Two hundred dollars buys a genuinely good printer in 2026 - as long as you spend it on the right kind, because this is also the price band where the cartridge trap is set.
#ad — buy links are affiliate links and we may earn a commission at no cost to you. How this site is funded. Prices as shown on Amazon as of November 12, 2026; Amazon’s own page is the price of record. Cost-per-page figures are arithmetic on supply prices we read on 27 September 2026 — here is the method.
The pick under $200 is the Epson EcoTank ET-2400, for any household that wants color and a scanner without cartridges: $189.99 list, about 0.4 of a cent a mono page. If you print black text only, the Brother HL-L2460DW at $179.99 is faster and does two-sided printing. The budget pick is the Canon imageCLASS LBP6030w — the cheapest machine here that does the job, and the dearest to run, which is the trade.
What is the best printer under $200?
The Epson EcoTank ET-2400 at $189.99 for most people, because it is the only machine in this band that prints color without cartridges — about 0.4 of a cent a mono page and 1.1 cents an ISO color page. For mono-only printing the $179.99 Brother HL-L2460DW is faster, does automatic two-sided printing and costs about 3.3 cents a page.
How we picked
Under $200 the hardware differences matter less than the supply you are committing to, so that is what we ranked on.
What does the next refill cost? At this price the printer is the cheap part. We only list machines whose supplies we have priced from a published source, and we show the per-page arithmetic.
Is there a subscription attached? No pick here requires or pushes one. That rules out a good deal of what is sold at this price.
Does it survive being ignored? A printer bought for under $200 is usually a light-use printer, and light use is what kills cheap inkjets. Bottle-fed and toner machines both handle it better than cartridges do.
Is it actually available under $200? We check the live Amazon price through our daily price layer rather than quoting a list price and hoping. The box above says which models cleared the cap at the last read, and when that was.
The trap this price band is famous for
Two hundred dollars is exactly the budget the printer industry has built its worst deals around. For well under half of it you can buy a color all-in-one with a scanner, a feeder and an app, which looks like more machine for less money — and then the ink costs about 7.5 cents a page in mono against 0.4¢ on a tank printer. Print 200 pages a month and that difference is larger than the price of the printer inside the first year.
The rule for this band is unglamorous: spend the whole budget on the supply system and accept less hardware. A printer with no duplexer and cheap ink beats a printer with every feature and dear ink, every time, for anyone who actually prints. How much a printer is really worth spending.
What $200 does not buy
Features and the cheapest machine we cover that publishes each
Feature
Cheapest model with it
Roughly
Automatic two-sided printing
Brother HL-L2460DW
$179.99
Color without cartridges
Epson EcoTank ET-2400
$189.99
Flatbed scanner and copier
Epson EcoTank ET-2400
$189.99
Automatic document feeder
Brother DCP-L2640DW
$209.99
Color and auto duplex together
Epson EcoTank ET-2850
$349.99 list
Second paper input tray
Brother HL-L5210DW
$329.99
List prices as published by Brother USA and Epson US on 27 September 2026. Live Amazon prices move daily and are shown on the buy buttons above, with the date they were read.
The two things most likely to frustrate you later are the missing duplexer and the missing document feeder. If either is non-negotiable, the cap has to move: $210 buys an ADF on the Brother DCP-L2640DW, and tank printers with automatic duplex start higher than this page allows.
Color or mono, decided in one question
At this budget you cannot have both cheap color and fast dry mono, so answer this: in the last year, did you print anything in color that you would have been unhappy to see in grayscale? If yes, buy the ET-2400 and accept the slower, wetter pages. If no, buy the HL-L2460DW and stop thinking about ink entirely. The longer version of that question.
Specifications and running costs side by side, for the printers discussed on this page.
#ad — the price buttons are affiliate links and we may earn a commission at no cost to you. How this site is funded. Prices as shown on Amazon as of November 12, 2026; Amazon’s own page is the price of record.
Cost-per-page figures are our own arithmetic: supply price divided by the manufacturer’s rated page yield, using prices read on 27 September 2026 and yields rated at the ISO 5% coverage standard. They are not measured by us and they are not current prices. Every input, and the working · run the numbers for your own printing
The picks in detail
Best printer under $200 overall
Epson EcoTank ET-2400
The cheapest entry into bottle-fed ink. It runs on exactly the same 522 ink as the ET-2800, so the cost per page is identical - you are only giving up some hardware.
