Best Compact Printer for Your Home Office

A compact printer is a great addition to any home office. Gone are the days of cumbersome, over-complicated and bulky devices. Today, compact options are smaller, smarter, and easier to use than ever. They’re often more affordable as well, with prices starting from around $200.

But which compact printer is the best, particularly for use in a home office? To work that out, it’s first necessary to define some must-have features. With those decided, it’s then possible to pick a compact printer that meets all of these criteria and more.

Printers intended predominantly for home office use call for a few key features which may not be as important when choosing a model for more general use. These include:

For use in a home office setting, compatibility with multiple devices is always desirable. That way, it’s possible to simultaneously print from a Windows desktop and an Apple MacBook Pro, for example, despite their different operating systems. It also means that anyone else potentially using your home office space can print with zero fuss, too.

Much like cross-compatibility, a range of connectivity options is also an important consideration. The best compact printer for any home office should be able to print over both wired and wireless connections. Accordingly, look for a model that offers both USB or Micro USB and Wi-Fi connectivity, for instance.

Printer ink is famously expensive. So, choosing a printer where ink and other consumables are reasonably affordable is an important consideration, especially in the longer term. As such, check the cost of such items before settling on a printer, rather than waiting until afterward to do so.

One of the biggest benefits of a compact printer is that it’s easily stowed away when not in use. Therefore, it must be reasonably lightweight. Of course, it doesn’t need to be feather-light, but it should still be easy to pop in and out of storage between uses.

Again, much like weight, battery power is an important consideration when choosing a compact printer. Easily moved and not reliant on an outlet, battery-powered printers offer massive convenience. And convenience is always valued in a work environment, whether at home or elsewhere.

For use in any home office, three compact printers from Epson, HP, and Canon stand out based on having most or all of the above features. These are:

The $299.99 Epson WorkForce WF110 is by far the lightest at just 1,600g, but falls down in terms of consumable costs. Although the WorkForce WF110 is a fantastic and very capable printer, Epson’s inkjet cartridges are, unfortunately, often extremely expensive.

The HP Tango is similarly impressive, almost across the board. It’s the cheapest of the three shortlisted printers as well, costing just $199.99. Yet, in this instance, its nearly 3.5kg weight lets it down. It also lacks an option for battery power, which is another reason why it’s not the best compact printer for most home offices.

With that, the title of the best compact printer for a home office has to go to the Canon option.

Even up against the stiffest of competition, the $229.99 Pixma TR150 from Canon is the stand-out choice. Weighing in at a fraction over 2,000g, it offers fantastic cross-compatibility with Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android devices. As a result, it’s a breeze to connect to a plethora of different pieces of equipment from any number of manufacturers.

High-quality printing power and largely affordable consumables also represent two further big ticks for the Canon Pixma TR150 as far as compact home office printers go. However, there is one minor complaint to be aware of. While the top-rated Canon option can be powered by a battery, one isn’t included by default.

Some retailers offer the Canon Pixma TR150 for sale bundled with this arguably crucial extra, though. Where that’s not the case, it’ll be necessary to pick up the appropriate Canon LK-72 separately, should battery-powered printing be desired.

Whichever compact printer you choose for your home office, be sure to protect it with an extended warranty. That said, don’t feel pressured into paying for one of the costly packages often pushed by manufacturers and retailers.

Choose Upsie instead to save up to 70 percent. Offering comparable or superior coverage, Upsie cuts out the middleman before passing on potential savings of two-thirds or more to consumers. Printer warranty prices are affordable. For example, for a $129 printer, Upsie’s warranties cost just $14.99 for two years and $27.99 for three years.

A further range of laptop computer warranty options are also available, as are packages for desktops, monitors, scanners, routers, modems, and more – all at up to 70 percent cheaper than retail. Find out more exclusively at Upsie.com.