The modern age is all about digitalization. Still, among all these far-cry of soft copies for all the documents, printed books in hand, hard copies of the meeting schedule, and invitation cards have not become obsolete yet. There comes the job of a printer. But selecting the best printer under $100 cost can be a bit tricky when every manufacturer is rushing towards a lowest-range product launch.
With such plenty of product varieties with so many features and the lure of cutting-edge technological modifications under a surprisingly low price charge, only one thing you should keep in mind. Technology is all about serving your purposeful demand. So, decide the reason for your purchasing a printer first, and it will answer for you to choose the best printer under your budget of 100 dollars.
We picked five of our best selections, opinionated by our expert advisors. Let’s see which one of them fits perfectly in your home or office cabin.
5 Best Printer Under $100
1. HP OfficeJet 3830 Printer
The black-colored HP OfficeJet 3830 inkjet model K7V40A printer has acquired an outstanding user satisfaction review with time. The 4-in-one feature in this printer is a real deal when it comes to multitasking with quality service for scanning, copying, or faxing in your printing machine through the command of Alexa or Google Assistant. The user-friendly 2.2-inch touchscreen interface makes all your wishes granted with a single touch.
Apple Airprint or Google Cloud printing, you have all in your hand with no-touch printing facility. Also, HP offers you a phone cord to print directly from your mobile. With HP Smart app technology, setting up this device is a no-time job of ease. Cloud printing software allows you to command your printer from anywhere to print files from Google Drive, Dropbox, or iCloud without presenting in front of the machine.
The bonus offer from HP Instant Ink Ready service fits you like a glove with the first two months of free ink delivery at your doorstep for less than 3 dollar monthly subscription holders.
Pros:
- ADF support
- All size paper support: letter, legal, 4 x 6, 5 x 7, and 8 x 10 inches
- One-year limited hardware warranty
- Outstanding quality printing
- Instant-Ink Ready
- Energy-Star certified
- Windows, Mac, iOS, Android supported
Cons:
- No auto-duplex
- Scan to email option is not available
- No separate photo-tray available
- No ethernet network accessibility
- No option for printing from a USB drive
2. Canon PIXMA TR4520 Printer
Canon PIXMA TR4520 photo printer can end your search to finding the best printer under 100 dollars when your sole concern is the professional image or photo printing service.
Setting up this black beast using the Canon Print App from your smartphone or tablet and then commanding it to print using Mobile Printing without touching saves your time from starting. Amazon Dash Replenishment service offers ink level measurement notification and can automate smart reorders with 10% savings for each order without any prior subscription.
Talk about Google Cloud printing, Mopria Print Service, or Apple Airprint compatibility, you have your printer ready through Wi-Fi connection, Also, USB connectivity is also available there. IFTTT provides printing automation through various web services and applications. Can you think about asking for more in such a price range?
Pros:
- IFTTT support
- Built-in ADF
- Auto-duplex printing
- Versatile printing paper sizes: US #10 envelope, letter, legal, 4×6, 5×7, and 8×10 inches
- 4-in-1 service
- Small size
Cons:
- No disc label printing
- Can’t print 11×17-inch paper
- Not Cloud-ready to print directly from Google Drive, iCloud, or Dropbox
3. Brother HL-L2350DW – Best Printer Under $100
Brother Compact Monochrome HL-L2350DW Printer has no color printing option, but it can save your office day’s immense workload with the bunch of best quality printed documents presented within a flash of lightning. Connectivity? Through both USB interface and built-in Wifi network. Connect any type of computer or mobile device in your department without touching the printing machine.
The best thing is it’s automatic duplex printing mechanism so that you can finish your other works during printing since there is no need to wait for flipping the pages every time.
Moreover, cost-efficient paper yield, manual feed slot with flexible paper handling system for a variety of paper types such as card stock, letter, legal, envelopes for different size professional document printing, you name it. And all these required conveniences are coming from a printer under 100 dollar charge. Isn’t it amazing?
Pros:
- Amazon Dash Replenishment Ready
- Class-leading print speed of up to 32 ppm
- 250-sheet paper tray capacity
- Windows, Mac, iOS, Android support
- Toner Save Mode helps to save on toner cost
- Various type and size of papers can be printed
Cons:
- No Bluetooth connectivity
- No color printing
- Other services like scanning, copying, and faxing are not possible.
