Printer manufacturers aren’t shy about calling their products “photo printers.” Many consumer all-in-one printers (inkjet printer/copier/scanners) wear the label, even if they have no more than the four usual ink cartridge colors—cyan, magenta, yellow, and black or CMYK—instead of the five or six shades that produce better-quality prints. Some vendors even apply the term “photo printer” to inkjets with the antique two-cartridge (black and tricolor) system. And some of their output, to be fair, isn’t bad, as long as you’re printing on special photo paper instead of plain or copier paper.
But this article assumes you’re looking for a true photo printer. For consumers, these fall into two broad categories: near-dedicated photo printers, and dedicated snapshot printers. Beyond those, some all-in-one inkjet printers take a decided photo-centric bent. We’ll run through our latest tested favorites of all three kinds below, then get into how to buy a photo printer that’s right for what you do.
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Deeper Dive: Our Top Tested Picks
Epson SureColor P900 17-Inch Photo Printer
Best Pro-Grade Photo Printer
Why We Picked It
Only professional photographers are likely to spend roughly $1,200 for a 10-ink freestanding printer capable of producing gallery-class 17-by-22-inch prints and 17-inch-wide banners almost 11 feet long. Those who do will find Epson’s SureColor P900 worth every penny—including the extra $250 for the roll adapter. This magnificent machine generates brilliant colors and deep blacks (automatically switching between photo and matte black ink), with its UltraChrome PRO10 pigment inks more than fulfilling the promise of its ICC (International Color Consortium) profile and a control panel that lets you configure print jobs in ways that previously had to be done within Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom. (There’s also an Epson Print Layout plug-in that replaces Photoshop’s Print dialog box.)
Who It’s For
If you have to ask, you can’t afford it, but if you need spectacular wide-format prints, panoramas, and banners, the P900 is actually something of a bargain. For anything short of high-volume commercial printing, the SureColor is a sure thing.
PROS
- Excellent print quality
- Prints borderless banners and panoramas up to 17 inches wide
- Prints cut sheets up to 17 by 22 inches
- Uses UltraChrome PRO10 pigment inks for increased color gamut
- Switches from photo black to matte black ink automatically
- Competitive per-millimeter ink costs
CONS
- Paper roll adapter costs extra
Canon Pixma Pro-200
Best Grayscale Art/Panorama Photo Printer
Why We Picked It
The Pixma Pro-200 isn’t the flagship of Canon’s photo printers—it’s limited to 13-inch-wide (supertabloid) media instead of 17-by-22-inch stock or roll paper for banners or panoramas. But its eight ChromaLife100+ CLI-65 inks offer deep blacks, brilliant color reproduction in blues and reds, and an enhanced color gamut that makes your prints look gorgeous, with particularly great grayscale images. If you don’t need roll support (the Pro-200 can manage limited banner printing up to 13 by 39 inches), it’s a clear winner.
Who It’s For
The Pixma Pro-200 fills a nifty niche between high-end desktop inkjets and super-deluxe, large-format photo printers. It offers a friendly control panel, versatile paper handling, automatic nozzle clog detection, and print quality you wouldn’t expect from a $600 printer, as well as lower operating costs than most machines in its class.
PROS
- Excellent print quality
- Prints borderless banners and panoramas up to 13 inches wide by 39 inches long
- Superb grayscale output
- Automatic nozzle clog detection
- Small footprint
- Improved software and control panel display
- Low running costs
Epson Expression Premium XP-7100 Small-in-One Printer
Best Photo-Centric Family AIO
Why We Picked It
Epson’s Small-in-One inkjets are famously affordable and capable photo-centric printers for families and home offices, taking little desk space to deliver five-ink prints (the CMYK quartet, plus a “photo black” ink) that outshine your local drugstore’s offerings. The Expression Premium XP-7100 also excels as a general-purpose all-in-one for copying and scanning, with robust connectivity and a 30-sheet, single-pass, auto-duplexing automatic document feeder (ADF) that frees you from having to shuffle pages of double-sided documents on and off the scanning glass by hand.
Who It’s For
Whether you’re making a USB, a Wi-Fi, or an Ethernet connection to a PC; printing from an Android or iOS smartphone; or scanning to or printing from a USB flash drive or SD card, the XP-7100 pairs great print quality with relatively low running costs. (At least as far as cartridge models go, rather than bulk-ink models like Epson’s EcoTank series.) That’s a winning combination.
