The best black and white printers, also known as mono printers, can achieve the same high-quality output as their color counterparts while being cheaper to buy and run. With just one black cartridge instead of the usual C/M/Y/K setup, mono printers can be smaller, simpler devices requiring less refilling and maintenance. Printing in black and white is often faster too, so if you don’t need to print in color, you could save significant time and money with a monochrome printer.
As TechRadar Pro’s senior printer editor, I’ve tested over two hundred of the best home printers and best small business printers, including plenty of black and models from the likes of Xerox, Brother, Canon, Epson and HP. This guide gives you their vital statistics and a brief review for each entry, but you can also click through to the full reviews for more detail.
For my in-depth evaluations, I’ll spend two days comparing everything from design and build, to usability and, of course, price and print quality, before giving each product its overall rating. All nine products on this shortlist have their strengths, but my pick for the best black and white printer overall is the Kyocera Ecosys P2040dn. Its rapid print rate, sharp print quality and economical page rate really shows what the best black and white printers can do.
The best black and white printer overall
✅ You need to print in a hurry. This mono printer starts up quickly and really churns out the pages in both simplex and duplex modes.
✅ Your business is expanding. With the option to add further input trays to increase paper capacity, this printer can grow with your print needs
❌ You want to print black and white photos. The resolution is sharp enough, but this laser printer cannot print on coated photo paper so it’s not good for photos.
❌ You need NFC connectivity. This model doesn’t have near field communication for collecting print jobs with your NFC card, but it does have other security features.
The Kyocera ECOSYS P2040dw is a straight forward letter/A4 monochrome printer with no fancy features, but an impressive specification.
At 40ppm (pages per minute) there are few laser printers that can beat it for speed and the image resolution is a crisp 1200dpi. It feels very well built, as it should for a premium product, and its TCO (total cost of ownership) is lowered by its efficient use of competitively priced toner and long-life components.
There’s only a cramped two-line display instead of a touchscreen, but more usefully, there are two paper inputs, the 250-sheet main tray and a multipurpose tray for one-off jobs such as printing on headed paper or envelopes.
What I like best, though, is the fast duplex print speed and consistently crisp pages of text. This proved to be a reliable workhorse of a printer that would do well in a shared office.
Read our full Kyocera ECOSYS P2040dw review
Best black and white printer on a budget
✅ Your print budget is small. This basic laser printer is both competitively priced and economical to run. Being monochrome means you only have one toner cartridge to replace.
✅ Your print volume is high. With a pretty high capacity for paper (250 sheets) and toner (3,000-sheet yield) this printer can manage a fairly heavy monthly duty cycle.
❌ You prefer a touchscreen interface. To keep the purchase price low, this simple printer has no display. You can access features and information via the app or PC.
❌ You need to print color documents. This is a mono printer, so black and white only.
This modest mono laser printer has all the right features for working from home and a strong enough specification to recommend it for office duty too.
With two input paths, one of which can hold 250 sheets of paper, and a cartridge large enough to yield 3,000 pages (not included), it has the capacity to handle a heavy workload. But being a laser rather than an inkjet, it’s equally happy to stand idle for long periods, so it would also suit someone who prints infrequently.
While it lacks the niceties you find on more expensive printers, such as a touchscreen or front USB Host port, it does come with dual-band wi-fi, AirPrint and some robust security features. I was impressed by its print rate, especially in duplex mode, but disappointed that it couldn’t duplex print on paper heavier than 106gsm. The print quality is consistent and sharp enough for business use.
It’s not the blackest of black toner available, but the cartridges are competitively priced and with enough toner in the box for 1,200 pages, the Brother HL-L2865DW looks like a pretty good deal to me.
Read our full Brother HL-L2865DW review
Best black and white printer for capacity
✅ You print predominantly in black and white, with the occasional need for color. This unique printer is best at mono printing, with the option to add a tri-color ink cartridge.
✅ You print a lot. With such a low CPP (cost per page), you can print as much as you like and with enough inbox ink for 18,000 pages, it’ll be a while before you need to buy any more.
❌ You need a fax facility. This is a 3-in-1 device so it can print, copy and scan, but there’s no fax modem.
❌ You need to print quickly. The print rate is rather slow at 18ipm. If you need speed, you should consider a laser printer.
The Canon PIXMA GM4050 is the first monochrome printer to be added to Canon’s cartridge-free MegaTank range and one of the few black and white inkjets around. It’s also the only one that can be retrospectively upgraded to full color, if required. This unique proposition is sweetened by its very low consumables cost and the generous amount of ink in the box. The three bundled bottles should yield up to 1,800 pages.
