With various kinds of printing technologies being available now, choosing a printer that is just right for your needs is certainly no easy task these days. Today, printers are available in many sizes and shapes - each design for a specific kind of application. There are tiny printers to carry with you when you're travelling and then there are the workgroup printers that are meant to handle extremely heavy loads.
While some printers are designed for use by photographers and artists, there are others designed specifically for multi-taskers.The purpose of this guide is to help you choose the best wireless printer for you. Multi function and wireless printers have become very common these days because there are so very convenient to use.
You can place a wireless printer anywhere with Wi-Fi without having to worry about unsightly cables.Before you'll be able to choose the right wireless printer for you, you should know exactly what features you need to look for and what your particular needs are.
Wireless Printer Comparison Table
Image
Model
Print
Tech
Added
Functionality
Price
Rating
HP OfficeJet 4650
Inkjet
Scanner, copier, fax
$
Canon PIXMA MX922
Inkjet
Scanner, copier, fax
$
HP Envy 4520
Inkjet
Scanner,
copier
$
HP Envy 7640
Inkjet
Scanner, copier, fax
$$
Brother MFCL2700DW
Laser,
Monochrome
Scanner, copier, fax
$
Brother
HL-3170CDW
Laser,
Color
None
$$
Canon PIXMA Pro-100
Inkjet
None
$$$$$
Brother
MFC-J480DW
Inkjet
Scanner, copier, fax
$$$
Epson WorkForce WF-2630
Inkjet
Value
Scanner, copier, fax
$$$
Epson Expression Home XP-320
Inkjet
Scanner, copier
$$$
Features To Look For
The minimum expectation for a wireless printer is for it to be able to do what its name implies, and that is to print images and documents wirelessly from a wireless-enabled computer. But most users do not just use their computers, but are more often on their smartphones and tablets, so wireless connectivity with mobile devices is a must as well.
WiFi connectivity
Printing from mobile
In addition, just about every wireless printer has these three features in common ...
Scanning
Fax
Copy
The Top Wireless Printers
HP OfficeJet 4650 All-in-One Color Photo Printer
For home office and small office settings, this printer from HP gives you printing capability from any device even without connecting to a network. In addition, its sleek and compact form packs a lot of punch, as it combines the functions of 3 other office tools, the scanner, copier, and fax machine — making it everything you would ever need.
For economy and efficiency, it uses high-yield ink cartridges, has an automatic document feeder and auto double-side printing feature.
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Canon PIXMA MX922 Wireless Office All-In-One Printer
This Canon Pixma model is definitely one of the most popular, and most highly-rated by more Amazon shoppers out of all the other wireless printers available. It is compatible with Apple gadgets through AirPrint, and Android gadgets through Google Cloud Print.
It also has extra large, individual tanks for each ink color, so that when an ink color runs out, one only has to replace the corresponding cartridge, which reduces waste and increases savings.
It also serves as copier, scanner and fax. Other features include automatic double-sided printing, and auto document feeder.
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HP Envy 4520 All-in-One Color Photo Printer with Wireless & Mobile Printing
This model is an all-in-one machine too, so you can copy, scan, and fax with it aside from using it as a printer. Set up is a breeze, and its wireless connectivity allows you to print from any mobile gadget easily, with a little help from the HP ePrint app.
Its duplex printing capability helps you save paper, and since it's wireless, you can print from any room in the house, fuss-free and hassle-free.
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HP Envy 7640 All-in-One Color Photo Printer
Another HP Envy to long for, and, well, envy. It's a printer-scanner-fax-copier combo that also allows you mobile printing — from AirPrint or via the HP ePrint app. And thanks to Wireless Direct technology, you don't even have to connect to a network to print from your devices!
You can print different paper sizes quickly because its multiple paper trays for different paper sizes allow you to print different output types — from photographs and postcards to documents — all without having to switch paper trays. Now that's what you call printing remotely.
You can also actually edit photos right from its touch screen interface.
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Brother MFCL2700DW Compact Laser All-In One Printer
Why is this printer in this list when it only prints black? What monochrome laser printers have over their full color inkjet counterparts is that they are lighting fast and have amazingly crisp and sharp print output. And Brother as a brand is really, really amazing at coming up with products that continue to raise the bar in these respects.
So if you work in a busy office that prints a high volume of documents, this is the machine that can provide your workplace with printouts of beautifully crisp and clear text, and lots of it, very very quickly.
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Brother HL-3170CDW Digital Color Printer with Wireless Networking and Duplex
Color laser printing is the ultimate in desktop print imaging. This model gives you the speed, crispness, and fineness of laser printing with the vibrant colors of an inkjet printer. It can churn out as many as 23 pages per minute, all with ultra high resolutions of up to 600x2400 dpi and can print on legal sized sheets. It's wireless functionally is derived from its WiFi connectivity that allows you to print from any gadget through AirPrint, WiFi Direct, Google Cloud Print, and Brother iPrint&Scan.
It also has an auto double-sided printing feature, and compatible high-yield color toners that can print up to 2,200 pages.
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Canon PIXMA Pro-100 Wireless Color Professional Inkjet Printer
This Canon Pixma can put out industry standard photographic prints. This baby uses the revolutionary 8-color system for the widest color gamut and extreme precision in both color and black and white photos.
