Best Printer for Infrequent Use (2026)

We’ve all been there. You need to print a boarding pass at 5am, or a form for school that’s due today, and the printer hasn’t been touched in three weeks. You press print, and out comes… streaky rubbish. Or nothing at all. Cue a cleaning cycle that gobbles up half your ink and still doesn’t fix the problem.

That’s the inkjet experience for anyone who doesn’t print regularly. The good news? You don’t have to put up with it. The right printer handles weeks — even months — of inactivity without blinking.

Why Infrequent Printing Kills Inkjets

Most home printers sold in the UK are inkjets. Cheap to buy, available everywhere, perfectly capable — as long as you use them regularly. Most households don’t.

Here’s the problem: inkjets spray liquid ink through nozzles thinner than a human hair. Leave them unused for two to four weeks and the ink dries inside those nozzles. The result? Streaky prints, missing colours, or a flat refusal to print. The cleaning cycle wastes ink and often doesn’t fully fix things. I’ve burned through entire cartridges just trying to unclog a printer I hadn’t used in a month.

Laser printers use powdered toner. Powder can’t dry out, can’t clog, can’t degrade. I left my Brother laser untouched for four months over summer, came back, and got a perfect page first try. That single difference makes laser the obvious choice for infrequent printers. We go deeper on this in our advantages of laser printers guide.

Laser vs Inkjet for Occasional Use

Feature	Laser Printer	Inkjet Printer
Idle reliability	Excellent — toner never dries	Poor — ink clogs after 2-4 weeks
Upfront cost	£80-150	£40-80
Cost per page (mono)	2-4p	5-10p (cartridge), 0.2p (EcoTank)
Print speed	20-30 pages/min	8-15 pages/min
Photo printing	Poor to average	Good to excellent
Warm-up time	5-10 seconds	None
Physical size	Larger	Compact

If you need colour photos, a refillable tank inkjet (like the Epson EcoTank) is a reasonable alternative — the larger ink reservoirs handle inactivity better than cartridge models. See our Epson vs HP printers comparison for help picking between the brands.

Top 5 Printers for Infrequent Use

1. Brother HL-L2350DW — Best Overall

If I had to recommend one printer to everyone who prints infrequently, it’s this one. I’ve been recommending the Brother HL-L2350DW for years, and I haven’t had a single person come back unhappy.

It’s a mono laser with Wi-Fi, auto-duplex, and a starter toner that lasts about 700 pages. The high-yield TN-2420 replacement does 3,000 pages for ~£45. At infrequent use, that cartridge will literally last you years. My parents’ one is still running on the toner it shipped with, 18 months later.

Key specs:

• Print speed: 30 pages per minute
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi, USB
• Duplex: Automatic
• Toner yield: 700 pages (starter), 3,000 pages (high-yield)

Pros: Bulletproof reliability, fast, compact for a laser, dirt-cheap toner. Never clogs, ever.

Cons: No colour. No scanner or copier. But honestly, for most infrequent printers, those aren’t dealbreakers.

Best for: Anyone who prints text documents occasionally and wants zero faff.

2. HP LaserJet M110we — Best Budget Laser

The HP LaserJet M110we is tiny — barely bigger than a thick hardback book. If your desk is already crammed with stuff, this fits in spaces no other laser printer can manage. Around £80-100 on Amazon UK.

Sharp mono prints, zero fuss. The starter toner does roughly 500 pages.

Key specs:

• Print speed: 20 pages per minute
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi, USB
• Duplex: Manual
• Toner yield: 500 pages (starter)

Pros: Genuinely affordable, ridiculously compact, reliable. HP Smart app is well-designed.

Cons: No auto-duplex (manual flipping only). No scanner. HP+ means you’re stuck with HP toner — no third-party cartridges. Running costs are higher than Brother (4p vs 1.5p per page).

Best for: People who need the smallest possible laser printer and can live with slightly higher running costs.

3. Brother DCP-L2620DW — Best Laser Multifunction

Sometimes you need to scan a document too — a signed contract, a receipt, that form from school. The Brother DCP-L2620DW adds a flatbed scanner and 50-sheet ADF to the same reliable mono laser platform. Same excellent toner system as the HL-L2350DW.

Key specs:

• Print speed: 32 pages per minute
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi, USB, Ethernet
• Duplex: Automatic
• Scanner: Flatbed + 50-sheet ADF

Pros: Print, scan, and copy. Fast. Reliable. The ADF handles multi-page scanning without babysitting.

