Best Large-Format Photo Printers of 2026

Updated October 14, 2026 4 products compared

A big print is a commitment: fine-art paper runs a few dollars a sheet, so a muddy sky or a color cast that never showed up on your screen gets expensive fast. My team spent eight months with six wide-format photo printers, and the difference between impressive and disappointing had less to do with resolution than with ink and color. What separates these machines is how they hold ink — a refillable tank versus cartridges that die halfway through a print run — and whether the colors on your monitor survive the trip to 13-by-19 paper.

Setup and wireless are the quiet dealbreakers. A printer that won't stay on your network is a paperweight with a scanner attached, and these machines are heavy enough that you want to place them once and be done. Print speed is the spec shoppers overrate; a wide-format printer taking several minutes on a single large sheet is normal, not broken. Ink cost is the number that should actually drive the decision. Below are the ones worth clearing desk space for.

Keeper Score summarizes customer ratings and review volume. Read it alongside the product details and trade-offs. How the score works.

1

Best Overall

Epson EcoTank Photo ET-8550

Epson EcoTank Photo ET-8550

81 /100
Keeper Score Excellent

Key details

Footprint
29.8 x 20.6 x 16.9 in. (D x W x H)
Functions
Print, scan, copy
Ink System
6-color Claria ET Premium, refillable tanks
Max Print Size
13 x 19 in.
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Epson rates a 4 x 6 photo at about 4 cents on the ET-8550, which is the sort of number that decides a purchase once you start printing wide. Six 70-milliliter bottles fill the tanks, a set is rated for up to 6,200 color pages, and the printer ships with up to two years of ink in the box. For anyone printing 13 x 19 photos at home instead of ordering them, that running cost is the whole argument, and it's why this is our top pick.

The rest of the machine backs it up. It prints to 13 x 19 inches, scans on a flatbed and copies, so it's the only pick here that can reproduce one of your own wide prints without sending it out. That matters more than it sounds: a framed 13 x 19 is exactly the size people ask for a second copy of, and here you just make one.

Photos come off it sharp and glossy, with the saturated color that suits landscapes and family prints rather than the flatter look pigment inks give. It is not fast — a full-color wide print is a minutes-long job, and the 16 pages per minute on the box is a text figure. We treat it as a set-it-going machine and let it work while we do something else.

One thing to plan around is the paper path. Thick fine-art stock and big sheets jam now and then, and a creased 13 x 19 is money in the bin, so load heavy paper a sheet at a time and keep the tray short of full. Fed that way it runs clean, which is what matters when every sheet is a 13 x 19.

Pros

  • Refillable bottles keep cost per photo low
  • Prints, scans and copies at 13 x 19
  • Six-color output with strong gloss and color
  • Up to two years of ink in the box

Cons

  • Early unit failures happen
  • Deep body: 29.8 inches front to back
Our verdict

Buy this if you want to print and scan wide at home without paying cartridge prices — it's the most useful wide-format machine here for the money.

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2

Best 17-Inch

Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-1100

Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-1100

84 /100
Keeper Score Excellent

Key details

Weight
83 lb
Ink System
11-color LUCIA PRO II pigment plus Chroma Optimizer
Max Print Size
17 x 22 in.
Paper Capacity
250 sheets
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Eighty-three pounds settles where this printer lives before anything else about it matters. The PRO-1100 wants a table of its own, a second pair of hands to lift it into place, and clear space behind the chassis for a 22-inch sheet to travel as it prints. In exchange you get the only 17-inch machine in this guide: 17 x 22 paper, 11 pigment inks plus a Chroma Optimizer, and a 250-sheet feed.

For a photographer selling prints, that's the right trade, and it's why this is the step-up pick rather than a niche one. The LUCIA PRO II set adds red, blue, photo cyan, photo magenta and two grays to the usual process colors, and the payoff lands where buyers care most: shadow detail that stays open instead of collapsing into a solid block, and black-and-white prints with a neutral tonal scale rather than a color cast.

Pigment ink needs exercise. The FINE print head and the anti-clogging routine exist for the weeks when the printer sits idle, and a weekly nozzle check is cheap insurance against a head cleaning that drinks a tank. Connections are its weak spot; when a computer loses the printer mid-queue, a restart and a re-queued job is the usual fix.

