Our picks for the best back to college and university printers

A good printer is a must for college and university students, whether it’s to print a report, homework assignment, scan a document and send by email to your prof or a fellow student, or to print a photo to hang on a dorm wall.

What’s the criteria? It has to be cost effective to purchase and to maintain and not take up too much space on a desk — funds are limited when you’re in school. Here’s our picks for the best printers for college and university students to purchase today.

HP Envy 5055

The HP Envy 5055 offers a balance of price and quality, along with a number of built-in conveniences to make your life easier. A big draw is HP’s optional Instant Ink replacement service, which will automatically reorder ink cartridges when your printer is running low — great for busy students. The most popular subscription plan gives 50 pages of ink for a low monthly monthly flat fee so you save time and money.

The Envy 5055 is designed to handle just about any printing job but shines at photo printing. Additional features include wireless printing and it connects to a wide range of devices including phones or tablets, as well as to cloud services like Google Drive, Dropbox, or iCloud. Bonus — Envy 5055 is compatible with Amazon Alexa, so it can be operated by voice control.

HP OfficeJet 4650

A do-it-all printer, competitively priced with a consistently high-quality print, the HP OfficeJet 4650 is an excellent choice. It is a moderately compact printer that leaves room on your desk for a computer and still have a workspace area. It can be hooked up via USB or Wi-Fi for wireless printing from a mobile device and also offers copy, scan and fax functions. Use the downloadable HP Smart App to manage all the features and to print photos quickly or scan a document to e-mail.

HP DeskJet 1112

The HP DeskJet 1112 is affordable, super compact and great for students living in tight quarters. Operating on both Windows and Mac platforms via USB or wireless connectivity, the DeskJet 1112 also provides support for HP’s optional high-yield ink cartridges, allowing time-crunched and cash-poor students to print up to 480 pages before needing to repurchase an ink refill.

Canon Pixma TS9120

The all-in-one Canon Pixma TS9120 provides the best-in-class print speeds for text and photos — and is available in three different colours to match your decor. Choose from two-tone grey, gold or red, plus six individual colour inks to give you some of the best colour quality available at this price range.

And along with all of that, it also comes with scanning and copy functionality, plus it's compatible with Apple’s AirPrint and Google’s Cloud Print wireless printing technology. A five-inch LCD touchscreen gives you an enhanced user interface for easy and quick setup along with adding creative effects to your photo prints. The TS9120 also supports CD/DVD and Blu-Ray disc printing, business card printing and support for loading files or images directly from a memory card.

Canon Selphy CP1300

For the photographer or art student, the Canon Selphy CP1300 Wireless Compact Photo Printer provides a compact photo printing solution about the size of a textbook. that’s similar in size to a college textbook. The Selphy weights about half of the average laptop and you can purchase it in white or black. The Selphy also provides wireless printing through the Canon’s PRINT downloadable smartphone app for Android and iOS. It also offers a variety of printing choices from postcard-sized to square label prints, as well as traditional 3 x 5 and 4 x 6 prints.