The downside is that the driver for this wireless AirPrint printer stopped providing drivers past Yosemite. And the wireless feature only works if the printer is connected to a WiFi network; which means I can’t take my wireless HP printer anywhere away from my house and expect it to wirelessly print.
Best printer for Mac, iPad or iPhone: best photo printers We’ve collected together six of the best printers from the past year, plus some of the best printers of the past that you might be able to get hold of at a discount Canon Pixma iP2850 Price: £40.00, More info: With a price of around £40, the iP2850 is certainly one of the cheapest inkjet printers currently available. However, its low price means that it’s pretty basic compared to many of the multifunction printers that are now available. There’s no built-in scanner or copier, and no WiFi either, so you’ll have to connect it directly to your Mac using one of those old-fashioned USB cable thingies. And, of course, the lack of wifi means that there’s no option for printing to an iPhone or iPad. Read: Still, keeping things simple keeps the cost down, and it also means that the iP2850 is nice and compact too. It measures just 426mm wide, so you can easily sit it on a desk next to your Mac, or plug it into a router if you want to share it on your network.
Print quality is good for a printer in this price range. Canon uses a special pigment-based black ink for text printing, which enables it to produce very smooth, sharp text output for letters and other text documents. Colour output is also very good, and the iP2850 is perfectly capable of printing decent photos when it needs to. It’s not the fastest printer around, with Canon quoting speeds of just eight pages per minute for text, and 4ppm for colour, but those speeds should be fine for light use at home. We were initially a bit disappointed by the cost of Canon’s replacement ink cartridges – especially as the three coloured inks are combined into a single cartridge, which means that you have the replace the cartridge even if just one colour ink runs out. Fortunately, the cartridges have come down in price quite a lot recently, and the high-yield colour cartridges now work out at a more reasonable 5.3p per page. The high-yield black cartridges are a little above average, working out at 3.6p per page, but the iP2850 is still a good option if you just need a basic, affordable printer for occasional use at home.
Resolution: 4800x600dpi Speed: Mono – 8ppm; Colour – 4ppm High-yield Black Cartridge: £14.50 (400 pages) High-yield Colour Cartridge: £16.00 (300 pages) Price: £40.00, More info: With a price of around £40, the iP2850 is certainly one of the cheapest inkjet printers currently available. However, its low price means that it’s pretty basic compared to many of the multifunction printers that are now available. There’s no built-in scanner or copier, and no WiFi either, so you’ll have to connect it directly to your Mac using one of those old-fashioned USB cable thingies. And, of course, the lack of wifi means that there’s no option for printing to an iPhone or iPad.
Read: Still, keeping things simple keeps the cost down, and it also means that the iP2850 is nice and compact too. It measures just 426mm wide, so you can easily sit it on a desk next to your Mac, or plug it into a router if you want to share it on your network. Print quality is good for a printer in this price range. Canon uses a special pigment-based black ink for text printing, which enables it to produce very smooth, sharp text output for letters and other text documents. Colour output is also very good, and the iP2850 is perfectly capable of printing decent photos when it needs to. It’s not the fastest printer around, with Canon quoting speeds of just eight pages per minute for text, and 4ppm for colour, but those speeds should be fine for light use at home.
We were initially a bit disappointed by the cost of Canon’s replacement ink cartridges – especially as the three coloured inks are combined into a single cartridge, which means that you have the replace the cartridge even if just one colour ink runs out. Fortunately, the cartridges have come down in price quite a lot recently, and the high-yield colour cartridges now work out at a more reasonable 5.3p per page. The high-yield black cartridges are a little above average, working out at 3.6p per page, but the iP2850 is still a good option if you just need a basic, affordable printer for occasional use at home. Resolution: 4800x600dpi Speed: Mono – 8ppm; Colour – 4ppm High-yield Black Cartridge: £14.50 (400 pages) High-yield Colour Cartridge: £16.00 (300 pages) Canon Maxify iB4050 Price: £120.00, More info: It’s big and bulky, but the Maxify iB4050 is a high-speed inkjet printer designed for home workers or office users who need to print lots of documents every day. Priced at around £120, the iB4050 is still quite affordable, yet it’s also one of the fastest inkjet printers around. Canon quotes speeds of 23 pages per minute for mono, and 15ppm for colour, so it can really churn the pages out when it needs to. It also includes two separate paper trays with a total capacity of 500 sheets of A4 paper, or you can mix things up with different types of papers in each tray.
