Money and time are always at a premium for businesses, but if you're working from home, or launching a startup in a cramped office, space can be in short supply, too. The last thing you need is a hulking office printer taking over your limited desk space. Happily, there are plenty of small office printers, compact enough to slip into any setup.
Smaller doesn't have to mean worse. Compact printers might forgo some of the features needed in a busier office, but it's easy to find ones that deliver good prints, at a reasonable rate of knots. Hunt around and you'll even find ones that won't break the bank – perfect for a startup.
Here, then, is our list of the best six compact office printers. We've tested and reviewed devices from £60 upwards, offering a mix of benefits – from the minimum size to the maximum value.
What to look for in a small business printer
Small printers can be marvels of packaging, but they're not built like the Tardis. If you need small dimensions outside, you're going to have to forgo the kinds of features that take up space on the inside. Multiple paper trays are probably out, while you might be limited to smaller consumables that push up the running costs.
If size is everything, it pays to think about the features you really need. Inkjet multifunction peripherals (MFPs) are rarely any bigger than the printer they're based on, but on laser MFPs the scanner is usually an extra stage, built on top of the first. Opting for a single-function laser printer will save you a lot of height, even if the footprint is the same. With inkjets or laser MFPs, scanners with automatic document feeders (ADFs) are great for office work, but they usually add at least a few centimeters to the printer's overall height.
When choosing a small office printer, particularly for a start-up, it's worth considering how your needs might change in the future. A versatile small MFP might take up slightly more space now, but it's better than buying a printer now, and having to buy a scanner or MFP later. It's also worth considering any space you might need to give over to spare consumables: a busy color laser printer might need four, eight or even more consumables on hand. A refillable inkjet would usually only need four ink bottles, plus a spare maintenance cartridge.
If you can compromise a little on space, you can still get feature-rich small printers. Take the Xerox B315DN in our guide (below): it packs duplex printing and scanning with an ADF into a 0.15m2 footprint -- only about twice the very smallest printers. Meanwhile, some features simply can't be shrunk. If you must have an A3-capable printer, you'll just have to find somewhere with the space for it.
Your small printer for business isn't likely to be a high-volume workhorse, but you shouldn't compromise on quality. And while it won't be as fast as a departmental laser printer, it's still best to make sure it won't become the office bottleneck. In our list, we've focused on small printers that still keep these basics covered.
The best small printers
If space concerns are absolutely everything, then you won't find smaller than this. Indeed, as our review says, "we've eaten bigger boxes of chocolates". This 1.6kg printer is intended for travel, rather than to live out its days in a single location. It even packs an internal battery, which means you can print from a laptop on a train if you really want.
Of course, making a product so small does come with drawbacks: there's no scanning or photocopying, and it's incapable of duplex printing. It doesn't even have a paper output tray, such is its dedication to compactness, and the input's only good for 20 sheets. Performance is a little on the slow side, too, at just 6.9 pages per minute, or 2.2ppm for our complex color test. Running costs are also high, with mono pages hitting 6p per page once the initial ink supply runs dry.
But you won't find a tinier footprint than this, and for that reason alone the Epson WorkForce WF-110W deserves a place on our list of the best small printers.
| Technology | Inkjet |
| Maximum print resolution | 5,760 x 1,440dpi |
| Dimensions | 309mm x 159mm x 61mm |
| Maximum paper size | A4/legal |
| Input tray | 20-page input tray |
| Speed | 7/4ppm mono/color |
Price when reviewed: £158 exc. VAT
Read our full Epson WorkForce WF-110W review for more information
Canon's PIXMA TS5350i is a compact inkjet MFP for under £60, so it fits a lot into a small space and a small price tag. It's missing an ADF, and it can't send or receive faxes, but if you just need a basic device to make prints, scans and single-page copies, the TS5350i more than has you covered. Helpfully it has two paper inputs, so you could load one with plain paper and use the other for headed sheets or photo media.
This isn't the best photo printer, but on plain paper it's surprisingly capable, turning out excellent prints and copies. It's not especially fast, however, so it's definitely not suitable if you have more than a couple of users or you often need to reel off long print jobs. The TS5350i would be better for office work if its excellent scanner also had an ADF, but then, that would make it bigger.
Buy your own cartridges and this MFP works out at more than 11p per full-color page, but you can bring this down by subscribing to one of Canon's PIXMA Print Plans. The most generous of these gets costs down to 4.5p, although it only allows 200 pages per month. That, and its slow speeds, mean the TS5350i is really only suitable for very light use, but if you need an attractive, small MFP with two paper trays, this is a strong choice.
| Technology | Inkjet MFP |
| Dimensions | 403mm x 315mm x 148mm |
| Maximum print resolution | 4,800 x 1,200dpi |
| Maximum paper size | A4 |
| Connectivity | USB, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi |
| Speed | 13/6.8ppm mono/color |
Price when reviewed: £58 exc. VAT
HP's Smart Tank 5105 is cheap for a refillable inkjet MFP, and there's no getting away from its basic nature. There's one paper input, no automatic document feeder (ADF) on the scanner, and if you want double-sided prints you'll need to flip the paper manually. What you do get is about 6,000 color pages' worth of ink in the box, after which ongoing running costs are just 0.6p or so per full-color page. Do the sums, and this is simply one of the cheapest MFPs you can own.
