If you haven’t looked at inkjet printers in a few years, you may be surprised at the improvements. While the dreaded ink cartridges are still used by some printers, there’s been a big rise in cartridge-free ink tank printing that reduces the waste and overall cost. There’s also been a big rise in security, capacity, and quality. If you’re in the market for everything from a massive departmental printer to a battery-powered printer you can run from the car, we have you covered. Also: The best printers of 2023 You can follow my day-to-day project updates on social media. Be sure to follow me on Twitter at @DavidGewirtz, on Facebook at Facebook.com/DavidGewirtz, on Instagram at Instagram.com/DavidGewirtz, and on YouTube at YouTube.com/DavidGewirtzTV. It will hold 225 sheets and will print up to 20 pages-per-minute. With Wi-Fi and Ethernet connections, as well as a smart app that will let you print from your phone, this little guy has many of the features found in more expensive printers, but for around $200. HP’s very proud of their HP+ program and asked me to share, “With HP+, the printer comes with six free months of Instant Ink and an extended 2-year HP warranty. HP+ also includes a cloud-based smart security settings monitoring system that helps detect and remediate printer security status, and a Private Pickup Smart App feature that ensures security of confidential information by only releasing documents to the intended receiver.” We also like the fact that you’re not limited to letter-sized pages when it comes to printing. You can actually print up to 13x19-inches, allowing you to output full tablet or A3-sized pages. This is an enterprise-level printer that can print 24 ppm, has security features, large ink capacity, Wi-Fi for wireless printing, and more. Print, copy, scan using the 50-sheet document feeder and fax. It holds up to 500 sheets in its dual paper bins. The dual bins also allow you to load two different kinds of paper, for more flexible printing. You can use your computer or your mobile device to print and with its NFC capability, all you need to do is tap your phone on the printer to connect for printing. In addition to connecting to your office’s Wi-Fi network for wireless printing, the network can create its own network, connect over Ethernet, or be connected to a single machine via USB. This printer also comes with the HP+ program described above.
Enterprise printers
There are two main classes of enterprise printers we looked at: Printers meant for general departmental use and printers meant for industrial or factory use. Departmental use is all about printing full pages at volume, while industrial use is often about portability and labeling.When we looked at the departmental printers, we looked for printers that offered a considerable paper capacity, so there wasn’t a need to reload them all the time. Likewise, we looked for printers that offered a particularly large ink tank or cartridge, again to reduce downtime and maintenance. Because security is becoming such a concern, we looked for printers that offered a solid security solution. And we looked for printers that would integrate well into your other departmental business operations.For handheld printers, we looked at typical applications. Some printers need to plaster giant serial numbers on the sides of shipping crates, while others need to be able to put a bar code on product boxes traveling down a production line. We identified a number of printers that can help meet those needs.
Small office/home office
We also took a long look at the wide range of multi-function printers that are ideal for small or home office use. These printers typically offer printing, as well as copying, scanning, and fax capabilities.If you have a small office, a multi-function (or MFP) printer can be a valuable investment, although, with the decline in landlines, you may find yourself using the fax capability less and less.Here, too, we tended to favor cartridge-free printers, although we do include some printers with cartridges. Although speed was important, we tended to favor printers that offered printing from both computers and mobile devices. We also looked at a couple of printers that allow you to do all your printing on the go, without having a power socket.
Photo printers
One category we did not rate was photo printers (although many of the printers we recommend can print photos). Because this guide is meant business and office decision-making, we felt it didn’t make sense to recommend dedicated photo printers. That said, if you are in the market for a photo printer, CNET has a great run-down of their favorites. While we weren’t able to perform hands-on tests with these printers, we did factor in customer satisfaction. In all cases, we looked at and read customer ratings and reviews – in particular, searching for comments that would disqualify a printer from consideration (like, for example, many users complaining of jams or failures for a given model). This time, I also had the opportunity to get some input from HP directly, which helped us choose some of the HP models to spotlight.Finally, we did a literature review of other reviews on the web, again looking for the printers that were very well reviewed and searching out and eliminating any printers that were described as having characteristics we thought would give you difficulty.Oh, and stay tuned. We’ll be looking at color lasers and other laser printer solutions in a future guide.The result is the list above. Feel free to let us know your favorite printers in the comments below. Do you own any that we’ve identified here? How do you like them?
