For professional users, printers can get a little on the large size. So what do you do if space is at a premium but you don’t want to skimp on print quality? Thankfully, there are plenty of quality options available across all budgets, and we’ve highlighted the best small printers we’ve seen in 2022 below for easy perusal.

No, smaller doesn’t necessarily have to mean inferior print quality, and all of the options on this page will do an admirable job of keeping up with your workload, despite their diminutive proportions. Priced between £60 and £275 excluding VAT, most of these not only print a good page in mono or colour but are good for light scanning and photocopying duties as well. 

To help you pick the right small printer for you, each entry below is accompanied by a chart detailing key details including print resolution, tray size, input tray, speed and, of course, physical dimensions to help you make an informed choice. If you want to read more, a link below each one will take you directly to a full review, so you can learn about the pros and cons in more depth.

Without further ado, here are the best small printers you can buy in 2022.

Epson WorkForce WF-110W

The smallest printer you can buy

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” than this, as this is a 1.6kg printer that’s 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. Performance is a little on the slow side, too, at just 6.9 pages per minute, or 2.2 for our complex colour 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.

Price when reviewed: £158 exc. VAT

Read our full Epson WorkForce WF-110W review for more information.

Brother MFC-J1300DW All in Box

A superb all-rounder with a small footprint

While the Brother MFC-J1300DW All in Box can’t compete with the Epson WorkForce WF-110W in terms of size, this reasonably compact beast packs plenty of features and enormous value despite its relatively high price of entry. That’s because it comes with enough ink for 7,200 full-colour prints, and when that’s done (in around three years, Brother reckons), buying an XL cartridge will drive your running costs as low as 2.3p per colour page.

It offers scanning, copying and faxing (albeit not duplex) on top of its highly capable duplex printing performance, and it’s capable of outputting 12 pages of black text per minute. This easy-to-use printer is well worth its small-ish footprint.

Price when reviewed: £241 exc. VAT

Read our full Brother MFC-J1300DW All in Box review for more information.

Epson EcoTank ET-3850

The cheapest ink, without scrimping on feature

The Epson EcoTank ET-3850 may not be the smallest printer on this list, but considering it eschews normal printer cartridges in favour of tanks that you manually fill up with bottled ink, it’s still impressively compact.

No longer having to buy replacement cartridges is not only more environmentally friendly, but cheaper too, and the cost of ink can come to down as little as 0.2p per page, once you’ve used up the 14,000 pages’-worth Epson supplies with the ET-3850. Pages shoot out at a pleasing 15.5ppm in black and white — which is actually a little faster than Epson’s own estimates. In other words, if you get through a lot of pages, this is probably the small printer for you.

Price when reviewed: £275 exc. VAT

Read our full Epson EcoTank ET-3850 review for more information.

Epson EcoTank ET-2710

Combining cheap ink with a low upfront cost

The ET-2710 is slightly smaller than the ET-3850, but you still get extremely low running costs thanks to the EcoTank system where you top up ink tanks yourself from bottles. It’s weaker in other ways, though –  which is perhaps to be expected considering it’s close to half the price. 

For one thing, we found the print mechanism to be extremely noisy, and it’s not the fastest, either. It’s capable of speeds of 9.6 pages per minute for black-and-white sheets, dropping to 2.9 for colour graphics. There’s also no control screen or duplex printing, but for its low costs (both upfront and ongoing), it remains an excellent small printer. 

Price when reviewed: £145 exc. VAT

Read our full Epson EcoTank ET-2710 review for more information.

Canon Pixma TS6250

The best small printer for under £100

You may be sceptical about how good a printer can be for less than £100, but the Canon Pixma TS6250 defies all expectations, proving to be an impressive little performer with decent speeds of 12.7 pages per minute for mono sheets and 3.9 for colour graphics. It’s not just pleasingly speedy either: print quality is exceptional.

So, what’s the catch? Well, for the price, there really aren’t many. It has no fax functionality, and it can be a touch on the noisy side thanks to a wheezy mechanical sound when in use, but considering it doesn’t break the three-figure mark, that’s literally a small price to pay for quality printing in one compact package.

Price when reviewed: £67 exc. VAT

Read our full Canon Pixma TS6250 review for more information.

Epson Expression Home XP-4100

The cheapest decent small printer you can buy

Unbelievably, you can get a quality printer for even less money than the Canon Pixma TS6250, although those who get through a lot of sheets may find this machine a false economy, given the company’s four-cartridge system makes for pricy ongoing printing costs of 5.2p per page of mono and 12.8p for colour.

If you only occasionally print, however, it’s a great little performer once you turn the quality up to ‘high’. It can print double sided, makes lightning fast photocopies and can turn out pages at a decent ten pages per minute for mono content, which is impressive for such an affordable model.

Price when reviewed: £60 exc. VAT

Read our full Epson Expression Home XP-4100 review for more information.

Brother MFC-J1010DW

A fully featured option at a competitive price

Brother’s MFC-J1010DW packs an awful lot in, considering its compact frame and low price tag. For the money, you’re getting a Wi-Fi printer with a colour screen as well as scanning, copying and faxing capabilities. It also supports dual-sided printing, which is far from guaranteed in more expensive models, let alone one available for just over £100.

The performance isn’t the best, as it offers only so-so print quality lacking in saturation when compared to other options in this list. The ongoing print costs aren’t super cheap either, and you can expect to pay 2.9p for a mono page and 7.9p for colour sheets, if you purchase Brother’s XL print cartridges. neither of these things should be deal breakers considering the low initial outlay and decent feature set, however, and for those needing an affordable all-rounder it’s an excellent option. 

Price when reviewed: £104 exc. VAT

Read our full Brother MFC-J1010DW review for more information.

Canon Pixma TS8350

A low-cost compact printer that punches above its weight

Another low-cost powerhouse, the Canon Pixma TS8350 won’t win any prizes for build quality — which feels a touch on the flimsy side — but it punches above its weight in all other respects. 

Print quality is up there with the best of them, whether you want pages of black and white text or need a bold photo print in a hurry. It can handle all kinds of media types and prints out pages at a nippy 13 pages per minute in mono, too. There’s no automatic sheet feeder, which is a pity, but it’s a compact and capable solution that will be at home in any small office. 

Price when reviewed: £100 exc. VAT

Read our full Canon Pixma TS8350 review for more information.