Other features include USB and wifi connectivity, along with an Ethernet interface for an office network, support for Apple’s AirPrint for iOS devices, and two-sided (duplex) printing. Print quality is very good for text, graphics and photo output, and the running costs are quite competitive too – which, of course, is vital for a high-capacity printer such as this. Canon sells a multipack containing XL cartridges for all four coloured inks for £75.99 – which is far cheaper than buying the cartridges individually – and that works out at a very competitive 1p per page for plain text documents, and 5p per page for colour. The only disappointment is that the iB4050 is an old-fashioned single-function printer.
There’s no scanner, copier or fax machine, so if you need a multi-function device with those features then you’ll need to look elsewhere. However, the iB4050 is hard to beat if you just need a fast, affordable office printer that can churn the pages out day after day. Resolution: 1200x600dpi Print speed: Mono – 23ppm; Colour – 15ppm Canon Pixma MG7750 Price: £159.99 More info: It’s not the cheapest printer around – either to buy or to run – but the MG7750 is Canon’s new top-of-the-range photo printer and it produces really impressive photographic prints. Conventional inkjet printers just use four coloured inks when printing – cyan, magenta, yellow and black – but the MG7750 uses six inks, including a special grey ink that helps to produce subtle shades of colour that really work well in photographs. There’s also a second pigmented black ink that is used just for printing text documents, and which provides very high quality text output. Of course, the disadvantage of using those extra inks means that the MG7750 is quite expensive to run.
Canon is a bit vague about how it calculates the printer’s running costs, but we estimate that plain text printed with the pigmented black ink is a bit above average, at around 3p per page. And, inevitably, using five inks for photo printing bumps up the price as well, bringing it to around 10p per page. We’d definitely recommend shopping around online to see if you can get the inks more cheaply than Canon’s own prices. Other features include a scanner and copier, and two-sided (duplex) printing. As well as USB and wifi the MG7550 also includes an Ethernet interface for office networks, and supports Apple’s AirPrint for iOS devices (and NFC for Android).
It’s a premium printer with premium running costs, but the high-quality photo printing provided by the MG7550 will still appeal to more serious photographers who want top quality for their best shots. And it’s available in lots of different colours too. Print resolution: 9600x2400dpi Speed: Mono – 15ppm; Colour – 10ppm Epson Ecotank ET-2550 Price: £230.00 More info: The Ecotank printers that Epson launched last year introduced a completely new approach to printing. Instead of selling the printer cheaply and then charging high prices for the replacement ink cartridges, Epson bumped up the price of the Ecotank printers but really cut the cost of the inks. The company recently updated the Ecotank range, and prices now start at around £230.00 for the new ET-2550.
That’s still expensive compared to many inkjet printers, but the large ink tank bolted onto the side of the printer contains enough ink to print 4000 pages in black and white or 6500 pages in colour – which is all included in the price of the printer – and which Epson estimates as being the equivalent of two-years supply for an average home user. Replacement inks are cheap too, with a set of four coloured inks costing about £32.00, which works out at less than 1p per page for either mono or colour. Print quality is very good, thanks to the 5760x1440dpi inkjet resolution, and the ET-4550 also includes a scanner and copier functions as well. There’s a USB port and wifi connectivity – but make sure you get the ET-2550 model rather than the very similar ET-2500, as the ET-2550 is the one that supports Apple’s AirPrint for use with iOS devices. Some people might think twice about paying more than £200 for a printer to use at home, but the Ecotank printers are still great value for home workers or small businesses that need to print a lot of documents on a regular basis.
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Print resolution: 5760x1440dpi Speed: Mono – 9ppm; Colour 4.5ppm Epson Expression Premium XP-530 Price: £92.00 More info: As the name implies, the Expression Premium XP-530 is a high-quality photo printer, but it’s actually one of the less expensive photo-printers on the market at the moment. The XP-530 is cheaper than most of its rivals, with an up-front price of just £92.00. That price also includes a scanner and copier with duplex printing, along with wifi connectivity and Apple’s AirPrint for printing from an iPhone or iPad. Like many photo printers, the XP-530 uses additional inks to enhance photo output. In this case it’s a special ‘photo-black’ ink that adds extra contrast and crispness to photos.
