Do you need a printer for college?
You can get through most courses without one: campuses provide printing, and plenty of work is submitted online. You want one if you print readings to annotate, if your course hands in on paper, or if you would rather not walk to a library at 1am. A mono laser is the right kind.
The four questions that settle it
- Does your course submit on paper? Law, education, nursing and anything with signed placement paperwork still do. If yes, bring a printer; a printing allowance that runs out is not a thing you want to discover in week eleven.
- Do you read on paper? Some people annotate PDFs happily; others cannot retain a word that is not printed. If you are the second kind, you will print hundreds of pages a term and a printer pays for itself in convenience alone.
- What does your campus actually give you? Check your own institution’s printing allowance and per-page charge before you decide — the figures vary enormously between schools, and we will not invent a number for yours.
- How far is the nearest printer at 1am? This is the question that decides it for most students, and it is not really about money.
If the answer is yes, buy a laser
Student printing is bursty by nature, and bursty printing is exactly where inkjets struggle. An inkjet left idle between deadlines can clog, and it spends ink on cleaning cycles whether or not you print. Toner is a dry powder with nothing to dry out, so a laser that sat through reading week prints perfectly on the Sunday night you need it.
The other two features that matter in a dorm are a duplexer, because carrying half as much paper is a real benefit, and a cheap high-yield cartridge, because nobody wants a $90 supply bill in their second term. That combination is what puts the Brother above at the top. Why toner suits occasional use.
| Printer | Per page | 500 pages | 1,500 pages a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brother HL-L2460DW | ~3.3¢ | ~$17 | ~$50 |
| Canon imageCLASS LBP6030w | ~6.1¢ | ~$31 | ~$92 |
| Epson EcoTank ET-2400 (mono) | ~0.4¢ | ~$2 | ~$6 |
Our arithmetic on genuine supply prices and manufacturer-rated ISO yields read on 27 September 2026. Paper is excluded. Rated yields assume 5% coverage, so real spend will be higher.
Three things nobody mentions about a dorm printer
- Space, not speed. A dorm desk is small and a printer is the biggest object you will put on it. Measure the desk before you buy, and remember a laser needs clearance behind for the rear duplex door.
- Everyone on your floor will want to use it. A printer on the Wi-Fi is a printer your flatmates will find. That is either a social asset or a toner bill, depending on your temperament — a USB cable solves it quietly.
- It has to survive a summer in a box. Toner does. Liquid ink in a tank printer left for three months in a parent’s garage may not.