Best devices for Work: Tech Awards 2021 Editor's Choice Results (Part 3)

Best Home Printer

Best Home Printer

In the home, whether for home or SOHO use, we still mostly rely on inkjet printers. They offer the best mix of functionality, cost-effectiveness, and quality. And even better for consumers like us, printer manufacturers have realised that we are sensitive to cost and have made smart tank, or ink tank printers mainstream product releases.

For this category, we tested two ink tank printers from HP and Canon that fit within our qualification timeline. They are both about S$350 (or below) AIO printers that can scan, copy, print, and have ink tanks for CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black). If you're looking for options to manage high print volume, more paper handling options and to serve a group of users, we've some serious options covered from last year's shootout.

Without further ado, here are the contenders and who made the list for the Best Home Printer:-

Nominees:

• Canon Pixma G3060
• HP Smart Tank 615

And the winner is…

This time around, with only two printers in the category, there was one that had an advantage from the start. The HP Smart Tank 615 offered the best mix of performance and cost-efficiencies. It was also the clear winner in terms of features as it came with an ADF that can hold up to 35 pages, a 100-sheet paper tray, and a 2.2-inch touchscreen display.

The HP Smart Tank 615 ships with a complete set of ink bottles. The 135ml Black has a print yield of 6,000 pages while the coloured bottles of Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow can print up to 8,000 pages.

In terms of print quality, both printers were fairly close to each other. These days, the print quality output on the affordable printer models are good enough that only minute differences in areas such as brightness, vibrance, and bleeding are the only way to tell them apart.

However, print speed is still a big differentiator among different printer classes and even within the same group. Using a four-page test document print run, which is part of our gamut of printer tests, the HP Smart Tank 615 was found to be 30 seconds faster. A print run of the same document five times saw a three-minute difference.

Furthermore, thanks to its auto document feeder (ADF) functionality and 2.2-inch touchscreen display, the HP Smart Tank 615 was a clear winner in features, as well as in printing, scanning and copying tasks.

Without an ADF, the Canon Pixma G3060 simply can’t compete as each page needs to be manipulated manually to be scanned and copied. Plus, the small two-line mono display was barely adequate compared to the 2.2-inch touchscreen display of the HP Smart Tank 615.

References

• Canon Pixma G3060 review  (HWM)
• HP Smart Tank 615 review (HWM)