Best Small Printer 2024: Compact Printers for Home & Office Use

The best small printer is a great investment for home offices, providing all the features you need with a much smaller footprint. There are loads of different options to choose from, a variety of reputable brands, and various ink options – and with working from home at an all-time high – it can be hard to find the right compact printer for your needs.

We’ve helped narrow things down with our selection of the best printers for home offices – across a range of budget and functional needs. Whether you only need the occasional document printed or you work with a lot of paper documentation in your home, these printers are sure to serve your every need.

How We Picked the Best Small Printer

Aside from size, there are a number of other factors we considered when choosing our top five small printers. We prioritized printers with good print speeds and print quality, but also those that enabled wireless connectivity for added convenience. A degree of portability was also welcome: for even more convenience than even a home office offers. We settled on five printers at a range of price points, each one being a stellar unit in its own right, but having distinct advantages over the others.

HP OfficeJet 250

Specifications

• Printer Output: Color
• Printer Type: InkJet
• Connectivity Technology: USB, WiFi Direct, Bluetooth, Cloud Printing
• Duplex Printing: No

What We Think

This compact InkJet printer is ideal for low-cost, low-space printing for your home or office.

Reasons to Buy

• All-in-one features – scan, copy and even fax from this portable print solution.
• Easy use – wireless setup and connectivity are easy and intuitive with the OfficeJet 250.

Reasons to Avoid

• Poor ink economy – expensive and frequently-emptied ink can make this a less efficient purchase.

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Our top pick for the best small printer is the HP OfficeJet 250: combining all the best features of a top-quality standard printer whilst keeping it contained within a tiny footprint.

The OfficeJet 250 packs a number of features designed for convenience: it’s battery-operated, with a long lifespan to allow you to print on the go for long periods without recharging – around 225 pages of printing on average. It also has built-in scanning and copying features for added functionality, and wireless printing from computers or phones. Prints are produced quickly and to a high standard, as can be expected from a top-of-the-line manufacturer such as HP.

However, like so many other printers, the catch comes in the cost of ink. Though the printer itself isn’t as cheap as some others, the cost of low-yield HP ink cartridges means that the average cost-per-print is quite high. But for unmatched convenience and quality, the OfficeJet 250 is still our best small printer on the market!

There’s a lot of similarities between the Epson WorkForce WF-110 and our previous selection, but being lighter than many other printers it earns a spot as our best portable printer. A wireless battery-powered printer with a ton of great features, this is a great compact option for the home office on the go.

Weighing just 3.5lbs, the WF-110 is lighter than most laptops and can be easily carried thanks to an unassuming design. With great battery life and print speeds, this Epson printer can create standard-size documents quickly and consistently – via a wired connection or a wireless one.

The only negative factor that stops this from being our best small printer is the scanner module is sold separately rather than being a built-in module. It reduces the footprint of the printer itself, but buying a separate portable scanner is less convenient. That said, the WF-110 is still among the best compact printers on the market!

Brother MFC-J1010DW

Specifications

• Printer Output:: Color
• Printer Type: : InkJet
• Connectivity Technology: : USB, Ethernet, WiFi Direct
• Duplex Printing?: Yes

What We Think

Boasting all the features of a full-fledged unit in a compact case, the MFC-J1010DW is a great low-cost printer under $100

Reasons to Buy

• Great value – with fast printing speeds and a range of configuration options, this printer’s sub-$100 price point is pushed to the limit.
• Multimedia printing – the MFC-J1010DW offers the option to print with a wide range of specialist media.

Reasons to Avoid

• Poor ink economy – inefficient cartridges lead to the MFC-J1010DW being less economical in the long-term.

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We’re big fans of Brother printers here, and the MFC-J1010DW is another one of their stellar offerings – this time in the budget and compact printer department. For the most affordable small printer for your home office, consider this plucky underdog of a product.

With automated double-sided printing and a built-in scanner, the MFC-J1010DW leaves little on the table while maintaining a great price. For monochrome documents, the print speed is as fast as 17 pages per minute – and it can also print color documents and photos, albeit slower. To send your work to the printer, you’ve got the choice of ethernet, USB, and WiFi connectivity.

However, while it’s certainly compact by printer standards, it’s not as small as the other picks on our list today, being both bulky and heavy and therefore difficult to transport. The MFC-J1010DW is a great printer that’s small-cost and small-scale, but it’s not the most portable compact printer in the world!

HP Envy Photo 7855 Wireless Home Office Printer

Specifications

• Printer Output: Color
• Printer Type: InkJet
• Connectivity Technology: USB, Ethernet, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi Direct
• Duplex Printing: No

What We Think

Economical and ecological, the 7855 is a great means of printing sustainably without taking up space.