Product photograph supplied by Amazon for this listing. We do not have this model in hand and have not photographed it ourselves.
#ad — we may earn a commission. How this site is funded. Prices as shown on Amazon as of November 12, 2026; Amazon’s own page is the price of record.
~0.4¢ per mono page · ~1.1¢ per color page
Based on a Epson 522 black ink bottle rated at 4,500 pages at $17.99, priced on 27 September 2026.
The color figure adds one per-page cost for each of the three color channels, because an ISO color page draws from all of them.
Epson 522 black ink bottle — rated 4,500 pages (ISO/IEC 24712), $17.99 at Epson US, checked 27 September 2026
Epson 522 color ink bottle — rated 7,500 pages (ISO/IEC 24712), $17.99 at Epson US, checked 27 September 2026
Yields are manufacturer-rated at the ISO 5% page-coverage standard, not measured by us, and real-world cost runs higher. Prices are not live: this is arithmetic on a price we read on the date shown, not a current price. How we calculate cost per page.
Identical 522 ink to the dearer ET-2800, so identical running cost
Small enough for a shelf or a shared family desk
What you give up
No automatic two-sided printing
Flatbed scanner only
Fewer hardware niceties than the ET-2800 for a modest saving
Who it is for: the household that wants color, a scanner and no cartridges, inside the cap.
This is the only way we know to get genuinely cheap color printing for under $200. Epson lists it at $189.99 and it takes the same 522 bottles as printers costing twice as much: about 0.4 of a cent a mono page and 1.1 cents an ISO color page. The same money spent on a cartridge all-in-one buys a machine whose first replacement ink set costs more than half of what you paid for it.
Honest cons. No automatic two-sided printing, no document feeder, one paper tray, and it is not quick. Prints, scans and copies, and that is the list. Our ET-2400 page.
#ad — we may earn a commission. How this site is funded. Prices as shown on Amazon as of November 12, 2026; Amazon’s own page is the price of record.
~3.3¢ per mono page
Based on a Brother TN830XL high-yield toner cartridge rated at 3,000 pages at $98.29, priced on 27 September 2026.
Brother TN830XL high-yield toner cartridge — rated 3,000 pages (ISO/IEC 19752), $98.29 at Brother USA, checked 27 September 2026
Yields are manufacturer-rated at the ISO 5% page-coverage standard, not measured by us, and real-world cost runs higher. Prices are not live: this is arithmetic on a price we read on the date shown, not a current price. How we calculate cost per page.
Dual-band wireless (2.4 GHz / 5 GHz), Ethernet or USB
Subscription
None required
What we like
Toner does not dry out, so it is ideal if you print in occasional bursts
Automatic two-sided printing at 36 pages per minute
Brother has publicly denied blocking third-party toner with firmware
What you give up
Black only - no color at all
Cost per page is roughly ten times a tank printer's
The 700-page starter cartridge runs out fast; budget for a TN830XL
Who it is for: anyone whose printing is black text that has to come out immediately.
At $179.99 this is the most capable machine in the band on paper: 36 pages a minute, automatic two-sided printing, dual-band Wi-Fi, Ethernet and USB. Toner does not dry out, so it survives being ignored for a month, and the TN830XL works out at about 3.3 cents a page.
Honest cons. Black only — no color at all — and no scanner. The starter cartridge in the box is rated at 700 pages, and the DR830 drum is a separate purchase down the line. The full breakdown.
#ad — we may earn a commission. How this site is funded. Prices as shown on Amazon as of November 12, 2026; Amazon’s own page is the price of record.
~0.3¢ per mono page · ~0.8¢ per color page
Based on a Canon GI-21 pigment black ink bottle rated at 6,000 pages at $17.99, priced on 27 September 2026.
The color figure adds one per-page cost for each of the three color channels, because an ISO color page draws from all of them.
Canon GI-21 pigment black ink bottle — rated 6,000 pages (ISO/IEC 24712 (Canon default print mode)), $17.99 at Target, checked 27 September 2026
Canon GI-21 color ink bottle — rated 7,700 pages (ISO/IEC 24712 (Canon default print mode)), $12.99 at Target, checked 27 September 2026
Yields are manufacturer-rated at the ISO 5% page-coverage standard, not measured by us, and real-world cost runs higher. Prices are not live: this is arithmetic on a price we read on the date shown, not a current price. How we calculate cost per page.
