Why should you pick one of the best laser printers over an inkjet? Inkjets might be better at printing photos and generally cheaper upfront. Still, top laser printers are much better for quickly and quietly printing large volumes of documents, making them a favorite for home office use.
The best laser printers also won’t demand a new ink cartridge every hundred or so pages; they don’t use ink at all. They rely on toner cartridges capable of printing thousands of pages before they need replacing. In other words, laser printers are usually considerably cheaper to run.
And where inkjet nozzles can become blocked or dry up when you leave them for long periods, laser printers don’t care how often you use them. They need less attention in general and are always ready to leap into action, bringing us to the other key advantage, speed.
Perhaps best of all, laser printers are more affordable and flexible than ever before. This means they make great home printers and are used in offices. The best laser printers come in every shape and size, and we've listed our top recommendations, including some budget printers, so that you can find the right laser printer for your home or office.
We've compared these laser printers across various aspects, from their printing speed and size to the print quality and build quality. We looked at their multi-function capabilities, connectivity options, security features, and pricing, among many other things.
We've also reviewed the best Brother printers, portable printers, and label printers.
The best laser printers of 2023
The best laser printers in full
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With a print speed of 55 pages per minute and room for a whole ream of paper, the Xerox VersaLink B600DN can keep a large workgroup printing continuously - more than justifying its place among the best laser printers around. It has a duplex print speed of 55ppm, a paper capacity of 700 sheets, and supports high-capacity toner cartridges.
The initial cost for a monochrome print-only device might seem high. Still, this premium machine is very economical to run, and its consistent print quality justifies the price tag. The intuitive five-inch touchscreen interface will further cut down your operating time.
But the printer is large, weighs 22.3kg, and is fairly noisy, so it's better suited for busy small and mid-sized businesses than a home office. The printer has security features too. Secure Print holds your documents in the printer’s memory and releases it only when you input the correct PIN.
Read the full review: Xerox VersaLink B600DN
This little grey box can churn out the pages, and despite the size, it will hold a lot of paper too. This makes the Brother HL-L5100DN ideal for small offices with a high demand for black-and-white documents. The quality is consistent, and the per-page print cost is attractive. It’s light on features with no Wi-Fi or a front USB port, but what it does, it does very well.
The printer has a print speed of 40ppm and a duplex print speed of 10ppm. The HL-L5100DN can hold 300 sheets of A4 paper in its two in-trays and 150 sheets in the out tray. There is an Ethernet port, so you can connect with the office router through an Ethernet cable (not included). Thanks to the Brother iPrint&Scan app, you can connect to the printer using your smartphone.
Read the full review: Brother HL-L5100DN
Kyocera’s hefty print-only device feels well-built and has enough capacity for 500 sheets of paper and large toner cartridges, making it suitable for a big workgroup or a busy home office. The Kyocera Ecosys P6230cdn prints quickly in duplex mode and runs quietly too.
The display and buttons are rather small, but it is well-armed with security features to prevent private documents from going astray.
The printer's main input tray can hold 500 sheets of A4 paper, while the multipurpose tray can carry 100 A4 sheets. The toner cartridges with the printer can deliver up to 6000 pages, which is quite suitable for a small or mid-sized business. The Ecosys P6230cdn can print mono and color pages at a rate of 30 ppm.
Read the full review: Kyocera Ecosys P6230cdn
By Xerox’s standards, this compact four-in-one laser printer is a modest affair, offering print, scan, copy and fax functions in a small and relatively affordable package. Despite the low price, however, the Xerox B215 still comes with a large tilting touchscreen for easy operation and a none-too-shabby print speed of 30ppm.
You can fit 250 sheets of paper in the main paper tray and it comes with enough toner for 1500 monochrome pages and has a fairly low per page print cost of around 2.2 pence per page.
The B215 is the brand’s smallest multifunction device, and it's light enough to lift easily onto a desk. Although the B215 has a seemingly small footprint, it's not quite the case. To fit A4 sheets inside, you'll have to extend the paper tray out the back by a few inches, and this takes up more space on your desk than you might expect.