It’s a 3-in-1 device with a scanner, a 35-sheet ADF (automatic document feeder) and room for 250 sheets of paper in its main paper tray. While the low cost per page beats any laser printer, it cannot compete on print rate, which is a sluggish 13ipm (imprints per minute).
I found the tilting two-line display quite hard to read and its lack of AirPrint or Mac compatibility was irritating. The black and white print quality, however, is good enough to recommend. Adding the optional tri-color cartridge meant that I could also print in color, which is potentially useful, but less economical and still no good for photos because it can’t handle photo paper. This is a novel product that fills a niche very well.
Read our full Canon PIXMA GM4050 review
See what you can save with our Canon discount codes.
Best small black and white printer
✅ Your work from home and space is precious. Laser printers don’t get any smaller than this. When not in use, it’s small enough to tuck away in a drawer.
✅ You work from various locations and want to take your printer with you. This compact unit is compact and light enough to take with you.
❌ You print a lot of long documents. With no auto-duplex mode, you’ll have to turn each page yourself in order to print the other side.
❌ You prefer an inkjet model. If you'd prefer a compact inkjet that accepts cartridges, this won't be the best mono printer for your needs.
Laser printers are usually larger than inkjets, but this is the world’s smallest and its footprint fits inside a sheet of letter, or A4 paper.
To shrink the LaserJet Pro M15W to size, HP has dropped a few features, so this is a very basic print-only black and white device. There’s no display, only one input tray and it can’t auto-duplex. Keeping things monochrome means there’s only one toner cartridge and drum and if none of this corner cutting puts you off, the other good news is that it’s also one of the cheapest laser printers around.
I appreciated the way the paper trays fold neatly away to make this printer small enough to fit in my desk drawer. I also found it very easy to use, despite having no display. There’s dual-band Wi-Fi with AirPrint compatibility and it prints reasonably quickly at 19ppm.
It’s a pity you have to turn the pages over manually to print the other side, but the image quality is strong and the competitive price of the printer and its toner is even more appealing.
Read our full HP LaserJet Pro M15w review
Best black and white printer for business
✅ You print a lot of black and white documents. With its rapid print rate and high capacity for paper and toner, this hardworking printer can really churn out the pages.
✅ You want a futureproof printer. Brother sells an optional stand and paper tray units for this model, so you can expand the paper capacity right up to 2,650 sheets.
❌ You work in a small home office. This printer is compact, but it’s quite noisy in operation and the high spec is probably overkill for a home printer.
❌ You want to print images. While this printer can turn out razor-sharp black text on white paper, it’s not so good at pictures, which can look overly dark.
Don’t underestimate this pale grey laser printer. The Brother HL-L6400DW may be small, but it can hold 570 sheets of paper and prints at the remarkable speed of 50 pages per minute.
It ships with enough toner for 12,00 pages, so it will satisfy the needs of any small office with a big workload. With plenty of accessories and expansion units to support it, inbuilt NFC for secure pull printing and a very economical operating cost it, this is one of the better mono printers around. It even has a touchscreen interface, although it is one of the smallest I’ve come across and typing into it is somewhat fiddly.
In other respects, this premium printer is a pleasure to use because it is so quick to print and its black and white output is hard to fault. Brother’s ultra-high yield cartridges achieve 20,000 prints and the CPP (cost per page) is low enough to make this one of the most economical printers to run.
Read our full Brother HL-L6400DW review
Best black and white printer for speed
✅ You need to print in a hurry. This is the fastest printer we’ve tested with a rate of 55ppm and an FPOT (first page out time) of 6.3 seconds.
✅ You work in a shared office. With strong security features and NFC built in, this printer could serve a large workgroup.
❌ You also need to scan documents. This is a print-only device, so you should take a look at all-in-one printers.
❌ You only print occasionally. You can save money by choosing a cheap printer if you don’t need this high level of specification.
If you think the Brother HL-L6400DW above is fast at printing, the Versalink asks you to hold its beer. With a print speed of 55ppm (pages per minute), it is one of the fastest laser printers in the business and stores an impressive 700 sheets of paper in its deep in-tray.
Consider the luxurious five-inch color touchscreen, super-fast duplex printing and wealth of modular upgrades available from Xerox and it’s clear that this is a premium device aimed at servicing the needs of the busiest enterprise, or SMB.
And while it’s expensive to buy, the running cost is actually very low thanks to the high print yield of the installed toner cartridge that promises a whopping 10,300 pages.
I’m happy to report that the print quality lives up to the high specification and I could find no fault in its prodigious output of crisp black and white pages. My only complaint is that it’s somewhat noisy when printing at full tilt and the Wi-Fi module is an optional extra.
