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If you only want one sentence: the Epson EcoTank ET-2800 is the best all in one printer for home use, because its refillable ink tanks print thousands of pages per bottle set at a running cost that a cartridge printer can never match, and it still fits on a home desk.
That verdict comes from a simple test. We put ten machines from HP, Epson, Canon and Brother side by side and weighed them on the four things that decide whether a home printer is a joy or a chore: how long the ink lasts, whether it prints both sides by itself, whether it has a document feeder, and how much desk space it eats. Those four factors, not the headline resolution number, decide almost everything after the first month of ownership.
Because running cost dominates what a printer costs you over three years, this guide treats ink system as the first filter. A cheap cartridge machine can look like a bargain on the shelf and then quietly spend multiples of its price on ink, while a refillable tank machine costs more up front and then mostly stops costing you anything.
We also cover the reliability question that owners ask most often, which is simply which printer has the least trouble. The short answer is that laser machines do not dry out, inkjets print richer photos, and the difference in wireless behaviour between brands is bigger than the specifications suggest. If you are also furnishing other rooms in the house, our guides to the best home gyms and the best electric pressure washers for home use follow the same cost-over-time approach.
Two of our top three use refillable tanks and one is a monochrome laser, which is the shape of the market right now. The Epson wins on running cost and owner volume, the Canon MegaTank wins on media handling, and the Brother wins outright if colour printing is not part of your week.
| Product | Features | |
|---|---|---|
Epson EcoTank ET-2800 |
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Canon PIXMA TR8620a |
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Canon MegaTank G3270 |
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Epson EcoTank ET-2400 |
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Brother DCP-L2640DW |
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Canon PIXMA TS3720 |
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Epson EcoTank ET-2980 |
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HP Envy 6155 |
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HP Envy Photo 7975 |
|
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Brother Work Smart 1410 |
|
Check Latest Price |
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Every machine here prints, scans and copies at minimum. The real differences sit in the right-hand columns: ink system, feeder, duplex and tray size.
Inkjet
4500 black and 7500 colour pages per bottle set
10 ppm black
100-sheet tray
11.4 pounds
The ET-2800 is the machine we keep coming back to, and the reason is arithmetic rather than excitement. One set of ink bottles covers up to 4,500 black pages or 7,500 colour pages, which is roughly what ninety individual cartridges would deliver. Owners describe refills as a twice-a-year event rather than a monthly one, and that single fact changes how a home printer feels to own.
Print quality is genuinely good for the money. Micro Piezo heat-free technology lays down sharp text and clean colour without the warm-up cycle older inkjets used to need, and the 5760 x 1440 dpi maximum resolution is more than a school worksheet will ever ask for.

Compare this machine with a two-cartridge printer that prints a few hundred colour pages before one tank is finished. The upfront difference is real, but the refill difference is structural, not marginal. A bottle set replaces ninety cartridges, so you are not standing at a shop replacing hardware ninety times.
There is a second, quieter saving. Cartridge printers waste ink on cleaning cycles, which is why they can run dry well before their rated yield. A tank machine with a large reservoir has far less reason to run a purge, so more of what you buy ends up on paper.
Two omissions matter more than any specification. There is no automatic duplex, so double-sided documents mean reloading the tray by hand, and there is no document feeder, so a twelve-page form is twelve flatbed trips.
For light users printing a permission slip and a school project, neither omission matters. For a home office that prints contracts every week, the ET-2980 further down this list is the better fit because it adds automatic duplex.
At 11.4 pounds and 14.8 inches wide, this is one of the smaller inkjets here, and it draws 12 watts, which is among the lowest figures in the group. The 100-sheet single tray is a little small for a family that prints a lot of worksheets, but the rear feed handles envelopes and heavier media.

The one-year limited warranty is standard for the category. Refills are mess-free because the bottles are keyed to the correct tank, which is a small detail that matters more than the marketing suggests.
Inkjet
Print copy scan and fax
15 ppm black and 10 ppm colour
20-sheet ADF
2 trays
Where the ET-2800 strips functions back, the TR8620a adds them. Print, copy, scan and standalone fax sit in a single body with a 20-sheet automatic document feeder and a tilting LCD panel you can steer without walking to the machine. For someone who signs documents digitally and still needs to send the occasional fax, that combination is the whole point.
Print speed is a real strength here. At 15 pages per minute in black and 10 in colour, it outruns most home inkjets, and the 1,000-page monthly duty cycle gives you headroom that light-duty machines do not offer.