Reasons to Buy

• Eco-friendly – made from recycled plastics and with a low power draw, this HP printer has a low carbon footprint.
• Low cost – priced the same as the MFC-J1010DW, the 7855 is still an affordable print solution.

Reasons to Avoid

• Poor color quality – although marketed as a photo printer, the 7855 doesn’t have the level of color depth that we’d expect from a top photo printer.

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With a small carbon footprint as well as a small physical one, the HP Envy 7855 is a sterling environmentally friendly printer from HP.

With an average cost-per-print of just 5 cents, and with a price point under $200, the 7855 is a great low-cost option. Made from recycled plastics, the printer keeps its draw on the environment to an absolute minimum. Print speeds are fast, even at top print quality levels, with the 7855. You can mass-produce full-color prints at an average speed of 10 prints per minute – given this printer’s low price, this is even more impressive.

However, this green printer doesn’t do a great job of reproducing other colors: without an ICC color profile, images aren’t as vibrant as we’d like. It’s an issue smaller than this printer’s carbon footprint, however, and we’d still recommend it as an environmentally-conscious print solution.

Canon SELPHY CP1500

Specifications

• Printer Output: Color
• Printer Type: Dye Sublimation
• Connectivity Technology: USB, WiFi Direct, SD Card
• Duplex Printing: No

What We Think

Pocket-sized and portable, this tiny photo printer is an easy solution for printing mini prints whilst on the move.

Reasons to Buy

• Highly compact – this photo printer is literally pocket-sized, making it ideal for taking with you.
• Great photo quality – prints are rendered quickly and in great quality with the CP1500.

Reasons to Avoid

• Limited capacity – limited to 4″ x 6″ photo prints and with a small battery life, the CP1500 isn’t the most capable photo printer.

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If you need a highly compact photo printer, then the Canon SELPHY CP1500 is your best bet. Pocket-size yet capable, this tiny photo printer is ideal for on-the-go prints.

The only non-InkJet printer on our list, the CP1500 employs dye sublimation technology to chemically bond color to paper. With WiFi connection functionality, an SD card slot and a 3.5″ LCD touchscreen crammed onto a pocket-sized body, the economy of space is second-to-none. You can easily port over images from smartphones or cameras, and can even edit them in-device with a library of filters and effects.

However, the portability is the limiting factor on the CP1500: with a print size capped at 4″ x 6″, and an external battery pack required to make it truly portable, the overall functionality is limited with the CP1500. For easy on-the-move photo printing, this unit is still hard to beat.

Features and Considerations

No matter what size printer you buy or the budget you have, every printer has a range of different specifications and use cases. It is important to get the right printer for your printing tasks. So, If you’re looking to invest, here are the key factors to input before you purchase:

Print Speed

Depending on what you intend to print using your printer, speed can and should factor into your purchase. For large amounts of text documents, print speed can be essential, but photo printing is ideally a slower process to ensure quality. When researching, look for a printer that ideally strikes the balance of both.

Print Quality

An important feature of any printer is how well it can print, and even the best small printers will reach a certain threshold of print quality. This is generally measured in Dots per Inch (DPI), and can be a good litmus test for a printer’s resolution before you make your purchase. Equally, if you plan to do large amounts of scanning, then consider the scan resolution.

Connectivity

Whilst most modern printers feature a form of wireless compatibility, be sure to double-check on the off-chance that it doesn’t. You’ll still be able to connect via a USB cable or another wired input, but this can be a major inconvenience for placement and printing.

Ink System and Cost

Printer manufacturers famously employ the “razor and blades” model of business: while the printer is more affordable, the cost of ink makes up for it. Check to see whether your small printer has a suitable ink economy and whether it is potentially compatible with more affordable third-party ink brands. Many consumers are switching to ink tank printers these days for their economic and environmental benefits.

FAQs

Verdict

HP OfficeJet 250

Specifications

• Printer Output: Color
• Printer Type: InkJet
• Connectivity Technology: USB, WiFi Direct, Bluetooth, Cloud Printing
• Duplex Printing: No

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Though the ink economy isn’t ideal, the HP OfficeJet 250 manages to strike a great balance between print quality, print speed and printer size – making it a cinch for the best small printer on the market in 2024! Though each of our other products today has its respective strengths and weaknesses, each are viable print solutions for those working with limited space – or limited funds.

For the opposite end of the spectrum, why not check out our guide on the best large-format printers available today?