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We’ve corrected some wrong information regarding how to get the Brother HL-L2350DW connected to Wi-Fi.

Printers are not our favorite household gadget, but sometimes they’re necessary. If you run a home business that has to generate receipts, shipping labels, or tax documents, for example, or if someone in your household is in school, you probably need a basic printer. Here are a couple of relatively inexpensive models that we recommend based on our tests for our guides to laser printers and all-in-one inkjets.

With low operating costs, quick printouts, and useful features, the HL-L2350DW is the best laser printer you can get for around $150.

May be out of stock

*At the time of publishing, the price was $161.

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. They 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-L2350DW is no exception here—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, and you can add it with the Brother Print Service on Android. Print jobs start within seconds of being sent, and they print fast. Plus, at just 7.2 inches tall, this model can easily fit on a bookshelf or in a tight desk area.

The HL-L2350DW comes with a starter toner cartridge that yields about 700 pages and an imaging drum that yields around 12,000 pages. A new toner cartridge costs about $80 at this writing, so the cost per page, including drum wear, comes out to about 3.3¢, right in line with the cost per page for other laser printers we tested. Out of the box, prints looked decent 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. Its one-year warranty is unexceptional but standard for printers.

Flaws but not dealbreakers: The display on the HL-L2350DW is just a one-line monochrome LED display surrounded by a few rubberized buttons, which makes changing settings (and especially typing in Wi-Fi passwords) a bit of a pain. Note too that Brother uses cheaper plastic parts in this model: The printer we received for testing was a little banged up during shipping, and we had to call customer service to get it fixed. Thankfully it was a quick fix, and we were back to printing in no time.

Learn more in our full guide to the best laser printer.

Brother’s entry-level color all-in-one is cheap to operate yet still produces great-looking prints and scans.

*At the time of publishing, the price was $300.

Who this is for: People who don’t require much from a printer and want to keep their printing costs to a minimum, but who also need a scanner.

Why we like it: The Brother MFC-J805DW has some of the lowest maintenance costs of the all-in-one printers (print, copy, and scan) that we evaluated, yet it still delivered sharp text and good-enough images in our tests. Out of the box it comes with enough ink to print 1,080 pages in black-and-white or 720 pages in color. When you’re ready to replace the included cartridges, a new ultra-high-yield set will cost $120. Although that might seem a bit high (sometimes more than the cost of the printer itself), that set gives you enough ink for 6,000 text pages and 5,000 pages in color, which works out to less than 1¢ per black-and-white page and 4.7¢ for each color page. In our tests, text was dark, graphics were vibrant, and photos printed on glossy paper exhibited excellent sharpness but had a slightly warm and greenish look. This model is a solid choice for casual use, whether you’re printing documents or a photo to stick on your fridge.

The MFC-J805DW works with Brother’s iPrint&Scan app, which is available on iOS and Android, or with AirPrint (iOS) and the Brother Print Service Plugin (Android). The mobile app lets you print from Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, and OneDrive, or you can choose documents and photos stored locally on your device. This model also comes with a two-year warranty, double that of most other printers.

Flaws but not dealbreakers: Although we had no issues setting the MFC-J805DW up, the process was a bit clunky, as the printer comes with unintuitive installers that feel out of date. In addition, this model prints more slowly than most other printers, it doesn’t do duplex scanning on its own (so if you want two-sided printing, you have to flip the pages yourself), and in order to refill the paper you have to remove the tray from the printer. It lacks a USB flash drive port, and the sole scan-to-email function uses only third-party email servers, which aren’t terribly secure (so we don’t recommend emailing sensitive documents like tax forms). It also does poorly when the font is smaller than 6 points, though since most text is 12 points or larger, we don’t mind this so much.

Learn more in our full guide to the best all-in-one printer.

If you need to print a photo or two to stick on your fridge, our all-in-one pick, the Brother MFC-J805DW, is more than capable of handling the job. If you’re looking to print art or photography and you’re on a budget, consider sending your images off to a print lab, because you won’t find a photo printer that can give you high-quality, color-accurate images in large format for less than $700.

This article was edited by Phil Ryan and Erica Ogg.

Arriana Vasquez is an updates writer for powering, home office, cameras, and hobbies at Wirecutter. Her hobbies include reading and photography. Her photos have won several awards in various online competitions, and she is the producer and co-host of Old Books Podcast.

Ben Keough is an editor covering powering, home office, and hobbies at Wirecutter. He previously spent more than a decade writing about cameras, printers, and other office equipment for Wirecutter, Reviewed, USA Today, and Digital Camera HQ. After four years testing printers, he has confirmed that they all suck, but some suck less than others.

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