The 4 Best Laser Printers of 2025 | Reviews by Wirecutter

Jul 02, 2025

By Kaitlyn Wells and Ben Keough

Our former budget pick, the Brother HL-L2460DW, is now our top pick. This simple, print-only black-and-white laser printer is the least annoying one we’ve tested — and all most people really need.

Printers are annoying. All of them. But if you want to keep the annoyance to a minimum, we recommend a laser printer: Not only do laser models print sharp text and crisp graphics, but they also run more reliably than inkjets, and they won’t clog if they sit unused for weeks between jobs.

The least annoying laser printer of all is the small, quick, and inexpensive Brother HL-L2460DW. It prints crisp, double-sided black-and-white documents, reliably stays on Wi-Fi, and takes long-lasting, cost-effective monochrome toner cartridges.

Unless you absolutely need scanning and copying capability or the ability to print in color, this is the printer to get.

With low operating costs and acceptable print quality, this is the best laser printer for casual home use — say, printing recipes and the occasional invoice. But it can't scan or copy, and it prints only in black and white.

This multifunction printer adds a flatbed scanner and an automatic document feeder to our top pick, significantly upping its home-office utility. But like our top pick, it prints only in black and white.

This business-class machine is great for a home office or small business: It’s faster, sharper, more durable, and more secure than our other picks. But it's also much more expensive.

The printer should be easy to use, so we took notes on everything from unboxing the printer to setting it up on Wi-Fi.

On each printer, we printed instructions for 1099 tax forms, star charts designed for lens-sharpness testing, and an office report.

We ran four copies of a four-page document, timing from our pressing the print button to the last sheet emerging from the feeder.

We slightly overstuffed printers with paper to see if they would jam, and we fed them single sheets to see if they could pick each one up.

With low operating costs and acceptable print quality, this is the best laser printer for casual home use — say, printing recipes and the occasional invoice. But it can't scan or copy, and it prints only in black and white.

With a price that typically hovers around $160 and a print cost per page that averages 2.8¢, the Brother HL-L2460DW is cheap to own and operate. It stays on Wi-Fi reliably, prints well enough, and generally just stays out of your way. With printers, that’s really the best you can ask for.

This multifunction printer adds a flatbed scanner and an automatic document feeder to our top pick, significantly upping its home-office utility. But like our top pick, it prints only in black and white.

The Brother MFC-L2900DW offers the same operating costs, the same print speed, and the same connectivity options as our top pick, the HL-L2460DW. It also has a flatbed scanner and a fast, single-pass duplexing automatic document feeder on top. For home offices, this model is a great do-it-all option — as long as you don’t need color.

This business-class machine is great for a home office or small business: It’s faster, sharper, more durable, and more secure than our other picks. But it's also much more expensive.

Upgrade to a business-oriented color laser all-in-one (AIO) printer like the Brother MFC-L3780CDW if your work finds you printing and scanning every day. It prints and scans more quickly and reliably than inkjet alternatives.

It includes robust admin and security settings designed for situations that may involve sensitive data, such as faxing legal documents or emailing a scanned driver’s license over Wi-Fi.

Though most home offices don’t need this kind of upgrade, the MFC-L3780CDW hits the sweet spot if you run a business with modest printing and paper-handling needs, or if you’ve grown exasperated with your inkjet AIO’s failings.

Just bear in mind that it’s much more expensive than our other picks both up front and in operating costs, so it really makes sense only in a business context.

Writer Kaitlyn Wells has covered everything from standing desks and dictation software to pet cameras and pet GPS trackers, and has been testing and writing about printers for Wirecutter since 2022.

Ben Keough is an editor at Wirecutter who has written guides to printers, scanners, cameras, lenses, and more. He conducted much of the testing for previous versions of this guide, along with Wirecutter’s other printer guides.

For this guide:

Laser printers are best for people who need to print a lot, such as small-business owners. They’re also great for people who don’t print often but want a machine that will work without complaint on the rare occasions when they do need to print.