That extra ink bumps up the running costs a bit, yet the XP-530 is still quite competitive when compared with rival photo printers. Canon’s XL-size ink cartridges vary between £12-£13 each for the four coloured inks used for graphics and photos. That works out at about 5p per page for colour graphics, which isn’t too bad at all.
Using the extra black ink for printing photos adds another 3p to that cost, but that’s still around the average for a high-end photo printer. The standard black ink used for printing plain text documents costs about 2.7p per page, which is a little higher than we’d have liked but not exorbitant. If you need to print a lot of photos and text documents every month then it might make sense to find an alternative with lower running costs, but the XP-530 is a good option if you need high-quality output for just the occasional photo print or school report. Print resolution: 5760x1440dpi Speed: Mono – 9ppm; Colour – 9ppm HP Envy 4507 Price: £49.00 Last year’s Envy 4500 was one of the most affordable multifunction printers around. This year’s update is called the Envy 4507, but as far as we can tell the two printers are virtually identical (HP even uses the same photos on its web site).
Like its predecessor, the Envy 4507 costs just £49.00 but manages to provide an impressive range of features. It includes both USB and wifi connectivity so that you can share the printer on a network, and it’s one of the cheapest printers you’ll find that supports Apple’s AirPrint for printing from an iPhone or iPad. Print quality for text and graphics is good, and with speeds of around eight pages per minute for mono printing, and 5ppm for colour the Envy 4507 is perfectly adequate for printing out letters or a school report for the kids. Running costs are something of a mixed bag, though. If you buy HP’s high-yield ‘tri-colour’ ink cartridge then colour printing comes to a fairly reasonable 6p per page.
The high-yield black cartridge isn’t such a good deal though, working out at about 3.5p per page, which is definitely above average. However, the Envy 4507 also allows you to sign up for HP’s new ‘instant ink’ subscription service, which lets you print a fixed number of pages each for month for a flat-rate subscription fee starting at just £1.99 per month. It’s worth checking out the subscription rates that are on offer to see if they can save you some extra cash.
Resolution: Print – 1200x600dpi; Scanner – 1200dpi Speed: Mono – 8ppm; Colour – 5ppm HP OffficeJet 7510 Price: £99.00 Most printers aimed at home users and small businesses only go up to A4 paper size, but it can often be handy to print in the larger A3 format, perhaps for marketing materials, or posters or calendars at home. HP describes its OfficeJet 7510 as a ‘personal print shop’ as it’s one of the most affordable A3/A4 printers currently available. It cost £129.00 when we first reviewed it, but that’s recently come down to just £99.00, so it’s a real bargain if you need the occasional A3 print. The OfficeJet 7510 also includes a scanner, copier and fax machine, with a 35-sheet automatic document feeder too.
The printer includes USB and wifi connectivity, along with an Ethernet interface for an office network, and it supports Apple’s AirPrint for iOS devices. The only thing missing is automatic duplex (two-sided) printing – although there’s a manual duplex option available if you don’t mind flipping the pages over yourself.
Print quality is very good, and we were pleasantly surprised by the cost of the replacement ink cartridges too. HP only sells XL cartridges for the OfficeJet 7510, with the black ink cartridge costing £17.00 and lasting for 1000 pages (A4 size), which works out at just 1.7p per page. Colour printing works out well too. The cyan, magenta and yellow ink cartridges cost £10.00 each (£30.00 total) and last for 825 pages, which comes to a very competitive 3.6p per page.
That makes the OfficeJet 7510 a good option for anyone that needs a versatile colour printer that can handle anything from 4×6 postcards up to A3 posters. Resolution: 600x1200dpi Print speed: Mono = 15ppm; Colour 8ppm HP OfficeJet 3830 Price: £59.00 The OfficeJet 4630 that made our list of top printers last year has been discontinued, but the OfficeJet 3830 makes a good replacement – especially following a recent price cut to just £49.00. Despite that low price, the OfficeJet 3830 includes a printer, scanner, copier and fax machine, so it covers all the main document-handling features that you’re likely to need in a home office or small business. It includes USB and wifi connectivity, and is one of the cheapest printers around that includes Apple’s AirPrint for printing from an iPhone or iPad. Our only minor complaint is the lack of automatic duplex (two-sided) printing, although there aren’t many printers in this price range that do include that option.
