In crafting, a proper printer is essential. Flexibility and freedom of creation are the best tools for the trade. While the starter Cricut tools are a start, it helps to have a good set of printers as well.
But there is a problem here when it comes to getting suitable printers for Cricut. There are so many printers out there, so it can be overwhelming to pick the best one.
I researched and selected the top 10 best printers for cricut print and cut, to help narrow down anyone’s choice looking for the right product.
Top 10 Printers for Cricut Print & Cut
| PRODUCT | TITLE | DETAILS | |
|---|---|---|---|
Editor’s choice |
Cannon Ts9521c Crafting Wireless Printer |
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View on Amazon |
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Epson P400-SureColor |
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View on Amazon |
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Epson 15000 Expression Photo HD |
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View on Amazon |
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Epson WorkForce 7610 WF |
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View on Amazon |
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Brother HL 3170CDW Digital printer |
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View on Amazon |
 |
Xerox Phaser 6510 |
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View on Amazon |
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7. HP-Office Jet Pro 8720 |
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View on Amazon |
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Envy 7640 by HP |
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View on Amazon |
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HP Officejet Pro 7720 |
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View on Amazon |
 |
Canon TS9120 AIO Printer |
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View on Amazon |
Cannon Ts9521c Crafting Wireless Printer – Made for crafters
This printer is meant for putting out superb graphics and photos. It comes with handy scrapbook features, along with voice support that makes it an excellent choice for cricut print and cut applications.
It also adds preset background patterns for crafting. It uses a five-ink output using the pigment black, yellow, cyan, magenta black combination. It also feeds paper automatically.
It comes with double paper feeding trays and SD support. The panel is a 4.3inch touchscreen panel with easy to use navigation. What this printer excels in is creating borderless, attractive greeting cards with printing capabilities up to 7”x10” which can be folded into the 5”x7”.
It comes with almost every connectivity feature, including Pictbridge, Ethernet, high-speed USB, memory card, and Bluetooth, among others. As for the picture qualities, it produces photo-lab quality prints.
It can do well in most crafting materials, but ideally, it is best suited for scrapbook enthusiasts.
It comes with a 12×12 borderless printing, preset templates, and mobile printing as well as scans. It is excellent for any scrapbook crafting projects. In my opinion, the Canon TS9521C is the best printer for cricut.
PROs
- Continuous and excellent photo quality
- Great for greeting cards, and high-intensity print jobs.
- Inkjet paper compatible (almost all of them)
Cons
- It takes a long time to warm up if left in idle
- Makes a lot of noise when scanning/printing
Epson P400-SureColor – Large format & High performance
The SureColor P400 by Epson is a large format and effective printer, it supports a wide variety of fine art and crafting papers like both canvases as well as water paper colors.
The print quality is top-notch, as is expected from Epson and is an ideal product for cost-efficient and professional-grade prints.
It has performed excellent for any size photos, be it snapshots of dimensions 4×6 or full-resolution images, producing very high-quality results. When it comes to printing, it has a 10 ppm for black, white-colored prints take 18 ppm.
Slow speed, sure, but the quality is worth waiting for. Relative to size, however, the speed can be different.
It prints out 4×6 photos, with an average rate of 88 seconds. Full page prints can be a tedious task to wait, with prints being made at an average of 194 seconds for one 8.5×11 photo.
Its unique use of colors must also be a contribution when it comes to printing high-quality pictures. The Epson SureColor P400 uses additional orange and red inks along with the yellow, cyan, and magenta cartridges.
Adding to the rich qualities of the pictures are also two black shades: matte black and photo black. An additional gloss optimizer cartridge helps the Epson P400 SureColor to create a consistent inking as well as a glossy protective coat.
The inks cannot be measured when it comes to a use-per-photo basis. However, they cost $1.29 for each milliliter, a very affordable ink considering its performance.
The printer also comes with a compatible tray for printing on DVDs and CDs.
In any case, the Epson P400-Sure Color is a perfect fit for those looking to make quality prints and crafting at a price they can afford.
PROs
- High-quality multi-surface printing with ease
- Long-lasting and affordable ink cartridges
- Great for wide-formatted photos and specialty media
- Easy setup and simple to use
Cons
- Slow photo printing
- No LED, opaque Control Panels
Epson 15000 Expression Photo HD – Quality Results at a lower price
Most crafters, artists, and cricut fans want a high-quality result at affordable prices. If the Cricut Design Space user is running on a tight budget, then the Epson 15000 is an excellent choice for a number of reasons.
While the name can be a bit awkward, you can easily overlook that if the prints are excellent. This printer comes at a very affordable price under $300.
It produces excellent borderless pictures up to the sizes of A3+ and can also directly print labels on CDs and DVDs.
It is a compact printer, and according to Epson, this is the smallest printer as far as A3+ sizes go.
This printer uses a Black, magenta, cyan, and yellow color setup, along with additional grey and red. The latter provides enhanced shade controls, and the former provides an improved color range.