Do one thing before you settle in: print a 17 x 22 in the first week, while the return window is open. Big sheets take a different path through the machine than letter paper, and you want to know yours works before a client's order is riding on it.

Pros

  • Only true 17 x 22 option here
  • Eleven pigment inks plus a gloss optimizer
  • Neutral, detailed black-and-white
  • Anti-clogging head and 250-sheet feed

Cons

  • Slow: full-color wide sheets take minutes
  • Twelve tanks to keep stocked
Our verdict

Choose this when 17 x 22 output and archival pigment quality are the point, and you have a dedicated table and the patience for slow, superb prints.

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3

Best Budget

Canon PIXMA iP8720

Canon PIXMA iP8720

81 /100
Keeper Score Excellent

Key details

Weight
18.6 lb
Ink System
6-color dye, including gray
Max Print Size
13 x 19 in.
Max Resolution
9600 x 2400 dpi
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There's no cheaper route to 13 x 19 in this guide, and at 18.6 pounds the iP8720 is light enough to carry upstairs alone and park on a sideboard. It keeps a 150-sheet feed and a body that takes less room than the all-in-ones here. For a student, a hobbyist, or a second printer for proofs, the money goes where it counts.

Six dye inks, one of them gray, at 9600 x 2400 dpi — and that gray tank is the detail worth noticing. A dedicated gray keeps black-and-white prints neutral instead of drifting warm or magenta, which is the usual failure of an inexpensive six-color machine. On glossy paper the output is detailed and vivid, good enough to frame and better than the money suggests.

Wireless is where it tests your patience. Setup through a router is the weak link, and if the network refuses to take it, run a USB cable and stop fighting — the printer behaves perfectly well tethered, and you get your evening back.

Give it a cable and good paper and it does the job it was bought for, which is putting a 13 x 19 photo on the wall for less than any other machine here. That's a narrow brief, and it fills it well.

Pros

  • Cheapest route to 13 x 19 prints here
  • Gray ink keeps monochrome neutral
  • 18.6 pounds and easy to move

Cons

  • Print-only
  • Six cartridges to buy, no tank option
Our verdict

The one to buy if you want big prints without a big outlay — a print-only 13 x 19 machine that asks you to meet it halfway on setup.

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4

Small-Space All-In-One

Epson Expression Photo XP-970

Epson Expression Photo XP-970

83 /100
Keeper Score Excellent

Key details

Duplex
Automatic
Footprint
18.9 x 18.9 x 11.6 in.
Functions
Print, scan, copy
Ink System
6-color Claria Photo HD
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Square is the shape to notice: 18.9 inches on each side and 11.6 inches tall, so the XP-970 sits on a shelf or a narrow desk where the EcoTank, at 29.8 inches deep, won't go. If your printing happens in a corner of a room that has to do other things all day, that footprint is the feature, not a footnote.

It's a genuine wide-format all-in-one — print, scan and copy — with six Claria Photo HD inks and a fold-over scan lid that holds an original flat without needing clearance above the machine. We like it for a household that scans paperwork, copies the occasional form and prints a photo now and then. As a dedicated photo printer it's outclassed; as the one machine in a small room, it makes sense.

Output is good rather than exceptional: glossy prints come out rich and detailed, and the six-ink set gives more color range than a four-ink all-in-one, but a gallery show is not what it's for. Where it earns its keep is the paperwork side — double-sided documents, scans and copies are the weekday job, and photos are the weekend one.

Buy it for the scanning and the footprint as much as for the printing. If photos are the main event, the EcoTank's bottles will save more over a few years than the gap between the two machines.

Pros

  • Smallest footprint here at 18.9 inches square
  • Prints, scans and copies in one box
  • Automatic duplex and a memory card slot

Cons

  • Heavy card stock feeds poorly
  • Small cartridges drain on long print runs
Our verdict

A sensible buy for a small room that needs one machine to scan, copy and print wide occasionally — not for anyone whose main event is photographs.

