Best Printer Scanner Combos for Artists (2026)

Most all-in-ones are office printers with a scanner lid; the ET-8550 is a photo printer with a scanner lid, and that is the difference artists feel. It prints with six inks from refillable tanks, including a pigment black for text and line work and five dye inks for smooth color, and it goes borderless up to 13 x 19 inches, which is the size most print buyers ask for after 8 x 10. Because the ink comes in bottles rather than cartridges, the cost of a 13 x 19 print is a fraction of what a cartridge printer charges, and that is the number that decides whether selling prints from home makes money.

The scanner is a letter-size flatbed, which is the one real limit. It scans a watercolor sketch or an ink drawing cleanly at the resolutions reproduction needs, but an 11x17 original has to go through in two passes and be stitched, or onto a separate A3 bed from our A3 scanner guide. Its near-twin the ET-8500 has the same ink and scanner but tops out at letter-size prints for nearly the same money; unless the desk is genuinely too small, buy the 8550.

If the ET-8550 is the artist's all-in-one, the G620 is the small-shop version. It uses six dye inks from refillable MegaTank reservoirs, so a run of greeting cards or 8 x 10 prints costs a few cents each in ink, and the extra inks over a standard four-color printer show up as smoother skin tones, cleaner gradients in a watercolor scan, and less visible grain in flat color. The flatbed on top scans letter-size originals cleanly, which for most card and sticker sellers is every original they have.

The limits are real ones. Dye ink throughout means prints will fade faster than pigment on the same paper, so sell them as prints, not as archival editions. The paper path stops at letter size. And like every tank printer, it wants to be used; the artist who prints every week will love it, and the one who prints twice a year will meet its cleaning cycle. For sticker sheets and small paper goods, our sticker printer guide compares it against the cutters and papers that go with it.

The TS9521Ca is here for its paper path. Canon designed it for the scrapbooking market, where 12 x 12 inch pages are the standard, so it prints borderless at 12 x 12, a size most letter-class printers cannot touch. Do not confuse that with the scanner: Canon's specifications list the flatbed at 8.5 x 11.7 inches, so a 12 x 12 original, a 9 x 12 watercolor block, or an open sketchbook spread has to be scanned in two passes and stitched, as on any letter-size combo.

As a printer it is a competent home photo machine: five cartridges, a pigment black for text and lines, dye colors for images, borderless at 12 x 12. Cartridges mean each print costs several times what a tank printer charges, so it is the wrong choice for someone selling prints in volume. It is the right choice for someone who wants square prints from a compact home machine. For bound sketchbooks specifically, our drawings and sketchbooks guide compares it against dedicated book-edge scanners.

This Brother is here for its scanner. It is one of few all-in-ones that scans and copies at 11 x 17 inches, which means a full comics page, a tabloid poster, or a large drawing comes back as one file with no stitching. Two paper trays, a 100-sheet multipurpose tray, and a 50-page document feeder round it out. Dedicated A3 scanners cost more than this whole machine.

If you draw large, this is the scanner. If you paint soft and print glossy, the ET-8550 is the better printer and you will stitch on its letter-size bed. Either way, the 11 x 17 scanning is most of what you pay for here, and it pairs naturally with the printers in our large format printer guide when the printing side outgrows it.

The XP-970 is the ET-8550's older, smaller cousin: same wide-format ambition, cartridges instead of tanks, and a body that fits on a bookshelf. Its six Claria Photo HD inks are dye throughout, which gives it very smooth photo and watercolor gradients, and it prints borderless up to 13 x 19 for the buyer who wants that size a few times a month rather than a few times a day.

The economics are the whole story. Up front it cost about $260 less than the ET-8550 when we checked; over a year of regular printing, cartridges erase that gap and keep going. Our rule for readers: if you will print more than a couple of 13 x 19s a week, the tank printer pays for itself inside the year. If you will not, the XP-970's smaller footprint and lower entry price are worth more than the ink savings you will never collect.

Five inks at around $150 is the reason the XP-7100 makes the list. Most printers at this price use a black and a tri-color cartridge; the XP-7100 uses a pigment black for text and ink lines, a photo black for deep shadows on glossy paper, and three dye colors. That is the ink set of a printer costing twice as much, and it shows on a scanned pencil drawing printed on matte paper, where the pigment black holds a crisp edge instead of feathering.

What you get at this price is a starter. The cartridges are small, so cost per print is the highest on the page, and the paper path stops at letter size. But the flatbed scans a drawing or a small painting cleanly, and the prints are good enough to sell at markets while you find out whether printing is a part of your practice. When it is, the G620 or the ET-8550 is the upgrade, and our print selling starter kit covers what else to buy along the way.

The Envy Photo 7975 is on this page as the baseline: what an ordinary home photo printer gives an artist, and what it does not. It sets up from a phone in minutes, prints borderless at letter size, and scans a sketch well enough for a portfolio site. For a household that draws and occasionally prints, it is easy to own.

What it lacks is the ink system that makes prints worth selling. A black and a tri-color cartridge produce acceptable snapshots and noticeably coarser gradients than the five- and six-ink Epsons and Canons above, and each color print costs more, which is why HP sells ink by subscription. If you are choosing between this and the XP-7100 for the same money, the Epson's five inks are the better buy for artwork. If you want the simplest possible machine and printing is a side note, this one is fine.