4. HP LaserJet Pro M15w Printer
It’s the second HP product in our list of the best printer under 100 dollars price tag. Difference? It’s one of the best laserjets for all your business solutions. Here is a surprise waiting for you. The white-colored HP LaserJet Pro M15w Wireless Laser Printer W2G51A is claimed to be the world’s smallest laser printer with a 35% smaller size compared to the others in its class.
Does that affect the quality? Definitely not. You get the same high-quality printed material out of this modernized device matching the footsteps of this portable era. Also, the lightning speed for rush-hour printing delivers the same volume of documents in your time limit.
HP Smart app has such a user-friendly interface for printer settings that you don’t have to be tech-savvy to start production from your printer. A cloud-ready system can directly print from iCloud, Google Drive, or Dropbox. And Wi-Fi Direct with built-in wireless capability lets you access various devices with all kinds of OS support to print, scan, and share through your network.
Pros:
- 35% smaller size compared to its competitors
- Energy-efficiency with HP auto on-off engineering
- Amazon Dash Replenishment service
- One year hardware warranty with 24×7 free web support
- LED control panel
- Energy Star certification
- USB port
- Variety of paper sizes can be printed
Cons:
- No ADF
- Manual Duplexing
- Monochrome printing
- No Ethernet support
- Can’t print from a USB drive
5. HP OfficeJet Pro 8025 Printer
Our last but not the least quality product is another HP inkjet means device. HP OfficeJet Pro 8025 printer 1KR57A is a smart small high-speed beast for both home and office productivity. The page organization speed is also claimed to be 50% faster than its competitors.
Cloud printing is like a smooth breeze when you can sync it from Google Drive, QuickBooks, and similar products and also send your email directly after scanning. HP Smart app takes care of all your services from mobile printing, copying, scanning, to faxing.
The self-healing feature of its built-in Wi-Fi connection can troubleshoot and solve up to a 3-stage reconnection system to keep you connected in your network continuously. Another best feature to make it a one-of-a-kind device is its security applications. All your confidential files and sensitive information will be protected under Wi-fi security, password protectivity, and basic encryption methods.
HP made a very thoughtful design out of sustainable products with 15% recycled electronics and plastic materials. The company provides you 24×7 free web support under a one-year limited hardware warranty.
Pros:
- Sustainable design made from recycled plastics
- 14% smaller than similar products
- HP Instant Ink
- Amazon Dash Replenishment
- Self-healing Wi-Fi
- Built-in security essentials
- Voice-activated printing
- 35 page ADF
- Printing on all sizes and types of paper including glossy photo papers
- Ethernet connection
- Color touchscreen
Cons:
- Printing is not possible from a USB drive
- No second paper-tray
- Slide-off glass is not available
Buying Guide
Modern printers under the $100 price-tag can provide you the best office or personal use services without shelling out a lot of money when you select them wisely based on your purposes. Let’s see what features are available for us.
What do you need? Inkjet or Laserjet?
Let’s start with the fundamental question on printer buying. You already know what will you print and how much, right? That also decides what type of printer you should buy.
Laserjets are the champion of printing bulk text documents and at a relatively higher speed and quality, whereas inkjets’ strength is in versatile printing. The latter’s liquid ink cartridges can print different size documents of texts, graphics, photos almost everything, excelling at a sufficiently good quality job.
Most of them also provide a margin-less printing feature on various paper sizes. Short answer, the inkjet technology can offer you the overall best printer under the budget of 100 dollars. If you are not seeking sophisticated image printing like photo printers dedicated to that cause, inkjets are good with home use and study purposes.
Currently, some laserjets are combining color printing too but the powdered ink of the toner cartridges in them can’t get you a quality photo printing like Inkjets, especially on a specialty paper like a glossy photo stock. Also, they are not so compatible to manage different sizes at-a-time, such as an envelope or 8☓10 sized papers. They are best suited to handle office and industry-level heavy work volume.
Talking about the price, laserjets are an efficient investment based on ink expenditure. Relatively, the initial-level laserjets can cost you as a mid-range inkjet printer, but they also print more documents per cartridge than the later one.
