Best Tank Printers Under $300 in 2023

When it comes to picking up a new printer, it's understandable to feel uncertain about which one to choose. At the end of the day, all printers perform the same basic assignments. The questions are, what features are you searching for and how much are you willing to spend for quality?

Whatever your requirements, there is a printer that can meet them. Our printer buying guide will assist you in sorting through the options to select the right equipment for you.

1. Paper handling

How much paper does your printer need to hold? What is the maximum number of pages that its output trays can handle? What sorts of paper does it support? If you often produce large print projects, you may want to consider a more robust printer with additional space for higher capacity standard trays, or even add-on trays.

2. Print quality

Tank printers are excellent for printing documents that have a mix of text, graphics, and pictures, though they tend to have slower print speeds than laser printers. They're also great for printing photos on different sizes of photo stock.

Dots-per-inch (DPI) is a common measurement of print quality. This number specifies how many individual dots of ink or toner the printer deposits within one square inch of printed space. The higher the DPI, the clearer and sharper the image. But the DPI value has become less important in recent years due to advancements in printing technology.

3. Connectivity

Most tank printers on the market allow computers to connect wirelessly through Wi-Fi or over Bluetooth. This eliminates the need for a cable to print papers. In many cases, you can print without a computer. Many models today even feature the ability to print directly from a digital camera's memory card. You just need to choose a tank printer with connectivity options you want.

4. Running costs

If you regularly print at a high volume, ink tank printers are worth consideration, but their expensive initial cost makes them difficult to justify for many buyers. The variation of the printer price depends on the model you choose - Epson, Canon, and Brother all provide quality options. The biggest value is found in the printer's ink bottles; for instance, Epson's 502 black cartridge prints 7,500 pages for $19.99, and its color ink bottles print 6,000 pages for $14.59. That's a lot of prints for the price, but if you don't print frequently, the savings might not be worthwhile. It all depends on how often you print!

5. Warranty

Many printers consist of a one-year warranty that usually only covers defects to the machine. If you’ve invested in a high-end printer, or if your company has had a bad experience with previous printers, extended warranties could be worth considering.

As you can obviously tell by now, there are tons of aspects to think about when buying a tank printer, not just the upfront price. With that being said, here’s our list of recommended tank printers.

1. Best Convenient Tank Printer: Brother MFC-J995DW

The entry-level Brother MFC-J995DW INKvestmentTank Color Inkjet All-in-One Printer provides a great mix of convenience and productivity advantages. This office-oriented tank printer has auto-two-sided printing and can print from and scan to many memory media, which are features that few of its competitors have.

• With an HWD of 7.7 by 17.1 by 13.4 inches and a weight of 19.2 pounds, the MFC-J995DW is fairly comparable in size to the Canon Pixma G4210 and somewhat taller, longer, and lighter than the Brother MFC-J775DW as well as a few other Brother's lower-volume AIOs.
• Brother MFC-J995DW has a total paper capacity of 101 sheets, which is split between a 100-sheet cassette in the front and a one-sheet bypass, or multipurpose tray, in the back. Like several other Brother AIOs in this class, it supports a small capacity (20 sheets) automatic document feeder (ADF) but does not allow automatic two-sided scanning.
• The MFC-J995DW also supports various connectivity options such as Wi-Fi, Ethernet, connecting to a single PC via USB, Wi-Fi Direct, and near-field communication (NFC), which are peer-to-peer wireless protocols enabling you to connect your printer to a smartphone or tablet without using a router or network.
• In most business environments, the MFC-J995DW prints and copies vivid graphical and picture content well enough to be accepted. The text was crisp, well-shaped, and highly legible, as usual, at around 4 or 5 points.

2. Best Print Quality Tank Printer: Epson EcoTank ET-2760

The Epson EcoTank ET-2760 Wireless Color All-in-One is positioned between the ET-3760 and the ET-4760 in the company's recently released bulk-ink all-in-one printer spectrum. The ET-2760 prints and copies nicely, but it's a little slower than its more robust siblings and lacks several essential productivity features like an ADF and Ethernet connectivity.

• With an HWD of 9.4 by 14.8 by 13.7 inches and a weight of just more than 13 pounds, The ET-2760 is considerably smaller than its ET-4760 and ET-3760 siblings. It also takes up so much less desk space than competitors such as the Canon Pixma G6020, Brother's MFC-J805DW, and HP OfficeJet Pro Premier.
• In terms of paper handling, the ET-2760 has a single 100-sheet input tray that fills from the back of the machine, and a meager 30 print output tray. Up to 20 sheets of quality picture paper or 10 No. 10 envelopes can be stored in the input tray.
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, a PC connection via USB 2.0, and Wi-Fi Direct are all included.  The latter is a peer-to-peer protocol for connecting mobile devices to the printer without them connected to a router or a local area network (LAN).
• This EcoTank ET-2760 prints nicely, if a little slowly, and gives good-looking output. You can print pictures directly from your camera's SD card, and running costs are nearly nothing. This tank printer is ideal for a family that prints around 100 to 150 pages and photos each month.