To see if a laser printer is right for you, consider this list of things that laser printers tend to do better than inkjets:

But laser printers aren’t for everyone, because they’re not great at everything. Here are a few reasons you might want to stick with an inkjet:

The HP OfficeJet Pro 9125e is our favorite all-in-one printer thanks to its ease of use, great print quality, and low cost of operation.

For this guide, we looked for the best options in four laser printer categories: monochrome print-only, color print-only, monochrome multifunction, and color multifunction.

Our criteria:

A note on pricing: We set price ranges for each category, starting at $150 for monochrome print-only models and at $500 for color multifunction laser printers.

Our testing has evolved since we first published this guide in 2011, but in our most recent testing round, we assessed each laser printer’s ease of setup and use, up-front and average printing costs, print/copy/scan/fax quality and speed (when applicable), duplex print/copy/scan/fax quality and speed (when applicable), Wi-Fi and mobile printing capabilities, and overall design.

We printed several sample documents, including instructions for the 1099 tax form (PDF), a star chart designed for lens-sharpness testing, high-resolution photos on copy paper and glossy paper, and a page with the same sentence repeated in descending font size from 72 points to 1 point.

With low operating costs and acceptable print quality, this is the best laser printer for casual home use — say, printing recipes and the occasional invoice. But it can't scan or copy, and it prints only in black and white.

The Brother HL-L2460DW is a simple, dependable monochrome laser printer, which is all most people really need. It doesn’t scan, copy, or fax, but it prints cleanly and quickly. Its supplies are also cheaper than those of most laser printers, and it’s small enough to fit on a bookshelf.

It quickly spits out prints. Brother claims that the HL-L2460DW can print at up to 36 pages per minute. We clocked it at 26.1 pages per minute while printing single-sided PDFs and 13.6 ppm double-sided. Printing single-sided, text-only Google Docs bumped the speed to 28.6 ppm.

Such real-world discrepancies aren’t unusual, and the HL-L2460DW is still faster than many far more expensive multifunction laser printers we’ve tested. And our print jobs reliably started up within a couple of seconds, so you won’t be left waiting long regardless.

The print quality is fine. The HL-L2460DW prints clear, clean text with decent contrast. While our upgrade pick prints sharper, darker text, few people would find fault with what this printer produces.

Images are a mixed bag, with some banding and lines running through photos and graphics, but they’re also not the primary purpose of a printer like this.

Operating costs are low. Each print runs you about 2.8¢, and thanks to the optional 3,000-page high-yield cartridges, you don’t need to replace the toner often. However, like most other laser printers, the HL-L2460DW comes with a puny starter cartridge good for just 700 pages.

This printer is compact. Far smaller than our other picks, it weighs just 15.6 pounds and measures roughly 14 by 14 by 7 inches, which should help you fit it on a bookshelf without too much of it hanging over. But it can just as easily occupy a space on your desk or any other spot you might want to put it.

Setup is slow, but you have to do that only once. Getting the HL-L2460DW on Wi-Fi is complicated because it employs an old-school user interface consisting of a one-line monochrome LCD panel and an array of rubber buttons, but you have a few options to accomplish the task.

If you have a WPS-enabled router, you can use that to set up the HL-L2460DW’s wireless connection without having to type in a password. If not, you can enter your Wi-Fi password using the printer’s up and down buttons. Or, you can bypass the control panel and use a PC.

All of that is a bit of a headache in comparison with the process on models with touchscreen displays, but even so, we were able to connect this printer to our network within 20 minutes.

Printing is its only capability. The HL-L2460DW can only print, and only in black and white, so opt for one of our other picks if you need to copy, scan, or fax documents too. The Brother MFC-L2900DW, in particular, is essentially the same printer but with a good-enough flatbed scanner and ADF strapped on top, so it’s a great option if you like what you’ve read about the HL-L2460DW and also want those other functions.

Brother sells an XL variant that ships with a lot more toner. The HL-L2460DW XL is the same printer except that it has double the onboard memory, which might help with larger print jobs, and ships with 4,200 pages’ worth of toner in the box. That’s six times (3,500 pages) more than you get with the basic HL-2460DW.

