Looking for the best laser printer for your business or home office? As TechRadar Pro's resident printer specialist, I’ve reviewed over a hundred products, including the best printers and best small business printers, and around half of those are laser printers, so there are plenty to choose from.
I've rounded up my top nine laser printers and multifunction devices, considering every aspect from performance and price while covering all categories from the best mono printer to the best workgroup printer. Currently, the best laser printer overall, in my view, is the super-fast Xerox VersaLink B600DN, which is at the top of the list below.
The quick list
Best laser printer overall
My top pick for laser printing is the Xerox VersaLink B600DN, which boasts a high-capacity tray and record-breaking print speeds.
Best laser printer for SMBs
I love the Brother HL-L5100DN, which thanks to its compact size and high-speed prints, is an ideal choice for busy small businesses and offices.
Best laser printer for heavy workloads
For anyone performing a lot of print jobs, I recommend the Kyocera Ecosys P6230cdn, a heavy-duty laser printer.
Best laser printer with touchscreen
While plenty, I enjoyed my time reviewing the Xerox B215 thanks to a glorious touchscreen that gives you plenty of control over prints.
Best laser printer for auto-duplex printing
The Canon imageCLASS MF743Cdw (also known as the i-SENSYS MF742Cdw) automatically prints double-sided, freeing up more time.
Best laser printer for image quality
The Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw (also known as the i-SENSYS MF754Cdw) delivers staggeringly good print quality on images considering this is a laser printer.
See more
Best laser printer on a budget
If you want an affordable, low-cost laser printer, the 7. HP Color LaserJet Pro 3201dw (sometimes called the 3202dw) offers excellent value for money.
Best refillable laser printer
The HP Neverstop Laser MFP 1202nw offers an economical and sustainable way to print, with refillable toner tanks.
Best mono laser printer
For document printing, you can't go wrong with a mono laser printer, and the Kyocera ECOSYS P2040dw is a stand-out pick.
The best laser printer of 2024 in full:
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Below you'll find full write-ups for each of the best laser printers in our list. We've tested each one extensively, so you can be sure that our recommendations can be trusted.
Best laser printer overall
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 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 our full Xerox VersaLink B600DN review.
Best laser printer for small businesses
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 our full review Brother HL-L5100DN review.
Best laser printer for heavy workloads
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 our full Kyocera Ecosys P6230cdn review.
Best laser printer with touchscreen
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 our full Xerox B215 review.
Best laser printer for auto-duplex printing
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 our full Canon imageCLASS MF743Cdw review.
Best laser printer for image quality
he Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw (known as the Canon i-SENSYS MF754Cdw outside the US) is a compact AIO laser printer with the speed and functionality to suit a busy workgroup, but it’s also small enough to slot nicely into a home office.
The design looks good and specifications are great. It prints at a nifty 35ppm in simplex mode and duplexes quickly too. There’s room for 250 sheets of paper in the main tray and 50 more in both the multi-purpose tray and ADF. You can also buy a second paper cassette to add a further 550 sheets. The impressive feature list includes automatic duplex scanning and a customizable 5-inch touchscreen.
Canon sells high yield cartridges for this model, although the cost-per-page is still not the most competitive in its class. It’s also worth noting that the bundled setup cartridges don’t contain much toner. When it comes to print quality, however, this MFP is hard to fault.
Read our full Canon Color imageCLASS MF753Cdw review
Best laser printer on a budget
The HP Color LaserJet Pro 3201dw (HP Color LaserJet Pro 3202dw in the UK) is a compact desktop printer aimed at the home office or shared workgroup and it doesn’t disappoint. The fairly modest price does not include a touchscreen, NFC or a USB Host port, but it does buy fast auto-duplex printing, a convenient multi-purpose tray, strong embedded security and inbuilt Wi-Fi with AirPrint compatibility.
More importantly, the print quality is impressive. HP’s TerraJet toner renders crisp and dark text and particularly vivid colors. The only area it’s not good at is printing photos, which look unrealistic. There’s not much toner in the box and cartridges are not cheap, but overall, there’s still lots to like about this inexpensive laser printer.
Read our full HP Color LaserJet Pro 3201dw review
Best refillable laser printer
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 refuelling 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 our full HP Neverstop Laser MFP 1202nw review.
Find the best deals on HP printers with our HP discount codes.
Best mono laser printer
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 our full Kyocera ECOSYS P2040dw review.
Best laser printers: FAQs
Why choose a laser printer over inkjet?
If you print a lot of documents, laser printers are an excellent choice, with crisp, clear detailing on fonts. For monochrome printing, they're better than even the best inkjet printers. They're fast, too, making them a popular choice for business, busy offices and shared workgroups. For high-volume print jobs, some laser printer toners are capable of printing thousands of documents before replacement, making running costs cheaper than the best ink tank printers.
Lasers use toner, a dry powder, which means clean, consistent prints with no smudging or clogged nozzles. While inkjets need the printheads cleaned of dry ink after standing unused, you can leave a laser printer for months between print jobs with no problem. The area lasers lose out to inkjets is photo printing, where liquid ink, applied as tiny droplets, bonds especially well with coated photo paper. Laser technology creates a little heat in transferring the toner particles from imaging drum to paper, so they also use more energy.
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.
Should I choose a color or mono laser printer?
If you don’t need to print in color, monochrome laser printers are significantly cheaper to buy and run than their color counterparts. That’s because lasers require a large cartridge for each of the CMYK colors and often a separate imaging drum for each as well. Mono machines are much simpler and have more space for higher capacity black cartridges.
Print-only or multifunction?
The essential difference between a pure 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.
How to choose the best laser printer 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 – including the best wireless printers, which are WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC enabled, Others let you connect via 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. The best all-in-one printers are ideal for when you need your device to do everything.
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 laser printers
As the senior printer editor at TechRadar Pro, I’ve tested hundreds of products, including the best photo printers, the best A3 printers, and the best printers for Mac. 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 always test both wired and wireless connections and explore the various remote printing companion apps offered by brands such as HP and Epson 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 color blocking and banding in lasers. 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 can 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 on how we test, rate, and review printers at TechRadar Pro.
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