One downside of this printer is on plain paper with a speed of 9.3 pages a minute in a black letter test. However, it ups the ante with complex colors, improving performance up to 4.9 ppm.
Meaning, this printer is a good choice for crafters as well as photographers and digital artists.
As for the borderless printing, it took 3 minutes on an A4 and a reasonable 5 minutes and thirty seconds on A3. Considering the price, that is very reasonable.
PROs
- Great complex graphic printing
- Photo paper print quality is sensational
- Great control of picture quality and shading
- Great monochrome photo mode
Cons
- Quality can be disappointing on black and white
- Does not have memory card slots
Epson WorkForce 7610 WF – High speed & wide format
This is another remarkably affordable printer from Epson, considering it is a wide format printer. This printer is actually a favorite among many crafters.
This is mainly due to its dependability when it comes to printing on cardstock and most other papers. On top of that, it provides crisp printout results with natural color shades.
Skin tones, both on the landscape as well as portrait modes, remain true to original colors.
The Workforce 7610 is an AIO (all-in-one) Inkjet and comes with a 4.3-inch touchscreen panel. It is also specially made to reduce costs on overtime expenses on inks and cartridges.
At an affordable price, 7610 makes it a point to make speed a priority. Thus, it performs at 18 pages per minute in black and white, and nine on color. This, of course, is a critical factor when it comes to buying printers for any reason.
Apart from that, this printer also comes with wireless support with Wi-Fi and remote cricut printing capabilities. It has been classified as faster than most of the predecessors, along with most entry-level laser printers.
Again, take it with a grain of salt because it is not quite as fast as other HP Officejet Printer models.
PROs
- Comes with full fax capabilities
- Clean, sharp texts
- Good speed, remarkable quality considering price
- Front panel Pictbridge and SD sockets
Cons
- No Auto-sensing paper type
- Single paper tray
- Noise while it is feeding paper
Brother HL 3170CDW Digital printer – Fast & Compact
This is a compact and fast printer, fitted for small businesses, due to features like wireless connectivity as well as duplex and a paper capacity of 250 sheets.
With a control panel of 2.7 inches touchscreen interface, it is a fast printer, especially considering it is entry-level with 25 ppm for both colors as well as black prints.
It works well with cardstock and depending on the cricut graphic density, and the speed can scale down to 10.4 ppm.
This is not a very negative thing because most high-tier printers can also take up to a 70% hit when it comes to this level of benchmarking — a reasonable performance considering that it is a printer only.
As for the printouts, this printer gives out great text output. They are well-shaped as well as crisp in all aspects, even when tried on the smallest fonts. And despite the fact that laser printers are not very ideal for printing pictures and photos, the 3170CDW can give exceptional results.
Colors are vibrant as well as brighter than what most laser printers would be able to create for print and cut.
It is also cost-effective despite its high performance, with costs of 2.6 cents and 15.5 cents for black and color printouts, respectively.
PROs
- It costs less and lasts long thanks to the toner cartridges
- Fast output performance
- Great cricut printouts at low cost
Cons
- It has a single printer only function
- Can be quite heavy despite being a single function
Xerox Phaser 6510 – Made for small business and great for cricut
This is a small to medium business focused color printer. The printer provides a high printing speed of 30 pages per minute, both color and black. The standard supply tray can support 250 sheets and an option to add a 550 sheet addon for $199. The trays can handle papers up to 8.5”x14” sizes. The output tray can support up to 150 sheets.
One of the features that are excellent is the Pantone simulator. This helps make changes to the color and the materials to produce a more controlled result. The printer has the most wireless connectivity capabilities and uses three cartridges of toner types.
They are extra high capacity, high capacity, and standard capacity, which all yields a different level of prints, but may or may not be cost-effective depending on the medium.
Additionally, the 6510 is an excellent printer for crafting, and it works great on most crafting papers, including vinyl.
PROs
- It is a fast printer and handles medium to heavy printing fairly well
- Supports double-sided printing
- Good price
- Good image output
Cons
- Text printouts are not very impressive, especially at the low end.
HP-Office Jet Pro 8720 – Best value
The office Jet Pro 8720 can take a bit of space, but it is worth it. It is actually one of the most feature-packed printers on this list. It has double printing and duplex paper feeders and is a reasonably fast printer, especially for colors.
Along with that, it contains a full software interface for both phones as well as PC.
It is an all-in-one printer and despite its features, is a straightforward set up to work with.
Printing on the OfficeJet Pro is a breeze, with a speed of 24 papers per minute and 20 documents per minute for black and color prints, respectively. Depending on the work weight, it can slow down.
Despite that, performance rarely slows when switching to double pages.
As far as images go, 8720 can produce vibrant images.
The colors are consistent, and unless printed at lower qualities, the printouts are near perfect. However, they are not quite as good as photo printers.
Apart from that, the printer offers all the necessary printer features for Cricut Design Space, including fax and scans.
PROs
- Accurate, consistent and vibrant color print
- Fast inkjet printer
- Automatic double document feeder
Cons
- Takes up a lot of space
- Text printing is a bit inconsistent
Envy 7640 by HP – Laser level quality at inkjet prices
When it comes to home printers, the envy series is well known among many Cricut afficionados. The Envy 7640 is an upgrade to its predecessors in technicality, features, and size as well.
