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Nov 01, 2024

Best A3 printer of 2024: Top picks for wide-format printers | TechRadar

Print bigger with our top A3 printer picks for home and office When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. The best A3 printers are the

Print bigger with our top A3 printer picks for home and office

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

The best A3 printers are the perfect choice for handling larger prints, like promo displays and posters.

Any of the best printers can print on letter, legal and A4-size paper, but what if you need larger prints for posters, maps or marketing materials? For A3 or tabloid-sized prints (11 by 17 inch) you’ll need a wide-format printer and you’ll find the best A3 printers or tabloid printers (it’s the same thing) reviewed here.

As TechRadar Pro’s printer specialist, I’ve tested over a hundred printers, and I’d guess around a quarter of those are designed for larger paper formats such as tabloid, super-tabloid, A2 and beyond. This top twelve list includes inkjet and laser printers for all budgets, some of which are print-only devices suited to photographers, while others are all-in-ones aimed at business. What they all do especially well is print on paper lager than letter or legal.

Best overall

Best A3 printer overallMy top pick for most people, the Brother MFC-J6959DW has rapid print speeds and plenty of features for A3 printing.

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Best on a budget

Best A3 printer on a budgetFor affordable A3 printing, the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-7310 offers great print quality and value for money.

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Best compact

Best compact A3 printerThe OKI C844dnw is the world's smallest A3 printer, and a stellar choice for those who need a space-saver unit.

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Best laser

Best A3 laser printerThis four-in-one unit delivers outstanding print quality, and comes packed with useful, professional features.

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Best for workgroups

Best A3 printer for workgroupsThe Brother MFC-J6955DW is our pick for anyone looking to set up a workgroup for multiple users.

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Best A3+

Best A3+ printerAn outstanding printer for A3+ photos, the Epson EcoTank ET-8550 impresses us thanks to vivid color prints and refillable tanks.

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Best for home offices

Best A3 printer for home officesThe HP OfficeJet Pro 9730e may lack a few features, but it's well-sized, prints great, and it's also really affordable.

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Best A3 ink tank printer For the full ink tank experience, there's few A3 printers that can beat the four-in-one Epson EcoTank ET-15000.

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Best for business

Best A3 printer for businessThe Brother MFC-J6945DW (known as the MFC-J6947DW outside the US) boasts high print and ink capacity and crisp detailing in prints.

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Below you'll find full write-ups for each of the entries on our best A3 printer list. We've tested each one extensively, so you can be sure that our recommendations can be trusted.

Our expert review:

This feature-packed large-format printer raises the bar for office inkjets. Like the rest of Brother’s business-oriented X-Series, it comes with all the tools the average SMB needs, such as duplex printing and scanning, high ink and paper capacity etc, but adds a significant new skill.

The ability to print and cut banners on rolls of paper puts the Brother MFC-J6959DW in a league of its own. If you need to produce signage or eye-catching marketing material at the point of sale, this thing makes it easy. But even if you don’t print on roll paper, this four-in-one MFP would serve well as workgroup printer in a shared office.

With room for 750 sheets of paper in its twin paper trays and compatibility with Brother’s huge high yield cartridges, it has the paper and ink capacity for a heavy workload. There’s also an NFC module for secure printing and big touchscreen interface to make operation easier. It’s not as fast as a laser, but it does offer way more functionality.

Read our full Brother MFC-J6959DW review.

Our expert review:

Epson’s A3-sized WorkForce color printer is perfect for the small office that needs to print on anything up to 13-in x 19-in paper. Conveniently, it has two 250-sheet paper trays, so you could fill one with A4 and the other with A3. Being an inkjet, you can also load photo paper, not to mention envelopes, labels and thin card.

It prints quite quickly, with a top speed of 25ppm (pages per minute) in black and white, and it can automatically print both sides of an A3 page – quite a feat for such a compact printer. Print resolution and connectivity are also strong suits.

The price is competitive, so don’t expect luxuries like a touchscreen interface, or USB Host port on this budget model. And it’s not part of Epson’s EcoTank line, sadly, so you’ll have to buy replacement cartridges. Thankfully, the four DURABrite Ultra inks are available in individual carts and are not especially expensive.

Read our full Epson WorkForce Pro WF-7310 review

Our expert review:

What looks like your typical A4 printer turns out to be the smallest A3 printer on the market with accessories available to make it one of the largest. It can hold 300 sheets of paper in its main paper tray and 100 in its multipurpose tray, but add three more drawers and that expands the capacity to 2,540 sheets.

