The best laser printer

The best laser printer is an absolute must if you regularly need to print out lots of documents at high speed. Laser printers are fast and they're the perfect choice for crisp monochrome prints, with none of the subtle banding you sometimes get when printing black and white on an inkjet printer; they're also a lot quieter than inkjets (although they do tend to take up a bit more space).

While many creatives will be better off with an inkjet for colour work, for crisp, clear letters and invoices, the best laser printers are near-impossible to beat. They're also cheaper to run than inkjets, using high-yield toner cartridges rather than small and expensive ink cartridges, and unlike inkjets they're low-maintenance and you don't need to worry about print nozzles getting clogged if you haven't used them for a while. You can leave your laser printer untouched for months on end and it'll still be good to go as soon as you switch it back on.

Laser printers used to be the more expensive option, but nowadays you should be able to find the best laser printer for you at a very affordable price. To save you a lot of searching, we've already picked out the best options for assorted use cases and at a range of price points below with direct links to the best offers. Read on to find the best laser printer for your needs. If you're not decided on a laser printer or you need  a machine for more specific uses, you should also take a look at our guides to the best printer for photos, the best art printers – or the best home printers for more general options.

The best laser printers available now

It's not unreasonable to declare that Brother is a solid and dependable name if you're looking for the best laser printer. If scan its product range and pick something close to your preferred price point, you're likely to be perfectly happy with it. All in all though, the Brother MFC-L2750DW comes out on top as the best laser printer.

There's plenty to like about it; it's a multifunction laser printer that'll scan, copy and even fax as well as printing, and it'll pump out mono A4 prints at an impressive 34 pages per minute, at up to 2400 x 600 dpi. And it has all the connectivity you need; either plug it in via USB or LAN, or print wirelessly, from your computer or from other devices via AirPrint or Google Cloud Print.

Running a close second to the Brother comes another venerable name in printing technology, Xerox. Functionally the Xerox B215 comes pretty close to the laser printer above, with a decent print speed plus multifunction capabilities giving you scanning, copying and faxing, and its built-in touchscreen makes things just that little bit easier.

You can print via USB, LAN or a wireless connection, and it also supports mobile printing via the likes of AirPrint and Mopria. One useful extra should prove helpful when you run low on toner: it also support Amazon Dash replenishment, so getting replacement toner can be done at the touch of a button.

If you're after a more serious laser printer, there's another Xerox that should fit the bill. The Xerox VersaLink B600DN is a heavyweight monster that can take a whole load of paper on board and spit it out again at lightning speed. It's all about the printing; no scanning here, and another thing it lacks is wireless printing. This is a machine you'll have to plug into your local network.

It's a bit much for a small studio, but if you have between 10 and 20 people needing to print things simultaneously, this Xerox will quickly come into its own. With a print resolution of 1200 x 1200 dpi it's not quite the best visually, but it's perfect for documents.

Tempted by a colour laser printer? If you're of a mind to find the best laser printer for printing out artwork, we'd suggest Canon's imageCLASS MF743Cdw, but we'd also counsel caution. Laser printers are brilliant for sharp monochrome printouts, but for quality reproduction of your work we'd suggest taking a look at the best art printers instead. 

That said, this Canon (known as the  i-SENSYS MF742Cdw in UK) gives good results thanks to its separate cyan, magenta and yellow toner cartridges, and while it's not especially fast (particularly in colour), it has some useful extras such as a scanner and a handy touchscreen.

For the best laser printer that'll fit in well at home, we'd recommend the HP Neverstop 1001nw. It's not going to win any awards for speed or print resolution (600 x 600 dpi will look fine but nothing special), but it's compact, lightweight and wireless, so you can set it up on a shelf and forget about it until you need it (you can also connect via USB or LAN If you prefer).

If you're not printing high volumes you may never get round to refilling the toner; it comes with enough for 5,000 pages, and when it does run out you won't have to pay extra for cartridges because this one has a toner tank that you can simply fill up, which HP says can save you up to 60% on toner.

We've already mentioned that Brother's a thoroughly dependable brand if you're after the best laser printer at any price, so it shouldn't be any surprise that it produces the most reliable cheap option. The compact HL-L5100DN gives you surprisingly good performance for not much money at all, with print speeds up to 40 pages per minute and a resolution of 1,200 x 1,200 DPI.

It's a little basic-looking with no Wi-Fi option (although if it's plugged into a wireless network it'll still handle the likes of of AirPrint and Mopria) and a tiny single-line LCD display, but it delivers where it counts, and it even comes with enough toner to print 2,000 pages.

For the best laser printer with all-in-one functionality, you'll have a hard time finding a better option than the Lexmark MB3442adw. Not only does it print, copy, scan and fax as well as providing duplex scanning and printing, it's also pleasingly fast. Not as fast as the Xerox VersaLink further up the page, but it'll still chuck out pages at a fair old lick.

It's a slightly weird-looking machine, but if you can live its top-heavy design you'll also get plenty of paper capacity (with the option to add an additional 900-sheet paper tray for bigger print runs), a colour touchscreen with cloud connectivity and the ability to retrieve and print files from services such as DropBox and Google Drive.

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