printers

What is the best laser printer for Mac users? When choosing between laser or inkjet, we recommend laser. Laser printers used to be prohibitively expensive, but prices have come down, and you’ll have fewer headaches. Inkjet printers are better for photos but are a pain to own. Replacement ink costs a fortune, the heads clog, and they dry out if the printer isn’t in regular use.

Laser printers, on the other hand, can sit idle for weeks without problems. They cost more up front, but are often cheaper to own in the long-run.

In this guide, we’ll explore which brand of printer works best with Mac and top laser printers that are fully compatible with macOS, whether you need a printer for your personal use, a home office or a small business.

Picture this scenario: You’ve multiple computers at your office and only one of them (which is a Mac) is connected to the printer. Every time you need to print a document stored on these “other” computers, you have to manually transfer the file to the Mac and start the printing process from there. Wouldn’t it be super-convenient if you could just send a document wirelessly and instantly initiate the process of printing files remotely?

Today, I’ll show you how to break apart from this hassle and easily print files remotely from any computer using a combination of Dropbox and Automator.

Epson calls its new Expression Home XP-430 printer a “Small-in-One” for good reason: It packs a lot of functions into a compact size.

The sub-$100 unit scans and makes copies in addition to printing wirelessly via Apple AirPrint or Google Cloud Print. It’s not a productivity monster that would be suited for a really busy home office, but for a light-duty personal printer, it’s worth serious consideration.

SAN FRANCISCO — The idea for Robert Macauley’s “photographs for the new millennium” sprang from a camera that is totally 20th century.

“What if you could create a Polaroid experience for your phone?” Macauley said as he showed off a prototype of LifePrint, his pint-size printer that works with an augmented-reality app. LifePrint lets you print out Polaroid-size images that, when viewed through the app, can come to life on your smartphone screen.

The newspaper that covers the wizarding world of Harry Potter publishes photos that move on the page. For us Muggles, there’s LifePrint, a pocket-sized printer that brings a similar magical to our still photos.

The LifePrint device lets you embed a video inside a printed photograph, using augmented reality and requiring the viewer to point their smartphone at the picture to bring it to life.

When I was a kid, we used to label everything: toys, boxes, file folders. My parents used one of those manual rotary label dispensers, the kind you had to squeeze hard enough to make each individual letter poke up through the hard plastic label tape. It was a good day when my brother and I got to use the label maker to title our shelves, toys and books (“Rob’s Stuff” was a common theme).

These days, printing labels is a lot easier thanks to computers and label printers like the ones from Dymo and Brother. Typically, you’ve got to connect these to a Mac or PC, and then use special software to send labels to the label printer.

The Brother P-Touch P750W (printer makers really need to work on their model names) is a label printer that can connect to your computer via USB, sure, but also connect either to your existing Wi-Fi network or create its own Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n network to print labels from any device, including iPhones, iPads, Android devices, Windows PCs and Macs.

Yeah, I’ve already labeled some shelves around the house. Old habits, it appears, die hard.

Leitz’s Icon is a label printer for iOS (and other mobile) devices, and it actually looks good enough to be an Apple product – the shape is clean and pretty, yes, but it also looks dead easy to use.

LifePrint might finally have invented a printer that you’ll want to use. It’s a wireless, internet-connected box that lets you print pictures from your iPhone (or Android phone), and you can also send photos direct to the printers of your friends and family.

Did your mother ask you to send her your baby photos? You can just print them out on the LifePrint she has sat in the hallway, on top of that lace doily.

Fujifilm has announced the Instax SP–1 mobile printer at Mobile World Congress 2014 in Barcelona, Spain. It’s a wireless, battery powered number that spits out 3×2 prints, and is controlled by an app on your iPhone (or Android device).

And while it looks pretty neat, if you can do without the battery power then I have a much better recommendation.

I used to be a printer opportunist. Find me the cheapest printer in the store, who cares, they’re all the same.

Which, honestly, is true for a technophile like myself (within a certain price range, anyway). I have a Wi-Fi network, spare cables, and a ton of different apps that will let me print from my various Macs and iOS devices.

Not so, however, for someone like my parents. When I went to buy them a printer a few months back to go with their new iPads, we found out that even the AirPrint printers need a WiFi network. They don’t have one (I know, don’t ask).

That’s where the Epson XP-950 comes in. Yes, it’s a high-quality up-to 11X17 photo, paper, and disc printer and scanning device, but the killer feature here? Directly printing from an iPad to the printer without an actual Wi-Fi network to send the print job across.

Oh, and it’s super easy to set up and use.

