The Best Home Printers in Australia for 2026

Which home printer should you actually buy in Australia?

For most Australian households the answer in July 2026 is an ink-tank printer, and specifically the Epson EcoTank ET-2950 ($451.37). It costs more up front than a cartridge printer, but one set of replacement ink bottles is rated for up to 8,500 black pages, which turns the scariest part of printer ownership, the ink bill, into a rounding error. If you mostly print documents in black and white, the Brother HL-L2464DW mono laser ($240.95) is faster, sharper on text and immune to dried-out ink. And if you only print a handful of pages a month, the HP DeskJet 2820e ($99.00) does the job for less than a tank of petrol.

This guide sticks to everyday document printing: multifunction inkjets, ink-tank machines and mono lasers for the home and home office. If you want gallery-grade photo output, that is a different machine entirely, and we cover it in our best photo printer guide. Labelling jars, cables and moving boxes is a job for a dedicated unit too, covered in our best label printer guide.

Every pick below was verified live on Amazon Australia: in stock, genuinely reviewed by Australian buyers, and priced sanely for its category. We compared cost per page from the manufacturers' own yield claims, and we show the working so you can check it yourself.

Need the short answer?

Buy the Epson EcoTank ET-2950 ($451.37) if you print regularly and want the lowest running costs of our six picks. Buy the Brother HL-L2464DW ($240.95) if your printing is mostly black-and-white documents, forms and school notes, because toner never dries out and 28 pages per minute makes short work of anything. Buy the HP DeskJet 2820e ($99.00) if you print rarely and refuse to spend more than $100; it is the cheapest and most-reviewed printer in this guide, with 12,992 ratings. Families who want a middle path should look at the Canon PIXMA TS3750i ($144.32) or the HP Envy 6530e ($125.00) with its document feeder.

How do our three headline picks compare?

The three printers below cover the three ways Australians actually print at home: the ink-tank machine for households that print weekly, the mono laser for document-heavy homes, and the sub-$100 all-rounder for everyone who prints a boarding pass twice a year. All three print, and the ET-2950 and 2820e also scan and copy; the Brother adds a flatbed scanner too, so none of them leaves you stuck when school forms need signing and scanning back.

How we chose these printers

NestPath is a research house, not a lab. We built this list by cross-referencing what the printer press and Australian retailers consistently rate highly, then verifying every single candidate against its live Amazon Australia listing: current price, stock status, star rating, review count and the spec sheet as published. Printers that were listed without a clear Amazon price, or only through marketplace resellers at inflated prices, were cut no matter how good they are on paper. We then compared the survivors on the numbers that decide long-term happiness: cost per page based on the maker's own yield claims, duplex printing, paper capacity, Wi-Fi and AirPrint support, and scan capability. Finally we read the Australian customer reviews, the one-star ones especially, to catch real-world problems the spec sheet hides, like flaky Wi-Fi or missing AirPrint.

Best home printer overall: which one suits most Australian households?

The Epson EcoTank ET-2950 ($451.37, down from $499 at the time of writing) is the printer we would put in most Australian homes. It is a cartridge-free multifunction machine: instead of clip-in cartridges you pour ink from bottles into built-in tanks, and Epson rates one set of replacement bottles at up to 8,500 black pages or 6,500 colour pages. Epson's own claim is that you save up to 95 percent on ink with each replacement set, and even allowing for marketing gloss, the arithmetic is hard to argue with. It also does the things a family printer must do: automatic double-sided printing, a colour flatbed scanner, a 1.44 inch colour screen for driverless copying, and both Wi-Fi and USB connections, with Wi-Fi Direct if your router is temperamental.

At 11.2 pages per minute in black and about 5.9 in colour it is not fast, but home printing is rarely a race. What matters is that it starts every time, prints from phones and laptops without drama, and does not punish you at the checkout when the ink runs low. It is the highest-rated printer in this guide at 4.8 stars, though from a small pool of 13 Australian ratings, so treat that score as promising rather than proven. It is also the priciest of our six picks, which is exactly the ink-tank trade: you prepay years of ink in the purchase price.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

The 100-sheet paper tray is on the small side, so heavy users will be topping up paper weekly. The rear paper feed means it needs clearance behind it, worth checking if it is going on a shallow shelf. Print speed in colour is leisurely, and the 13-rating sample is thin compared with the thousands of reviews behind our budget picks. Finally, the sticker price will genuinely sting if your printing is occasional; the payback maths below only works if you actually print.