It comes with four huge pre-installed toner cartridges that can print around 2,500 pages. What's even better is that you can replace these with cartridges that offer a higher yield of up to 10,000 pages.

You can choose the banner tray upgrade for printing on rolls of paper. It can auto duplex print and has Wi-Fi built in as standard. It uses LEDs rather than laser, but with similar effect.

Read our full Oki C844dnw review

Our expert review:

This high-end laser printer will take big bites out of your office space and your budget, but there’s nothing the VersaLink C7000DN can’t do exceptionally well. For a start, it can duplex print on A3 paper and do it at a resolution of 1200 x 2400 DPI.

It can also scan, copy, and fax with all that functionality simplified by a sophisticated five-inch colour touchscreen.

Text is exceptionally sharp and colours particularly bold and with plenty of optional modules available for boosting the paper capacity, this is a printer that will suit the demands of any medium-sized office.

But keep in mind that this is a heavy printer that takes up a lot of space — you'll need at least a square meter of floor space because opening the bypass tray adds around 40cm to the width.

Read our full Xerox VersaLink C7000DN review

Our expert review:

If you’re looking for a workgroup printer that can handle A3 paper and a heavy workload, the Brother MFC-J6955DW could be the answer. It’s a four-in-one inkjet printer that comes with every business feature we can think of and specifications that will trump most lasers. It prints quickly, especially in duplex mode, and it can hold a ream of A3 paper in its twin paper trays, while holding a hundred more in its multi-purpose tray and ADF.

It also prints very well using extra large cartridges of Brother’s Innobella ink that have such a high yield, the cost per page is lower than any other cartridge-based inkjet and some lasers. It’s a little on the large size, and somewhat expensive, but it’s well designed and easy to use, thanks to the excellent touchscreen interface. With a reasonable amount of ink in the box and very high capacity cartridges available, this inkjet means business.

Read our full Brother MFC-J6955DW review

Our expert review:

The Epson EcoTank ET-8550 has long been one of our favorite printers - and it absolutely excels at A3+ printing. As an EcoTank, it's also an economical choice, letting you refill the ink via bottles instead of expensive cartridges.

Wide-format paper sizes are fed into the printer through a rear tray. In all of our tests, the printer showed excellent performance. However, the highlight feature here is printing photos on glossy photo paper. Results are great, with the six color dyes providing accurate, vivid colors. The inclusion of gray ink, often missing from ink tank printers, helps make even the blacks and white stand out. Check out our Epson EcoTank ET-18100 review for more photo printing at A3 and A3+.

Printing is admittedly slow, but it is quiet. The EcoTank ET-8550 also has scan and copy capabilities - although we were disappointed to see the scanner only supports up to A4.

Read our full Epson EcoTank ET-8550 review

Our expert review:

As large format multifunction printers go, the HP OfficeJet Pro 9730e looks like a well specified office inkjet at a competitive price. It comes with plenty of room for paper (500 sheets) in its twin trays and there's a 35-sheet automatic document feed for copying multiple A4-sized documents.

The print rate of 22ppm (pages per minute) is fast for an inkjet and essential features such as dual-band Wi-Fi, AirPrint and HP's Wolf Pro Security are included. It's also easy to use thanks to the large 4.3-inch capacitive display and an intuitive companion app.

As ever, however, the catch with any cheap cartridge-based printer is the cost of the ink, which is not competitive. We also had some printing issues with paper jams and an inability to print on paper over 105 g/m' in weight. While this inexpensive printer will fit well in a home office environment, we wouldn't recommend it as a workgroup printer in a busy office.

Read our full HP OfficeJet Pro 9730e review

While we rate the EcoTank ET-8550 for A3+ printing, if you want a refillable ink tank printer, you won't find better than the Epson EcoTank ET-15000 in our experience. It has all the features you could ask of a premium four-in-one office printer.

That includes a 35-sheet ADF (automatic document feed) a fax facility, a touchscreen control panel and Wi-Fi with Wi-Fi Direct connectivity.

There’s plenty of room for paper with 250 sheets in the main tray and another twenty in the rear tray and plenty of room for ink. It ships with four bottles that should give you up to 6,200 black and white pages and 5,200 color, so you won’t need to worry about buying more for a while. The Epson EcoTank ET-15000 comes in ice white in the US and black in the UK.