PROS
- Exceptional output quality.
- Single-pass duplexing ADF.
- Large, easy-to-use control panel.
- Robust connectivity.
CONS
- High running costs.
- Low paper capacity.
Read Our Epson Expression Premium XP-7100 Small-in-One Printer Review
Canon Pixma TR8620 Wireless Home Office All-In-One Printer
Best Home-Office Photo Printer
Why We Picked It
As its under-$200 price suggests, Canon’s Pixma TR8620 is a low-volume inkjet printer/copier/scanner aimed at families and home offices instead of busy business workgroups. Its 20-sheet automatic document feeder lacks auto-duplexing, so you’ll have to flip and reinsert double-sided documents. Its ink-cartridge costs make printing more than a few hundred pages per month (especially black text pages) prohibitive. But its output is worth waiting for, with five inks (including pigment black) that produce brighter, more vibrant, and more accurate photos than four-ink office models, with less graininess and greater detail. The Canon also offers versatile PC and mobile connectivity and a friendly touch-screen control panel.
Who It’s For
Canon’s Pixma TR series all-in-ones target office productivity more than its photo-centric TS models, but the TR8620 straddles both worlds pretty nimbly. For dens, dorm rooms, and micro offices that print a lot of photos, it’s a worthy choice.
PROS
- Excellent print quality, especially photos
- Two black inks for darker text and blacker blacks in photos
- Two paper input trays
- 20-sheet document feeder
- SD card support
- Ethernet and Bluetooth support
- Light and compact
CONS
- High running costs
- Sluggish print speeds
- No auto-duplexing
Read Our Canon Pixma TR8620 Wireless Home Office All-In-One Printer Review
Epson EcoTank Photo ET-8550
Best Wide-Format Home Photo Printer
Why We Picked It
Think home-office and small-office multifunction inkjets are a dime a dozen? (They’re actually $150 to $750, but you know what we mean.) The Epson EcoTank Photo ET-8550 stands out from the crowd in several ways. First, it’s a wide-format machine, supporting borderless tabloid (11-by-17-inch) and supertabloid (13-by-19-inch) prints. Second, it uses six inks (adding photo black and gray to the usual cyan, magenta, yellow, and black), yielding more vivid and detailed photos and grayscale images. Third, it’s an EcoTank printer, using ink reservoirs refilled from bottles instead of costly cartridges to cut operating costs to just pennies per page.
Who It’s For
Though its connectivity and text output quality are faultless, the ET-8550 isn’t your best pick for office productivity, since it has a flatbed scanner with no ADF for copying multipage documents. But semi-pro photographers, enthusiastic hobbyists, and small businesses making their own marketing materials will find it a perfect partner.
PROS
- Prints borderless from 4 by 6 inches to 13 by 19 inches
- Exceptional output quality
- Relatively fast printing speeds for its class
- Low running costs
- First two years of ink are free
CONS
- Purchase price is a little steep
Canon Selphy CP1500 Wireless Compact Photo Printer
Best Snapshot Photo Printer
Why We Picked It
Canon’s Selphy CP1500 comes from a venerable line of dye-sublimation printers that deliver snapshot-size output using “print packs” that bundle the paper and dye-ribbon cartridges in one box, good for a fixed number of prints. This model stands out for its support for up to four different print sizes, some with adhesive backing and some without. (Supporting smaller than the default 4-by-6-inch size requires a cheap adapter tray.) It’s relatively fast and produces high-quality prints at very competitive running costs. You’ll find the software geared more toward printing from mobile devices than PCs, but it will do a creditable job whatever the photo source.
Who It’s For
Families, especially ones with a scrapbooker in the house, will find the Selphy handy. If you need a quick, compact, and affordable way to turn your family’s smartphone images into good-looking photos and stickers, the Selphy will do the job, and you’ll have no doubt where you stand with consumables. There’s no guesswork how much “ink” is left.
