The 2 Best Cheap Printers of 2025
Top pick
Offering low operating costs, quick printouts, and useful features, this is the best laser printer you can get for around $180.
Who this is for: Anyone who needs a basic monochrome printer for straightforward print jobs.
Why we like it: Laser printers are well suited for people who don’t need to print often. That’s because toner cartridges don’t clog like ink tanks do, so you can go months between print jobs without any issue.
Laser printers also print faster and produce sharper text, and their output doesn’t run or smear if it gets wet, the way some inkjet prints might. The Brother HL-L2460DW is no exception — it’s a simple, straightforward printer that delivers great print quality reliably and quickly.
Setting up the printer is a breeze because it has native Mac and Windows drivers. It works automatically with AirPrint on iOS, too, and Android users can use the Brother Mobile Connect app.
Print jobs start within a couple of seconds of your sending them, and they print fast — up to 28.6 pages per minute in our tests. Plus, at just 7.2 inches tall, this model can easily fit on a bookshelf or in a tight desk area.
The HL-L2460DW comes with a starter toner cartridge that yields about 700 pages. New toner cartridge costs range from about $58 for the basic (1,200-page) TN830 cartridge to $91 for the high-yield (3,000-page) TN830XL cartridge at this writing. That makes the cost per page about 3.1 cents, right in line with the cost per page for other laser printers we’ve tested, if not cheaper.
Out of the box, the HL-L2460DW produced decent prints in our tests. With a little tweaking of the toner density and resolution settings, however, we managed to get great-looking prints that were sharp, contrasty, and readable all the way down to 2-point font sizes. This model’s one-year warranty is unexceptional but standard for printers.
Flaws but not dealbreakers
Its controls are cramped. The display on the HL-L2460DW is just a one-line monochrome LCD surrounded by a few rubberized buttons, which makes changing settings (and especially typing in Wi-Fi passwords) a bit of a pain. You can, however, set up Wi-Fi using WPS instead.
Build quality is just okay. This is a budget model, and it shows in the construction, which is largely plastic. Our test unit of this printer’s extremely similar predecessor, the Brother HL-L2350DW, got banged up in shipping, and we had to call customer service to get it fixed. That said, once you’ve set it up on your shelf, it’s unlikely to acquire damage.
Learn more about other printers we recommend in our full guide to the best laser printer.