Two trays mean you can keep plain paper loaded in the 100-sheet cassette and photo or cardstock in the rear feed, then switch without reloading. Automatic two-sided printing covers long documents, and the ADF removes the manual flipping that dominates flatbed-only machines.
The catch is the ADF design. It is single-sided, so a two-sided original document has to be turned over and fed again. That is slower than a single-pass duplex feeder, but it is still far faster than lifting the lid.
Wireless reliability is the most common complaint. Owners report the Canon mobile app being slow to connect from a phone, and some describe the printer struggling on a crowded multi-band network. Position matters: a printer in a far corner of a large house will feel the difference more than the specification sheet suggests.
Scanning resolution caps at 600 dpi for photo capture, which is fine for documents and receipts but underwhelming if you want to digitise negatives or slides.

Pick this one if you fax, if you scan multi-page paperwork regularly, or if you want a touchscreen to manage jobs from the sofa. Skip it if your printing is occasional and your priority is ink cost, because it runs on standard cartridges and that cost adds up over years.
At 17.4 pounds and 17.3 inches wide, it is one of the larger bodies here, so measure the shelf before you commit.
Inkjet
6000 black and 7700 colour pages per ink set
11 ppm black
Borderless printing
13.2 pounds
The MegaTank G3270 is the strongest tank value in the group, and the numbers explain why. A single set of inks covers up to 6,000 black and white pages or 7,700 colour pages, which is more than the ET-2800 manages and comfortably more than the ET-2400.
It is also the most flexible machine here for unusual paper. Borderless printing plus custom sizes up to 3.5 by 47.2 inches means square photo formats and long banner-style craft projects are all within reach, which is something no other printer on this list covers as cleanly.

For scrapbookers, card makers and anyone printing square social formats, the custom size range removes the need to crop images in software. That capability alone justifies the machine for a specific kind of buyer, and it is not something the other refillable tanks in this lineup offer.
Borderless output also means photo printing without the white margin, which is the difference between a real print and a screenshot of one.
Like the Epson winner, this is a simplex machine with no automatic duplex and no document feeder. Both are common complaints in reviews, and both are fair. A home user who prints twenty pages a month will not notice either gap.
The 1.35-inch square LCD is small, and most day-to-day control happens through the Canon PRINT app rather than the panel. If you dislike app-based operation, this is the wrong machine.
Up to two years of ink ship in the box, and the ink bottles are keyed to their tanks, so a mis-pour is close to impossible. That keying detail is the one upgrade in refill safety that most owners mention first when they compare brands.
At 13.2 pounds the body is manageable, and the 16-watt power draw is modest. The one-year warranty is standard.

Inkjet
4500 black and 7200 colour pages per bottle set
8.6 pounds
No display screen
100-sheet tray
The ET-2400 exists for one reason: desk space. At 8.6 pounds it is the lightest printer here by a wide margin, and its 22.8 by 14.8 by 10 inch body is narrow enough for a shelf in a flat where a full-size all in one simply will not go.
It also runs one set of EcoFit bottles to 4,500 black or 7,200 colour pages, so the running cost story holds up even against the more expensive tanks in this list.

There is no display at all, only a few status lights and the Epson app. Buyers who expect to check ink levels at a glance tend to miss this, while buyers who print from a phone never touch the panel anyway and consider it a positive.
Setup is app-driven, which makes initial configuration simple on a phone and slightly fiddly on a desktop computer where you expected an installer package.
Duplex is manual, so two-sided documents mean flipping the stack and reloading. That is a real cost in time if you print anything substantial double-sided, and it is the main reason we would point a frequent home printer elsewhere.
Recurring paper jams appear in reviews, most often on first prints and on envelopes. Separately, some owners on dual-band routers report needing to disable the 5 GHz band during setup, which is a fix rather than a fault but worth knowing before you start.
The single 100-sheet tray handles everyday documents and the 5760 x 1440 dpi maximum resolution covers photos adequately. Maximum media size is 8.5 by 14 inches, and power draw is 12 watts.
This is a one-year limited warranty, and the compatible cartridge reference is T522. The trade is simple: smallest footprint in the lineup, but you give up duplex automation and the on-screen controls.