What if you mostly print documents in black and white?

Buy a mono laser, and specifically the Brother HL-L2464DW ($240.95). Laser printers use powdered toner rather than liquid ink, so nothing dries out or clogs if the printer sits unused for a month, which is the silent killer of cheap inkjets. This one prints at up to 28 pages per minute with automatic double-siding, holds 250 sheets of A4 so you are not refilling the tray every week, and adds a flatbed scanner and copier, which most compact lasers at this price skip. Its 4.6-star average across 94 Australian ratings is the second-best score in this guide, and the review themes are consistent: painless Wi-Fi setup, fast output, crisp text.

Running costs are the other half of the story. The in-box toner is rated for about 700 pages, and the replacement TN2530XL is rated for 3,000 pages. Divide whatever you pay for that cartridge by 3,000 and you get a per-page cost that undercuts every cartridge inkjet here; at an illustrative $80 a cartridge, that works out at about 2.7 cents a page. Brother rates it for up to 2,500 pages a month, which is a comical overkill for a household and exactly why these machines tend to outlive several inkjets. AirPrint and the Brother Mobile Connect app cover phone printing.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

It is monochrome only, so the kids' colour projects will need a different plan, and photo printing is off the table entirely. At 9 kilograms and roughly 41 centimetres wide it is a chunky unit that wants a permanent spot rather than a bookshelf corner. The scanner is a flatbed without a document feeder, so digitising a 20-page document means 20 lid lifts. And the two-line LCD is functional rather than friendly.

What is the best cheap printer for occasional printing?

The HP DeskJet 2820e ($99.00) is the printer for people who resent buying a printer. It prints, scans and copies, connects over Wi-Fi or USB, and has a mountain of social proof behind it: 12,992 ratings averaging 4.1 stars, which makes it both the cheapest and the most-reviewed pick in this guide. For boarding passes, school permission slips, return labels and the occasional recipe, it is all the printer a low-volume household needs, and it is small and light enough, at about 3.4 kilograms, to live in a cupboard between jobs.

Know what you are buying, though. Print speed is a modest 7.5 pages per minute in black, the input tray holds 60 sheets, and double-sided printing is manual, meaning the printer pauses and asks you to flip the stack. The economics are also the mirror image of the EcoTank: cheap machine, dear ink. Small cartridges mean a high cost per page, which is fine at ten pages a month and painful at a hundred. One factual note from the listing itself: HP states the printer's firmware includes dynamic security measures that can prevent cartridges using non-HP chips or circuitry from working, so factor genuine-cartridge pricing into your sums rather than counting on cheap refills.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

Manual duplex is tedious for anything longer than a few pages. The 60-sheet tray and slow colour speed rule it out for regular study-from-home loads. Cost per page is the highest of our picks if you print often, and the 4.1-star average reflects a slice of buyers who found setup via the HP app fiddly. None of that matters at this price if your printer mostly sits idle.

Which printer suits families printing homework and school notes?

The Canon PIXMA TS3750i ($144.32) is the family middle ground: a compact 3-in-1 that prints, scans and copies, with automatic double-sided printing that the cheaper HP lacks. That one feature matters more than it sounds for school use, halving the paper a term of worksheets consumes. It carries a 4.2-star average across 1,987 ratings, prints borderless photos up to 5 x 7 inches for the fridge door, and sips just 9 watts while printing. Canon's one-touch wireless setup and app-based printing from phones and tablets are well suited to households where the printer is shared by everyone and administered by no one.

