Best printer brands Printer brands

Printer brands covered in this summary are Canon, Epson, HP, Kodak and Lexmark, but there are other brands operating in the printer market such as Brother and Samsung. 

Best Buy printers

Although there are similarities between some models in a brand's range, some perform better than others in our tests. For more information on the best printers to buy, read the Which? best printers review and see details of our extensive printer testing and unique Which? test score.

How Which? chooses the best printers

All of the information in this guide is based on Which?'s printer test which is unique and incredibly thorough.

Some printer manuals are really easy to use, others are confusing and badly organised

We use a panel of experts to assess the print quality of a range of documents including black text letters, photos, spreadsheets and desktop publishing.

The same documents that are used to assess print quality are also used to establish print speeds. We time how long each printer takes to print a good-quality document – manufacturers often quote times in draft mode or at low qualities, so we don't rely on their claims.

The scanning and copying functions of the all-in-one printers are assessed by scanning and copying different types of documents as well as, in the case of the scanners, a 3D object.

We also assess how easy each printer is to use, and how much it costs to print the documents you would print on an every day basis as this is where a printer can really save or spend your money.

Find out more about how the big brands perform in our tests by visiting our Canon, Epson and HP printers brand pages.