The simple fact of the matter is that, as a student, you cannot make it through 4 years of collage without your personal printer. It may be cheaper to use the university’s printer, and you will probably take advantage of that option ever so often, but sooner or later you will need to print a paper in a hurry and that is when you will be thankful for the one on your desk. Of course, being a student, there are plenty of other things that you need to spend your limited funds on, so you need to buy a printer that is both cheap and cheap to run. Unfortunately those 2 qualities tend to exclude each other so we had to look far and wide to come up with the following alternatives for the best printer for college students available in 2014. You may want to make your choice based only on the following list but we would recommend that you scroll past it to the in depth reviews we have given each product. That way you can decide which the best printer for your needs is, based on their qualities.
| Preview | Name | Rating | Price | Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 
| Brother HL-2270DW Compact Laser Printer
| 4.3 / 5 | $$ | Click Here! |
 
| Canon PIXMA MX922 Wireless Color Photo Printer
| 3.9 / 5 | $ | Click Here! |
 
| HP Deskjet 1000 Printer
| 3.8 / 5 | $ | Click Here! |
 
| Brother Work Smart MFCJ870DW Wireless Color Inkjet All-In-One Printer
| 4.1 / 5 | $ | Click Here! |
 
| Epson WorkForce WF-2540 Wireless All-in-One Color Inkjet Printer
| 3.7 / 5 | $ | Click Here! |
1. Brother HL-2270DW Compact Laser Printer
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Our personal favorite printer for college is the Brother HL-2270DW. It is a laser printer so it has a better cost per page price, particularly since it is so easy to recharge the ink cartridges at a local shop, and it is faster than most inkjet printers with a speed of 27 pages per minute. It also has the ability to print on both sides of the paper, so you can save up on paper too. It has a 250 page tray, which, if you are careful in how you balance your university prints and your home prints, should be enough for a whole semester. The other great thing about the Brother HL-2270DW is the fact that, despite the fact that it is a laser printer, it is fairly small and can easily share a typical dorm desk with your laptop and secondary screen. Last but not least, take into consideration the fact that the Brother HL-2270DW has earned a 4.3 star rating on Amazon from almost 3,000 customers, which is more than impressive for this category.
2. Canon PIXMA MX922 Wireless Color Photo Printer
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There is little more we need to say about the Canon PIXMA MX922 except that it is capable of printing 4 x 6 inches photo of the same quality and clarity that you would get from a professional printing shop. It only prints about 4 pages per minute, and this is where you really see the problem with an inkjet printer. Still, it can deliver full pages at 9600 x 2400 maximum color dpi, far above anything you could expect to get out of a laser printer in this price range. We were equally impressed by the fact that you can connect the printer to your wireless network and even use cloud services. So you can start printing a document via your smartphone while you are still at school and find it ready printed for you when you get home. And the Canon PIXMA MX922 has the Auto Duplex Printing feature that allows it to print on both sides of a paper automatically.
3. HP Deskjet 1000 Printer for College Students
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So far, all the printers we have shown you are fairly decent priced, but if you want to get a dirt cheap printer that will still do the job, you will need to choose the HP Deskjet 1000. You will need to connect it to the printing computer’s USB port, but that only makes the setup and installation that much easier. It is an inkjet printer that will turn out college level quality at a decent price. It cannot print on both sides of the paper automatically or do any other fancy things, but it get the job done at an above the average quality and speed.
4. HP Envy 4500 Wireless Color Photo Printer
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Now that we have shown you the most affordable, and the one that makes the most sense for a student, we can finally feature the printer that does it all, the Brother MFCJ870DW. It does more than just print out photo quality documents. You can switch it to fast mode and then, with just a slight decrease in print quality, it will turn out an impressive 33 pages per minute, as long as they only use black, and 27 pages per minute in full color mode. But that is just the beginning because the MFCJ870DW can also be used as a high quality scanner, it can be used as a copier and, not that you would need it, but it also works as a fax machine. From a strict functionality perspective, it is the best printer for college students available on the market in 2014. And it has earned a 4.1 star rating on Amazon from over 1,800 customers.
5. Epson WorkForce WF-2540 Wireless All-in-One Color Inkjet Printer
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The alternative to the Brother MFCJ870DW is the Epson WorkForce WF-2540. It cost just about the same to purchase and it can also be used as a scanner, copier and fax machine in addition to its high quality printing feature. It is slightly slower than the Brother as in high quality mode it can churn out 9 pages per minute in black and 4.7 pages per minute in color. Of course, with a lot of manual tweaking and by lowering the print quality, you can significantly increase that speed.
