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The best portable printers let you print at home, at work and on the road Paper Receipt Rolls
The best portable printers allow you to print from wherever you are, whether you're on a business trip or relaxing on a beach. By combining the ability to print into a compact device you can slip into a laptop bag or backpack, you can print documents and photos anytime time and anywhere. With Wi-Fi connectivity and often an optional battery, a mobile printer gives you the freedom to print even if you're away from an outlet.
Most portable printers are small, coming in at less than 5 pounds. Many even come with rechargeable batteries and car chargers for use on the road. Despite the small size, a lot of portable models still offer full-page printing with the same inkjet technology you're accustomed to. Many even have scan and copy capability to give you full functionality even when you're away from the office.
A few models ratchet up the portability by adopting more exotic technologies, like thermal printing in black-and-white, or shifting some functions (like document scanning and copying) to another device, like a smartphone. But the end result is the same, letting you take printing on the go.
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This HP OfficeJet 250 maximizes what you can do on the go, offering fast copying and scanning, in addition to fast print speeds—with high image quality across the board. This portable printer is on the pricey side, but it offers a lot of features and performance in a compact package. The most immediate payoff is a large, 2.6-inch color touch screen, which makes for easy operation.
Better yet is a small, 10-page automatic document feeder for copying and scanning. This is the only portable printer we've tested that offers copy and scan functions, but with no flatbed scanner, the printer draws paper through the body of the OfficeJet for scanning and copying. Scans weren't always straight, and the paper path's 60-degree bend left me nervous about it possibly damaging photos. But having scanning and copying capability on the go is well-worth these compromises.
The OfficeJet 250 printed text very quickly from a PC, at 9 ppm. On battery power, text printed at 7 ppm. The OfficeJet 250 also printed quickly our six-page PDF of text and color graphics, taking 1:57, compared with the average of 2:27. Photo printing was extremely fast, as well. A 4 x 6-inch glossy photo printed in just 37.6 seconds, at default settings, and in just under 50 seconds at the high-quality setting. The closest competitor, the HP Tango X, took 1:15. The OfficeJet also was the fastest when printing from an iPhone, making a photo print in 42.9 seconds.
Copy and scan speeds were fast, making a color copy in 19.5 seconds, compared with the average of 28.7 seconds for desktop inkjets. The OfficeJet made a black-and-white copy in 13.1 seconds, versus the 16-second desktop average. It made a 600 dpi color scan to JPEG in 1 minute and 21 seconds, and a 300 dpi black-and-white scan to PDF in 20.1 seconds (desktop models average 11 seconds).
Best of all, the speed didn't come with any trade-off in image quality. The very high-quality photo prints had rich, well-saturated colors, pleasing midtone transitions, and lots of fine details. Text documents printed with dark letterforms and edges looked quite sharp. Graphics on plain paper were equally attractive. Document scans looked accurate, with only some sharpness lost on text edges. Photo scans were attractive, with accurate colors and plenty of detail.
The HP OfficeJet offers mobile and cloud printing, but there are some quirks. Using the HP Smart iPhone app was problematic—the app turned a five-page .doc file into a four-page document, while the .docx version was reformatted onto six pages. Photos printed from the Box cloud storage service did not print in full. Roughly two-thirds of the photo would print—but the rest of the paper was left blank.
Ink costs for printing text documents are about average for portable printers, at 9 cents each. With standard cartridges, cost per color page is high, at 23 cents per page. Using high-yield cartridges, you can lower this to 17.3 cents, though this is still higher than the 15.5 cents per color page you get with the Canon iP110 when using standard cartridges. You can save even more money by using HP Instant Ink, HP's subscription service for ink refills by mail.
One of our favorite portable printers is the Canon Pixma TR150, a compact inkjet that's small enough to carry in a backpack, but still offers excellent document and photo printing. With a two-cartridge ink system and printing for text documents, graphics and even glossy photos, the Pixma TR150 is a solid choice for portable printing. It doesn't offer copy or scan functionality, but at $199, it's also a great option for your pocketbook.
An optional battery lets you use it when you're away from a wall outlet, but even without it, the Canon Pixma TR150 is one of the most portable and travel-friendly printers out there, weighing less than the HP OfficeJet 250 and offering a more affordable print-only option.
The Pixma TR150 measures a compact 12.7 x 7.3 x 2.6 inches when closed, and weighs just 4.5 pounds – and weighs only 5.1 pounds with an optional battery attached. It opens up to a larger size, accommodating a 50-page paper tray, a basic control panel and plenty of connectivity, so long as you don't need a card slot.
It also offers excellent print speeds, a five-page document in 38.7 seconds, or 7.8 ppm.
In addition to its great mobility, the portable Pixma TR150 made high-quality photos faster than other competing portable printers, and delivered excellent color and detail. It can also handle larger photo prints, but unlike some of our photo printing favorites, there is no copy or scan capability. You do get a solidly-built portable printer with optional battery and even support for Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant voice controls, but we love it for the great photos and low ink costs it offers.
Read our full Canon Pixma TR150 review.
Of the four models outfitted with a battery, the Epson WorkForce EC-C110 is the least expensive. With the WorkForce moniker, this mobile printer is sold by business equipment resellers, and might be the best portable printer for business users. Of the inkjet models here, it is the lightest, weighing just 3.5 pounds.
You lift the lid and lean it back to serve as the 20-sheet input tray. Doing so reveals a small, 1.4-inch color LCD and four-way control buttons. Prints come out a slot on the front panel. You can use the LCD and buttons to change settings, configure Wi-Fi, and so on. You also need it to confirm the paper size, which I was prompted to do every time I loaded paper.
The EC-C110's print speeds were slower than the average. Text printed at 5.8 ppm, versus the average of 6.9 ppm. Running on battery power slowed the EC-C110 substantially: Text printing slowed to 3.4 ppm. Our six-page PDF of mixed text and color graphics more slowly than any other inkjet in this roundup, taking 3:16, or 1.8 ppm. The average was 2.4 ppm.
The EC-C110 printed a photo at default settings from a PC via USB in 1:11. Printing at high resolution slowed the EC-C110 to 3:59. Over Wi-Fi Direct at high-quality settings from an iPhone was agonizingly slow, taking 5:28 to print one photo; printing a second snapshot took almost 7 minutes.
Print quality was high across the board. Text looked dark and sharp, though the letter edges looked a little rough up close. Color graphics printed with natural-looking colors and sharp details. Glossy photos looked very attractive.
Costs per page are better than the portable printers average. Estimated costs per page are 8.8 cents for text and 17.8 cents for color.
I ran into a glitch when trying to print 4 x 6-inch photos from a Windows 10 PC. In the print driver, an error said, "photo doesn't fit on selected paper." The online FAQ did not help, but changing the default paper size to 4-x-6 in the Windows 10 printing preferences solved the issue.
When printing with an iPhone, the EC-C110 had a tendency to drop the Wi-Fi Direct connection before I could finish printing. Resetting the connection and re-entering the password seemed to solve this issue.
Cloud printing may not always be seamless. The Epson iOS app reflowed text in .doc files opened from Box, the online storage service, turning a five-page document into a seven-page reflow that would not be worthy of a business meeting.
This Epson WorkForce model delivers below-average costs per page, Wi-Fi Direct connectivity, an LCD and control panel buttons, but low battery life and slower-than-average print speeds limit its appeal.
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