The best home printers for hybrid workers

Times change. More people than ever are doing some or most of their work from home, going into the office only when it's really necessary. Jamie Watson is a prime example. A strategy director at an advertising agency in Bristol, he works with clients, a research team and a creative concept team, and he has transformed his dining room into a home office.

"When I have loads of work to do, working from home is quite a good way to get away from the distractions of the office," he says. "You can manage your time a little better and it's just a bit less rigid than traditional working hours. Obviously, you don't have to commute either, so you can get a bit more work done in a day. I'm quite into cycling, so I can go for a bike ride without having to factor in the time to commute to the office, or vice versa."

Jamie discovered very early on that a reliable printer was an essential, and decided that the Canon PIXMA TR4640 was the ideal home office printer for his specific requirements. However, that's certainly not the only option. Canon's extensive range of PIXMA and MAXIFY printers includes models such as the PIXMA TS7740i, MAXIFY GX1040 and MAXIFY GX2040, perfect home office printers for people who, like Jamie, were previously used to printing in an office environment. As such, these printers are easy to set up and intuitive to use. They're also designed to be fast, efficient and cost-effective, while delivering print quality of a professional standard that your business can depend on.

Here, Jamie shares how his home printer offers him a pathway away from his screen to fully immerse himself in projects he works on at home, and we explore some further benefits of Canon printers for the home office.

Jamie's PIXMA TR4640 printer helps him step away from his laptop, reduce his screen time and focus on hard copies of documents that are necessary for his work. "I prefer to read client briefs on paper," says Jamie, "to take in more so you don't get distracted by whatever is on your screen like an email or team chat notification. It's easier to focus on what you're reading, highlight it and add questions. I just feel a little bit more engrossed in what I'm doing and what I'm reading.

"When getting survey results back from research agencies with lots of different charts and graphs, I find it easiest to have a few pieces of paper in front of me and compare them, rather than flicking through slides," he adds.

When working at the office, you never really have to worry about the printer set-up and paper and ink levels. At home, it should be no different. A document removal reminder notification, improved front paper tray to make paper loading easier and a faster, straightforward cartridge installation makes this a user-friendly and efficient home printer for professionals like Jamie.

Subscription-based ink services are available for selected Canon printers in selected regions. The Canon Auto-Ink Delivery service gives you one less admin task to worry about, as your printer's ink levels are automatically monitored and replacement cartridges or bottles of ink are delivered to your door before you need them. It's free to sign up to the service and you can cancel any time you want. With the PIXMA Print Plan, you can choose a tailored print plan for you where you pay a fixed monthly price based on your print usage and get ink delivered when you start running low.

Like Jamie's Canon PIXMA TR4640, the PIXMA TS7640i is an all-in-one budget printer that's suited to photo printing and crafting as well as producing business documents. Its compact size makes it perfect where space is tight, while next-generation print heads enable fast print speeds of around 15ipm (impressions per minute) for mono and 10ipm for colour documents. It's also the first Canon home printer with marker-resistant black ink, equivalent to that of GX business models, so you can use highlighter pens without any risk of smudging text. It even has a tilting colour touchscreen with alternative interfaces for work, study and lifestyle scenarios. Print quality is excellent, and advanced Wi-Fi printing features enable you to scan directly to a smartphone or tablet. The PIXMA TS7740i adds an auto document feeder for easier scanning or copying of multi-page documents, ideal for the home office.

The Canon MAXIFY GX1040 is a more business-focused all-in-one printer that aims for seamless integration between the home and office. Its customisable colour touchscreen interface gives you the option of assigning complex but often-repeated tasks such as cloud-based printing and scanning to a single tap or two. Thanks to its MegaTank refillable ink tanks, you can expect to get thousands of mono and colour documents from a single set of ink bottles, saving time and money compared with typical cartridge-based home office printers. All the inks are pigment-based and resistant to smudging, for colour as well as mono documents. Like the PIXMA TS7640i, it's fast, with print speeds of around 15ipm for mono and 10ipm for colour, and the MAXIFY GX2040 adds the convenience of an auto document feeder for its scanner, as well as fax capabilities.

Canon printers with Wi-Fi make it easy for you to print, copy and scan from your smartphone or tablet using the Canon PRINT app, and also check printer status and ink levels wherever you are on the Wi-Fi network.

Jamie finds that using the Canon PRINT app has many benefits. "It was very easy to set up the printer, which was the main thing for me because I feel like every printer I've ever had has taken me about five days to actually set up and get working. It just did it itself," he enthuses.

It also features a useful connection to the Easy-Layout Editor, which enables you to rearrange documents such as PDFs and image files onto one page before printing – ideal for the sort of work Jamie does.

With the Canon PRINT app you can scan and print to and from the cloud.¹ It's a major advantage for hybrid workers who need to share documents with colleagues at the office or working in other remote locations.

The PIXMA Cloud Link is perfectly suited to small businesses that share and save content on a shared cloud service such as Google Drive™, Dropbox™ or the Evernote® service,² meaning these files can be accessed to print no matter where you are.

When teams share their designs, Jamie says the act of printing documents and drawings before pinning them on the wall, or having them on display, helps him consider creative ideas as he works.

"When we get creative ideas back from our concept teams, which can be drawings of designs, quite often you just need to get on with a bit of work and almost have it in the back of your mind," he says. "So I quite like having it printed out, as it allows me to mull it over in the background when it's printed and pinned up on my wall or desk. It's a bit easier to refer back to and subconsciously keep thinking about."

Another business benefit for hybrid workers is the free-of-charge Canon PosterArtist. It includes thousands of fully customisable layouts backed up by high-quality artwork for creating flyers, banners and posters. If you're making marketing material in high volumes, it's a highly economical companion to the large ink capacity and low running costs of the MAXIFY GX1040 and other Canon MegaTank printers.

The Canon PIXMA and MAXIFY ranges of printers aren't just great for hybrid working, they're also versatile enough for home study, kids' school assignments and family photos. Canon's Easy-PhotoPrint Editor app makes it simple to create a variety of original photo items such as custom-sized prints, calendars and square photo layouts, perfect for personal projects at home as well as work.

As a keen amateur photographer, Jamie uses his PIXMA TR4640 to create prints for framing as it's possible to print 4x6-inch borderless photos in seconds. The same applies to the PIXMA TS7640i and PIXMA TS7740i, which also use dye-based colour inks for premium print quality on glossy photo paper.

Ultimately, a printer is an essential when you're working from home. Whether your priority is to find a compact printer to fit in your home office space, a high-speed printer to maximise your productivity, or a cloud-ready printer to seamlessly integrate working from home with the office, there's a Canon printer to meet your needs. Find out more about Canon's printer range for home and small business requirements, and try Canon's online printer selector to find the right printer for your needs.


Written by Lorna Dockerill and Matthew Richards