Best Printer for Home Use in India, 4 Live Picks

> Quick answer: Buy the HP Smart Tank 589 at ₹13,999 if you print more than a few pages a month. Buy the Canon PIXMA TS207 at ₹2,525 if you print almost nothing.

There's no sensible middle here, and that surprises people.

The expensive one is cheaper. Not per printer, per page, and by a long way.

I read all four listings live before writing this, so these numbers are today's.

Every rating, review count, price and page yield came off the actual product page.

Not a search card. I checked the cards against the pages first. Search cards regularly show the rating of a different model in the same family.

So the numbers here are: HP Smart Tank 589 at 4.0 from 3,408 ratings, HP Smart Tank 580 at 4.0 from 1,692, Canon PIXMA E470 at 3.8 from 1,772, and Canon PIXMA TS207 at 3.6 from 2,103.

Those are low scores by this site's standards and that's worth saying out loud.

Printers are a badly rated category everywhere. A 4.0 printer is a good printer.

Page yield. It's on all four listings and almost nobody reads it.

The HP Smart Tank 589 says up to 4000 black and 6000 colour prints with the ink in the box.

The Canon PIXMA E470 says up to 400 black and 180 colour.

The Canon PIXMA TS207 says up to 100 black and 100 colour.

So the ₹13,999 printer includes roughly forty times the printing of the ₹2,525 one. That's the whole story and everything else on this page is detail.

This is the actual choice you're making. The brand barely matters.

A cartridge printer is cheap to buy and expensive to feed. You replace a sealed ink cartridge that holds a small amount of ink and costs a meaningful fraction of the printer.

A tank printer has refillable reservoirs you top up from bottles.

Two or three cartridge refills usually cost more than the difference between the two machines.

So if you print anything regularly, the tank printer pays for itself inside a year.

This is where people get it wrong in both directions.

If you're printing school forms four times a year, a tank printer is a waste and the ink will dry out before you use it.

If you're printing anything weekly, a cartridge printer will quietly bleed money and you won't notice because each refill feels small.

The rough line is about twenty pages a month.

Below that, buy cheap. Above it, buy the tank.

At ₹13,999 this is the printer most homes should buy.

It prints, copies and scans. WiFi and Hi-Speed USB 2.0. Print speeds up to 30 pages per minute black and 24 colour.

The tray holds 100 sheets in and 30 out, which is normal for the category.

Ink is HP's GT53 black bottles and GT52 colour bottles, which are sold everywhere in India and aren't hard to find.

Its 4.0 comes from 3,408 ratings, the deepest record of the four. That matters more than the score itself.

At ₹14,999 this is a thousand rupees more for one extra black ink bottle.

Same 30 pages per minute black and 24 colour. Same 100 sheet input tray. Same GT53 and GT52 ink.

It adds WiFi Direct and quotes a first page out as fast as 14 seconds.

It's rated 4.0 from 1,692 people, half the review base of the 589.

Worth it only if the extra bottle is genuinely worth a thousand rupees to you. Usually the 589 is the better buy.

At ₹4,999 this is the cheapest printer here that also scans.

Print, scan and copy, with WiFi, and print speeds up to 8 images per minute black and 4 colour.

Resolution is up to 4800 by 600 dpi, which is fine for documents and adequate for photos.

It uses PG 47 and CL 57s cartridges, and the listing quotes up to 400 black and 180 colour prints.

Rated 3.8 from 1,772 people. It's the right answer if you print rarely but still need to scan.

At ₹2,525 this is print only. No scanner, no WiFi.

USB 2.0 to a computer, up to 4800 by 1200 dpi, and up to 8 images per minute black.

The listing quotes up to 100 black and 100 colour prints from the supplied cartridges.

It's rated 3.6 from 2,103 people, the lowest here.

Buy it for a student who needs to print assignments and nothing else. Don't buy it as a family printer, because you'll be replacing cartridges constantly.

One feature that changes daily use completely.

Without it, printing from a phone means emailing yourself a file and finding a laptop.

With it, everybody in the house can print from their phone directly.

Three of these four have WiFi. The TS207 doesn't, and that's the main reason it's so cheap.

If more than one person will use the printer, treat WiFi as compulsory.

Not printing enough.

Inkjet heads clog when they sit unused, and a clogged head on a cheap printer usually means a new printer.

Inkjet printing works by pushing ink through very fine nozzles, and dried ink blocks them.

So print something in colour once a month, even a test page. It costs almost nothing and it's the single best thing you can do for the machine.

I counted this as the most common reason people replace a working printer.

Everybody in India asks about this, so here's the honest answer.

Cheaper compatible ink exists for all of these and it's widely used.

It often voids the warranty, and on tank printers a bad batch can clog the head, which is the expensive failure.

For the first year, while the warranty is live, use the original ink.

After that it's your call, and the tank printers make original ink cheap enough that the temptation mostly goes away.

A fair question and for some homes it's the right answer.

Laser is faster, doesn't clog when idle, and gives sharper black text.

It also can't print decent photos, and colour laser is well outside this budget.

If you only ever print black text documents and you print in bursts, a mono laser is worth considering instead of everything on this page.

For a household printing school projects, forms and the occasional photo, inkjet is still the right shape.

None of these four do it automatically, so it's worth knowing what you're missing.

Duplex printing means the printer flips the page itself.

Without it you print odd pages, flip the stack by hand, and print the evens.

That's fine occasionally and miserable for a fifty page document.

If you print long documents regularly, spend up to a model that lists auto duplex. It's the one feature people wish they'd bought.

A small thing that saves an argument later.

A printer needs mains power, room for paper to come out the front, and clearance above for the scanner lid.

With WiFi it doesn't need to sit near a computer, which people forget, so the top of a cupboard works fine.

Keep it out of direct sunlight and away from damp, because both ruin paper before they ruin the machine.

If it's going in a home office, our office chair picks cover the part you'll actually spend time in.

Short version, by how much you print.

More than twenty pages a month: the HP Smart Tank 589 at ₹13,999. Highest review count, 4000 black pages included, and the cheapest per page by a distance.

Rarely, but you need a scanner: the Canon PIXMA E470 at ₹4,999.

Almost never, one student, no scanning: the Canon PIXMA TS207 at ₹2,525.

The Smart Tank 580 only if that extra ink bottle is worth a thousand rupees to you.

The rest of our tested picks sit on the shop page.