A single TN830XL toner cartridge is good for 3,000 pages and costs $85, which makes the HL-L2460DW XL’s asking price of $200 quite reasonable. But depending on how much you print, it might also be overkill right out of the gate.

If this model is out of stock, you have lots of other options. Brother makes a wide range of similar models that differ slightly in print speed, connectivity, and duplexing capability. In general, if a Brother printer model number starts with “HL-L24,” it uses the same core printing technology, takes the same toner cartridges, and will produce similar print quality.

Here’s how to interpret Brother’s model names: D means duplex (two-sided) printing, W means Wi-Fi, and higher numbers generally mean faster print speeds (all else being equal, feature-wise). Other notable models include the HL-L2405W (Wi-Fi but no duplexing), HL-L2400D (duplexing but no Wi-Fi), and HL-L2420DW (both duplexing and Wi-Fi, but slower than the HL-L2460DW).

It doesn’t scan, copy, fax, or print in color. If you need a printer that can do it all, consider our black-and-white all-in-one pick or our color upgrade pick.

The build is a little flimsy. Unsurprisingly for an inexpensive printer, the HL-L2460DW is made of thin plastic that doesn’t feel or look particularly great. In the past, we received similar models from Brother with cosmetic damage, but if that happens to you, the printer’s one-year warranty will have you covered.

The interface is archaic, and Brother’s software is straight out of the ’00s. The HL-L2460DW has a one-line monochrome LCD screen and a few rubber buttons, which makes changing settings a bit of a pain. That said, once you’ve set it up, you won’t need to change them often. Similarly, the PC, Mac, and smartphone software is clunky and old-school in design, but it works reliably.

This multifunction printer adds a flatbed scanner and an automatic document feeder to our top pick, significantly upping its home-office utility. But like our top pick, it prints only in black and white.

The Brother MFC-L2900DW is dependable, quick, cost-effective, and reasonably compact, and aside from color print jobs, it can handle everything — including faxing.

Setup is a breeze. The MFC-L2900DW is simple to set up thanks to its color touchscreen control panel, which offers an interface that’s easy to navigate. While it lacks the hard buttons found on previous models in this series, its screen is larger and a little more responsive, so punching in fax numbers and Wi-Fi passwords isn’t too much of a chore.

It’s speedy. Brother says the MFC-L2900DW is good for up to 36 pages per minute when printing. In our testing, the best we saw was 28.6 ppm with a single-sided, black-and-white Google Docs document — identical to the results we got from the HL-L2460DW.

Such a discrepancy between the quoted and real-world speeds is not unusual, and 28.6 ppm is more than quick enough for any home-office situation.

We clocked the MFC-L2900DW’s ADF scanner at up to 21.4 ppm when scanning single-sided and 18.8 ppm double-sided. Both speeds are more than adequate for home and home-office use.

The print quality is good enough. The MFC-L2900DW’s print quality is roughly comparable to that of our top pick, the Brother HL-L2460DW. The MFC-L2900DW may print slightly sharper text at small font sizes and marginally better graphics, but the difference is marginal at best.

For professional-looking presentations, you’d probably want to use a printer like our upgrade pick, the Brother MFC-L3780CDW. But for truly beautiful brochures and presentations, it’s best to hand the job to a pro print shop instead.

The scan quality is, too. Scans from the automatic document feeder looked just fine in our tests, though they tended to have a slight skew even when we micromanaged the paper guides on the ADF tray (a fault shared by many all-in-ones).

This model’s flatbed scanner maxes out at a resolution of 1200 dpi, double what some competing machines offer. Its ADF scans are limited to 600 dpi, which is still more than most people need for processing everyday documents.

This printer lacks a USB port, so you can’t save your scans directly to a thumb drive, though you can scan wirelessly to a computer or smartphone via the Brother iPrint&Scan app.

It doesn’t print in color. Most people don’t need to print in color on a regular basis. If you do, consider our upgrade pick.