The control panel itself is an 88mm pad (touchscreen) consisting of single tap functions. It has two trays, one for papers sized up to A4 and another for the 15×10 cm and 13×8 cm photo blanks.
The listed speed is 14 pages per minute for black and 9 ppm for colors, respectively. Performance does not drop too drastically, as it remains around 7.9 and 11.3 pages per minute for black document prints.
However, while printing the heavy color images, the speed dropped to around four pages per minute, which is not very promising. However, considering the fact that it is an inkjet printer and its price, it is not bad at all.
As far as quality goes, the 7640 is pretty impressive, and the quality of texts especially meets that of laser level quality. The color prints are evened out and smooth, both photos as well as pictures. However, darker areas, like heavily shadowed parts, lose some details.
PROs
- Wireless printing capabilities
- A separate tray for photos
- Compact and affordable
Cons
- Print qualities are not superb
- Paper identification can be annoying
- Identifying and refilling the trays is a chore
HP Officejet Pro 7720 – Best for large format printing
This printer is a bittersweet choice for a number of reasons. It is a good choice when it comes to large cricut printing, at up to 11×17 inches. Along with that, it contains more features.
As far as speed goes, the product description lists it at 22 ppm and 28 ppm, respectively, for black and color. The performance does not perform too far behind with text prints coming at five pages at 24.1 seconds. So it is 12.4 pages per minute. It leaves a little to be desired. As for color prints, six-page prints took 6.4 pages per minute.
The quality, however, is remarkably good considering the price range. It has near laser-quality text prints. The graphics are well saturated, with smooth textures, near true colors and great details. With the duplexer, however, the colors contain less saturation, and shadows seem a bit lighter. But those differences are subtle.
Depending on standard or high ink cartridges, the cost can be a bit of a mix. It calculated up to 2.1 and 11.1 cents for text and colored picture prints respectively at standard.
The high yield cartridges, however, does not make much of a cost break. It takes about 1.7 cents for the black and 7.7 for color, which is quite taxing. However, using three-pack XL ink cartridges can reduce cost when it comes to color printing.
PROs
- Print size is impressive
- Two-sided prints are fast
- Great on colored graphic prints
- Very affordable
Cons
- Scans are not very impressive
- High yield ink costs are expensive
- Lack of physical buttons can be a nuisance
Canon TS9120 AIO Printer –
This may be the last on the list, but that does not mean it is the worst. In fact, the Canon TS9120 is an excellent printer as far as price and usability go. It is a home printer by design, packing six cartridges with one photo blue and two black inks.
It has a five-inch colored touch screen control panel, and despite the lack of physical buttons, it still works like a charm.
As for its speed, the TS9120 printer performed rather impressively with an 11.2 ppm text printing. This, considering its class, is very impressive. But most importantly, the color prints performed at 3.4, which well exceeded the average of its type. The quality of the pictures turned out glossy and natural, even for the high-resolution ones.
Scans are also fast and quality-wise; it does not disappoint. As for the costs, the cartridges perform well but with the roughly average price per page.
PROs
- Fast scans and prints
- Six cartridges for best printout results
- Great control panel
- Can print on DVDs and CDs
Cons
- Two-sided prints are a bit slower than average
- Ink costs per page are average
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Speed or quality?
A: For Cricut, there are a number of important factors to look into. Printing speed can be just as important as the quality, but some printers sacrifice one for the other. This should not be a problem with mid to high tier printers, but when it is a budget purchase, the choice can be narrow. The best way is to have a good quality output, but assuming the crafter is okay with decreased quality, speed.
Q: Which is the best printer type for Cricut?
A: When it comes to Cricut, it can be quite intimidating to pick the right printer. However, knowing what you should look for is the key. Consider paper types, size, quality, paper feeding, and price.
The ones listed in this article are commonly preferred picks for most crafters. Inkjet printers are best suited for this purpose, but some laser printers work fine as well. All-in-one printers provide the best usability.
Q: What is the best buy price for Cricut printers?
A: This depends on the buyer. Most mid-range and low tier printers provide ample features and will satisfy most necessities. High tier priced printers are great when it comes to performance and speed most of the time, but they will cost more (obviously).
Q: How to research for a good printer?
A: Well, starting with this article is a great start. Another way to get this done is to check the full reviews of the printer. Customer feedback on websites can be helpful, but most complaints are based on a single item considered defective. Checking for recommended lists is also beneficial.
Conclusion
To each person, preference is different. Naturally, everyone will have different questions regarding the best printer guides for Cricut. The best way to buy a product is to research it.
The best way to do that is to get your questions answered. Make sure to leave any questions and doubts in the comments section below!
Referred links:
Cricut Tutorials & Design Ideas – Cricut.com
The Ultimate Cricut Guide For Beginners – ALittleCraftInYourDay
How Printer Head Cleaning Works (Manual & Built-in)