Monochrome laser
36 ppm print and 23.6 ipm scan
50-sheet ADF
250-sheet tray
25 pounds
If your printing is contracts, invoices and boarding passes rather than photographs, colour is dead weight and speed is everything. The DCP-L2640DW prints 36 pages per minute in black, scans at up to 23.6 pages per minute, and carries a 250-sheet paper tray. Nothing else on this list moves paper that quickly.
The laser argument is more than speed. Toner is powder, so it cannot dry in the nozzles or clog a printhead, which removes the single most common long-term complaint about home inkjets.

The 50-sheet automatic document feeder is larger than anything else here, and combined with automatic duplex it turns a 40-page contract into a single job. Flatbed-only competitors make you watch the machine, feed every page by hand and wait through the whole cycle.
Scan resolution prints at 1200 x 1200 dpi and copies at 600 x 600 dpi, which is more than adequate for paperwork and archiving.
Brothers network setup is the most consistent pain point in the reviews, with owners describing the firmware and wireless password process as confusing and error-prone. Budget twenty minutes for it rather than assuming a five-minute job.
On-device menu navigation is also clumsy compared with the mobile app, so if you will drive this machine from a phone, use the Brother Mobile Connect app for scanning and toner ordering.
There is no colour, no photo printing and no fax on this model. It is a three-function machine: print, scan, copy. If a school project needs colour, this is the wrong tool entirely.
At 25 pounds and 16.1 inches wide with a 12.5 inch height, it is the heaviest and bulkiest printer on this list, and the power cord is short enough that it needs a nearby outlet. The 1200 x 1200 dpi maximum resolution, dual-band wireless, Ethernet and USB cover every connection type you might want.

Inkjet
7.7 ppm black and 4 ppm colour
Two cartridges
60-sheet tray
8.7 pounds
The TS3720 answers a narrow question well: what is the least complicated way to get homework, recipes and occasional colour out of a phone or laptop? It runs from the box in minutes, weighs 8.7 pounds and carries a 1.5-inch segment LCD rather than a touchscreen.
Its two-cartridge ink system is the reason it sits at the bottom of the running-cost ranking, and also the reason we consider it a short-term rather than a long-term answer.

Up front you spend less than on any other machine here, and if you print a handful of pages a month the total over a couple of years may still be acceptable. The break point arrives when a single colour job empties the tri-color cartridge, because there is no separate magenta, cyan and yellow unit to replace.
That two-cartridge design is the single most common complaint in reviews, and it is a genuine design limitation rather than a fault.
At 7.7 pages per minute in black and 4 in colour, this is the slowest printer here. That is fine for a single worksheet and frustrating for a twenty-page document. The 60-sheet tray is also the smallest, which means more frequent refilling.
Borderless 5 by 7 photos, square formats and envelopes are all supported, so light photo printing does not look bad, it is simply slow to start.
Dual-band Wi-Fi at either 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz is more stable than single-band budget machines, and it works with the Canon PRINT app, Apple AirPrint, Mopria and Chromebooks. That matters if the household is mixed Apple, Android and Chrome.
Maximum media size is 8.5 by 14 inches, resolution is 4800 x 1200 dpi in both colour and black, and the warranty is one year from the manufacturer. Compatible cartridges are the Canon CL-276 and PG-275.

Inkjet
Automatic duplex
6600 black and 5500 colour pages per set
15 ppm black
14.8 inch wide
The ET-2980 fixes the complaint we hear most about the ET-2800. It adds automatic two-sided printing while keeping refillable tanks, and it ships with up to three years of ink inside. That combination of low running cost and duplex automation is unusual at this size.
It also prints faster than the other EcoTanks here, at 15 pages per minute in black and 8 in colour, and its 14.8-inch-wide body is genuinely compact for a machine with duplex.