PROS
- Solid photo print quality
- Low running costs (for 4-by-6-inch media)
- Supports multiple paper sizes with inexpensive tray option
- Easy-to-use control panel
- Prints from USB and SD card memory devices
- Optional battery
CONS
- No Windows or macOS software (companion apps are phone-oriented)
- Photo paper stock provided in packs of consumables is thin
Read Our Canon Selphy CP1500 Wireless Compact Photo Printer Review
HP Sprocket Select
Best Inkless Smartphone (Wallet-Size) Photo Printer
Why We Picked It
HP’s Sprocket Select finds a happy medium among the company’s Zink (zero-ink) smartphone photo printers, making larger prints than the base Sprocket’s tiny snapshots but coming in under the Sprocket Studio’s 4-by-6-inch scrapbook photos. The Select’s 2.3-by-3.4-inch pics have a peel-off sticky backing and cost 65 cents apiece if you buy HP’s two-pack of 10 sheets. Print quality is the best we’ve seen from a Zink printer, if still short of inkjet and dye-sublimation devices, but then the Sprocket Select is only 0.7 by 3.5 by 5.7 inches and weighs just six ounces.
Who It’s For
Limited to Bluetooth (not Wi-Fi) printing from the iOS or Android Sprocket app, the Select is a convenient gadget that offers easy integration with Facebook, Google Photos, and Instagram. We wish HP offered non-sticky stock, but this printer is tops for handing out pics at parties and family gatherings.
PROS
- Good print quality for a pocket printer.
- Special paper eliminates need for ink or dye cartridges.
- Easy to use.
- Larger prints than some similar models.
- Quirky image-tweaking and AR features accessible through app.
CONS
- On the slow side for a pocket photo printer.
- High running costs.
- Can’t print from a PC.
- Connects solely via Bluetooth.
Kodak Step Instant Mobile Photo Printer
A Solid Alternative to the HP Sprocket Select
Why We Picked It
If you’re interested in trying a Zink printer like the HP Sprocket Select but are looking for one with more traditional color options, the Kodak Step Instant is an excellent alternative. It’s available in solid hues (white, black, pink, and blue) instead of the silver gray or light green marbled finish of the Sprocket Select. Print quality is very good for a Zink printer, and the 50-cent cost per page is average for the category.
Who It’s For
Smartphone-compatible snapshot printers need to be versatile and look good too, since you’ll likely be carrying one around with you for impromptu prints. The multiple color options of the Step Instant make it a perfect fit for people who like to color-match their personal devices.
PROS
- Low purchase price and competitive running costs
- Good output quality
- Multiple bundles available
- Supports NFC
CONS
- Only wireless (no USB) connectivity
- No support for Windows or macOS laptops or desktops
Kodak Mini 3 Retro (3×3) Portable Printer
Best Instagram/Square-Format Snapshot Printer
Why We Picked It
The Kodak Mini 3 Retro combines high-quality dye-sub printing with an Instagram-style square (3-by-3-inch) picture format. The “Retro” part of its name refers to its choice of borderless photos or pics with a white border around all four edges (equal at top and sides, and wider at bottom), which may appeal to nostalgia buffs or bulletin-board thumbtackers. Available in white, yellow, or black and measuring a pocket-friendly 1 by 5 by 4 inches, the one-pound printer makes four passes to lay down cyan, magenta, and yellow ink plus a protective clear coat. Kodak says its largest (90-print) paper and ink pack translates to 40 cents per photo, but we’ve found sale prices that cut that to 30 cents.
Who It’s For
Phone-photo fiends who need quick, spiffy prints in a jiffy. Besides looking sharper and more colorful than most rivals’, the Kodak’s prints arrive quicker (in 40 to 45 seconds). It’s a standout among Bluetooth printers for iOS and Android phones.
PROS
- Fine photo quality in 3-inch square print format
- Prints both borderless and bordered photos
- Comes with enough consumables for 68 photos
CONS
- Bluetooth only; no Wi-Fi connectivity
- Android or iOS only; no Windows or macOS support
Buying Guide: The Best Photo Printers for 2023
First, let’s define photo printers by the two broad extremes we mentioned up top.
As the name indicates, dedicated snapshot (also known as “small-format”) printers are designed to print nothing but small and wallet-size photos. You can’t print documents with them, because they don’t accept letter-size paper. They’re limited to snapshot sizes, usually around 2 by 3 inches, 4 by 6 inches, or 5 by 7 inches, or longer panoramic or Instagram-style square prints. Not all such printers print all these sizes; most support just one. Generally, the smaller the printer, the smaller the maximum paper size.
(Credit: HP)
But this category of printer isn’t defined just by its limits. These printers are small and portable. They’re also much less computer-centric printers than they are standalone consumer gadgets, with an emphasis on ease of use for printing snapshots from smartphones.