Also, the laser cartridge charges you higher than an Inkjet cartridge, but they can print at least 1000 documents before burning out, whereas the basic and mid-level inkjet cartridges have a page yield rate of 100-500 pages. Hence, the rate of per page expenditure is very low in laserjet printing. But as every technology is evolving, some inkjet printers are now evenly competing with the laserjets on speed and page yield rates.
Multifunctional Feature
This feature allows you to scan, copy, and sometimes fax from the device alongside printing. The market-standard name of this function is ‘all-in-one’, and it comes both in inkjet and laserjet printers. For home use and personal use, this option is your best choice to save money over different stand-alone machines for three different features than getting all of them in one device.
Although the price is a bit higher than regular basic printers, finding one under $100 is not a big problem these days. Only, make sure to get a flat-bed scanning application for better results.
Stay Connected
Like other electronic devices, printers also are not lagging behind to offer wireless connectivity to remote access facility. Commanding your home printer from a remote computer from someplace else is no dream anymore. The best probable connectivity features under contemporary 100 dollar printers offer:
- Direct Wifi connectivity support
- Mobile connectivity such as Near-Field Communication (NFC) feature to command printing from your smartphone or tablet
- The voice-activated command from Alexa or Google Assistance
- IFTTT support for device-to-device connectivity
- Regular USB connection
- Built-in Ethernet port
- Memory card accessibility with multi-format card reader slot sometimes
- Bluetooth connectivity
- PictBridge feature to print directly from a digital camera or other compatible devices
- Direct web connection through Wi-Fi Direct feature to support Google Cloud Print or Apple AirPrint.
Ink and Power Expenditure
This is one of the most valuable liquids included in your everyday use, even more than drinks or car gas. Again, inkjet technology uses some parts of it in routine printer maintenance when the device is not working, whereas laserjets spare you on that.
That’s why you should research on maintenance ink and power use quantities of each printer you select so that you don’t end up spending more on the overall regular expenditure on your printer to get a cheap model. The power consumption of each device is also different, and some electricity supply also goes for maintenance.
Laserjet toner cartridges are higher in price, but they serve a lot more than inkjet’s wet ink cartridges. Also, Color cartridges cost more than black ink. Most inkjet color cartridges for under 100 dollar printers provide three different colors in one, but if you print a lot of colored documents, different cartridges for different colors may save your money on a wholesome basis. In that case, you need to buy only the color which ended.
Moreover, there is a Supertank facility available in some inkjet devices named Ink tanks. These devices cost more upfront, but they offer refillable reservoir cartridges so that you save your pocket on ink over time.
Duplex feature
This feature allows you to print both sides of a paper without manually flipping them and also to scan in the same way if the printer supports ADF (automatic document feeder) application.
Speed, color, and Resolution
Although printer brands brag a lot on these features, the average rate is almost the same for all similar types of printers.
- PPM (Pages-per-minute): Normally, black-and-white ppm is near-about 15-20 pages for inkjets, and 25-50 pages for laserjets. Color printing takes more time around 10-15 pages per minute for inkjets.
- DPI (Dots-per-inch): This measurement defines applied dots of ink per square inch of paper for inkjet devices. More dots means higher resolution and high detailing in images. Although, modern printers can improve the resolution of a printed image without altering the DPI.
- Duty-cycle: This number tells the maximum page printing ability of a printer per month. You should work on fewer pages below this number to keep your printer belt from wearing off due to excessive work-load.
Brands
The best names in printer manufacturing are HP, Canon, Epson, and Brother. Samsung is also improving its market-standard but still remains a little below in line. You can select any brand you prefer, but the main aspect is not the name, but the features you required.
Conclusion
Ok, end of today’s discussion. Obviously, the last decision is always yours after you have got some basic idea through our printer buying guide, however, we made our own choice here. Yes, it’s hard to come out with the one best printer under $100 price bracket out of the five best-in-line products, but we did at last, and it’s the HP OfficeJet Pro 8025 wireless printer.
Have you favored something else? It can be, for your requirement. Because everyone has some different purpose to serve, right? Don’t forget to let us know which name you put in the ballot box.
If you are searching for good quality and low price sublimation printer, here’s the list of Best Cheap Sublimation Printer.