Automatic two-sided printing is what most buyers are actually looking for and what many budget machines omit. Here it is paired with a 6,600 black page yield per bottle set, so you get the low running cost and the convenience together.
Borderless photo printing is supported, and maximum media size runs to 8.5 by 14 inches. Maximum resolution is 4800 x 1200 dpi in colour.
There is no document feeder, so every multi-page job is a flatbed task, and the scanning software plus control panel icons are reported as dated and hard to read. If you archive paperwork weekly, that combination will annoy you.
Photo quality is described as decent rather than competitive, which is what you would expect from a machine not designed around a photo tray.
Some owners report recurring wireless connection drops and jams on duplex jobs. The 11.5-pound body draws 13 watts and carries a one-year limited warranty. At 4,000-plus pages a year this is the tank machine we would pick for a home office that does not need a feeder.

Inkjet
Automatic duplex
10 ppm black and 7 ppm colour
2.4 inch touchscreen
100-sheet tray
The Envy 6155 is the machine to recommend to someone who finds printer setup stressful. The 2.4-inch colour touchscreen walks you through connection and cartridge installation, and the dual-band radio is described as automatically detecting and resolving connection issues rather than making you troubleshoot band by band.
Its rating across owner reviews is the highest in this group, which usually signals a machine that simply does what it says without drama.
Automatic two-sided printing is standard here, an unusual inclusion at this outlay, and the 100-sheet tray is adequate for a household rather than an office. Speed is 10 pages per minute in black and 7 in colour, with a resolution of 4800 x 1200 dpi in colour.
HP AI formatting is a small but genuine convenience. It cleans up web pages and emails so you do not waste a sheet printing a page that is 90 percent browser furniture.
This printer works only with HP cartridges containing original HP chips, which is the complaint that appears most often in reviews and the reason we would steer a frequent printer elsewhere. It is also a model that ships with a trial of HP Instant Ink, the subscription programme that owners across printing forums describe as the thing they most wanted to avoid.
There is no document feeder, so scanning is flatbed only, and there is a single paper tray. The body measures 17.05 by 5.35 by 14.21 inches at 11.2 pounds, and it is built with at least 60 percent recycled plastic with a one-year limited hardware warranty.
Inkjet photo
35-sheet ADF
Automatic duplex
2.7 inch touchscreen
125-sheet capacity
The Envy Photo 7975 is the only machine here built around photographs and still capable of handling paperwork. A dedicated photo tray accepts the heavier media that will not feed through the main path, and borderless photo printing gives you full-bleed output rather than a white margin.
Unlike most photo-focused machines, it keeps a 35-sheet automatic document feeder and automatic duplex, so it does not become useless the moment school paperwork starts to arrive.

Photo paper is stiffer and thicker than plain sheets, and machines without a dedicated path feed it inconsistently or not at all. With a separate tray you switch media without reloading the main cassette, and the print comes out at up to 4800 x 1200 optimised dpi in colour and 1200 x 1200 rendered dpi in black.
At 15 pages per minute in black and up to 10 in colour, it handles documents reasonably as well as photos.
HP 64 and 64XL cartridges are among the most expensive per page in this group, particularly for colour, and the machine ships with a trial of HP Instant Ink. If you are printing photographs regularly, treat the running cost as part of the purchase decision rather than an afterthought.
There is no fax function, and most setup steps run through the 2.7-inch touchscreen, so a flatbed scanner plus a separate laser might suit someone who prints a lot of documents and only the occasional photo.
At 17.9 pounds and 18.11 inches wide with 125 sheets of capacity across two trays, this is one of the larger home models here, so give it a dedicated shelf rather than a cupboard. Connectivity is USB and Wi-Fi, and the warranty is one year limited.

Inkjet
Print copy scan and fax
16 ppm black and 9 ppm colour
20-sheet ADF
150-sheet tray
The Work Smart 1410 packs the most functions into the least space. Print, copy, scan and fax, automatic duplex, a 20-sheet feeder, a 150-sheet tray and a 2.7-inch colour touchscreen, all in a 15.4-inch-wide body that sits under a desk. Very few all in one printers give you that list.
The touchscreen is the differentiator. It scans directly to Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and OneDrive, which turns a two-minute walk to a desktop into a two-button job on the machine itself.

