Which Printer Should I Buy?

The following applies to Mac, iPhone, and iPad printing, with some details for Windows, Linux, and Unix printing.

There are many different printers available, with different features, and with different trade-offs, because there are many different vendors, many different user priorities, many different preferences, and many different requirements.

Your needs and requirements and expectations here will vary from those of others.

There's no one right printer for everybody.

Printer Price

Price is usually the first thing we look at. Naturally. With printers, there are two other "prices" to look at, beyond the initial purchase price.

Look at the printer consumable prices. These are the ink, toner, drums, and other maintenance kits that will be needed over the lifetime of the printer.

Also look at the "price" that is the relative longevity of vendor support. Vendors that more quickly retire their printers or that don't track Apple software updates with their drivers means more frequent printer replacements.

Inkjet printers consumables tend to be the most expensive, followed by the expenses of lower-end laser printer supplies.

Mid-range and "departmental" printers tend to have lower consumable costs and the highest capacities.

The cheapest purchase-price printer you can buy can be one of the most expensive printers to use.

Printing from Apple Mac, iPhone, and iPad

You're here in the Apple forums, so you'll very likely want a printer with AirPrint and/or IPP/IPPS printing support.

AirPrint printing support is necessary if you're planning on printing from iPhone or iPad.

AirPrint and IPP/IPPS support—AirPrint printing is a superset of IPP/IPPS printing—removes the need for vendor printer drivers for most printing capabilities.

For Mac printing, you'll minimally want a printer with support for macOS 10.15 Catalina or macOS 11 Big Sur support, as that printer support means the vendor has been paying attention during the last ~decade or so of Apple software updates, and has migrated the printer drivers to 64-bit driver support. If the printer vendor only has 32-bit drivers available, they won’t and can’t support newer macOS versions without releasing newer drivers.

For most of us reading this, you will want an AirPrint-capable printer.

Printer Feature Decisions and Trade-Offs

Now comes the part where you get decide what you want and what you plan to do with the printer, and (indirectly) how much you want to pay.

• Printer Resolution? Document or Photo printing? For most people, this is a printing resolution suitable for routine documents that they plan to print, or the higher-resolution printers that are intended for printing art and photos. Higher-resolution printers also tend to be slower, and supplies can be more expensive. Higher-resolution printers and photo-printers can be or are less desirable for document printing.
• Paper page size support; what paper-size flexibility do you require? Post cards? 3x5" cards? Other sizes?
• Automatic duplex printing? Manual duplexing? No duplexing support? Automatic duplexing support is much easier to use. The others are far more of a hassle to use when you need to print on both sides of the paper.
• Envelope printing support? Label-printing support? Some printers can. Some can't.
• Single-sheet feeding, whether for pre-printed forms or label-printing, or otherwise.
• Printer printing speed, and printer warm-up times. How much are you printing, and how quickly?
• Do you need an automatic document scanner? Copier? Fax? Do you need any or all of these?
• Do you need to scan documents to email, or scanning to a printer-connected USB device?
• Printer physical size and weight? How much room do you have for your printer?
• Color or monochrome printing support? Color isn't as expensive as it used to be.
• Is the initial purchase price or the consumables price your cost focus?
• Printer duty cycle? How many pages are you printing a day or a month or a year? Higher-duty-cycle printers tend to be more robustly built, too.
• Paper sorter, bins, or printer stapling support? Printers can have other paper-processing features.
• Input paper capacity; can you fit a whole ream of paper in the input bin, or not? If you're doing high-volume printing on a higher-speed printer, can you fit several reams into the input bin?
• Number of printer paper input bins, if you should want some mixture of plain paper, photo paper, punched paper, colored paper, pre-printed forms, or other printing supplies.

Printer Consumables and Supplies Considerations

The cost and availability and the number of printing pages are all of interest.

Some vendors have cartridge lifetimes. With some of those vendors, an expired cartridge cannot be used.

With some vendors, an expired or depleted printer cartridge can disable the scanner, or other features, too.

Some vendors effectively rent their printers to users, as part of a printer-consumables monthly subscription.

For color printers, are the colors replaceable separately, or only available as a single multi-colored cartridge? Separate ink or toner cartridges means you can swap just that depleted color, rather than all colors.

Printer Networking

Printers with Wi-Fi or wired Ethernet printing make sharing the printer far easier.

With AirPrint printers, the printer offers (at least) Wi-Fi networking, and possibly wired-network printing.

For other printer usage requirements, a local USB printer that attaches only to one computer is useful. Trying to share a USB-connected printer with other people or other computers is a hassle, though. If you might ever want to print from other computers or from an iPad or iPhone, get a network-connected printer.

Other Printer Features? Scanners? Copiers?

If you are interested in a multi-function printer with a scanner, you will probably want the scanner to support TWAIN. Support for TWAIN scanning means you might be able to use different software to perform scans, beyond whatever software and scanner-driver software that the vendor might provide. This includes the Image Capture app available on macOS.

Document copying. Do you want to use your printer as a document copier or photocopier?

Most any printer with a scanner or a copier or a fax will also have the other features.

Staplers, stackers, sorters, higher-end printers have all sorts of other features.

Yes, some folks still need facsimile support and faxes, too.

Linux or Unix Printing?

If you're planning to use this printer with Linux or Unix or BSD or Windows computers, you'll want a printer with support for IPP/IPPS, and probably also with support for LPR/LPD printing, telnet printing, and/or support for Raw / port 9100 printing.

And you'll want a network-connected or maybe Wi-Fi printer.

Printers You Probably Do Not Want To Buy

You do not want a printer that uses what is called host-based rendering.

Host-based rendering means that the printer vendor has off-loaded the intelligence and the firmware and the rendering-related processing from the printer, and performs those and other printer operations in the host computer.

With host-based rendering, the printer hardware provides something approaching the simplest printing mechanism possible. This makes the host-based rendering printer among the cheapest to build and sell.

Okay. Host-based printers are cheap. That sounds good. Why might that be bad?

Printers with host-based rendering will forever require vendor drivers, and some vendors keep those printer drivers longer than others, but all retire printers. Host-based printers are entirely dependent on the vendor drivers. You can't get around that with AirPrint or IPP/IPPS or lpr/lpr or telnet printing. Once those vendor drivers don't work with your particular version of macOS or iOS or iPadOS in your Mac or iPhone or iPad, the printer is so much industrial decoration.

Printer Vendor Recommendations

Brother is one of the last old-school printer vendors around, and they have a reasonably long support for their products.

Brother also has wide support for printing from Apple computers including Mac, Pad, and iPhone.

I've been using various Brother MFC-series color laser printer-scanner-copiers for years, as have others I know and/or work with, and the Brother printers have all worked well. And with long lifetimes. The Brother consumables, maintenance kits, and related products have all had reasonable prices.

Having worked with a number of inkjet printers over the years, I cannot recommend inkjets over a decent-resolution laser printer.

There are other printer companies that I can't or won't recommend, whether for their consumables pricing and policies, or their (atrocious) support websites, their printer documentation, printer support policies or longevity, or other factors. Some printer vendors are better than others.