It uses the PG-575 black and CL-576 colour cartridge pair, with XL versions available, and the listing offers Canon's optional PIXMA Print Plan subscription that posts ink out automatically before you run dry. Treat that as a convenience option to price up rather than a default: subscriptions suit steady printers and penalise sporadic ones. At 7.7 images per minute in black it is quicker than the DeskJet, and the 60-sheet tray is the same size, so it occupies a genuine middle rung between our budget and premium picks in both price and capability.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

Two-cartridge printers have a hidden cost: the colour cartridge holds all three colours in one unit, so when cyan runs out you replace the lot. Casual photo prints look good, but heavy photo printing belongs with a dedicated machine. The 60-sheet tray suits a family, not a home business. And a handful of reviewers report slow first-time Wi-Fi setup, so allow half an hour with the app on day one.

What about scanning stacks of documents at home?

If your home admin involves multi-page documents, contracts, settlement paperwork, tax receipts, the HP Envy 6530e ($125.00) earns its spot with one feature the others under $200 here lack: a 35-page automatic document feeder. Drop the stack in, press scan, walk away. It also prints double-sided automatically, copies, runs a colour touchscreen, and connects over HP's dual-band self-healing Wi-Fi, which the listing claims reconnects itself when the network drops. With 8,116 ratings at 4.1 stars, it has the second-largest review base in this guide.

The listing bundles 6 months of free Instant Ink, HP's subscription that posts cartridges automatically, if you activate HP+ during setup. The factual fine print from HP's own listing: HP+ requires an HP account, an ongoing internet connection and exclusive use of Original HP ink cartridges for the life of the printer. The free months are genuinely useful for a first-home buyer's paperwork blitz; just diarise the end date and decide deliberately whether the ongoing plan fits your volume, because casual printers often do better buying cartridges as needed. As a printer it is unhurried at 10 pages per minute in black, but as a scan-copy-print admin station for a paperwork-heavy season of life, nothing else at $125.00 in this list touches it.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

The 35-sheet input tray is the smallest here, so it suits scanning-heavy rather than printing-heavy homes. Like the DeskJet, it is an HP+ era machine, so the ink ecosystem rewards commitment to genuine cartridges. Print quality reviews are solid for documents but mixed for photos, and a minority of the 8,116 reviews mention paper jams under sustained load. Buy it for the document feeder, not for volume printing.

Is there a cheaper ink-tank option if you only need printing?

The Epson EcoTank ET-1810 ($248.00, down from $299 at the time of writing) is the cheapest way into cartridge-free printing on Amazon Australia right now, and the catch is a fair one: it only prints. No scanner, no copier. If you already scan with your phone, and most people under 40 do, that trade buys you the same tank economics as our top pick at close to half the price. Epson rates one replacement set of bottles at up to 4,500 black or 7,500 colour pages, the equivalent of about 203 individual cartridges by Epson's own comparison, and the auto-stop bottles are keyed so each colour only fits its own tank.

It holds 100 sheets, prints 10 pages per minute in black, and connects over Wi-Fi with Wi-Fi Direct as a fallback. At 37.5 centimetres wide and under 17 centimetres deep it is genuinely compact for a tank machine, and its 4.2-star average across 129 Australian ratings includes a strong seam of reviews from crafters and Linux users praising its simplicity. For a study nook where the printer's only job is turning documents into paper cheaply, this is the sharpest dollars-per-page play in the guide.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

Print-only is the obvious one: school scan-and-return jobs will need your phone camera. There is no screen, so everything runs through the Epson app or your computer, and several reviewers found the initial setup and app pairing frustrating. A few report Wi-Fi dropouts. And note the review consensus that plain-paper colour is respectable while glossy photo work is only passable, which is fine, because that is not this printer's job.

What should you look for in a home printer?

Ink system first, everything else second. The purchase price of a printer is a deposit; the ink is the mortgage. There are three systems. Cartridge inkjets (our HP and Canon picks) are cheap to buy and dear to run. Ink-tank machines (the two EcoTanks) are dear to buy and startlingly cheap to run. Mono lasers (the Brother) sit in between and never dry out.