At 16 pages per minute in black and 9 in colour, it is the fastest colour inkjet in this lineup, with a first page out in roughly 6.2 seconds in black and 9.6 seconds in colour. Resolution reaches 1,200 x 6,000 dpi on Windows and copies at 1,200 x 1,200 dpi.
The 150-sheet single tray is the second largest here, and the machine handles both network and USB connections alongside the Brother Mobile Connect app.
Brother recommends genuine LC501 ink, which narrows your cartridge options compared with brands that accept third-party equivalents. That is the main recurring reservation in reviews about this model.
At 16.8 pounds it is heavier than most home inkjets, though still lighter than the mono laser. The 20-sheet feeder handles single-sided originals only, and the warranty is one year limited.

Purchase price is the least interesting number in printer ownership. What decides the real cost is how long a bottle set, a cartridge or a toner cartridge lasts, and how many cleaning cycles the machine runs before it accepts a page. Both of those favour refillable tanks and laser over entry-level cartridges.
Here is the pattern that shows up across this group. A cartridge printer rated for a few hundred colour pages frequently stops well short of that figure, because maintenance cycles consume ink that never reaches paper. Users describe this as feeling cheated, and the frustration is well earned. A tank printer rated at 4,500 to 6,600 black pages has a much larger reservoir, so the ratio of printed pages to wasted ink is structurally better.
The break-even maths is simpler than most guides admit. If a tank machine costs meaningfully more than a cartridge printer up front, and you print on the order of a few hundred pages a year, the tank pays for itself within a year or two. If you print ten pages a month and nothing else, the upfront difference may never repay itself, and at that volume reliability matters more than cost per page. On r/AskUK threads about minimal-use printers, that is exactly the trade owners describe: they want something that works when needed, not the cheapest page.
The question we get asked most is which brand to avoid, and the honest answer is that no whole brand should be avoided. What differs is failure mode. Laser printers use powdered toner, so they cannot dry out or clog, and the Brother laser models here are praised repeatedly in r/printers threads for longevity rather than for features.
Inkjets fail differently. A machine that sits unused for weeks can develop dried ink in the printhead nozzles, and the first job after an idle month prints streaky or blank. The repeated advice from owners is to run the machine briefly every couple of weeks. That habit is the price of owning an inkjet, and it is also why people who print rarely sometimes choose a laser despite colour being unavailable.
Two more reliability patterns are worth knowing. Cartridge lock-outs appear in reviews of both HP and Brother models, where chips inside the cartridge restrict which cartridges the printer accepts. And wireless behaviour varies more between brands than any specification suggests, with some owners reporting that a printer which connected reliably in one home refuses to be found in another with a crowded multi-band router.
Unclogging, running cleaning cycles and replacing a failed tri-color cartridge all take an evening you did not plan to spend. That time is real cost, and it is the argument that matters most for someone printing a few pages a month rather than for a family printing a hundred.
On connectivity, the practical advice is to set the printer up on whichever band gives you the stronger signal, keep firmware current, and expect a reconnect after a router change. AirPrint and Mopria support is common across this group, and every machine here prints from a phone without a computer switched on.
Choose inkjet if you print any colour, any photographs, or fewer than a few hundred pages a month. Choose laser if you print mostly black and white at volume, want the fastest output, or want a machine that sits unused for weeks and still works on the first job.
There is no third path worth considering at home. Single-function printers skip the scanner and copier, and for a household that scans a recipe or copies a permission slip, an all in one is the better buy.
Refillable tanks such as EcoTank, MegaTank and Smart Tank systems print far more pages per refill and cut cartridge waste. The trade-offs are a higher upfront cost, a larger body because the tanks need reservoir space, and in some models the loss of automatic duplex.
The most common complaints about tank printers are the same three: the machine sits unused and the ink in open tanks is not ideal, there is no automatic duplex on cheaper models, and the bottles must match the exact regional ink system rather than the brand name alone. Check the specific bottle code before ordering refills, and run the machine occasionally.
You need one if you scan or copy more than two or three pages at a time, and you need a large one if you archive paperwork. A 50-sheet feeder suits a home office handling contracts. A 20-sheet feeder suits school projects and a few receipts.
