Best Printer for Printing Stickers

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Buying the right printer when you’re printing stickers is important to create high quality images that will look great as stickers. Stickers are handy for so many things – scrapbooking, greeting card making, or even label making for a home business.

The ability to design your own personalized sticker and print it out is a fun project. All you need is the right printer. And if you are wanting to make them especially unique using a cutting machine lets you customize your stickers even further, see my top picks for the Best Cutting Machines for Beginners.

I’ve searched the internet and found some of the top printers available for printing stickers. I’ll give you an overview of the top machines and then go through the many different features you will want to consider before buying a sticker printer in my buying guide.

 

The EcoTank Wireless 3-in-1 printer from Epson is a popular and well loved inkjet printer. As much as it boasts many thousands of top reviews and is highly rated by owners, the most important feature in my eyes as a sticker printer is the print quality.

It has amazing print quality. The included software lets you set the dpi yourself from a drop-down list that ranges from 75 to 1200 dpi.

The other stand out feature of this machine is just how long the ink lasts. It comes with 4 bottles of ink designed to last for up to 2 full years! Basically, you get enough ink to print up to 6500 pages of greyscale images, or 5200 pages of color. To put that in perspective, normally with an inkjet printer, you could go through about 80 individual ink cartridges in this length of time.

So there’s significantly less needless waste, AND you can save up to 90% on your replacement ink costs. You get to save the environment and save your pocket at the same time! Epson boasts it costs about 1 cent per color page in ink. Cartridge printers normally cost 20x that!

Since it’s a 3-in-1 printer you also have the ability to scan and photocopy. Scanning is a handy feature for stickers since you can sketch a design by hand then scan it and print it multiple times as a sticker.

While the Epson EcoTank is not a budget printer you will save a ton of money in ink which is where the true cost of a printer really is.

• Good, well-established brand
• Amazon bestseller in the category
• Positive customer ratings
• Get 2 years’ worth of ink for free
• Save up to 90% on ink costs
• Set the dpi as you see fit

• Print speed can be slow for more detailed images such as photos

The Canon PIXMA TS6220 is a great budget printer for printing stickers. And even though it’s a budget printer, it has some real stand out features. You can even enable voice-activated printing from your Amazon Alexa device.

The best part of this printer is it prints photo’s exceptionally well. Since most printers don’t advertise themselves as “sticker printers” finding one that is well known at printing photos is important since it means it will have great print quality for your color stickers.

The PIXMA TS6220 is known for high quality and low volume. But this is perfect for us crafters looking to make beautiful stickers. Even if you need to churn out a ton of stickers it’ll keep up no problem and it’s has a reasonable print speed even in color.

One really cool feature is it can perform borderless printing and copying. You can even copy and print images up to 8.5″x11″ without that pesky white borders. Now that’s a big sticker!

It takes 5 individual ink cartridges, 3 colors, one black standard sized black, and one double-sized black. This is great when you intend to use your printed stickers as labels, where you want the text to be black against a white background and really stand out clearly.

The PIXIMA TS6220 is available with Amazon Dash, whereby you can automatically order ink cartridges as you need them. It’s a great little system, and you save 10% on your cartridges and toners, and there are no subscription fees to worry about.

It has a super user-friendly interface, through its LCD touchscreen. And of course can scan and copy as well as print.

• Easy to use
• Prints high quality photos
• Excellent value for money
• Available with Amazon Dash

• Ink cartridges can be expensive, but if you’re primarily using the black ink, you won’t need to replace the cartridges very often

The HP OfficeJet 3830 is a great sticker printer. It’s actually my pick for the Best Printer for Vinyl Stickers. It has excellent value for money and isn’t too highly priced.

Although it’s an inkjet printer, you get laser printer quality. You can print top quality images, such as photos, and you can make some really beautiful stickers.

The ink drys almost as soon as your sticker has printed so you don’t need to worry about smudging freshly printed stickers. The OfficeJet 3830 also boasts borderless printing so you don’t need to deal with white borders around the edge of your stickers or photos.

Amazon Dash is another handy feature that lets you automatically reorder supplies when you start to run low. AND you can save money on your cartridges this way too. On top of the built-in WiFi you can use the HP Smart app to print from the cloud with iCloud, Dropbox and Google Drive.

Of course as an “All-in-one” it can print, scan, copy and even fax. The Office Jet 3830 is easy to use and has great support from HP

• Laser printer quality results
• Excellent value for money
• Automatically reorder supplies
• Prints high quality photos

• Cartridges can be expensive and not last long

Canon’s Pixma Pro-100 is a high end inkjet printer. The finished print quality is phenomenal. Thanks to it’s patented print head, the nozzle releases microscopic droplets to give a super-high resolution of up to a spectacular 4800 x 2400 dpi!

These days higher-end inkjet printers like this one use more than just the traditional 3 color cartridges. The really expensive ones use a whopping 12 ink cartridges altogether. This printer, on the relatively cheaper end of the high-end printers, uses 8 ink cartridges altogether.

This 8 dye system allows for amazing gradients and color, 3 of which are dedicated grayscale inks for beautiful black & white prints.

If you wanted to print vinyl stickers, then you should go for this printer if you have the budget for it. It automatically detects when you’ve put vinyl through the feeder, and it adjusts the printing depending on the thickness of the material you’ve put through.

