Best photo printers to bring your memories to life

We were seriously impressed with both the quality and speed of this printer. The colour is absolutely spot on, even when printed on standard paper. And the detail it manages to produce is as good as a professional printer, with textures and lines so lifelike it feels like you can jump into the photo.

Set-up is easy between the HP Smart app and the touchscreen panel on the printer itself and took us about 10 minutes in total. There are some nifty features, too, and we were particularly impressed by the dual paper input tray. Simply put, this means you can have your standard printer paper in the main tray and then load your fancy photo paper in another. It’s easy to select which tray to print from when you go through the printer prompts, which really cuts down on faff. The printer can also scan and copy, and has a document feeder, meaning you can photocopy a multipage document without having to feed in each page yourself. Overall, this is hard to beat, especially given the reasonable price.

This nifty little printer feels like a collision of analogue and digital worlds. Download the Polaroid app (very easy to use, no faff here), pop your phone face down and it prints out the photo on your camera screen as a Polaroid. This was a lot of fun, and we admit we got a bit addicted. The printouts are good quality – not sharp and the colours aren’t true to life, but they have that colour grading on them that Instagram has spent a lot of time emulating with filters.

As for the printer itself, it is quite chunky and heavy, so not something you can easily slip into a small bag, say. But we took it on a weekend away with us and had lots of fun printing out our memories on the go – and our whippersnapper kids (who will probably never have the fun of picking up a developed roll of film from the Boots photo desk) were totally entranced. It’s worth noting the i-Type film that this printer takes costs £15.99 for eight images – so it’s not a cost-effective way to print your photos, but boy is it fun.

The app software also lets you create a Polaroid collage (one large image spread over up to nine prints). You can also embed a film in your physical Polaroid – whereby you hover your phone over the Polaroid with your camera app open and a film linked to the photo plays. What a time to be alive!

This printer feels seriously heavy-duty when you get it out of the box, mainly because it can print in sizes up to A3. We were impressed by how easy it was to connect to our laptop and phone and get printing – the whole process probably took less than 20 minutes, and we didn’t utter any expletives in that time either. Seriously impressive!

The quality of the photo printing on standard paper is very decent indeed – a full A4 photo printed out looks pin sharp and highly detailed, with an excellent range of colours. The colours are slightly warmer than some of the others we tried, too, which is probably thanks to all those individual print cartridges it has. Home learning and any of our own work looked noticeably sharper than the stuff our bog-standard printer normally churns out, which makes it ideal for creative types or those who need a more professional edge to their printing. Another plus point is that it’s very speedy and quiet – it made short work of even detailed, print-heavy documents.

After some initial headaches setting this up – probably more to do with us than the printer – the ET-2850 impressed us. We will say, though that set-up is a bit lengthy, as you have to manually pour in the ink from supplied bottles (not at all as messy as that sounds), and ideally have a smart device to take you through setup. Our tip is to set this up long before you urgently need to print something.

The colours from this printer are incredible – they are true to life. The detail on the printing is fantastic, too, and there was not a single blur or smudge in our printouts. In fact, it had us wanting to print out our entire camera roll. Thanks to the EcoTank, the ET-2850 can go and go. You’re supplied with one bottle of CMY, and two bottles of black ink. This bundle is apparently equivalent to 72 ink cartridges, making it more cost-effective and eco-friendly, too. As well as top-quality photo printing, this printer can handle standard printing, two-sided printing, scanning and copying.

If you want to print photos from your phone in a quick and fun way, this Instax number is for you. It connects to your phone via Bluetooth, and, using an app on your phone, you can pick any photo from your camera roll to print out in Instax format. The printer then produces a cute little photo with that retro feel. The product name indicates that the end result is a bit bigger than the little Instax photos you might’ve seen around, but it’s still rectangular.

The app (use the dedicated Instax Wide app, rather than the general Instax one) allows you to also add filters, little icons and make a collage. You can even ask friends to collaborate on a photo with you via the app, and then print it off once everyone is happy with it. The print takes a good five minutes to develop and you’re left with a gorgeous, nostalgic print. The colours are never going to be as close to the true colours from a desktop printer, but that’s not the point of this device – it’s meant to be fun, and it certainly delivers.

This is really the printer you want if you’re doing some serious printing at home and want the images to be good enough to hang on your walls. The print quality of the Pixma 6250 is second to none, and the depth of colour is perfect. This is thanks, in part, to the six-colour ink tanks that contain photo-quality inks. We also used glossy photo paper, normal paper and matte paper in this printer and weren’t disappointed by any of the results – although, you’re always best opting for photo paper if you want a more professional finish.

Setup was simple – the small screen guides you through the process and connecting it to our wireless network via WPS was just two clicks of a button. Then we easily printed from both our laptops and smartphones and were able to select the print quality and type of paper to get the best results. The Pixma G650 is also able to take care of your day-to-day printing needs, as it has a scan and copy function too, although no automatic paper feed for doing multipage documents.

Oh, the fun we had with this camera. Yes, it’s a camera and a photo printer in one and it comes with 10 different lens effects, including soft focus and fish eye – there are film filters, too, if you want the Insta effect on your snaps. To use, simply load in the film, snap away and then pull the printing lever and out comes your photo. It really couldn’t be simpler. The quality of the photos is sharper than other instant photos we tried and we liked that this meant you could pick the photos you print. Plus, you can also print one photo multiple times.