Printing from Brother’s apps degrades print quality. iPrint&Scan is a relatively innocuous piece of software by printer standards. However, while it works great for scanning, print quality is noticeably worse on this machine when you initiate jobs from the app rather than from your operating system’s native print dialog.

This business-class machine is great for a home office or small business: It’s faster, sharper, more durable, and more secure than our other picks. But it's also much more expensive.

Small-business owners who print and scan frequently, or even fax often, should opt for a great color laser all-in-one like the Brother MFC-L3780CDW.

The MFC-L3780CDW is more expensive than our other picks, but it’s faster and capable of printing clearer text and graphics. Among the color laser printers that offer all the same productivity features as our favorite inkjet model, it’s one of the most affordable options.

Although navigating this laser printer’s menu is relatively easy, the interface may still be hard for people with low vision to use, as the footer’s black menu bar blends into the black display screen.

It prints well, and fast. The MFC-L3780CDW can crank out up to 31 pages per minute, according to Brother.

In our tests, its text was sharp, and its graphics were similarly crisp and free of banding. As with most laser printers, its images could look a little flat; if you frequently print photos, opt for a dedicated photo printer instead.

Compared with our favorite inkjet all-in-ones, this laser model struggled to reproduce beautiful-looking prints from scan jobs, and the graphics often came out duller than the source files — something that’s true for laser printers across the board.

It can go the distance with minimal wear and tear. The MFC-L3780CDW spools quickly, and its recommended duty cycle of 4,000 pages per month should be plenty for any home office and even many small businesses with multiple employees. Thanks to that higher duty cycle, you can print thousands of pages come audit season without burning out the machine.

It doesn’t need a computer or a mobile device to print. When you’re in too big a rush to fire up a laptop for a print job, you can use this printer’s USB port. It’s capable of printing JPEGs, PDFs, and TIFFs, and it can save scans too.

It easily handles odd-size print jobs. The foldout bypass paper tray prints letter-, legal-, executive-, and postcard-size media. The automatic document feeder can handle legal-size documents as well.

It’s more secure than other printers we’ve tested, inkjet and laser alike. Similar to our other laser printer picks, the MFC-L3780CDW features firmware integrity and encryption protocols to ensure that the printer is less likely to be hijacked by bad actors. It also allows for directory authentication, can hold faxes until you enter your credentials, and offers role-based access control for multi-user environments. It even has an integrated NFC card reader that you can optionally use for badge authentication; just tap your NFC-compatible badge, and associated print jobs will spool up.

It’s cheap to operate over time. When you use the super-high-yield toner cartridges, per-page costs for the MFC-L3780CDW hover around 2.5¢ for printing in black and 12.9¢ for color — on a par with the black-printing costs for the monochrome Brother models we recommend.

The up-front cost for those super-high-yield cartridges comes to an eye-popping $530, however. You can opt for the lower-capacity high-yield or standard-yield cartridges instead, dropping the price to $402 or $290, respectively, but doing so drives up your per-print costs accordingly.

The interface is easy to use. This printer’s color touchscreen is simple to operate and less frustrating than what you get on some competing models. It has one potentially significant flaw, though: Unlike our also-great recommendation, the monochrome Brother MFC-L2900DW, the MFC-L3780CDW has a touchscreen with a black-background footer. Our testers with limited vision couldn’t see this menu bar because the black bar behind it made that part of the touchscreen disappear from their view.

Brother’s warranty is short. Brother’s one-year warranty for the MFC-L3780CDW is the same as what you get for our other picks, but it isn’t as good as what some rivals offer for printers in this class. Canon, for example, provides a three-year guarantee on its home-office machines, and HP adds on-site service within one business day to its own one-year warranty.

Still, when you purchase the MFC-L3780CDW, you can add an extended warranty (starting at $103) that includes free repairs at authorized locations or next-day business shipping of a refurbished replacement model.