Do the cost-per-page maths before you buy. The method is simple: divide the price of the consumable by the page yield printed on its box. For illustration, using the yields from our picks' own listings: a $100 set of EcoTank bottles rated at 8,500 black pages is about 1.2 cents a page. An $80 Brother TN2530XL rated at 3,000 pages is about 2.7 cents a page. A $30 budget cartridge rated around 200 pages is 15 cents a page. Whatever the consumables cost when you read this, the division takes ten seconds and settles the argument.

Duplex printing is worth insisting on. Automatic double-siding halves your paper spend and the ET-2950, HL-L2464DW, TS3750i and Envy 6530e all have it. The DeskJet 2820e makes you flip pages by hand.

Check the connectivity fine print. All six picks have Wi-Fi, but AirPrint support is the detail that decides whether printing from an iPhone is one tap or an ordeal. The Brother, Canon and both HPs support it; with the EcoTanks, confirm the model's AirPrint status on Epson's site before buying if iPhone printing is core to your household, because reviewers flag it as a gap on some tank models.

Subscription ink deserves a clear-eyed look. HP's Instant Ink and Canon's PIXMA Print Plan post ink automatically and can be good value for steady, predictable printing. The verifiable facts from our picks' listings: HP+ requires an internet connection and exclusive Original HP ink for the life of the printer, and HP's dynamic security firmware can block cartridges with non-HP chips. Neither is a reason to avoid HP; both are reasons to decide before checkout rather than after.

Match capacity to your household. A 60-sheet tray suits occasional printing, 100 sheets suits a family, 250 sheets suits a home office that prints daily.

How do you keep a home printer running?

Print something every fortnight. Inkjet heads clog when idle; a single colour test page every week or two keeps the nozzles clear and costs cents. This is the single best habit for the EcoTanks, the Canon and the HPs. Laser owners can ignore this entirely, which is half the reason to own one.

Use the built-in cleaning cycle sparingly. Head cleans burn a surprising amount of ink. Run one only when prints show banding, and try a second pass before escalating to a deep clean.

Store paper flat and dry. Humid Australian summers curl paper, and curled paper jams. Keep reams in a drawer or the original wrap, and fan the stack before loading.

Power off with the printer's own button. Inkjets park their print heads when shut down properly; killing them at the wall can leave heads exposed and drying.

Update firmware on your terms. Connected printers update themselves. Check the maker's release notes occasionally, and be aware that on HP machines, firmware updates maintain the cartridge dynamic security measures described on the listing.

Recycle the empties. Cartridges 4 Planet Ark bins in Officeworks, Australia Post and other outlets take cartridges and toners nationally, and EcoTank bottles are ordinary recyclable plastic once rinsed.

You'll also want

A printer without paper is furniture. These are the add-ons worth bundling into the same order, each verified live on Amazon Australia.

• PaperOne High White A4 copy paper, 2,500 sheets ($21.82): a carton of five reams at under a cent a sheet keeps you stocked for a year of family printing.
• Reflex Ultra White A4, carton of 5 reams ($65.00): the Australian-made option, 4.8 stars across 640 ratings, and noticeably brighter stock for documents that need to look sharp.
• Canon GP701 glossy photo paper, A4, 100 sheets ($45.95): 200 GSM gloss stock for the occasional fridge-door photo run on any of the inkjet picks.
• Rainbow A4 pastel colour paper, 100 sheets ($5.78): craft and school-project stock that turns the family printer into the fun kind of printer.
• MARTY desktop printer stand with storage ($42.99): lifts the printer and gives paper and ink a home underneath, 4.6 stars from 536 ratings.
• BONTEC 2-tier desk riser ($36.99): a 30 kilogram rated riser with cable slots that suits the lighter picks like the ET-1810 and DeskJet, backed by 33,900 ratings.
• Stackable 4-tier paper letter tray: keeps the to-print, to-sign and to-file piles from colonising the kitchen bench.

The competition

Epson EcoTank ET-2810: the previous-generation EcoTank all-rounder scores 4.0 stars from 218 ratings and remains a fine machine, but at the time of research its Amazon listing carried no headline price, only marketplace buying options, and reviewers repeatedly flag its lack of AirPrint. The ET-2950 adds auto duplex and a screen, and is the one to buy new.

