50 dB will then annoy you in a small flat.

Starter toner warning. Most lasers ship with a reduced-yield "starter" cartridge of 700 to 1,200 pages. However, the full-yield replacement is bigger and cheaper per page. Therefore, factor this into your first-year budget.

10 / What we don't recommend

What we stopped recommending

First, anything with a flat membrane power button. Secondly, anything that requires a proprietary app and a cloud account just to print a PDF. Additionally, budget inkjets under £50, which are pure cartridge-shifting vehicles. Furthermore, half-empty starter cartridges sold without warning. And finally, regrettably, anything with "DeskJet" in the name. That product family had its moment in 1995. Since then, we have moved on.

For our full takedown of the HP Colour Laser 150nw, the worst printer we have personally owned, full review coming soon. Spoiler already published: 1 out of 5.

Frequently asked questions

Is a laser printer better than inkjet for home use?

For most homes, yes. Indeed, laser toner does not dry out, cost per page is roughly a quarter of cartridge inkjet, and reliability is dramatically higher. However, the exception is photo printing or very colour-heavy households, where a refillable ink tank is the right answer.

What is the best home printer UK households should buy in 2026?

The best home printer UK answer for most households is the Brother HL-L2400DW at around £115. In short, it is the simplest, cheapest, most reliable laser you can put on a domestic desk. Alternatively, if you also need to scan, step up to the Brother DCP-L2660DW.

Do laser printers dry out?

No. After all, toner is a powder, not a liquid. You can leave a laser printer unused for months and it will print perfectly first time. Consequently, this is the single biggest practical advantage over inkjets.

What is the cheapest printer to run in the UK?

By cost per page, refillable ink tank printers like the Epson EcoTank ET-2850 and Canon PIXMA G3570 are unbeatable, at roughly 0.3p mono. Among lasers, meanwhile, Kyocera ECOSYS models with high-yield toner come close at under 2p per page.

Are EcoTank printers worth it?

Yes, if you print colour regularly. Granted, the upfront cost is higher than a cartridge inkjet. However, you recover it within a year of normal use. Bottles last for hundreds of pages and cost a few pounds each. Even so, remember the ink can still dry out if left unused for many months.

What is toner cost per page?

Cost per page is the price of a replacement toner cartridge divided by its rated page yield. For example, a Brother TN-2510XL costs around £75 and prints 3,000 pages, which is roughly 2.5p per page. Therefore, always use the XL or high-yield figure when comparing printers.

Do I need a colour printer at home?

Probably not. After all, most household printing is documents, forms and labels, all of which print perfectly in mono. Buy colour only if you genuinely print colour every week. Otherwise, a £115 mono laser will serve you for a decade.

Does Apple make a printer?

No. Apple's last printer, the LaserWriter 8500, was discontinued in 1997. However, the 1985 original LaserWriter helped invent desktop publishing alongside the Macintosh and Aldus PageMaker. Today, Apple's contribution to printing is AirPrint, the driverless wireless protocol used by every printer in this guide.

What happened to Samsung printers?

HP acquired Samsung's printer business in November 2017 for $1.05 billion. Consequently, Samsung-branded printers are no longer manufactured. Some legacy units still appear on second-hand sites. However, for a 2026 home purchase, treat Samsung as a dead brand.

Other CoolCuration guides you might like

Best AI Assistant UK 2026, the productivity software side of your home office setup.
Parallels Desktop, the easiest way to run Windows on a Mac when a printer driver insists on it.
Affinity by Canva, the free Adobe alternative we now use for most design work.
ThePrintspace, gallery-quality output when your home printer is not enough.
BackMarket, our usual first stop for refurbished tech that costs less and lasts longer.
Native Union Anchor USB-C cable, to keep the desk cable chaos under control.

The verdict

Printers are still annoying. Furthermore, they will probably always be annoying. However, in 2026 the gap between a good printer and a bad one is larger than it has ever been. As a result, the right choice for a UK home is now genuinely obvious. First, buy a Brother mono laser if you can possibly avoid colour. Alternatively, buy an Epson EcoTank or a Canon MegaTank if you cannot. Above all, insist on a physical power switch, AirPrint, and high-yield toner from day one. Then put it on a shelf and forget about it for five years, which is the highest praise any printer can earn.

Ultimately, that is the best home printer UK advice we can offer for 2026, after months of research and one very recent HP-shaped disappointment.

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