3. Best Economical Tank Printer: Canon PIXMA G5020

The Canon PIXMA G5020 Wireless MegaTank is one of the very few single-function bulk-ink printers available. It produces outstanding output and has low running costs, just like Canon's other MegaTank brand products. It also comes with thousands of pages worth of ink in the box and supports a variety of connectivity options, together with a few voice-activation protocols.

• With an HWD of 6.6 by 15.9 by 14.6 inches and a weight of 14.3 pounds, the Canon PIXMA G5020 consumes very little desk space, unlike the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-C5290. Despite this, it's nearly twice as big and thick as the HP Tango X printer, as well as a few inches larger and 5 pounds heavier than Canon Pixma G1200.
• In terms of paper handling, the G5020 has a total capacity of 350 sheets, divided into a 250-sheet main drawer and a 100-sheet tray that slides up and out from the rear. On the other hand, the WF-C5290 contains 330 sheets and can be expanded to 850 with an optional 500-sheet drawer, meanwhile, the HP Tango X tank printer holds only 50 sheets.
• Standard connectivity interfaces consist of Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Ethernet up to 100 Base-T, connecting to a single PC via USB 2.0, PictBridge, and wireless PictBridge for connecting directly to specific Canon PictBridge-compliant digital cameras and video recorders. Mobile support includes Google Cloud Print, Apple AirPrint, and Mopria Print Service.
• Most Pixmas prints really well, so does the G5020. At all sizes down to around 6 points, the text is extremely legible and well-shaped, which is quite small enough for most family and small-business papers.
• The G5020 comes with three black ink bottles holding up to 6,000 pages, for a total of 18,000 monochrome pages, as well as a set of color ink bottles containing up to 7,700 color pages. When it's time to replace the bottles, the monochrome output will cost around 0.2 cents per page, and color pages will cost about 0.7 cents. These figures are a fraction of a cent lower than Epson's EcoTank printers.

1. Who should use ink tank printers?

For individuals who print a lot every day, ink tank printers are excellent. They have bigger ink reservoirs than regular cartridges, allowing you to refill ink cartridges less frequently and save money on replacements. This might not be the best option if you just print once a week. On the other hand, ink tanks are the way to go if you're tired of having to refill ink cartridges weekly.

2. What are the advantages of ink tank printers over laser printers?

Ink tank printers print with liquid ink. Some of the benefits of utilizing an ink tank printer versus a laser printer are as follows:

• Printer costs less
• Color print quality is higher 
• Can be used to print on different media like glossy paper, sticker paper, and so on
• Compact size
• Good for home/small office use.

3. What are the disadvantages of ink tank printers over laser printers?

• High operating costs
• Printing is slower than the laser printers
• Need to be used on a regular basis; otherwise, the ink may dry up
• Ideal for heavy and repetitive use.

4. Does ink dry ink tank printers?

Yes, just as the ink dries up in cartridges that aren't used for long periods, ink in an ink tank printer can also dry up. Because ink tank printers are fundamentally inkjet printers, they inherit the same issues.

5. Why is my tank printer not printing?

If your tank printer sounds like it’s printing but prints nothing out onto paper, maybe your printhead needs to be cleaned. Run the automatic printhead cleaning function of your printer to solve this. You can find this on your printer’s display.  You may have to print a few times to clear out whatever’s clogging your printer’s printhead nozzles. Also, check to see if any of your ink tanks are running empty. If the print quality is still poor, try changing the print setting from Normal to High Quality.  You can also try printing on the Glossy Paper setting (under Paper options) to check whether the print quality improves.

Finally, all of these three tank printers under $300 are a great offering in the market. You might select the Brother MFC-J995DW for moderate-use offices, as it provides a great range of connectivity and high printing speed (12 pages per minute for monochrome pages and 10ppm for color ones).

If your small office doesn't require a lot of multipage copies, the ADF-less Epson EcoTank ET-2760 may be a good fit. However, if you do need an automatic document feeder, it's worth spending some extra coin on the ET-3760, or even the more robust ET-4760.

In case your family, home-based office, or small business prints up to a thousand or so pages each month, and running costs are key concerns, the Pixma G5020 is a superb value. It's not only cheap to use in the long run, but it also comes with a lot of ink in the box.

Hope these guides will help you choose a suitable tank printer for your business.