Its scans aren’t as good as what we saw from some competitors. In our testing, we observed pixelation, distortion, and muted colors in some scans, especially when scanning color images. We generally preferred the scans from the more expensive HP Color LaserJet Pro 4301fdw, but we think for most people this wouldn’t be a serious sticking point.

If you need a business-class all-in-one and print a lot of color: The HP Color LaserJet Pro 4301fdw outclasses our upgrade pick, the Brother MFC-L3780CDW, in color printing. In our tests, this HP model’s photos and graphics were vibrant, smooth, and free of the banding and other artifacts that marred the Brother printer’s performance. The 4301fdw is also slightly faster than the MFC-L3780CDW overall.

We decided not to make this model a pick because its up-front cost is slightly higher than the MFC-L3780CDW’s, its toner replacement cost is drastically higher (especially with XL and XXL cartridges), and its per-page print cost is—you guessed it — higher. In addition, it has a higher ratio of negative owner reviews on major retailer sites, and we experienced a few firmware-related hiccups during our testing (though nothing day-ruining).

Ultimately, most people don’t need the added color printing performance that the 4301fdw provides. But if you do, it might be worth the investment and dealing with the occasional software gremlin.

Selecting which printer to buy can bring you one step closer to paperwork bliss. Now, you might also need to decide what to do with an old printer that jams, sucks down ink like it’s constantly dehydrated, or never seems to connect to your Wi-Fi. Yet responsibly disposing of old electronics, aka e-waste, requires more work than toting it to a trash bin.

Some electronics contain hazardous materials, such as cadmium, lead, or mercury, that can contaminate soil and groundwater. Printers can also take thousands of years to decompose, and they have the potential to catch on fire when improperly dumped.

You have a few options if you want to dispose of your printer the right way. To learn more, read our article on how to off-load your old office equipment.

This is not a comprehensive list of all laser printers we have tested. We have removed any models that are discontinued or do not meet our criteria.

The Canon ImageClass LBP6230dw is expensive to run, and it produced iffy graphics in our tests.

The Brother DCP-L2550DW lacks duplex copy and scan, fax capability, and a touchscreen interface.

Although the Brother HL-L2390DW resembled our top pick in testing performance, it doesn’t have an automatic document feeder.

Both the Brother MFC-L2690DW and MFC-L2730DW suffered from slow print speeds in our tests. They also have clunky interfaces and little onboard memory.

The Canon ImageClass MF264dw and MF267dw don’t offer duplex scanning and copying.

We found that the Canon ImageClass MF269dw had a frustrating touchscreen interface, annoying software, and ludicrously slow scanning over Wi-Fi.

The Canon ImageClass MF465dw costs about $200 more than the comparable Brother MFC-L2900DW but isn’t much faster or sharper. Its toner is more expensive, too.

The Canon Color ImageClass MF644Cdw has a clunky interface, a finicky touchscreen, and problematic software.

The HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP 3301fdw is a former top pick that offers an easy setup process, reasonable operating costs, and great printing quality for home offices and small businesses needs. Unfortunately, its price has risen drastically — it’s now more expensive than our upgrade pick from Brother — so it no longer makes sense for home use.

The HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP 4301fdn had a clunky interface and problematic software. It printed full-page graphics at a glacial pace, and it made distorted prints of complex images with shadows and gradients.

This article was edited by Ben Keough and Erica Ogg.

Kaitlyn Wells

Kaitlyn Wells is a senior staff writer who advocates for greater work flexibility by showing you how to work smarter remotely without losing yourself. Previously, she covered pets and style for Wirecutter. She's never met a pet she didn’t like, although she can’t say the same thing about productivity apps. Her first picture book, A Family Looks Like Love, follows a pup who learns that love, rather than how you look, is what makes a family.

Ben Keough

Ben Keough is the supervising editor for Wirecutter's working from home, powering, cameras, and hobbies and games coverage. He previously spent more than a decade writing about cameras, printers, and other office equipment for Wirecutter, Reviewed, USA Today, and Digital Camera HQ. After four years testing printers, he definitively confirmed that they all suck, but some suck less than others.

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