The honest thing to say about printers is that the purchase price is the small number. Cost per page — toner or ink over the machine's life — is where the money goes, it varies by more than an order of magnitude across this page, and no manufacturer puts it on the box. Our model cannot rank it either.
What the ranking does tell you is speed, resolution and features, and those sort cleanly. Every figure below is the live computed Mars Score.
Highest score in the catalog: HP LaserJet Pro MFP 4101fdw
Mars Score 83.9 at $449. 42 pages per minute — the fastest here — at 1200×1200 dpi, mono laser, with a document feeder, duplex, Wi-Fi and AirPrint.
Who should buy it: a home office that prints documents in volume and does not need colour.
Same machine, less money: Pantum BM5100ADW
Mars Score 82.7 at $379. 40 ppm at 1200×1200, same feature set. Pantum is the unfamiliar name here and the machine is 2 ppm slower for $70 less.
Cheapest thing on this page worth owning: Brother HL-L2460DW
Mars Score 80.2 at $239 — the lowest price here, and it scores joint third.
It is mono laser, 36 ppm, 1200×1200, duplex, Wi-Fi, AirPrint — and it has no document feeder and no scanner, because it is a printer rather than an all-in-one. If you do not scan, you are buying nothing but printing, and Brother's toner is among the cheapest per page in the industry.
Best colour laser: Xerox VersaLink C405
Mars Score 80.2 at $599. 36 ppm in both mono and colour — colour at full speed, which is unusual — with a feeder and duplex, at 600×600 dpi.
The Brother MFC-L8905CDW (78.3, $749) is the alternative: 33 ppm both ways at a finer 2400×600, for $150 more.
Best all-rounder: Brother MFC-J5855DW
Mars Score 76.3 at $349. An inkjet all-in-one at 30 ppm in colour and mono, 4800×1200 dpi, and tabloid paper support — A3, which only one other machine here offers.
If you print anything larger than letter or anything photographic, this is where the list starts for you.
The slow colour lasers
HP Color LaserJet Pro 3301fdw (73.1, $599) manages 25 ppm at 600×600 — considerably less machine than the Xerox for the same class of money.
Lexmark MC3326adwe (72.5, $399) is 24 ppm colour laser and is the only printer in this top ten without AirPrint, which for an iPhone or Mac household is close to disqualifying.
The two that cost least to run: Epson EcoTank ET-5850 and WorkForce Pro WF-7840
Both 73.1, and this is where the ranking most under-sells a machine.
The EcoTank ET-5850 costs $699 and uses refillable ink tanks rather than cartridges — the only machine on this page that does. Its purchase price is high and its per-page cost is a fraction of everything else here; over a few thousand pages it is the cheapest printer in this top ten by a wide margin. Our model sees 25 ppm mono, 12 ppm colour, and ranks it eighth.
The WF-7840 is $449, cartridge-based, with tabloid support and 4800×2400 dpi — the finest resolution here.
How to choose, in four questions
- Laser or inkjet? Laser for documents, speed and machines that sit unused for weeks. Inkjet for photos, colour and A3.
- Cost per page, which you must look up yourself. A cheap printer with expensive cartridges is the most reliable way to lose money in consumer electronics. The EcoTank exists because of it.
- Do you actually scan? If not, the $239 Brother HL-L2460DW does everything the $449 machine above it does.
- AirPrint. Universal here except the Lexmark, and the thing you will curse daily if it is missing.
All printers in the catalog are ranked on the printers page, and the full dataset behind these scores is open data.
Turn this reading into a better product decision
This buying guide is a decision framework, not a substitute for checking the exact variant, regional price, availability, and warranty that apply to you. Use the linked catalog data to separate published facts from personal priorities, then compare the final shortlist directly rather than relying on a generic ranking.
Verify the fit
Open the Printers category page to filter the relevant field, then inspect full product profiles and the score methodology.
Keep the recommendation current
This article references 10 catalog products; use the live product pages for current specifications and comparison links.
vsMars keeps editorial judgment, normalized Mars Score inputs, and affiliate links separate. If a detail is missing or out of date, report it so the catalog and this article can be corrected.