By contrast, near-dedicated photo printers are aimed at serious amateur and semipro photographers. They offer professional-level output quality, can typically print at sizes up to 13 by 19 inches (sometimes, even more), and often demand a reasonable level of sophistication to get the best results.
(Credit: Epson)
What both categories have in common is that they focus on printing photos, not documents, reports, or presentations. Here’s what you need to consider to make the right choice.
Do You Even Need a Photo Printer?
As we said, many inkjet-based home and office all-in-one printers do print excellent photos, and even some color laser printers do a decent job with photographic images for flyers or brochures. But they’re more general-use printers than the two kinds we’re focused on here.
Near-dedicated photo printers and snapshot models both are made for printing photos, but that’s where the similarities end between the two. By definition, near-dedicated photo printers are also capable of printing ordinary business documents, but it’s a waste of their talents, like using a Lamborghini for a trip to the supermarket. You’ll have to swap out paper stock or even ink cartridges when you switch from printing photos to everyday documents, only to get results that an office inkjet or laser printer could give you for a fraction of the cost.
Snapshot printers are a whole different animal. At one time, these printers often had LCD screens with menus and basic editing features that let you crop an image, remove red-eye, and so on; a few were practically home photo kiosks with touch-screen controls. Nowadays, however, snapshot printers tend to work with mobile devices like smartphones, over a wireless connection, with your phone or tablet serving as both the image source and the control screen. If you’re mostly interested in printing quick, small snaps from your phone, these are more your speed.
How Much Will Your Photo Printing Cost?
With any photo printer, check the running cost and total cost of ownership if you can. Our reviews are helpful in this regard. Snapshot printers often use easy-to-replace packs or cartridges that combine enough photo paper and ink for 20 or 30 prints (those that use ink, that is; more in a minute). Unfortunately, there’s no easily found or widely accepted standard for calculating the cost per print for near-dedicated photo printers, many of which can produce images of widely varying sizes or even long panoramas using rolls instead of sheets.
(Credit: Epson)
To get the cost per photo for a snapshot printer, simply divide the cost of the print pack by the number of photos it produces. To get the total cost of ownership, multiply the cost per photo by the number of photos you expect to print over the device’s lifetime, and then add the printer’s initial cost.
Some inkjet printers, not usually photo-first models, work with automatic ink delivery or subscription services like HP’s Instant Ink. These can be great deals for consumers who print a lot of photos, since they charge a flat monthly fee for a given number of prints—whether they be letter-size, borderless photos or pages of double-spaced black text. It’s easy in these cases to calculate what a photo print will cost.
Do You Print in Black and White?
When shopping for a laser printer, you must consider whether you really need color printing or can make do with monochrome. Photo printers turn the question on its head, making you ask whether you want to print any black-and-white images, which many printers can’t handle particularly well.
The most common flaw in monochrome image printing is a color tint, or multiple tints, that show up in different shades of gray. If you intend to print lots of black-and-white photos, you’ll need to check out monochrome photo quality separately from the printer’s color photo quality. This is more often a problem for dedicated rather than near-dedicated photo printers, but you should be aware of it in either case. (In our reviews, we note such tints and their severity when we encounter them, but we don’t use black-and-white images to test small-format snapshot printers, most of which aren’t designed to print any.)
Photo Printers: Portable Printers vs. Desk-Bound Printers
Many inexpensive snapshot printers are small enough to fit in a pocket; a few are too big to carry very often. If you want to bring a printer to a party or a Little League game, pick a size you won’t mind carrying. Also, consider whether the printer can run on batteries (many do by default; some offer batteries as options). And find out how many photos you can print on a full charge.
(Credit: Canon)
Most near-dedicated photo printers are larger than standard desktop-style inkjets, because they’re designed for printing on cut-paper sheets as large as 11 by 17 or even 13 by 19 inches, plus banners and roll paper for some models. Beyond the size of the printer itself, some machines in this class need additional space behind them to feed large paper stock or accommodate a roll feeder.
(Credit: Epson)
To print on large paper with some near-dedicated photo printers, you have to feed a single sheet from the front, which the printer then feeds all the way out of a rear slot and then prints while moving the paper forward again. If you don’t have enough free space for this approach to printing, look for a printer that can handle roll paper or feed large sheets from a standard tray (or both).
Do You Need a Wired or a Wireless Photo Printer?