Cons: Mono only. Bigger footprint than print-only models — it needs proper desk space.

Best for: Home offices that occasionally need to scan or copy alongside printing.

4. Canon PIXMA TS3550i — Best Budget Colour Option

If you absolutely must have colour and can’t spend more than fifty quid, the Canon PIXMA TS3550i is… acceptable. It’s an inkjet, so it carries the drying risk, but Canon’s print head maintenance is better than most. Currently around £45-60 on Amazon UK.

Key specs:

• Print speed: 7.7 ppm (mono), 4 ppm (colour)
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi, USB
• Duplex: No
• Cartridges: Canon PG-545/CL-546

Pros: Cheap to buy, colour printing, scan and copy included, compact.

Cons: Ink will dry out if left for weeks — that’s just the reality. The small cartridges are expensive per page (we’re talking 8-10p). Slow. No duplex. A friend of mine bought one, left it three weeks, and had to run two cleaning cycles before it printed properly. Cost him about £5 in wasted ink.

Best for: Budget buyers who need occasional colour and are willing to print a test page weekly to keep the nozzles clear.

5. Epson EcoTank ET-2860 — Best Colour for Infrequent Use

The Epson EcoTank ET-2860 is the best inkjet option for people who don’t print often. The refillable ink tanks hold far more ink than cartridges, and those larger reservoirs are much less prone to drying. The included ink bottles print up to 4,500 mono or 7,500 colour pages — that’s years of ink for most households.

Key specs:

• Print speed: 10.5 ppm (mono), 5 ppm (colour)
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi, USB
• Duplex: Automatic
• Ink yield: 4,500 mono / 7,500 colour (included bottles)

Pros: Running costs are almost nothing (sub-1p per page), colour printing, refillable tanks handle inactivity much better than cartridges, auto-duplex.

Cons: £180-220 upfront is steep for what is, at the end of the day, an inkjet. Long periods of inactivity (6+ weeks) can still cause clogging. Slower than laser. The 100-sheet paper tray is small.

Best for: Anyone who needs colour printing and can commit to using the printer at least once every two to three weeks.

Comparison Table: All Five Picks

Printer	Type	Colour	Print Speed	Auto Duplex	Price Range
Brother HL-L2350DW	Laser	Mono	30 ppm	Yes	£100-130
HP LaserJet M110we	Laser	Mono	20 ppm	No	£80-100
Brother DCP-L2620DW	Laser	Mono	32 ppm	Yes	£140-170
Canon PIXMA TS3550i	Inkjet	Colour	7.7 ppm	No	£45-60
Epson EcoTank ET-2860	Inkjet	Colour	10.5 ppm	Yes	£180-220

Buying Guide: What Actually Matters

Toner vs Ink

Single most important decision. If you print less than once a week, laser wins. Toner cartridges last thousands of pages and don’t degrade from sitting idle. Done.

Connectivity

Wi-Fi is non-negotiable in 2026. You want to print from your phone, your laptop, your tablet — without plugging in cables. Every printer here supports wireless printing. USB is a useful backup but you’ll rarely use it.

Running Costs

Look at cost per page, not the price on the box. A £50 inkjet that uses £30 cartridges every 200 pages is far more expensive over its life than a £120 laser with £45 toner that lasts 3,000 pages. The maths doesn’t lie.

Mono laser: 2-4p per page. Cartridge inkjet: 5-10p per page. EcoTank: as low as 0.2p per page.

Duplex Printing

Auto-duplex (double-sided printing) halves your paper usage. Standard on most laser printers, often missing from budget inkjets. If you print multi-page documents even occasionally, it’s worth having.

Size and Noise

Laser printers are bigger than inkjets — that’s just physics. But compact models like the HP M110we are narrowing the gap. Laser printers make a brief noise when printing (the fuser warming up, the drum spinning), but they’re dead silent when idle.

The Verdict

For most people who print infrequently, the Brother HL-L2350DW is the answer. Reliable, fast, cheap to run, works perfectly after months of sitting idle. Buy it, stick it on a shelf, forget about it until you need it. It’ll work. Every time.

If you need colour, the Epson EcoTank ET-2860 is the safest inkjet option, thanks to those big refillable tanks. But you’ll still need to run a test page every couple of weeks to keep the nozzles clear — not the end of the world, but something to remember.

The takeaway is simple: if you don’t print often, buy a laser. No dried-out ink, no clogged nozzles, no wasted cartridges, no standing at the printer at 5am swearing at it while your flight is in four hours.