Read the full review: Xerox B215
The Canon imageCLASS MF743Cdw (known as the i-SENSYS MF742Cdw in UK) comes with all of the key features such as auto duplex printing, a fifty-sheet ADF and a front USB port while offering a good enough print speed and print quality for any small to medium-sized business.
There’s plenty of room for paper and the ability to add further paper trays if required. It’s fairly economical to run, and that prominent touchscreen interface makes it particularly easy to use.
This printer's cheaper than the previous i-SENSYS model that it succeeds, and it ships with enough toner to print 2300 black and white pages, or 1200 in color. The MF743Cdw isn't super compact, and although you may not want to place it on your desk, it has a neat design.
Read the full review: Canon imageCLASS MF743Cdw
This simple cube of a laser printer can churn out color or monochrome pages at a steady rate of 25 per minute and 13ppm in duplex mode. It’s simple to use too and easy to connect with, thanks to its inclusion of both Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi Direct.
There’s even an NFC chip built in for added wireless convenience. NFC allows you to pull down individual print jobs by tapping your NFC-enabled smartphone so that sensitive documents are never left lying on the printer.
The Ricoh P C301W’s high-yield toner cartridges also ensure a low running cost. It has a paper capacity of 750 sheets, and it recovers from sleep mode in under 10 seconds so that you can get to printing swiftly. The printer supports multiple connectivity options, including AirPrint, Google Cloud Print, and Mopria.
While we have not had a chance to complete a hands-on review of this printer, we think its feature set makes it worth your consideration. We’ll post a full review when we’re able to.
It might look a little top-heavy, but this all-in-one laser printer balances price and specifications. It can print, copy scan, and fax with the ability to both duplex scan and print. Plenty of room for paper inside, and high-capacity toner cartridges are available to keep you printing at volume. With a print speed of 42ppm, it’s one of the fastest available at this competitive price point.
Lexmark recommends a maximum monthly page volume of 8,000 prints, which will suit small to medium-sized businesses. The printer can hold 350 A4 sheets in the main tray and ships with enough black toner for 3000 pages. Since the tray projects out of the back of the unit by a few centimeters, its footprint takes up little desk space.
Read the full review: Lexmark MB3442adw.
This uncompromising laser printer will not disappoint you with hefty workloads and a professional finish. The latest TASKalfa device has a massive capacity for any paper size from A6 to SRA3. It prints and scans quickly and at high quality with 1200 dpi resolution and advanced color technology. It can even staple your perfect printed pages together for you.
The TASKalfa 4052ci has a paper capacity of 7,150 and is considerably heavy at 95kg. It has a print speed of 40ppm and a maximum duty cycle of 200,000 pages per month — perfect for a busy mid-sized business.
The printer supports connectivity options like high-speed USB and other mobile printing solutions, like Google Cloud Print, Apple AirPrint, and KYOCERA Mobile Print. It also has a customizable 9” color display with an intuitive home screen that makes it easy to input commands.
We’ve found this laser printer to be an intriguing option that will meet the needs of many businesses with high print capacity needs. When we’ve had a chance to do a full review, we’ll post it here.
The HP Neverstop Laser MFP 1202nw is the first to employ a refillable toner tank instead of a disposable cartridge. It’s a win for both the environment and your print budget, which could cost as much as 60% less than regular toner cartridges.
This inexpensive all-in-one lacks an auto-duplex mode, but for basic monochrome printing and copying duties, this machine is hard to beat on the total cost of ownership. There’s enough black toner in the box for 5,000 pages, and refueling is as simple as injecting the toner from a syringe-type canister into the printer.
The Neverstop Laser MFP 1202nw is apt for home office users looking for economy and space-saving design. The printer takes up very little space on the desk and has room for 150 sheets of paper. It has an LCD display for basic information, but it's easier to use the companion app, HP Smart, to input commands through your smartphone or laptop.
