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The cheapest printers can save you over £100 a year compared to printers with higher ink consumption. Please note: without our test results, you won’t be able to tell whether a cheap printer is worth the price or will be a loss in the long run.
This guide features inexpensive printers that are affordable and cost-effective to print on. This means you won’t have to spend money on a cheap printer that costs a lot to maintain.
When buying a good, inexpensive printer, you should look at the ongoing cost of ink, rather than the initial cost of the printer itself. Although an inkjet printer with cartridges can be purchased for as little as £40, when the cost of replacing the cartridges exceeds the cost of the printer itself, you will realise that you have made a costly mistake.
All of the printers we recommend use cartridges, which is significantly cheaper than running a cartridge-based inkjet printer. We’ve selected some of the most affordable cartridge printers that performed well in our expert tests, giving you the best of both worlds: lower initial costs and significantly lower ink costs.
If you’re a Which? member, sign in to see the recommendations in the table below. If you’re not already a member, sign up for Which? today to see our pick of great printers and all our online reviews, including laptops, phones, cameras and electric cars.
Consider what features you need from your printer. Automatic duplex printing, which automatically prints on both sides of the paper, costs more for inkjet printers with this feature. Here are three inkjet printers with automatic duplex printing that we recommend.
Browse all of our printer reviews and filter by the features you need to find the model that’s best for you.
If you need fast printing, super-sharp text, or waterproof ink (the paper is not waterproof), buy a laser printer. Color laser printers are good for printing photos, but inkjet printers are recommended for photo printing because laser printers cannot print on glossy photo paper.
Laser printers are generally not as cheap to run as inkjet printers with cartridges, but they are still considerably cheaper. Many laser printers are monochrome rather than color, and color laser printers tend to be considerably more expensive.
If you’re a Which? member, sign in to see the recommendations in the table below. If you’re not already a member, join Which? today to check out our best budget printers, including budget laser printers, plus all our online reviews, from laptops to phones, cameras and electric cars.
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Some printers cost a fortune, but the print quality leaves much to be desired. In addition, the high cost of ink can lead to increased costs. Some printers may seem inexpensive, but the annual operating costs exceed the cost of the printer itself.
If you’re not sure what type of printer you need, here are four key questions to consider when shopping for a new printer:
Explore ink and toner brands that combine high quality and low prices – choose the cheapest cartridges.
We know that printers are much more expensive to run than manufacturers claim. Many printers automatically clean their print heads from time to time, wasting precious ink that never makes it to the paper. This affects your bottom line on ink.
Our unique print tests take this additional ink consumption into account, so we can give you a more realistic idea of your printing costs.
We use over 90 grams of ink to test each printer and weigh the cartridges before and after testing, so we know exactly how much ink is used.
We found that the worst printers use up to six times more ink than the best ones if there is a pause between print jobs. This can more than double the ink consumption.
We also set the printer to run almost nonstop, printing as many pages of text, tables, and photos as possible with three sets of new cartridges. This method is very similar to the method manufacturers use to calculate the page yield listed on the printer packaging.
To give you an idea of how much it costs to run a printer, we provide one-, two-, and three-year running cost estimates for all the printers we tested in the specifications of our printer reviews.
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Post time: Jul-29-2025