If you often find yourself printing out photographs, whether that be at home, at work or to share your pictures with friends and family, you might find it worth investing in a photo printer.
Photo printers are a fantastic tool to have around if you find yourself frequenting your local photo printing shop. After all, getting a physical copy of all of your holiday snaps isn’t cheap and you can save a good amount of time and cash in the long run by printing them at home.
However, choosing exactly which printer to buy can be a tricky process. You’ll want to strike a good balance between image quality and affordability – not only when it comes to the device itself, but also the ink required to fuel the printer.
Luckily, we’ve done all the hard work by narrowing that decision down to only the best printers we’ve reviewed.
We’ve included a variety of printers that cater to a wide range of price points in this list. That includes printers that use ink bottles for affordable running costs, as well as cartridge-based models with lower upfront fees.
When testing printers, we take into account multiple factors before settling on a final score and verdict. This includes the design and features, print speed and quality, scans and copies and the price and overall running costs of the machine.
Scroll down this page to see a summary of each of our best printers, along with a brief list of pros and cons for each model, or head over to our full reviews for a more in-depth look at how each printer performed in our lab tests and during real-world use.
If you’re looking for a more general-use printer for the home or office, you might want to check out our guide to the best printers. Alternatively, if you like the idea of snapping and printing photos on the go, make sure to visit our guide to the best instant cameras.
Best printers at a glance
How we test
Every printer we review goes through a series of uniform checks designed to gauge key things including print quality, speed and cost. These include first-time setup, changing respective cartridges, and measuring key things such as print speed and quality with a range of different paper types, including plain and photo.
We’ll also compare the features with other printers at the same price point to see if you’re getting good value for your money. We’ve also calculated how much it would cost to replace the cartridge or refill the ink in order to see how much the printer will cost you in the long term.
Canon PIXMA G650
Best overall photo printer
Pros
- Low running costs
- Strong photo and scan quality
- Decent plain paper prints
Cons
- Expensive to buy
- Slow, especially on plain paper
- No automatic double-sided printing
For the best overall printer we’ve used for printing out photos, look no further than the Canon PIXMA G650.
This is especially thanks to the fact it offers a six-ink setup, offering two additional bottles, compared to more standard printers, in the form of another grey and red. The enables the printer to offer a wider array of colours, as well as better shade control, resulting in some brilliant printed photos. We found the G650’s dyes to be perfect for photo paper too.
The trade off for such good photo paper printers is that the G650 is one of the slowest document printers we’ve tested. If you need to have those photos or text in a rush, you may want to look elsewhere. In addition, functions such as duplex (double sided) printing or faxing aren’t here, but you do get an especially speedy scanner that, in testing, proved to have some great colour reproduction.
This is also an affordable printer to run thanks to low running costs – the G650 comes with a set of ink bottles that can print up to 8000 colour pages or 3800 postcard size photos. And with replacement bottles costing £11, each picture will cost around 2p a go, which is fantastic value. The fact these are refillable is also beneficial to the environment with them potentially stopping a lot of plastic going into landfill.
Reviewer: Simon Handby
Full review: Canon PIXMA G650 review
Epson EcoTank ET-2750
Best versatile photo printer
Pros
- Incredibly cheap to run
- Good print quality
- Acceptable print speeds
- Versatile and easy to use
Cons
- High initial cost
- No automatic document feeder
The Epson EcoTank ET-2750 is our pick for a photo printer that’s versatile enough to perform other tasks too.
As well as being a photo printer, the ET-2750 is also a decent scanner. This is one of the speedier prints we’ve tested too, taking 1 minute 13 seconds to print a colour photo on plain A4. On higher quality paper, it took around a few seconds longer. The print quality itself is excellent, with great results on glossy paper and higher-quality photo papers especially.
The Epson ET-2750 offers some of the cheapest per-print costs of any printer we’ve tested. Colour refills are £8.49 each, and with these, you’ll be able to get 6000 pages before needing a refill. For black ink, these retail for £13.99, although you’ll be able to get 7500 pages worth of print outs before needing to fill it up again. Epson’s EcoTank printers have always been some of the most economical out there, and the ET-2750 helps to prove that yet again.
At 5.5kg, it’s lightweight compared to other all-in-one printers, and with dimensions totalling 187 x 375 x 345mm, it’s also compact. This is also a smart printer, with oodles of connectivity on offer. The ET-2750 works with Apple AirPrint, as well as Epson’s own iPrint app too, which allows you to print directly from cloud storage services. You can even perform routine maintenance tasks such as nozzle and printhead cleaning, right from the comfort of your phone.