If a product page does not mention a feeder, assume there is none. Flatbed scanning is slower by a wide margin for multi-page jobs, and a 20-page document can mean twenty separate trips to the machine.
Yes, if you print anything double-sided, which includes most schoolwork, forms and reports. Half the printers in this lineup have it and half do not, and that split is the single clearest dividing line between the budget and the mid-range tier.
Note the difference between duplex printing and duplex scanning. Printing both sides automatically does not mean the feeder can read a two-sided original in one pass. A reversing feeder turns the stack over for you; a single-pass feeder reads both sides at once, and a single-sided feeder needs the original turned over manually.
A 250-sheet tray means less refilling for a family or home office. A 60-sheet tray is a recurring irritation for a busy week. Paper speed figures are quoted as ISO pages per minute, measured under standard conditions, and lab results run lower, so treat the number as a relative measure between models rather than a promise about your own documents.
Footprint matters more in small homes than people expect. The lightest machine here is 8.6 pounds and the heaviest is 25, and the difference between a 14.8-inch-wide EcoTank and a 22.8-inch-wide body is the difference between a shelf and a dedicated cabinet.
Look for dual-band Wi-Fi, AirPrint and Mopria support, and a vendor app that works from a phone without a computer attached. All ten machines here cover that, but the quality of the app varies, and app complaints are the most common software issue in reviews.
Finally, calculate cost per page before you buy rather than after. Take the price of an ink set or toner cartridge, divide by its rated page yield, and multiply by the number of pages your household prints in a year. For most homes that one calculation picks the printer for you.
The Epson EcoTank ET-2800 is the best all-in-one printer for most homes. Its refillable ink tanks print up to 4,500 black pages or 7,500 colour pages per bottle set, which is roughly ninety cartridges of output from one refill. It prints, scans and copies, connects over USB and Wi-Fi, and weighs only 11.4 pounds. The trade-off is that it has no automatic duplex printing and no document feeder.
Monochrome laser printers generally have the least problems, because powdered toner cannot dry out or clog a printhead the way liquid ink can. The Brother DCP-L2640DW in this group combines 36 pages per minute output, a 50-sheet feeder and automatic duplex. Among inkjets, refillable tank models such as the ET-2800 and the Canon MegaTank G3270 tend to draw fewer complaints than two-cartridge machines, since cartridge cleaning cycles are the main source of dissatisfaction.
They are better on running cost and page yield, and worse in two specific ways. A tank printer prints thousands of pages per refill and produces far less cartridge waste, but it costs more up front and the reservoir space means a larger body. Some cheaper tank models also drop automatic duplex printing. The break-even point arrives quickly for anyone printing a few hundred pages a year, but for someone printing ten pages a month the upfront difference may never repay itself.
Canon leads on photo handling and on refillable ink value, with models such as the MegaTank G3270 offering borderless and custom banner printing alongside refillable tanks. HP leads on guided setup and interface polish, with dual-band wireless that resolves connection issues automatically and colour touchscreens as standard. The deciding factor for many households is ink: HP cartridge models are tied to original HP chips and frequently arrive with a subscription ink trial, while Canon tank models charge far less per page.
Most homes should buy an all-in-one. The scanner and copier cost little extra when built into the same box, and households consistently underestimate how often they need to scan a receipt, copy a permission slip or digitise a document. A single-function printer only makes sense if you already own a separate scanner and never print colour or photographs. For a shared family or home office machine, automatic duplex and a document feeder matter more than any other two features.
If you want the lowest running cost and do not care about duplex or a feeder, buy the Epson EcoTank ET-2800. If you want automatic duplex with refillable ink in a compact body, the ET-2980 is the pick. If you need a feeder, a fax and a touchscreen, the Canon PIXMA TR8620a covers the most ground.
If you print mostly black and white at volume, the Brother DCP-L2640DW is the fastest and the least likely to dry out. If photographs matter, the HP Envy Photo 7975 adds a dedicated photo tray, and the Canon MegaTank G3270 handles unusual sizes and custom banners for craft work. For the smallest possible footprint, the Epson EcoTank ET-2400 at 8.6 pounds wins outright.
Whichever you pick, print a test page before you rely on it, and run the machine briefly every couple of weeks. That single habit prevents most of the problems people complain about later.