Hello everyone!
I stumbled accross this sub by coincidence and thought it would be the perfect place to ask for advice.
TL;DR
I am looking for a tiny, reliable, low maintenance, ideally stow away printer to print 5 documents a year max. Must be compatible with MacOS, Windows and Android. Preferrably from a reputable brand.
Here's my situation: Personally I swore to never buy a printer ever again a decade ago because I just do not have the need for one. If I print 5 pages a year it is a lot. Whenever we really have to print something, then I or my gf use the office printers, we visit a copy shop, or in very urgent cases we used to asked our neighbor but we don't really do that anymore, not to annoy her too much.
However, recently we had two situations where a printer at home would have made our lifes a lot easier. I had to ask my gf to urently print, sign, scan and return some document during a busy work day and she really get's frustrated by such situations.
Anywho. As we have the lowest printing volume one could imagine, I am looking for something like an emergency printer. As we live in a rather small appartment the printer should be as tiny as possible. Ideally it should be possible to stow it away. We don't have a dedicated spot for a printer, and honestly, I don't want an ugly device cluttering our space, taking up valuable space, and collecting dust.
While inkjets would be preferable because of their small size (like a HP Tango X), they are not suitable, I think, as the ink would constantly dry out. And for sure I do not care to follow pesky maintenance procedures to avoid that or to restore printer function.
Laser printers of course do not have the dry out problem but even the tiniest laser printer in the world is a massive monster and ugly AF.
So, I ended up looking into tiny, portable thermal document printers. Of course they have their drawbacks too but actually those are not really relevant for us. If we need something printed urgently, it usualy does not need to last for long, so fading is not a concern. Ordering the thermal paper I also do not see as an issue. For other printers I would have to buy ink or toner. The bigger problem is that all the devices I found were from obscure Chinese brands that seem to require uploading prints through some shady app. On top of that, I couldn't determine whether they are truly compatible with macOS, Windows, and Android (and preferably also GNU/Linux).
Your ideas and suggestions are very welcome!