Best portable printers of 2019

When you’re on the run, and you just need to quickly print some photos, you’re going to want to look at the best portable printers. You can forget about printers being big, bulky and beige devices that need 20 different wires.

Modern printers are more flexible than they’ve ever been. Many have wireless connectivity, allowing you to print from almost any device without having to worry about trailing cables everywhere.

There’s also a class of portable printers that are battery-powered, allowing you to easily take them with you wherever you want to go. With this guide, we’ll show you all the best portable printers you can buy today.

This handy portable printer allows you to print full page A4 documents while on the go, and is small enough to easily fit in a briefcase or shoulder bag. It supports the MFI Bluetooth protocol, so it's a great choice for printing wirelessly from your smartphone or Apple iOS device. There's also USB 2.0 support for hooking up to your PC, and you can buy an additional rechargeable high-capacity battery, which gives you around 600 pages from a single charge.

The HP Sprocket Photo Printer is a small, hand-sized, photo printer which isn't for printing out professional-quality photos, but is a quick, easy and fun way to instantly print out your digital snaps - essentially turning any digital camera into a Polaroid-esque instant printer. It doesn't use ink, so you don't have to worry about buying replacement cartridges - instead it uses heat to transform a pre-dyed sheet of paper into your photos. It runs on batteries and has a stylish design as well.

If you're looking for a portable printer that offers very good print quality - some times better than standard inkjet printers - while also being fast when it comes to producing printouts, then the HP OfficeJet 200 Mobile Printer is a great choice. Weighing less than HP's previous mobile printers, the HP OfficeJet 200 Mobile Printer is a brilliant little portable printer that can hook up to devices via Wi-Fi. It offers plenty of connectivity options, though Bluetooth isn't included. A lack of an included USB cable also feels a bit mean.

Unless a portable printer is explicitly designed for photo printing (such as the HP Sprocket), then they often fail to produce brilliant image quality. However, the Canon PIXMA iP110 bucks that trend, as it's a portable printer that can handle documents as well as print out excellent photos. That makes it a great choice if you want a flexible portable printer that can handle a range of tasks. It's not the fastest portable printer in the world, but for such good image quality, we don't mind waiting a little bit longer.

The Fujifilm Instax Share SP-3 is another portable printer designed for photos. It essentially turns your smartphone into a retro instant camera, like a Polaroid, with the Fujifilm Instax Share SP-3 printing out photos on square printouts. Rather than using an instant camera, just send your photos from your via to the printer via a wireless connection and the Instax Share app. It's small enough to be carried around easily and the rechargeable battery lasts a good while. Print media is costly, however, and it's only good for printing retro-inspired photos. If you need a portable printer for documents as well, the Canon PIXMA iP110 (above) is a better choice.

• Check out our pick of the best photo printers of 2018