If money were no object this would hands-down be the one to go for – especially if you wanted to turn high definition photos into stickers.

• Phenomenal print quality, up to 4800dpi
• 8 dye ink cartridge system
• Can print vinyl stickers
• Great for turning photos to stickers

• Premium product at a premium price
• Expensive printing cost per page

The HP LaserJet Pro M281fdw is my favorite laser printer for printing stickers. After reading my buying guide below you decide that a laser printer is the best option for you then this is the one to get. Just remember that if you want to print stickers with a laser printer you will need to use compatible sticker paper.

It’s a fast printer but doesn’t sacrifice quality for speed. The quality of the prints is great, with a dpi of 600.

The LaserJet Pro M281fdw has great connectivity options and allows for wireless printing. The HP Smart App (which I mentioned previously) lets you scan, order toner or print from the cloud all from your mobile device.

You also have the benefit of Amazon Dash Replenishment. This allows it to automatically detect when toner is getting low and reorders it for you. There are no subscription fees for this service, and you can save 10% on your toner costs.

• High Quality Printing
• One of Amazon’s best sellers for the category
• Handy HP Smart app with many uses
• Amazon Dash Replenishment

• Not the best printer for Mac users
• You must ensure you use compatible sticker paper
• Premium product at a premium price

I want you to be happy with your sticker printer so there are few things you should consider before buying a printer

Final Result

Since a sticker printer is all about the end result you need to begin your decision of what printer to buy by thinking about what result you want to achieve in your finished product and plan from there.

What material or sticker paper you print your stickers onto has the most significant impact on your final results. You can get sticker paper in matte, soft gloss, or high gloss.

However, if you want your stickers to be used outdoors, then you will need a printer that can print onto vinyl. Vinyl stickers are stronger and more durable than their paper counterparts, as they do not fade or get damaged by the weather, eg. rain or UV rays. Not all printers will have this capability. See my article Best Vinyl Sticker Printer if you want a machine that can handle vinyl well.

If you’re happy to print onto sticker paper, however, you should be sure to always use the right sticker paper for your style of machine – inkjet papers for an inkjet printer and laserjet papers for a laserjet printer. This way you can always be certain that you’re in no danger of the sticker paper melting.

Laserjet or Inkjet

Laser and inkjet printers each have their advantages and disadvantages.

If you intend to do a lot of high volume printing, then you will get a longer lifespan from a laserjet printer than you would from an inkjet printer.

Laser printers are more expensive to buy than inkjet printers, but laser printers are cheaper to run because you can print more pages from laser toner cartridges than inkjet cartridges.

When it comes to getting photo quality stickers printed however, inkjet printers are hands down the best to go for.

So, in short, there’s no right or wrong answer as to which type of printer to go for, just choose the one which best suits your needs.

In our Top 5 picks, we’ve concentrated on inkjet printers (that’s what most people go for), but if you’ve decided you want a laserjet printer, we can recommend our Number 5 pick.

Print Resolution / Dots per Inch

The number of dots printed in an inch, or dpi, is a good measure of the print quality for your stickers. The more dots per inch the higher the quality of the print, basically you get more sharpness and detail. A resolution that’s too low will look blocky or pixelated.

300 dpi is the standard resolution you should use for printing your stickers. Sometimes 150 is acceptable but never lower, or you may go higher for some situations for a more high definition photo-like design.

Brand

When you buy from an established brand, you get better quality results and better quality running. All of the printers in our Top 5 picks come from good well-established brands.

Where the brand also becomes important is in the availability of refills of ink cartridges, and refills of printer paper or sticker paper. The more well known and established brands generally tend to have the most stockists.

It’s worth noting at this point that when it comes to ink cartridge refills it is possible to get low-cost off-brand cartridges that are designed for use in branded printers that do just as good a job as the real thing. So you won’t have to keep paying a premium when there are alternatives that are just as good.

Connectivity

There are several different ways that you can send the image you want to print to your printer. Most printers can connect to your PC or Mac via a USB lead, and now it’s also commonplace to have printers connect wirelessly too via WiFI. This way you can print from your laptop wherever it happens to be in the building.

Many printers also have an SD slot. With this functionality, if you have a particular design or designs that frequently needs to be printed, then you can send the image to the printer via an SD card, and you won’t have to get a PC up and running at all to do it.

Printers that offer Bluetooth connectivity can also work via your smartphone or tablet, avoiding having to rely on a PC or Mac altogether, and allowing you to send your sticker designs from Andriod or iOS apps.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can I cut out my stickers?

If you are looking to make stickers that are more than just a rectangle, then you’ll want to invest in a digital die cutting machine that lets you cut out your sticker into any shape.

There are two main cutting machine brands, Cricut and Silhouette. If you are new to the “cutting” scene then you can find the right cutting machine for you in my article Best Cutting Machines for Beginners.

What is the difference between vinyl sticker sheets and paper sticker sheets?

Generally speaking, paper sticker sheets are usually a little cheaper than vinyl and are best suited to indoor use (such as wall labels in a classroom, for example) this is because paper sticker sheets are not durable or weather resistant and are also prone to get ripped or damaged over time.

On the other hand, though vinyl sticker sheets are a little more expensive than paper sticker sheets, they are suitable to be used in the outdoors and last a lot longer. They are also not easily torn due to vinyl-containing PVC which helps it to remain intact better than paper sticker sheets.