Some snapshot printers can print from a computer over a USB connection, but most are really meant as standalone devices for use with phones or tablets. Older models tend to come with Wi-Fi connectivity, and many can print directly from PictBridge-supporting cameras and memory cards or USB flash drives. (Make sure the printer is compatible with the memory card format you want to use.) A few print from internal memory, but you need to transfer files to the memory first, so find what connection you need to use to transfer images. Bluetooth connectivity is most common with today’s “smartphone companion”-type printers.
Connectivity options for near-dedicated photo printers are much the same as for standard office models. Some offer just a single USB connector; others add an Ethernet jack for easy sharing on an office network. Most now offer Wi-Fi connectivity, as well, and a few offer all three (USB, Ethernet, and Wi-Fi). Few models at this level offer PictBridge connectors or USB flash drive ports or SD card slots, because the assumption is that serious photographers will want to tweak their images before printing from photo-editing programs on their PCs or Macs.
How to Get the Best Output Quality From Your Photo Printer
Whatever printer you’re considering, be sure to check on the output quality before buying. Professional and semipro photo printers include both inkjet models—often with eight or 10 different color ink cartridges, instead of the four, five, or six in a typical inkjet—and dye-sublimation (often called dye-sub) printers that make multiple passes to create an image (laying down, say, cyan, magenta, yellow, and a clear coat).
Snapshot printers offer the same two technologies. With an inkjet, you’ll typically buy your ink and paper separately, so you’ll want to match the printer maker’s paper recommendations. Dye-sub models combine their ink cartridges and paper into packs or cartridges designated for a fixed number of prints.
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(Credit: Fujifilm)
A third technology seen in small snapshot printers is zero-ink, or Zink. As you’d guess, it uses no ink cartridges; instead, special Zink paper impregnated with chemicals generates the image when heated precisely by the printer. Zink doesn’t support large prints, and its output quality doesn’t quite stack up to dye-sub or inkjet. It’s best described as good enough for photos that will wind up in a wallet or behind a refrigerator magnet.
Snapshot printers vary in quality, but any near-dedicated photo printer should offer output suitable for a professional photographer’s exhibition prints. Still, you should obviously check before buying by reading reviews or looking at print samples at a retailer. Keep in mind, too, that different people have different tastes, so choosing between two or more printers with superb but slightly different output may depend on which you like better.
The type of paper you use can make a huge difference in the quality and appearance of an image, so ask what papers are available for the printer. Most manufacturers offer an assortment of fine-art papers for near-dedicated photo printers. In many cases, you can get paper-specific color profiles so you can use the printer with third-party papers, as well.
(Credit: Canon)
Finally, two other issues fall loosely under the heading of quality: ruggedness and lifetime. Don’t expect much in the way of ruggedness for fine-art papers for framing, but you do need it for stacks of 4-by-6-inch snaps that you might hand out for people to look through. Photos from most printers today are reasonably waterproof and smudge- and scratch-resistant, but some fare better than others.
Claimed photo lifetimes also vary, with longer lifetimes obviously preferred. Traditional silver halide color prints last about 20 years when exposed to air; many of today’s snapshot printers rate their output for a century of storage in a photo album.
Print Speeds and Quantities: Do They Matter?
Speed is a crucial measure for office printers, but print speed is almost a nonissue for these devices. Output quality matters much more, and even today’s slowest photo printers offer tolerable speeds of two minutes or less for a 4-by-6-inch print in our tests. Of course, advertised or rated speeds are typically slower than real-world speeds, and (as we note in our reviews where applicable) wireless printing tends to be slower than USB or Ethernet.
Similarly, enterprises and workgroups worry about a printer’s monthly and recommended duty cycles or maximum number of pages it can crank out in a given time frame. Unfortunately, manufacturers almost never rate duty cycles for snapshot and near-dedicated photo printers. About the best you can do is, if you know you’ll be printing a lot of photos, shop for printers aimed at professional photographers and retail stores.
So, What Is the Best Photo Printer to Buy?
Whether you’re a casual photographer or a pro, one of the photo printers below is sure to fit your needs. Whichever you choose, you’re guaranteed to hold evidence of that great moment in your hand almost as soon as you capture it with a click. We’ve listed our favorite near-dedicated photo printers and snapshot models, as well as a few inkjet all-in-ones that do an especially good job with photos but can also serve general printing needs in a home or small office.
For a wider view of printers, check out our guide to our favorite printers overall. And for photo hounds getting started in the photo-printing world, see our guide to fixing bad photos and our collection of advanced photo tips.
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