The 5105's basic nature means it's obviously not suited to particularly busy offices. It's quite slow, with a claimed mono print speed of just 12ppm - it got quite close to that in our tests, but it delivered our challenging graphical document at only 1.7ppm. Fortunately, the results are generally worth waiting for. This MFP produces great prints on plain paper, with its bold, laser-like text a particular highlight. It's not as great at scanning, though, and its color photocopies looked a little sombre.
This isn't quite the cheapest MFP to run – Epson's EcoTank ET-4850 is one of a select group that are cheaper still. However, if you don't need fast performance and advanced features, but you're looking for a very small, inexpensive MFP that's also very cheap to own, it's an excellent choice.
| Technology | Inkjet MFP |
| Dimensions | 435mm x 362mm x 157mm |
| Maximum print resolution | 4,800 x 1,200dpi |
| Maximum paper size | A4 |
| Connectivity | USB, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi |
| Speed | 12/5ppm mono/color |
Price when reviewed: £175 exc. VAT
Read our full HP Smart Tank 5105 review for more information.
Price when reviewed: £145 exc. VAT
Read our full Epson EcoTank ET-2710 review for more information.
The laws of physics dictate that you can't buy an especially small A3-capable printer. A3 paper is big, so A3 printers have to be wider than their A4 counterparts to fit a sheet through. More significantly, A3 is long, so they need significantly bigger paper input and output trays, too. We can't pretend, then, that the Expression Photo HD XP-15000 is a truly small printer, but it's remarkably compact for a device that prints up to huge A3+ sheets.
As the name suggests, the Expression Photo HD XP-15000 is targeted more at photo and creative prints than at churning out plain-paper reports and letters. This printer's six-ink setup helps it deliver deep blacks and rich, bright colors. It's an accomplished device on coated photo papers, if not quite up to the standards of the best photo inkjets. Inevitably, the XP-15000 is comparatively disappointing on plain paper, where it's quite slow to print text.
It's important to understand that, while this printer's surprisingly close in size to some A4 inkjets, you'll need to leave acres of space behind and in front if you're planning to fully deploy its trays for A3 printing. But if that's a must-have feature, this is the smallest printer around.
| Technology | Inkjet |
| Dimensions | 479mm x 370mm x 159mm |
| Maximum print resolution | 5,760 x 1,440dpi |
| Maximum paper size | A4 |
| Input tray | 200-sheet tray, 50-sheet multipurpose feed photo sheets) |
| Speed | 8/5ppm mono/color |
Price when reviewed: £235 exc. VAT
Read our full Epson Expression Photo HD XP-15000 review for more information.
FAQs
Where should I put my small printer?
If your working area doesn't have a lot of spare space, it can be difficult to work out where to put even the smallest printer. Placing it within arm's reach of the PC may seem like the most natural option, but it might not be the best. Most modern printers now come with wireless networking as standard, which means you're not limited by cable routing. Placing it somewhere out of the way – such as on a shelf, or even tucked away in a cupboard – can be a great way to stop a printer taking up valuable real estate.
It's best to put devices used by other people such as coworkers, housemates or family members in an easily accessible central location, such as a sideboard or end table. If you're going down this route, however, you might want to choose a printer that looks reasonably attractive.
How can I maintain my small printer?
All printers will need replacement consumables or topping up with ink. For a laser printer, that's usually it -- although it helps to give any printer an occasional dusting or a wipe down with a damp cloth.
Inkjet printers don't tend to like being left idle for more than a couple of weeks, as it can cause some of their ink nozzles to dry up and become blocked. This reduces their print quality. It's a good idea to print at least a page every month, increasing this frequency if you find the printer still becomes blocked. If it does, check on the display or in the print driver options for print head test patterns and cleaning cycles.
On all printers, you should check regularly for firmware updates, or make sure that automatic updates are enabled. These can be selected via many printer's settings menus, or by running the update program installed with the drivers.
Do I need a small printer with a scanner?
Unless you know you'll never need it, we generally recommend all businesses have at least one multifunction printer that can print, scan, copy, and fax. If you're buying your first printer, that means you probably need an all-in-one.
Otherwise, you can save a bit of money and space by sticking with a single-function printer. But remember – even one big MFP takes up less room than the printer you bought initially, and the MFP you had to add later because you needed a scanner after all.
How we test small printers
When testing a printer, there are two key metrics that we measure to assess its performance: speed and image quality. The first of these is measured by running a batch of documents through the machine and timing how long it takes to get through the whole job from the point we hit print, as well as how long it takes to produce the first page.
We use a 25-sheet black-and-white text document to test mono performance, as well as a mixed sheaf of 24 web pages, magazine pages, and presentation slides to test color speed. For inkjet devices, we'll also repeat the mono test at draft quality, and to measure duplex printing, we'll run the first ten pages of the mixed graphics workload, measuring the images per minute.
Image quality, meanwhile, is tested by assessing a series of greyscale pictures, color photos, and mono office documents. For devices with scan functionality, we'll look at the image quality of a scanned office document, color photo, and color input target chart, looking primarily for any evidence of color banding or loss of clarity in both cases.
To measure scan speeds, we time how quickly an MFP can deliver a single photocopy, how quickly it scans at various resolutions, and how quickly preview images appear. In the event that a compact printer includes an ADF, we'll use a ten-page copy job to test its speeds in both mono and color (where we can), and if both it and the printer are duplex, we'll test this with a ten-sheet double-sided batch as well.
