Best printer brands HP printers

HP

HP's printer range includes web-enabled all-in-one printers 

A basic entry-level printer from HP will cost you around £40, whereas a top-of-the-range all-in-one for the home could set you back £250.

Testing HP printers

We’ve tested more than 30 printers from HP including laser printers, all-in-one inkjet printers that can also copy and scan and standard printers. 

There are HP Best Buy models in each of these product categories. 

Find out which HP printers we've tested and which are Best Buys by filtering our reviews to show only the HP printers tested.

Running costs and cartridges for HP printers

Lots of HP printers take separate colour cartridges, though not all do, so check before you buy. The benefit of separate colour cartridges is that you only replace a colour when it runs out. With combined colour cartridges if one colour runs out you also end up throwing away and replacing the other two. 

Several top-of-the-range HP printers take five separate colour cartridges – cyan, magenta, yellow, light cyan and light magenta. HP claims that this produces better-quality photographs. In the specification of each printer we test we list the ink cartridges that the printer uses, so you know how many you'll need to buy.

Printers that use more cartridges at once don't necessarily cost more to run - we calculate running costs as part of our tests.

Find out more about the Which? printers test on our 'How we test printers' page. 

changing cartridges std printer

When your printer warns you it's out of ink, you can usually get a couple more pages out of it 

HP printer ranges

There are some clues in the product names of HP printers as to which type of user they're targeted towards:

  • HP Photosmart printers - These all-in-one models are designed for printing photographs. The majority have LCD preview screens, memory card slots and take separate colour cartridges, but there are a small number of exceptions - like the HP Photosmart C4680 that use a combined colour cartridge. 
  • HP Deskjet printers - Deskjet models are designed for home office use. You're unlikely to find memory card slots or PictBridge on Deskjet models. They are usually slow when it comes to printing photos and use combined colour cartridges.
  • HP e-all-in-one printers - These printers will have an Ethernet or wi-fi connection (or both) and come with their own email address, so you can email prints to the printer - called HP ePrint. Some of these models have large screens and are compatible with HP print apps.

Click here to find out more about web printers, or see an e-all-in-one printer in action in our video review.

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