best home printer for art prints

person printing at desk

Illustration by Alice Morgan

For those seeking a useful way to spend their time during social distancing—or anyone simply interested in forging a deeper connection with their homes—HB has launched Home Love, a series of daily tips and ideas to make every minute indoors more productive (and gratifying!).

High on the list of things I've long considered but always put off due to one excuse or another: getting a printer. For starters, they are large and screechy and horrible-looking—where could I put it so as to be both hidden and also accessible? (Spoiler: There are no options that meet both requirements.) And two, in the age of Adobe Acrobat and Airdrop, how often does one really need or use a printer? I couldn't justify dropping $200 (or more!) on something I only wished to use, purely out of convenience, twice a year. Or so I thought.

But then, I started working remotely. And within weeks, I found myself sanitizing and unboxing a slim, linen-covered printer called the HP Tango X.

To be clear, this purchase was not about work, although I probably could have justified it: We put out a print magazine—ahem, subscribe to it!—and typically edit it line-by-line on good, old-fashioned paper. But that system, like all of our others, has pivoted to digital thanks to Slack rooms and PDFs and blue-light reading glasses. My printer purchase was just for me. The HP Tango X, which now appears sold out pretty much everywhere, connects to my phone and computer wirelessly, and folds up to become a small gray linen box when not in use. You'd never know it was a printer until unfurling it to print something.

Typically, one doesn't really need a printer. You can print the occasional W2 at their office—or the local FedEx office—without much trouble. But, toiling around at home during a global pandemic, I found myself, suddenly, requiring more printed things: a return label for an online purchase (why venture into the post office unnecessarily?), a name-change form for my passport (a year and a half after getting married, I hadn't gotten around to it), maybe some photos of the friends I wasn't seeing IRL any longer...

All of these are acquirable by running an errand or two. But when you are want to leave home—come coronavirus or, perhaps in the future, sheer laziness—a printer saves the day.

Things You Can Print

Stamps! Just weigh the item on your kitchen scale to see how many you need.
Packing labels
Forms... You know what I mean.
Stationery and greeting cards
Photos
Art (just download some free hi-res imagery and frame or tack to the cork board staring back at you from your high-school bedroom)
Math class supplies: graph paper, a ruler, a protractor, etc.
Cards Against Humanity? (I personally can't decide if this is better or worse than buying it, but how neat that you can!)

For more Home Love ideas, head here—we'll be launching a new one every day. And tag your own home project photos #homelove for everyone to enjoy.

Follow House Beautiful on Instagram.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io