List price
$248.99 at Office Depot, checked 27 September 2026
Supply type
Refillable ink bottles
Two-sided printing
Not stated on the spec page we read
Document feeder
None
Connectivity
Wireless
Subscription
None required
What we like
Lowest cost per page of any model on this site, mono and color
Pigment black ink smudges less on plain paper
Large 170 mL bottles, so refills are infrequent
What you give up
Canon's own store would not show us a price, so ours is a retailer listing
No document feeder
Canon's headline yields assume its default print mode, not draft mode
Who it is for: the reader for whom the deciding number is the cost of a color page.
Canon’s MegaTank undercuts everything else here on running cost: about 0.3 of a cent a mono page and 0.8 cents an ISO color page, from large GI-21 bottles, with a pigment black that resists water on plain paper. Canon’s list price is $248.99, which puts it over the cap at list — it has been selling below $200 on Amazon, which is why it appears here, and the live figure in the table above is the one that counts.
Honest cons. Canon does not publish automatic duplex or a document feeder for this model on the pages we read, and Canon’s own store would not show us a price. Its position under $200 depends on the current Amazon offer rather than on Canon’s list price. The G3270 in detail.
#ad — we may earn a commission. How this site is funded. Prices as shown on Amazon as of November 12, 2026; Amazon’s own page is the price of record.
~6.1¢ per mono page
Based on a Canon 125 black toner cartridge rated at 1,600 pages at $96.95, priced on 27 September 2026.
Canon 125 black toner cartridge — rated 1,600 pages (ISO/IEC 19752), $96.95 at Precision Roller, checked 27 September 2026
Yields are manufacturer-rated at the ISO 5% page-coverage standard, not measured by us, and real-world cost runs higher. Prices are not live: this is arithmetic on a price we read on the date shown, not a current price. How we calculate cost per page.
List price
Not published where we checked on 27 September 2026
Supply type
Toner cartridge
Two-sided printing
Manual only
Document feeder
None
Connectivity
Wireless
Subscription
None required
What we like
Compact and long established, so toner is easy to find
Laser, so nothing dries out between jobs
Frequently sold well below the price of a Brother equivalent
What you give up
Highest cost per page on this site once you buy genuine toner
No automatic two-sided printing, so paper costs double
Canon's own store would not show us a printer price on the date we checked
Who it is for: very light mono printing where the printer will mostly sit idle — a spare room, a student, a shelf.
This is the cheapest machine we are willing to recommend, and we recommend it narrowly rather than enthusiastically. It is a small wireless mono laser: no duplexer, no scanner, no network port. What it does is start reliably after months of nothing, which is exactly where cheap inkjets fail.
Honest cons. The Canon 125 cartridge is rated at only 1,600 pages, so your cost per page is about 6.1 cents — roughly double the Brother, and the worst running cost in this roundup. Buy it for the low entry price and light use, never for volume. What it costs to run.
+−What is the best printer under $200 for home use?
The Epson EcoTank ET-2400 at $189.99: color, scanning and copying with refillable bottles instead of cartridges, about 0.4 of a cent a mono page. If you never print color, the $179.99 Brother HL-L2460DW is faster and does two-sided printing automatically.
+−Can you get a laser printer for under $200?
Yes. The Brother HL-L2460DW is $179.99 and the Canon imageCLASS LBP6030w sits lower still. Both are mono; a color laser does not fit this budget, with the cheapest we cover at $284.99.
+−Is a cheap printer worth buying?
A cheap printer with cheap supplies is. A cheap printer with expensive cartridges is a payment plan, not a purchase. The ink or toner, not the shelf price, is what decides whether a sub-$200 printer was a bargain.
+−Do any printers under $200 print double-sided automatically?
The Brother HL-L2460DW does, at $179.99. No ink tank printer we cover publishes automatic duplex at this price — the cheapest that does is the EcoTank ET-2850 at $349.99 list.
+−Where do these prices come from?
List prices are read from the manufacturer’s own US site, with the date. The live figures on the buy buttons come from our own daily Amazon price check, stamped with the date and time it last ran — if that check stops, the numbers disappear rather than going stale.