Despite the fact that Brother’s new, top-of-the-line all-in-one inkjet printer looks like a swarthy behemoth, Brother says the MFC-J6920dw is actually 35 percent smaller than comparable competitor’s models.

Brother achieves this through something they call “Landscape Print Technology,” a feature it introduced last year that lets the printers output to large pages from printers with relatively small footprints.

A printer is already pretty much disposable, thanks to the environmentally hateful practices of manufacturers; it’s almost cheaper to buy a whole new printer than it is to pony up for replacement ink. So why not go the whole way and make the printer out of cardboard? That’s the idea behind Samsung’s concept designs, which take the metal and plastic guts of the printer and put them — literally — into a cardboard box.

Christmas is nearly here, and with it comes the snapping of a million never-to-be shared photos. So, instead of promising your friends and family that you’ll e-mail pictures, or trying to teach your mom how to use shared Photo Streams, or dicking around with SD cards and sneakernet, why not just make some good, old-fashioned prints?

And don’t worry – you won’t have to touch a computer.

At one time, deep back in the swirling mists of time, Polaroid was like the Apple of photography, not only making the best stuff but also inventing new ways to do things. Now, the brand is nothing but a label slapped onto a bunch of crap by the current owner.

But that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing amazing going on in the analog instant film world. Take a look at the Impossible Project’s FPU (Film Processing Unit), an amazing gadget that marries your iPhone to real, instant analog photos.

Small, wifi-enabled with the ability to print from tablets and smartphones, low-cost printing, equipped with a touchscreen, relatively inexpensive, fast…looks like a shopping list for the perfect printer, right? And that’s what Brother might have in their just-launched MFC-J4510DW, a sleek printer with Google Cloud Print connectivity and a price tag of $200 (though I’d love an explanation as to why Brother has stuck with alphabet-soup product names while its competitors have moved on to printers with names like “Artisan” and “Envy”).

You’ve got an iPad. You were so taken with this magical device that you decided to write the next great American novel that doesn’t involve sparkling vampires using Pages or another word processing app for the iPad. One problem: How to print it.

The Brother MFC-J825DW is one of the latest Brother printers to join HP, Lexmark, Epson and Canon as a capable Airprint printer. So how does it work with the iPad?

Ahh, Polaroid – how far you have fallen. Once a true icon, an essential tool for photographers and a medium for many artists, as well as being the only way to take dirty photos without getting arrested at the processing lab.

Now you are stuck licensing your name and Logo to any cowboy who wants to stick a crappy ZINK (zero-ink) printer inside a box with a cellphone camera.

You have an office full of cubicle jockeys, and you have a network full of printers. And a lot of your workers come to the office with iPads and iPhones. Now, I hate printers, but even I realize that people need to put things on paper from time to time. And even a printer lover doesn’t want to re-equip the whole office with AirPrint-ready machines.

Thankfully, you don’t have to. The Lantronix xPrintServer will convert the whole network for you.

If you think about it, printers are probably the worst-designed gadgets in our homes (unless you own the same awful Samsung Behold as I do). But despite the mythical advance of the paperless office, nobody has been able to kill them off. Until now. A new survey says that the iPad has finally doomed the printer, and is even saving trees.

For years, you’ve always been able to buy a Mac and get a $100 rebate for a free printer from Apple. That is no longer the case. The “Buy a Mac, get a free printer” promotion has officially been discontinued by Apple starting today, January 17th.

Till now, HP has held a huge advantage over it’s printer rivals when it comes to printing from the iPad — because even though rivals have made strides with their own apps (like Epson’s slick iPrint app) HP’s printers remain the only ones with AirPrint, which is tied directly to iOS and allows printing from within apps, without having to use an intermediary app (eg iPrint).

London based design consultancy BERG have surpassed themselves with their latest idea, simply called Little Printer.

In all the hubbub with HP killing the TouchPad and spinning off its PC division, one might forget that HP still has a strong connection with Apple: They’re the only printer manufacturer with printers that fully integrate prinitng from iOS, thanks to HP’s inclusion of AirPrint on many of its printers.

The HP Officejet 6500A Plus ($200), with its all-in-one features, automatic document feeder, wifi connectivity and removable duplexer for double-sided printing, is already an attractively spec’d printer. Toss in AirPrint capability and you’ve got a strong contender to fill any iDevice-toting home/small office manager’s priniting needs.

There will soon be a day when a driver is not required for printing. Wireless printing has become more of a household standard as new printers roll out with cloud technology, and Apple is looking to make the printing experience as painless and seamless as possible.

Two interesting patents applications were recently filed by Apple that detail printing protocols and APIs that don’t require drivers, with more of a focus also being placed on printing from the cloud.