Reasonable up-front cost: In general, we think people shouldn’t pay more than $300 for a color, print-only machine for use in the home.

Ease of setup and use: First and foremost, a printer has to be reasonably easy to get up and running, and it shouldn’t drive you crazy when you actually need to print.

If you need prints that can get wet without becoming unreadable, you need a laser printer.

Toner doesn’t smear and run when it gets wet.

Laser printers don’t waste toner in the same way, and because they don’t gunk up like inkjets, they may last longer before needing to be replaced. That waste isn’t reflected in the estimates manufacturers provide for how many pages you can get out of a tank. Some inkjets have a lower cost per page than home laser printers, but they also waste more ink on cleaning.

They may be more economical to run in the long term.

The best inkjets do a good job, but even a mediocre laser printer will do a better job delivering crisp results, especially when it comes to fine lines and small font sizes.

Our laser picks can pump out as many as 27 pages per minute the fastest inkjets we’ve tested maxed out at 13 pages per minute.

If you have a home office or run a home business, you may be more conscious of printer speed than those who don’t. Laser toner cartridges don’t have to be replaced as often as ink tanks, and they won’t clog-as inkjet print heads sometimes do-if you go weeks or months between print jobs. Laser printers are less frustrating to maintain.Some models drop one or the other, so be sure to check before buying. If you’re considering oth er printers in this series, just be aware that the letters after the number indicate key features: D for duplex printing and W for wireless. The HL-L2370DW is a particularly close relative that seems to be more readily available at the moment. As of this writing, our budget pick is out of stock, but all Brother L2300-series models will get you similar print performance with slight speed or feature differences. Global supply chain issues have made it more difficult to find some of our printer picks, and have caused the price of others to jump. It’s easy to set up and simple to use, and it produces great-looking results, both in color and in black and white. The best laser printer is the powerful, versatile HP Color LaserJet Pro M255dw. But if you want to keep your 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 won’t clog if they sit unused for weeks between jobs.

Small print test page