Read our full Xerox VersaLink B600DN review
Best black and white laser printer for refills
✅ You hate buying printer cartridges. This is the only laser printer that doesn’t need one. Topping up with dry toner powder is clean and easy and involves far less plastic waste.
✅ Your print budget is low. The price of this printer is competitive, considering the new refillable technology on board, and its refill kits are considerably cheaper than cartridges.
❌ You print a lot of long documents. With no auto-duplex mode, you might be tempted to simplex print, which is wasteful of paper.
❌ You’re choosing a laser printer purely for speed. This one prints faster than your average inkjet, but it’s quite slow for a laser device.
HP’s novel Neverstop laser printers are the first to use refillable toner cartridges, slashing your consumables bill by around sixty percent.
I tested the Neverstop Laser MFP 1202nw all-in-one device incorporating a flatbed scanner for photocopying letter-sized or A4 pages and offering Wi-Fi with AirPrint compatibility. Like all of HP’s Neverstop printers, it can’t print in color or turn the page over (auto-duplexing).
Instead, HP is offering a basic and remarkably compact laser printer for use in a small office where cost and efficiency are key factors. I especially liked the shallow design with the scanner suspended above the printer as it takes up less desk space and allows more prints to collect in the out-tray.
It’s a pity there’s no auto-duplex mode and printing is slow for a laser, but the quality is very good. The real selling point is the low running cost, of course. There’s enough toner in the box for 5,000 pages and with toner refill kits costing around US$16 for another 2,500 pages, that’s less than one cent per page.
Read our full HP Neverstop Laser MFP 1202nw review
Find the best deals on HP printers with our HP discount codes.
Best black and white printer for efficiency
✅ Your business prints a lot. Being fast to finish a print job and having plenty of room on board for paper makes this printer more likely to meet the demands of a busy office.
✅ You scan a lot too. The ADF has a high capacity for letter/A4 paper (50 sheets) and it can quickly scan both sides of the document automatically.
❌ You might need to print in color. The only thing this monochrome printer can’t do is print color.
❌ You rarely need to scan documents. Lexmark sells a similar print-only model in this product line, which is significantly smaller and cheaper.
The Lexmark MB3442adw looks a little top heavy with its overhanging scanner and ADF (automatic document feeder) but I appreciated the space-saving footprint and this compact three-in-one printer really packs in the features.
There’s a USB Host port, Wi-Fi with AirPrint, a 2.8-inch touchscreen display, a fax modem and both duplex printing and scanning. It has a very fast print rate of 42ppm (pages per minute) and can hold a useful amount of letter or A4 paper (350 sheets in the main tray). The big ADF will hold another fifty.
I’ll admit that at around US$430 (about £334, AU$604), it’s not the cheapest mono AIO around, but your ongoing consumables cost is relatively low and there’s enough black toner in the box for 3,000 pages.
Replace this with one of Lexmark’s high yield cartridges and you’ll double that page number. My test pages printed very quickly and had the professional finish you can expect from a premium office printer.
Read our full Lexmark MB3442adw review
Best black and white inkjet printer
✅ You print on a variety of media. Being an inkjet, it can handle coated photo paper as well as envelopes and thin card up to 256g/m2.
✅ You print a lot of black and white documents. The consumables cost is as low as it gets with Epson’s cheap bottled black ink, and there’s nothing to stop you refilling with third-party ink.
❌ You don’t always print from your computer. With no Wi-Fi module and no Ethernet port, the only way to connect with this printer is by USB data cable.
❌ Your office space is small. The raised scanner bed design makes this printer taller than it needs to be.
Black and white inkjet printers are rare, but Epson’s refillable EcoTank ET-M2140 makes a lot of sense, especially if you’re looking for something with a lower running cost than a laser.
It’s a very simple all-in-one device with few features in order to keep the price point low. There’s no Wi-Fi, or an ADF (automatic document feeder), or even an Ethernet port. What it does have is a single ink reservoir for you to top up with black ink. Epson generously includes two bottles in the box, which is enough for 11,000 pages.
The distinctive design with the suspended flatbed scanner is unusual, but practical because it gives easier access to the scanner and control panel as well as allowing room for 250 sheets of paper in the main tray and plenty of room in the output tray. It prints quite quickly for an inkjet and crucially, it does have an auto-duplex mode.
I found that the black pigment ink produced text that looked bolder and darker on white paper than laser toner. It can’t keep up with laser printers when it comes to print speed, but it will give you a lower cost per page.
Read our full Epson EcoTank ET-M2140 review
How to choose the best black and white printers for you?