Text quality isn’t quite as good as some of the more expensive inkjet printers we’ve seen recently, but it’s perfectly adequate for routine documents such as letters and school reports. Photo quality is very good, though, and the OfficeJet 3830 can certainly handle a few holiday snaps on glossy paper or marketing materials for work. Running costs are a bit of a mixed bag.
The XL colour cartridges work out at about 6.6p per page, which isn’t too bad at all. Unfortunately, the XL black cartridges aren’t such good value, working out at hefty 4.5p per page. However, the DeskJet 3630 also includes a free, two-month subscription to HP’s Instant Ink subscription scheme. That’s obviously intended to tempt you into signing up for a regular subscription, but you’re free to cancel whenever you want, so at the very least you’ll get two month’s worth of free ink to help you save some money. Resolution: 1200x1200dpi Print speed: Mono = 8.5ppm; Colour 6ppm Canon Pixma MG6450 Moving on to last year’s top printers Price: Was £90.00 (now £74.99), More info: The Pixma MG6450 originally cost £140.00 when it was first launched, but it’s now widely available for around £90.00, so it’s a good option if you need a versatile, high-quality printer for use at home or in a small office.
It’s available in black or white, and there’s also a striking bronze model as well. The MG6450 is a multifunction device that includes a 1200x2400dpi scanner and copier along with its 4800x1200dpi printing. It provides both USB and wifi connectivity, and it supports Apple’s AirPrint so that you can use it with iOS devices too.
The printer also includes some built-in apps of its own that allow you to quickly print photos from social media sites such as Facebook. It’s a bit on the bulky side, measuring 455mm wide, 369mm deep and148mm high, so you’ll probably need to put it on a table or desk by itself. However, its wireless connectivity means that you can move it around easily enough, and its excellent print quality ensures that it will earn its keep. Most printers use four coloured inks – cyan, magenta, yellow and black (known as CMYK)– but Canon’s Pixma MG6450 actually uses five different inks. It uses the four standard CMYK inks for colour printing, along with a special pigmented black ink that is used for printing text documents. The pigmented ink produces extremely sharp, clear text, while the other four inks do an equally good job for colour and photo output. Running costs aren’t too bad either – at least for a printer that uses five different ink cartridges.
If you use Canon’s high-yield cartridges then straightforward mono printing costs a reasonable 2.3p per page. Colour printing is better, as that comes to a below-average price of around 6p per page. The MG6450 is fairly speedy too, as it can manage 15 pages per minute for mono, and 9.7ppm for colour. Our only minor complaint is that the 100-sheet input tray is a bit small for a beefy printer like this. Resolution: Printer – 4800x1200dpi; Scanner – 1200x2400dpi Speed: Mono – 15ppm; Colour – 9.7ppm High-yield Black Cartridge: Pigment Black (text) –£11.50 (500 pages); Black – £10.00 (810 pages) High-yield Colour Cartridge: Cyan – £11.50 (715 pages); Magenta – £11.50 (715 pages); Yellow – £11.50 (715 pages) Epson Ecotank L355 Price: Was £249.99 (now £239), More info: Epson’s new Ecotank printers represent one of the few genuine innovations in inkjet printing for years. Most inkjet printers are sold quite cheaply, and the manufacturers make their profit by charging really high prices for the replacement ink cartridges.
Epson’s Ecotank printers take a completely different approach. The printers themselves are more expensive to buy, but the ink is much cheaper, which means that running costs are dramatically lower when spread over a period of two or three years. The L355 model costs £249.99, which is relatively high for an inkjet printer, but it has a large ink tank bolted onto the side that contains enough ink – included in the price – for 4000 pages in mono and 6500 pages in colour. That should last you for about two years, and when you eventually run out of ink you can refill the ink tank using bottled inks that are much less expensive than conventional cartridges.
The black ink costs £8 for 4000 pages, or just 0.2p per page, which is far lower than any conventional inkjet printer. The cyan, magenta and yellow coloured inks cost £8 each but they should last for 6500 pages, which works out at 0.4p per page, making the L355 excellent value if you do a lot of colour printing.
Other aspects of the printer’s design are more conventional, but print quality is very good for text, graphics and photo output, and the L355 provides both USB and wifi connectivity for connecting to your Mac or your home or office network. It doesn’t support AirPrint for iOS devices, but Epson’s iPrint app does allow you to print a wide variety of file formats from iOS devices, including Word and Excel files as well as photos. It even includes a fax machine, along with its scanner and copier functions.