It prints large format professional quality photos as big as 13 x 19 inches with extremely fine resolution of up to 4800 x 2400 dpi.
Aside from its wireless functionality through its built-in WiFi, Canon's PictBridge allows users to print directly from their imaging devices — their digital cameras, camcorders, or smartphones.
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Brother MFC-J480DW Wireless Inkjet Color All-in-One Printer
When Brother does inkjet, it does it quite well. It scans, copies, and faxes just as well as it prints high-quality full color pages. It works excellently and seamlessly with your favorite gadgets, whether you use Apple, Android, or Windows, especially if you download the Brother printer app.
This model has an 1.5" color display and quick and easy navigation and function buttons.
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Epson WorkForce WF-2630 Wireless Business AIO
This printer isn't called workforce for nothing. You can share the use of this baby with the rest of your small office as it can handle the load very well. When printing in black, it can do up to 9 pages per minute, while color printing speed is up to 4.7 pages — that's pretty awesome for an inkjet printer.
Apart from the ease and convenience of printing directly from your iPad, iPhone, or any other tablet or smartphone, it gives you the efficiency and economy of auto duplex printing and a 30-page automatic document feeder, and its individual ink cartridges ensures that you only need to replace the ink colors that actually run out.
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Epson Expression Home XP-320 Wireless Color Photo Printer
This printer, scanner, and copier in one lets you print from your mobile devices wirelessly from anywhere, whether you're connected to a network or not.
And it's got a memory card slot that lets you view your digicam photos through its color LCD screen, print them, and upload them to Facebook in one sitting.
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Print Features
Print Speed
At the very minimum, you would want the printer to be able to print at least 20 black-and-white pages and 10 color pages per minute. Anything lower than that could be very frustrating and thus unacceptable.
In general, wired connections happen to be significantly faster than wireless connections. If your Wi-Fi connection happens to be slow, there's only so much your printer can do. You certainly would want your printer to be USB 3.0 capable.
In case your wireless happens to be a bit too slow, you'll be able to connect it to your computer instead with a cable - the old-fashioned way, and get work done.
Quality or resolution
A resolution of at least 600 x 600 dpi (dots per inch) for black-and-white printers and 1200 x 1200 for color printers would be the least acceptable.
Pages printed per month or duty cycle
If you're going to be using the printer in your home, it should be able to print at least 2000 to 5000 pages per month.
On the other hand, printers that are used in offices usually handled much higher loads and should be able to print at least 20,000 pages per month.
Laser or Inkjet
If image quality is what you're really looking for, you would want to opt for a laser printer. Laser printers are more efficient as well when compared with inkjet printers and have a lower cost per page. They are faster as well.
That said, laser cartridges happen to be more expensive as well but they also tend to last longer.
Inkjet printers are relatively inexpensive, but might have a higher cost per page. Before you buy any check printer, calculate the cost for printing one page and compare that with the cost per page of a laser printer.
Scanner features
You should pay attention to the features of the scanner as well - unless you plan to use it just as a copying machine...
Resolution
You want the scanner to have a resolution of at least 1200 x 600 dots per inch. Anything lower than that would result in very low quality images. Ideally, you want a higher resolution than 1200 x 600. A resolution of 4800 x 4800 dots per inch would result in extremely high quality scanned images.
CCD vs CIS
While CCD scanners are more suitable for scanning photographs and other graphic files, see IDS scanners are very well-suited for scanning text images. You would want to decide what kind of files are most important to you and choose accordingly.
Optical Character Recognition
If you happened to use text files a lot, you might want your scanner to come with OCR software. That would mean any page of text that you scan will be processed by the OCR software and converted into your text document that he would open with any word processor.
Copier features
Copy Speed
If the copier is not fast enough, you cannot be very productive at your job. You want a copy speed of at least 20 to 25 pages a minute.
Resizing
You would want to be able to resize a document to be copied anywhere from 25% to 400% or so. You never know when you will need to do this.
Fax features
Fax is certainly not as popular as it once was. But since multifunction printers come with this capability as well, you would want it to be as good as a stand-alone fax machine.
Memory
You want the machine to have a memory of at least 100 pages.
Automatic Document Feeder
This is an essential feature which can have a significant impact on your productivity. You do not want to be manually feeding document is one at a time. Put a stack of papers on the feeder tray and the machine should be able to scan each document and store it in memory.
Fax Speed
The printer should be able to fax a page in less than five seconds.
While it is essential that you look for these features in any wireless printer before you buy, there are a couple of others as well ....
Additional Features
USB Connectivity
You should be able to connect the printer either to your PC or to your laptop through USB.
Wi-Fi direct / NFC
These are relatively new technologies that enable peer-to-peer connections between computers and printers and do not require an access point.
Mobile Printing
You'd want to be able to print from your iPad, iPhone or android device. Most of the newer Wi-Fi printers have this feature.
A Final Note ...
You would also want to be able to use your memory card with the printer. You would want to note that some of the older memory cards may not be compatible with most of the newer printers on the market today.
All product images sourced from Amazon.com
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