Inkjet or laser?
If you print black and white photos, the answer is inkjet. With hundreds of nozzles applying liquid ink dots onto plain or coated paper, inkjets achieve superior image quality, while being generally smaller and cheaper than lasers. However, the dry toner used by laser printers is more efficient and allows for faster, cleaner and more consistent printing at higher capacities. In short, inkjets are good for printing high quality images on a variety of media, while lasers are good for churning out crisp pages of text. For some top recommendations, we reviewed the best inkjet printers, best ink tank printers, and the best laser printers.
Cartridge or ink tank?
If you chose inkjet, you now have another decision to make. Some say topping up a supertank printer’s ink reservoirs with bottled ink is less convenient and potentially messier than installing cartridges, and that cartridge printers are cheaper to buy. I’d agree with that last point, but the advantages of ink tanks are overwhelming. Bottled ink costs around 80% less than cartridge ink and there’s nothing to stop you using third party ink. You can see at a glance how much ink is remaining in an ink tank and none is wasted as happens with tri-color cartridges in particular. There’s less plastic waste with ink tanks too, and the ink is cheap enough to run printhead-cleaning maintenance cycles without worrying about draining your last cartridge.
Monochrome or color?
If you’re sure you won’t need color, monochrome laser printers are significantly cheaper to buy and run than their color counterparts. They’re also simpler and have more space for larger cartridges with higher page yields and significantly lower running costs. With inkjet printing, the four colors usually share a printhead and delivery mechanism, so there’s less advantage in making them mono.
Print-only or multifunction?
The essential difference between a single-function printer and an MFP (multifunction printer) also known as an AOI (all-in-one) is the integrated scanner. Naturally, this feature adds size and cost, but a flatbed scanner will capture documents more satisfyingly than an app on your smartphone and it effectively turns any printer into a photocopier. The more expensive MFPs will also offer an ADF (automatic document feeder) for passing a stack of pages over the scanner for you. We tested out the best all-in-one printers.
Home or office?
Business printers aimed at the home office tend to be quieter and more compact inkjet models. In the office, printing at faster speeds and higher volumes is more important than size and operating noise, so lasers are more common. Business printers usually have stronger security and can be accessed by whole networked workgroups.
What features do I need?
Nearly all small business printers now have Wi-Fi built in, but not all have an Ethernet port. Most can also auto-duplex (turn the page over automatically) but beware of those that have only manual duplex as this can add considerable time to print jobs and encourage paper wastage. Also consider the type of media you will be using and the quantity. If you print a lot, it will be worth avoiding inkjet cartridges in favour of refillable supertank models. If you want to print on card, check the specifications for the maximum compatible paper weight.
What’s my budget?
The good news is that black and white printers are cheaper than color printers. The best cheap printers are usually inkjet models, but their expensive cartridges are the catch. Always check the price of your printer’s consumables before you buy. Bottled ink costs around eighty percent less than cartridges, so a more expensive ink tank device will give you long term savings.
Have a preferred brand? We’ve tested, reviewed, and rated the best HP printers, the best Epson printers, and the best Brother printers.
How we test the best black and white printers
I’ve been the senior printer editor at TechRadar long enough to have tested hundreds of printers and over a quarter of those have been black and white. My methodology follows a series of repeatable tests and comparisons and the process starts right from the unboxing and initial set-up, which is timed. If there’s a problem with unsustainable packaging or a baffling user manual, I’ll call it. If it’s a pleasure to use, that’ll be reflected in the final score too. I test both wired and wireless connections and explore the various remote printing companion apps as these often enhance the user experience.
For the performance tests, I have a folder of test cards, photos and text documents designed to assess detail resolution, contrast, color accuracy and gamut. Some test images are particularly good for spotting feathering and smearing among inkjets, while others highlight color blocking and banding in laser prints. A ten-page text document is useful for measuring print rates because I never take manufacturer's claims at face value. Having said that, the quoted print and scan speeds are usually accurate enough that I rarely contradict them.
I print each test page on a range of standard paper stock from cheap 75gsm sheets to 600gsm card, as every printer has its limits and preferences when it comes to paper quality. And if the manual claims you can print on envelopes, labels or t-shirts, I test that too.
Features such as auto-duplex scanning or copying multi-page documents via an ADF (automatic document feed) are evaluated, and an assessment of build quality and design contributes to the overall rating. I pay particular attention to the COO (cost of ownership) because cheap printers often give lower value for money when you calculate the ongoing consumables cost.
You can find out more about our comprehensive testing process in our guide to how we test, review, and rate printers on TechRadar Pro.