It’s not particularly fast for a printer in this price range – Epson quotes speeds of just 9 pages per minute for mono and 4.5ppm for colour – but what the L355 lacks in speed it more than makes up for with its extremely low running costs. Resolution: Print – 5750x1440dpi; Scanner – 300dpi Speed: Mono – 9ppm; Colour – 4.5ppm Black Ink: £8.00 (4000 pages) Colour ink: Cyan – £8.00 (6500 pages); Magenta – £8.00 (6500 pages); Yellow – £8.00 (6500 pages) Epson Expression XP-412 Price: Was £89.99 (now £64), More info: The Expression XP-412 is one of Epson’s ‘small-in-one’ printers, which are designed to be as compact as possible for home users. It’s certainly neatly designed, measuring just 390mm wide, 300 deep and 145mm high, but it still manages to cram in a good range of features, including printer, scanner and copier, and 100-sheet paper tray. That compact design means that you’ll have no trouble sitting it on a desk next to your Mac. Alternatively, you can move it onto a nearby shelf and just use its built-in wifi to connect it to your home network. The XP-412 is also one of the cheapest printers we’ve seen that supports AirPrint, so you can use it with your iPhone or iPad as well.
Text output is good – not quite as smooth and sharp as you can get from some of the more expensive inkjet printers, but perfectly adequate for printing the occasional letter or school report. Photo output is better, producing bright, vivid colours with plenty of detail. Epson’s quoted speeds are a bit optimistic, and it seems that the figures of 33 pages per minute for mono and 15ppm for colour are based on using the printer’s lower-quality draft mode. We tested the printer using its ‘normal’ quality mode, and got much lower figures of around 7ppm for mono and 4ppm for colour. But, to be fair, those speeds are still adequate for light use at home. The same applies to printing costs. Epson’s standard ink cartridges aren’t great value for money, as they don’t even provide 200 pages for either colour or mono printing.
However, you can get a multi-pack containing high-yield cartridges for all four coloured inks – cyan, magenta, yellow and black – for about £50, and this brings the cost per page down to about 2.7p for mono and 8.3p for colour. Those prices are a little above average, but not massively so, and the compact design of the XP-412 and its support for wifi and AirPrint make it a good option if you only need an affordable printer for occasional use at home. Resolution: Print – 1440x5760dpi; Scanner – 1200x2400dpi Speed: Mono – 7ppm; Colour – 4ppm High-yield Black Cartridge: £12.50 – as part of multipack (470 pages) High-yield Colour Cartridge: £12.50 each, as part of multipack (450 pages) HP Envy 4500 Price: £49.00 With a price of just £49, the Envy 4500 is one of the most affordable multifunction printers currently available. It’s quite neatly designed too, with a compact, low-profile design that measures just 120mm high and 445mm wide, so you can easily sit it on your desk or on a convenient shelf.
The Envy 4500 also manages to include an impressive range of features for such a low cost device. It provides both USB and wifi connectivity so that you can share the printer on a network, and also supports Apple’s AirPrint for printing from an iPhone or iPad. It even includes double-sided printing – a feature that you rarely find in low-cost printers such as this.
Print quality for text and graphics is good, and the Envy 4500 is more than adequate for printing out letters or a school report for the kids. Its photo output isn’t dazzlingly bright or colourful, but that’s a lot to ask from a printer in this price range, and you can still get decent results if you don’t mind using higher quality glossy papers.
It’s not particularly fast either, although speeds of about eight pages per minute for mono and 5ppm for colour are still fine for light use at home. Running costs are something of a mixed bag, though. If you buy HP’s high-yield ‘tri-colour’ ink cartridge then colour printing comes to a fairly reasonable 6p per page. The high-yield black cartridge isn’t such a good deal, and works out at about 4p per page, which is definitely above average.
However, the Envy 4500 also allows you to sign up for HP’s new ‘instant ink’ subscription service, which lets you print a fixed number of pages each for month for a flat-rate subscription fee starting at just £1.99 per month. That can save you up to 70% on your normal printing costs, according to HP, so it’s worth checking out the subscription rates that are on offer to see if they can save you some extra cash (see for more info). Resolution: Print – 1200x600dpi; Scanner – 1200dpi Speed: Mono – 8ppm; Colour – 5ppm High-yield Black Cartridge: £20.00 (480 pages) High-yield Colour Cartridge: £20.00 (330 pages).
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