Reviewer: Thomas Newton
Full review: Epson EcoTank ET-2750 review
Canon Pixma TS205
Best budget photo printer
Pros
- Very nice price tag
- Easy to get up and running
- Acceptable print quality
Cons
- No Wi-Fi
- No mobile apps
- Slow printing speeds
The Canon Pixma TS205 is a good choice as a more affordable option for printing snaps.
Its print quality for general documents may be prone to smudging, but we found that photos printed on glossy paper looked excellent, with rich and natural colours. The same cannot be said for printed graphics, but for such an affordable printer, we found the photo printing quality to be more than good enough. As well as offering decent quality output, the print speeds for the TS205 are also okay, with a colour photo on plain A4 taking 46 seconds, while glossy photo paper output took nearly 4 minutes.
Print costs for the TS205 are in line with other affordable cartridge-based inkjet printers, with an average-per-page cost of 10p across black and colour ink – the black PG-545 cartridge will run you £16.49 for a 180 page yield, while a colour CL-546 cartridge will set you back £19.99 for the same yield. There are XL cartridges available for both black and colour that don’t cost too much more and offer nearly double the page yield, halving the cost per page.
This is also one of the lightest printers out there, with a total mass of just 2.5kg. Of course, as a single-purpose device, it’s not expected to weigh a ton, but that lightweight build still means it won’t be a pain to move around. This is also a good-looking printer too, and doesn’t look cheap in the slightest. While there isn’t a dedicated display for control, it’s still an easy printer to set up and use, with it being a case of downloading the right drivers for your operating system, installing them, and connecting the printer up.
Reviewer: Thomas Newton
Full review: Canon Pixma TS205 review
Canon PIXMA G550
Great long-term cost
Pros
- Low running costs
- Strong photo quality
- Decent plain paper prints
Cons
- Expensive to buy
- Slow, especially on plain paper
- No auto double-sided printing
The Canon Pixma G550 isn’t the best all-round photo printer avaiable, but we decided to include it on this list since it still offers affordable long-term running costs if you plan on printing out photos on a frequent basis.
This model utilises refillable bottles as opposed to cartridges, which immediately makes refills more cost effective. To boot, the G550’s bottles will last for either 3700 black pages or 8000 colour pages. It’s capable of 3800 10x15cm colour photos, giving you a cost per page of just 1.7p, which is some of the lowest we’ve ever seen. This is especially thanks to replacement bottles costing just £11.
As well as offering great value for money, the G550 delivers great quality printouts. This printer offers a six-ink setup, with an extra red and grey ink option, which helped to provide smooth shade transition in coloured printouts, as well as a neutral and exceptionally detailed greyscale print. While some of our colour samples may not be up to standard against other six-inkers, there’s a noticeable difference compared to more standard four-ink printers. Admittedly, it may not be the fastest printer in the world, with a print time of nearly seven minutes to print a single borderless A4 photo, but at least the results are good.
This is a remarkably simple printer, especially given it’s a single function device so you can’t copy or scan images. That being said, it does have a display alongside offering convenient control over key features with some actual buttons. The fact it’s a six-ink printer is also a handy given the extra oomph it gives to photos, as well as the fact the ink is refillable, saving waste and also saving you money with much lower printing costs than more standard cartridge-based inkjets.
Reviewer: Simon Handby
Full review: Canon Pixma G550 review
Instax Square Link
Best for smartphones
Pros
- In-app editing tools give saturation and contrast a boost
- Only Instax Link printer to use square film
- AR Print and Instax Connect aren’t available on other printers
Cons
- Limited editing tools
- QR codes are too big
- Film development takes slightly longer than advertised
The Instax Square Link is a little different to the other printers on this list, and it’s the one to choose if you’re printing pictures from a smartphone and want a portable option.
This is very much a photo printer, and it gives snaps a retro instant camera feel with a modern twist. You can edit snaps in the companion app before printing and even add AR elements that can be seen through someone else’s phone thanks to a QR code. While our reviewer found this something of a novelty, it remains a neat trick if used correctly.
The Instax Square Link prints square 6.2cm x 6.2xcm images and requires the Square Instant film. While printing time is stated to be 15 seconds and developing time 90 seconds, our reviewer noted the whole process took a little longer.
Print quality is great, it charges via USB-C and easily slips inside a bag if you want to take it on the go.
Reviewer: Hannah Davies
Full review: Instax Square Link review
FAQs
For our money, the Canon Pixma G650 is the best overall photo printer you can buy, with high quality printouts, especially on glossy paper, as well as a convenient featureset and low running costs.
For what it’s worth, we’d say yes, especially given we’ve listed an Epson EcoTank (the ET-2750) above as a potential option for those wanting a versatile photo printer. Although it really does depend on the specific model.
Inkjet printers are arguably better for printing photos, given that laser printers are traditionally more associated with large-scale text work, and for commercial image printing operations such as brochures and flyers.