Our expert review:

The Brother MFC-J6945DW (known as the MFC-J6945DW in the UK) is an inkjet that’s aimed at a role in a busy office more usually filled by a laser printer.

The impressive print speed is only a little slower than the average laser, while offering all the advantages of an inkjet, such as the the ability to print on photo paper at a higher image resolution.

It also comes with an unusually generous amount of ink — enough for a whole year apparently. The most impressive feature, however, is its ability to duplex print and scan not just A4 paper, but A3 as well.

Make sure you have enough space to house the printer because it has a large footprint, especially when the rear and front trays are pulled out to accommodate A3 sheets.

Read our full Brother MFC-J6947DW review

Before buying a wide format A3 printer, consider these key questions:

Inkjet or laser?

Generally speaking, choose inkjet for photos and laser for documents. Thanks to thousands of nozzles delivering liquid ink to the page, inkjet printers are tailored to the job. Using dry toner, a laser printer is faster and more efficient, and excels at crisp lettering on documentation. For some top recommendations, we reviewed the best inkjet printers, best ink tank printers, and the best laser printers.

Print-only or multifunction?

We've reviewed a range of A3 printers that also feature scanning, copying, and even fax capabilities. These multi-function printers (MFP) are also known as all-in-one (AIO) printers. However, you often pay extra for these functions, and if you only need to print or don't need the additional features, you can opt for a print-only device. For more fully functional units, we tested out the best all-in-one printers.

Home or office?

Printers designed for the home and home office tend to be more compact, affordable, but may lack the more durable construction of an office printer. Printers for offices focus on print speeds at high volumes, designed for multiple users. They can also include security features and workgroup support. For more professional choices, we reviewed the best small business printers.

Do I need a subscription plans?

You can get anything on subscription these days, and printer ink is no exception. It's not essential, but if you do a lot of printing - and A3 print-outs can use a lot - then it may be worth seeing if your chosen manufacturer offers a printer cartridge subscription service.

What features do I need?

Wi-Fi and Ethernet are more or less standard on the best A3 printers, but other features to look out for include automatic document feeder (ADF), auto-duplex printing and scanning. For A3 printing, it's also worth seeing the specifications for supported paper thickness, particularly if you're printing on card.

What’s my budget?

In our experience, the best cheap printers are usually inkjet models - however, you'll often pay more in the long-run as cartridges are expensive. For laser printing, the opposite is true. The most economical printers to run right now are ink tank printers. Epson's ink tank range of known as EcoTanks, while the MegaTank is the Canon equivalent. We've come across some excellent Prime Day printer deals and Black Friday printer deals when the sales are live, so keep your eyes peeled.

As the senior printer editor at TechRadar Pro, I’ve tested hundreds of products, from the best photo printers to the best large format printers, and I’m always improving my methodology. The process starts right from the unboxing and initial set-up, which is timed. If there’s a problem with unsustainable packaging or a baffling user manual, I’ll call it. If it’s a pleasure to use, that’ll be reflected in the final score too. I always test both wired and wireless connections and explore the various remote printing companion apps offered by brands such as HP and Epson as these often enhance the user experience.

For the performance tests, I have a folder of test cards, photos and text documents designed to assess detail resolution, contrast, color accuracy and gamut. Some test images are particularly good for spotting feathering and smearing among inkjets. A ten-page text document is useful for measuring print rates because I never take manufacturer's claims at face value. Having said that, the quoted print and scan speeds are usually accurate enough that I rarely contradict them.

I print each test page on a range of standard paper stock from cheap 75gsm sheets to 600gsm card, as every printer has its limits and preferences when it comes to paper quality. And if the manual claims you can print on envelopes, labels or t-shirts, I test that too.

Features such as auto-duplex scanning or copying multi-page documents via an ADF (automatic document feed) are evaluated, and an assessment of build quality and design contributes to the overall rating. I pay particular attention to the COO (cost of ownership) because cheap printers can often give lower value for money when you calculate the ongoing consumables cost.

Read more on how we test, rate, and review printers.

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Jim has been evaluating printers for more than twenty years and has, to date, written over a hundred reviews for TechRadar Pro. From pocket printers to industrial dye sublimation, Jim has been there, run the tests and printed the t-shirt. His expertise extends to consumables (paper, ink, toner) and his printer buying guides make it easy to compare these essential peripherals.

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