Brother HL-L2445DW: the print-only sibling of our Brother pick, rated 4.5 stars from 239 reviews, is faster at 32 pages per minute with the same 250-sheet tray. It also lacked a straightforward Amazon price at research time; if you spot it listed near $200 and do not need the scanner, it is excellent.

Canon PIXMA TS7760: a 4.4-star, 315-rating family 3-in-1 with a touchscreen and two-way paper feed. Again, no headline Amazon price at research time kept it off the list; from a retailer it is a worthy TS3750i upgrade.

HP Smart Tank 5105: HP's answer to the EcoTank has promising tank economics but only 57 ratings at 4.2 stars locally and manual duplex, which the similarly priced ET-2950 beats.

Epson Expression Home XP-4200: a popular sub-$100 cartridge inkjet at Australian retailers, but its 3.9 to 4.3 star spread and small cartridges make the DeskJet 2820e the safer cheap seat on Amazon.

Laser all-in-ones like the Brother MFC-L2820DW: superb machines for heavier home offices, but priced and sized beyond what most households need; our HL-L2464DW covers the same jobs for less.

Home printer FAQs

Which printer has the cheapest ink costs in Australia?

Ink-tank printers. Our top pick, the Epson EcoTank ET-2950, is rated by Epson for up to 8,500 black pages per replacement bottle set, and the cheaper print-only ET-1810 is rated for up to 4,500. Divide the price of a bottle set by those yields and you land near one to two cents a page, versus roughly 10 to 15 cents from small standard cartridges in budget inkjets.

Is a laser or inkjet printer better for home use?

It depends on what you print. A mono laser like the Brother HL-L2464DW is better for black-and-white documents: 28 pages per minute, crisp text, and toner that never dries out between uses. An inkjet or ink-tank machine like the EcoTank ET-2950 is better for households that need colour for school projects and the odd photo. Many low-volume homes are happiest with a cheap inkjet like the $99.00 HP DeskJet 2820e despite higher per-page costs.

How often should you print to stop ink drying out?

Print at least one page, ideally a colour test page, every one to two weeks on any inkjet or ink-tank printer. Idle nozzles clog, and repeated cleaning cycles waste far more ink than the maintenance page costs. Laser printers like our Brother pick are immune, because toner is a dry powder.

Do you have to use HP Instant Ink with an HP printer?

No. Both HP picks in this guide print with ordinary genuine cartridges without any subscription. The relevant facts from HP's listings: the Envy 6530e's 6 free months of Instant Ink require activating HP+, which needs an HP account, an internet connection and exclusive Original HP ink for the printer's life, and HP's dynamic security firmware can block cartridges using non-HP chips. Decide on the subscription deliberately at setup rather than by default.

Are ink tank printers worth the higher upfront cost?

If you print regularly, yes. The gap between the $451.37 ET-2950 and a $99.00 cartridge printer is about $352, and at cartridge-inkjet running costs of 10 cents and up per page, a household printing 25 pages a week can claw that back within a couple of years, then keep saving. If you print a few pages a month, the maths flips and the DeskJet 2820e is the rational buy.

Complete your home office setup

A printer is usually the first piece of a working-from-home corner, not the last. These guides cover the rest of the room.

• Home office setup essentials: the full checklist for a productive WFH corner in a new home.
• Best standing desks: the surface your new printer will probably share.
• Best desk chairs: because the paperwork takes longer than the printing.
• Best monitors: pair the print station with a proper screen.
• Best paper shredders: what goes in must securely come out.
• Best photo printers: for photo-first printing that this guide's document machines are not built for.
• Best label printers: the right tool for jars, cables and moving boxes.

About the author

Anish Puri founded NestPath in 2026 after going through the Australian first-home-buyer process himself. NestPath focuses on Australian first-home buyers because the existing review sites are American, generic, or both. Anish handles editorial selection across the homeowner hub. Reach out: hello@nestpath.com.au