Does anyone have recommendations for an affordable home AirPrinter to use with an iPad Pro.

Other than minor differences in the printer controls and setup between manufacturers, if using AirPrint, one printer works and performs much the same as another.

Assuming that you are looking at an inkjet printer, principal differences are the cost of ink consumables - as these vary widely between printers; some printers use between individual tanks for three colours (cyan, red, yellow plus black), or instead use a three colour combined-cartridge plus black. Individual colour tanks can work our cheaper per-page if you print a lot, whereas a combined cartridge may work our cheaper for occasional low-volume printing (where the ink cartridges may simply dry-out before being depleted of ink).

You appear to know exactly what you want. You have done your research for the printers and also know how much you want to spend. I would not worry about the reviews with the price point set to $120 USD. Make the best decision based on your research and you will be fine.

Axel F.

JLT1024 wrote:

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my question! I appreciate your advice. I’m looking for an inkjet printer but my concerns are not about the printer controls or ink since I only need to print a few pages occasionally. I’ve read numerous reviews from frustrated customers saying that HP printers constantly drop the network connection. They have strong home internet connections that consistently support other devices without any problems. One reviewer with a background in IT said there appears to be a bug in HP's firmware. Do you currently use a printer with AirPrint? I’m leaning towards finding one manufactured by Canon. It would be great to hear which ones Apple device owners use and if they’ve had any consistent problems.

I do regularly use an HP Deskjet (inkjet) printer - although the printer itself does not support AirPrint. My Apple devices do use AirPrint to submit print jobs via an AirPrint Print Server (Lantronix xPrintServer) installed on my local ethernet network.

AirPrint printing issues, should they occur, are frequently due to issues with the WiFi Router unexpectedly dropping Apple Bonjour data packets on you local network - or your WiFi Router or Network Switch blocking this device discovery protocol.

The Apple Bonjour protocol uses mDNS (Multicast DNS) UDP port 5353.

Unless skilfully diagnosed, any negative reviews/reports that you encounter may be mis-diagnose a Printer fault - and not necessarily/correctly attribute the problem to a network communication issue.