A $300 cap is unusually well placed in laser printing. It covers every mono laser a household could want, it just reaches a color laser, and it stops about thirty dollars short of the business machines — which is where the toner gets dramatically cheaper. Knowing which side of that line you are on is the whole decision.
How we picked
Every printer on this page was under $300 at the manufacturer’s own list price on the date recorded beside it. We used list prices rather than street prices because a street price changes hourly and a list price is a published, checkable number. Retail prices move in both directions, so check the current one before buying.
Within the cap we ranked on cost per page from the largest genuine cartridge the printer takes, then on automatic duplexing, then on hardware. That order is deliberate: at this budget the cartridge outlives the saving.
What $300 buys, and what it does not
| Printer | List price | What you get | Inside $300? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brother HL-L2460DW | $179.99 | Mono, auto duplex, dual-band Wi-Fi, Ethernet | Yes, with $120 left |
| Brother DCP-L2640DW | $209.99 | Adds a scanner and a 50-page feeder | Yes |
| Brother MFC-L2820DW | $279.99 | Adds fax and a fuller control panel | Yes, just |
| Brother HL-L3220CDW | $284.99 | Color laser, auto duplex, four cartridges | Yes, just |
| Brother HL-L5210DW | $329.99 | Two paper sources and the cheap TN920 cartridge | No — $30 over |
List prices from each model's Brother USA product page. These are not live prices and not what you will pay; they are the published figure we read on the date shown.
That last row is the interesting one. Thirty dollars past the cap sits the business cartridge tier: the TN920XXL is about 1.9 cents a page against the TN830XL’s 3.3. If you print a lot, the cheapest printer to own is just outside a $300 budget, and it is worth knowing that before you set the budget.
The $300 you did not budget for
The purchase price is the part people plan. The cartridge is the part that arrives later. At 100 pages a month, three years of high-yield toner on any of the TN830 models above comes to $118 — which, on a $179.99 printer, roughly doubles what you have spent.
At the same volume on the standard TN830 cartridge instead, it is $183. Same printer, same pages. Buying the cheaper cartridge on the shelf is the most expensive decision available inside this budget.
Cheapest under $300 is not the same as cheapest to own
This page answers a budget question: what is the best printer I can buy for $300 or less. It is not the same question as which laser costs least to own, because that answer counts cartridges over years rather than dollars at the till.
The two answers happen to agree here — the HL-L2460DW wins both — but they part company as soon as volume rises. Our budget page ranks on three-year total cost, and the cheapest printers to run ignores purchase price entirely.
What $300 buys if it does not have to be a laser
A refillable tank printer at the same money prints color at a small fraction of the cost per page — about 1.1 cents a color page, where color toner runs to many times that. The reason to still buy the laser is that toner cannot dry out, which matters if the printer will be ignored for weeks at a time. The volume at which the answer flips.