Apple’s ever-popular iPhone and iPad devices are a great replacement for bulky laptops if you just want to browse the web, watch videos or listen to music. They’re also much better for producing business documents and helping you organize your business life than people typically give them credit for. However, the one area where the iPad and iPhone is certainly at a disadvantage compared to the laptop or desktop PC is printing.
While Windows and Mac OS were designed for productivity from the very beginning and have had decades of software engineering and refinement, mobile operating systems are relatively new. Apple AirPrint makes it much easier to print documents from an iOS device but your device must be AirPrint-compatible, and AirPrint lacks advanced printing options. So most printer vendors have developed their own printing apps to extend the functionality of iOS perhaps to allow secure printing and the printing of documents from cloud storage services.
Here we present iOS printing apps from most of the leading printer/MFP OEMs, many of which we’ve tested. There are many other good apps, too, so log on to BLI’s Solutions Center to see more.
- Brother iPrint&Scan
Brother iPrint&Scan is a mobile print app that lets users output a variety of file types, including PDF, JPEG and DOC/DOCX, to a Brother printer from their iPhone or iPad. Users can even print PDF files from within other apps, too. And via a built-in browser, users can print webpages and bookmark frequently visited sites.
Read BLI’s Brother iPrint&Scan report or visit the Brother website for more information.
Brother iPrint&Scan has a clear, intuitive user interface.
2. Canon Mobile Printing
Canon’s Mobile Printing app is a little confusing at first because it gives you three options: Photo Albums lets you select a picture, preview it and then print it; Web lets you print web pages; and Camera lets you take a picture with an iPhone or iPad camera and print the result. However, you can also open the app from within other apps, such as Google Drive, and use Canon Mobile Printing to print documents instead of AirPrint.
Read BLI’s Canon Mobile Printing v2 report to find out more about this app, or view Canon’s website.
Canon Mobile Printing makes Microsoft documents look good every time.
3. Epson iPrint 5
Epson iPrint 5 lets users print from and scan to cloud storage, with support for Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive and Dropbox, Evernote and Box. One especially neat feature is the ability to take a picture of a document using an iOS device’s rear camera and enhance it to make the text more legible, which is great if you need to send a paper document to someone electronically but don’t have a scanner handy.
Visit Epson’s website for more information, or read BLI’s in-depth Epson iPrint 5 report.
Epson iPrint 5 lets you print a range of different document types, including Microsoft Word.
4. HP ePrint
HP ePrint is a good-looking app that lets users print documents from a number of cloud storage services: Box, Dropbox, Evernote, Facebook, Google Drive, iCloud, Instagram and OneDrive. Users can take advantage of more than just one cloud storage service with the app, and it’s easy to move from one to another. Users can also print emails from within the mobile device, but they’ll have to supply usernames and passwords.
See the specifications for HP All-in-one Printer Remote and read BLI’s brief for more information, or view HP’s website.
HP ePrint lets users access a wide variety of cloud storage service and optimize Web pages for print.
5. Konica Minolta PageScope Mobile
Konica Minolta PageScope Mobile is a pretty high-end mobile print app that lets users print web pages and communicate to a variety of cloud storage services, including Google Drive, Dropbox and Sharepoint Online. PageScope Mobile can even connect to an SMB folder. PageScope Mobile has great file format support (MS Office documents, PDFs, JPEGs and TIFFs).
Visit the Konica Minolta website or read BLI’s Konica Minolta PageScope Mobile report to find out more.
Konica Minolta PageScope Mobile integrates with many popular cloud storage services.
6. KYOCERA Mobile Print
KYOCERA Mobile Print lacks some of the higher-end features of the very best mobile print apps, such as close integration with cloud storage, but if you don’t need such luxuries you’ll be more than happy with it. The app provides pretty detailed print options such as duplexing, orientation, colour or monochrome, page range, quantity and stapling.
Read BLI’s KYOCERA Mobile Print report or visit the KYOCERA website for more information.
Kyocera Mobile Print lets users print Web pages.
- Lexmark Mobile Printing
Lexmark Mobile Printing supports PDF, JPEG, GIF, BMP, PNG and TIFF formats. The app allows users to print photos stored on the iOS device’s Camera Roll or snap a new photo using the camera, with print options including quantity, duplex and pages per slide. Users can even paste content from websites and documents into a clipboard for printing, and use iOS’s Open In command to open the app from within another app to print documents.
View the Lexmark website or read the specifications for Lexmark Mobile Printing and read BLI’s brief for more information.
Lexmark Mobile Printing lets users print web pages from within the app.
8. Ricoh Smart Device Print&Scan
Ricoh Smart Device Print&Scan is a neat app that lets users print a wide variety of file formats, including PDF, DOC/DOCX, XLS/XLSX and JPEG. Users can print documents already stored on the mobile device, but an extra slice of convenience is the ability to print documents stored in DropBox and Google Drive.
Visit the Ricoh website for more information or read BLI’s Ricoh Smart Device Print&Scan report.
Ricoh Smart Device Print&Scan provides lots of options for print jobs.
9. Samsung Mobile Print
This is the ideal app if you want to print to/scan from a Samsung MFP. The app also supports faxing of documents, and users can fax documents from local storage and the Google Drive cloud storage service, or text from iOS’s clipboard.
Read BLI’s Samsung Mobile Print report or view the Samsung website for more information on Samsung Mobile Print.
Samsung Mobile Print is well organized and easy on the eye.
10. Sharp Sharpdesk Mobile 2
Sharpdesk Mobile 2 lacks integration with cloud services but it does let users print to a Sharp MFP from an iOS device, and scan from a Sharp MFP to an iOS device. The app’s built-in web browser helps users to print web pages, and the app also supports the printing of emails, photos and files. Users can specify print options such as duplexing, colour mode and paper size among others.
Read BLI’s Sharp Sharpdesk Mobile 2 brief or check out the Sharp website.
Sharpdesk Mobile 2 provides users with essential print features such as web page, photo, and e-mail printing.