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How We Tested Wide-Format Photo Printers

We started with every wide-format photo printer we could find that handles at least 13-by-19 paper, then narrowed the field by ink setup (refillable tanks versus cartridges), how many ink colors each machine runs, wireless and AirPrint support, and what a full set of ink costs. Six made the final cut, and each one spent eight months on a desk in a home office rather than sitting on a bench.

Setup was timed from unboxing to first print, including whether the companion app found the printer over Wi-Fi on the first try or needed a USB cable to get there. Every machine printed the same three files: a portrait with tricky skin tones, a landscape with a wide gradient sky, and a black-and-white shot with deep shadows. We compared each print against a calibrated monitor and against the same file coming out of the printer next to it.

Ink was where the math got interesting. We tracked how many 8x10 and 13x19 prints each machine produced before a cartridge ran dry or a tank needed refilling, and worked out what that came to per print. For reliability, we left each printer idle for two weeks, then ran a nozzle check to see what had clogged. Speed was timed on a full-size, highest-quality sheet, and we noted the things no spec sheet mentions: how much desk the body eats, how the feed grabs a thick fine-art stock, and whether the output tray feels like it would survive a move. On the all-in-ones, we also scanned finished prints and compared the copies to the originals instead of trusting a dpi figure.

How to Choose a Wide-Format Photo Printer

Start With the Largest Print You'll Really Make

13 x 19 inches covers nearly everything a home or small studio needs: portfolio prints, framed work, proof sheets for clients. Moving to 17 x 22 buys a genuinely different object on the wall, and it costs you a printer that weighs 83 pounds, needs a table of its own and drinks far more ink per sheet. If nine out of ten prints you make fit in 13 x 19, stay there — the Epson EcoTank Photo ET-8550 and the Canon PIXMA iP8720 both do that size.

The step up earns its keep when you sell large work or clients ask for 17-inch output. Our 17-inch pick, the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-1100, is the choice for that reason alone: the size and the paper path, not the badge on the front.

Dye, Pigment, and What Shows on the Paper

Dye inks sit on glossy paper with a saturated, smooth look; pigment inks sit deeper, resist fading for far longer, and give matte stock and monochrome a depth dye struggles to match. In this group the pigment route is the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-1100, with eleven LUCIA PRO II inks and two grays, while the six-color machines are dye printers built around glossy color.

Choose pigment if prints will hang in daylight, if you print black-and-white seriously, or if you're selling. Choose dye if the output is glossy color for albums, gifts and family walls — those machines cost less and, in the case of the Canon PIXMA iP8720, take up a fraction of the room.

The Paper Path Decides How Pleasant It Is

Wide photo paper is heavy and it curls. A printer that feeds it along a long, flat path handles it better than one that bends it tightly around a roller, but the bigger factor is how you load it: thick stock goes in a sheet at a time, and the tray stays short of full. A creased 13 x 19 is money in the bin, so slow down for anything heavier than glossy photo paper.

Measure the space, too. A 17-inch machine needs clearance behind and in front for a 22-inch sheet to travel and land, and the Canon PRO-1100's 250-sheet tray doesn't fold away. Check the table depth and the door swing before you order.

Budget for Ink, Not Just the Printer

A wide print uses a lot of ink, and running cost separates these machines more than any other specification. Refillable tanks change the arithmetic — Epson rates a 4 x 6 at about 4 cents on the ET-8550, with a set of bottles good for up to 6,200 color pages — while a twelve-tank pigment set is the most expensive way here to put a photo on paper, and worth it only when quality is the reason you're buying.

Print weekly and a tank machine repays its premium fairly quickly. Print in bursts a few times a year and the priority flips to avoiding clogs and wasted sheets, which makes a cheaper cartridge printer a perfectly rational buy as long as you keep it exercised.

Frequently Asked Questions

Final Verdict

For most people printing wide at home, the Epson EcoTank Photo ET-8550 is the one to buy: 13 x 19 output, a flatbed scanner that lets you reproduce your own prints, and ink bottles that make each photo cheap enough to print without flinching.

Step up to the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-1100 only when you need 17 x 22 and the pigment gamut that comes with it. If the budget is the deciding factor, the Canon PIXMA iP8720 puts 13 x 19 prints on the wall for less than anything else here — as long as you accept a print-only machine and a wireless setup that may send you looking for a USB cable.