8 Best Large Format Printers (Review) In 2020

Large format printing is something you absolutely need right now, but you’re not looking to go bonkers and get something over the top. That’s okay, because Brother’s Inkjet series has the perfect go-between that rests on one of the most agreeable prices you’re going to find. Fitted with an INKvestmentTank, they’ve basically put in an ink reservoir in this unit that allows for longer printing sessions. You’re not going to run out of ink halfway through a large order of prints.

With that, there’s a full year of ink in the box, and that’s pretty fantastic. The issues come in when you look at the setup. It’s a printer, so you already know it’s going to be a tedious process, but Brother just made this a little more difficult to get going than we expected. Apart from that, there’s only one functional flaw: a very small margin on the edges of your scanned documents that simply doesn’t show up. It’s only about 0.12”, but that can cut the edge off of an otherwise perfect scan, so plan for this.

Brother is back at it with All-in-One Color Inkjet Printer, another wide format printer, but this one’s a bit cheaper than the INKvestment model. You’re paying about half the cost, and as fitting as it could be, you’re getting half the max paper supply. The tray-like container holds up to 250 sheets of paper, which works well for large-scale printing sessions. Speaking of those, with this, you can directly connect to Microsoft Office services, Dropbox, and others to directly print from your account.

You can also hook it up to a mobile device for quick printing, but keep in mind that the Wi-Fi range on this printer is fairly poor. You need to be pretty close to the thing in order to actually have them sync up properly. If you get that all hooked up and start printing like a madman, there’s one more thing you need to know: the paper tray isn’t properly aligned all the time. When it feeds enough paper into the printer, the tray falls out of line and needs to be readjusted.

HP is usually a top-tier brand, but they couldn’t outpace Brother in this department. Their OfficeJet Pro 7720 Wide Format Printer came in with the bronze on this list after a close race. Designed for ledger style printouts (11” x 17”), this printer is sleek and compact, so you aren’t going to sacrifice a ton of space to set this up. Speaking of which, the setup is pretty quick and doesn’t require much installation or crazy wire management. The high 300 x 300 DPI printout makes just about anything that comes out of this printer appear in crystal clear high quality.

But it’s not all sunshine. There’s some difficulty when you’re feeding in any paper that isn’t standard printer paper. Sometimes you’ll run into an issue where it doesn’t register it properly, and you’ll get a “Page Too Long” error when that happens. It’s a bit of a hindrance, but it’s nothing you can’t work past. This includes two-sided printing, as well as a decent paper tray size.

Canon is the other big name in printing that we wanted to take a look at, and when we tested the wireless crafting printer, we weren’t disappointed. This 12” x 12” Wireless Crafting Printer gives clear and high quality images, though they don’t provide the DPI settings, it’s definitely on the higher end. Canon designed this with one of the best features, and that’s slow ink usage. There’s no reservoir like the Brother models, but somehow this thing takes forever to run out of ink.

That comes at the price of a low paper tray capacity, as well as some misleading information about the maximum resolution. They talk about the 12” x 12” setting, but fail to mention that if you go up to 11” x 17” you will notice some imperfections in the photos you print out. It’s designed to primarily create 12” x 12” projects, hence the crafting printer title. If that setting meets your criteria, then you’ll be able to enjoy these printouts without issue.

You can’t get away from these guys—the little brother model (get it?) of their top-tier INKvestmentTank series is basically a slightly less pricey model that comes with many of the same features. You will see a minimized paper tray compared to the other model, but that’s still 250 sheets plus the 100 sheets in the feeding tray. The INKvestment reservoirs help extend the life of your ink so that you can print more, and worry a whole lot less.

11” x 17” ledger documents run into a bit of an issue though. You’ll sometimes need to manually orient the pages by fixing the paper alignment in the tray, and that can be a hassle. There’s about a 30% chance of running into this issue at the beginning of each batch print, according to data gathered from user-submitted reviews. Apart from that, the only other issue we encountered was a lengthy setup process.

Epson made this Workforce printer compact and easy to store, despite the wide format printing options available. You can actually print up to a 13” x 19” format on this, which exceeds most other home wide format printers on the market. It includes a high DPI even at this print size, so you’re getting high quality photographs every single time you hit that print button. Use the LCD screen to help select the right information and source to get your photos/documents from, and allow the super easy process to commence from there.

The max is 13” x 19”, but the double-sided printing only hits a ledger length of 11” x 17”. That’s a bit disheartening, but that resolution is still good for double-sided prints. It’s a good system, but it’s pretty slow. For colored prints, you won’t exceed ten pages per minute, so large projects will take a while. You’d might as well set, forget, and leave for some coffee while it finishes. Epson made sure this printer is only applicable with their brand of ink cartridges, so you won’t be able to use third-party cartridges at all, or you’ll risk damaging the unit.

Epson did something that just about nobody else on this list was able to do, and that’s make Expression Photo HD, the most compact printer out there that still has a wide format. You can get up to 13” x 19” with this, all while only needing a few extra inches to store the entire unit. That comes at a cost when you look at the paper tray, but 200 sheets is still beyond good enough to get your use out of this. Your prints can go as low as 4” x 6” without an issue as well.

The main issue with Epson is that they make their printers exclusive to their cartridges, so you can’t buy another brand of ink even if you wanted to. For this printer, that’s a problem, since it goes through ink a bit faster than the advertising suggested. Everything is pretty lightweight, but that also makes it more fragile. Be sure to have it in a secured spot before you get to using it.

Last but not least, Canon’s famous PIXMA series printer gets an upgrade with this all-in-one wireless, wide format printer. It’s basically a souped-up version of their other printers, and it keeps that same compact size while allowing for ledger sizes up to 11” x 17”. One of the star features of this is that you can connect in a multitude of ways: Bluetooth, USB, ethernet, or the SD card slot for direct printing.

But the bas part is that it’s going to eat through that ink quickly, and you’ll be refilling the paper tray more often than you may have originally thought. They don’t really specify the total amount allowed in the paper tray, but we’d wager it’s no more than 150 sheets. It takes a while for this to “warm up,” not that a printer should have to. It can take 1-3 minutes from the time you enable a print command for it to actually start printing. Your printer could have stayed on since your last printing session right up until now, but it’s still going to take a while to get started.