Read the full review: HP Neverstop Laser MFP 1202nw
The Kyocera ECOSYS P2040dw is a slick monochrome device that demonstrates the advantages of laser class printing by churning out crisp black-and-white pages of text with ruthless efficiency and at speeds inkjets can only dream of.
It uses LED technology, which relies on fewer moving parts than conventional laser printers, Kyocera’s ECOSYS products are invariably well-built using components designed to last, so they should demand less maintenance than your average inkjet printer.
There will undoubtedly be no stopping from cleaning inkjet nozzles or swapping out spent inkjet cartridges. There’s room for 250 sheets of A4 paper in its main tray and enough toner included to print 3,600 pages. There’s no touchscreen interface, but in all other respects, this simple laser printer punches well above its weight and would suit any busy SMB (small and medium-sized business).
Read the full review: Kyocera ECOSYS P2040dw
Best Laser Printers: Frequently Asked Questions
How to choose the best laser printers for you?
When selecting the best laser printer for yourself, you'll want to start by considering whether you'll use the machine at home or the office and how much printing you could do monthly.
Then, you'll want to evaluate whether you'll be doing text-heavy printing or more of image and graphic-oriented printing. If your printing requirements go into several hundreds or thousands of pages a month, you'll want a heavy-duty machine that can keep up with the large output and whose ink prices aren't steep. It'll especially help if the printer comes with toner and ink.
You’ll also want to ensure you’ve selected a printer that meets all your multi-function needs. Do you need double-sided printing, black and white or will you need to print color documents? Do you need to make copies? Depending on the type of documents you’re copying, you want a flatbed or multi-page feed scanner.
What kind of connectivity do you need? There are many options to choose from that best suit your specific needs – wireless (eg. WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC), USB flash drives, or even a hardwired connection via LAN or USB cables.
You’ll also want to consider the printer’s speed and other features, such as the control panel, companion app, and price, among other things.
What kind of laser printer should you buy - print-only or all-in-one?
Choosing a print-only or all-in-one printer comes down to a few key elements - namely, your overall cost to purchase and operate, the frequency you’ll use the feature(s), and how accessible you need features to be (eg. do you need it every week, or can you pay a print company to do a small batch of printing at a fraction of the cost of buying a printer with the feature you need only a few times per year). For example, if you only make copies of single pages, you might only need a model with a flatbed scanner and not a multi-document feeder. Thankfully, you have a wide selection of printer options to purchase a model with only what you need and not any extra features that will drive the purchase price up.
Does a laser printer cost more than an inkjet printer?
While laser printers have a higher upfront cost for the printer and toner cartridge replacements than an inkjet printer and ink cartridge refills, they are often more economical in the long run based on the volume of pages they are able to print. Per-page costs are significantly cheaper for laser printers (50% or more), especially when printing in black and white. Toner also has a longer shelf life than ink so you don’t need to worry about needing to replace dried-out ink cartridges or dealing with clogged jets.
Best laser printers: How did we choose?
The best laser printers: How we test
Of course, there is quite a range of laser printers now available for consumers. Compiling this review meant we had to narrow down the devices by taking into account speed, longevity, print quality - and cost. Another important consideration was what the printer might eventually be used for.
Will the printer be used at home or based in the office? Will it primarily be used to print the odd document or image for your child’s schoolwork, or will it have to manage a more intensive workload? We considered these critical factors in a review covering the spectrum of printers and use cases.
Each laser printer we source for testing is measured on our test bench, and the results are critically compared with every other model we have reviewed. Rather than relying on the manufacturer’s quoted figures, we time the first page out and print speeds in single sheet and duplex mode using a standard ten-page document and a stopwatch app.
To compare print quality, we print out the same set of test documents on every machine. These twelve test pages include text of varying font sizes and colors, mixed image and text pages, a collection of photos, and a series of test patterns designed to assess sharpness, color fidelity, contrast, and grey scale.
We also calculate running costs, compare functionality and consider each product’s versatility, design, and build quality. The overall score reflects all of these parameters and overall value for money.
- Check out our list of the best printers, no matter if they are inkjet or laser
