Best Printers For Mac 2014
Some recent 3D printers, such as the MakerBot Replicator+, work with Macs as well as Windows machines; check the manufacturer's specs for Mac support when shopping for a 3D printer. The HP Color LaserJet Pro M254dw is fast, powerful, flexible, and—most important—easy to use, which in our book makes it the best laser printer for most people. We love the responsive control panel, the modern design of HP’s PC and mobile software, and how easy the printer is to set up and get on Wi-Fi.
What Type of Printer Is Right for You?
Picking the right printer can be tough, with so many features to choose from, and individual printers with almost any possible combination of those variations available. Here are some pointers to help you find both the right category of
The three most useful ways to categorize printers are by purpose (general or special), intended use (home or office), and technology. Define your needs by all three categories, and you're well on your way to finding the right printer.
Most printers, including most inkjets that manufacturers market as photo printers, are general-purpose models, meant for printing text, graphics, and photos. Special-purpose printers include portable printers, dedicated and near-dedicated photo printers, and label printers. (Even among specialty printers, 3D printers are a unique case, and beyond the scope of this discussion.) If you're looking for a model to print, say, photos, consider whether you want to print only photos or want a printer that can also produce other kinds of output.
General-purpose printers tend to focus on photos if they're intended for home use or on text if they're intended for the office. Many all-in-one printers or MFPs are meant for the dual role of home and office printer (particularly for home offices), but
The two most common technologies, laser and inkjet, increasingly overlap in capabilities, but there are still differences. The most important
Single-Function or All-in-One Printer?
For general-purpose printing, additional capability means choosing an all-in-one printer (AIO), also known as a multifunction printer (MFP). Those other functions include some combination of scanning, copying, and faxing from your PC, standalone faxing, and scanning to email. Office printers also typically add an automatic document feeder (ADF) to scan, copy, and/or fax multipage documents and legal-size pages. Some ADFs can handle two-sided documents, either by scanning one side, flipping the page over, and scanning the other side, or employing two sensors to scan both sides of the page on a single pass. (The latter is typically a more expensive solution.)
Some MFPs offer additional printing options. Web-enabled printers, both home
Do You Need Color?
For a home printer, you probably need color, but for an office model, if all you print are business documents, there may be no reason to spend money on color output and the cost of maintaining four color toner cartridges versus one in black. Keep in mind, however, that many color lasers can print at high enough quality to make your own advertising handouts and trifold brochures, which could save you money compared with printing small quantities at your local print shop.
It's rare to see an inkjet with anything but color capabilities, but Epson does offer a few inkjet models in its WorkForce line that are high-volume and monochrome-only. If you want to stick with single-color black printing, though, you're otherwise looking at a monochrome laser or LED printer or MFP.
Space Considerations
Be sure to look into the printer's size, and don't underestimate just how big some of them can be, especially with trays extended. Even some home models can be uncomfortably large to share a desk with, and note that some printers with a small footprint can be tall enough to feel like they are towering over you. At the other extreme, we're seeing a growing number of compact versions that can fit into tight spaces in apartments, home offices, and dorm rooms.
Connectivity
In addition to a USB port, most office printers and an increasing number of home printers include Ethernet ports, so you can share the printer easily on a network. Many also include Wi-Fi capability. Even if they don't, if you have a wireless access point on your network, you can print wirelessly to any printer on that network, whether the printer itself offers a wireless connection or not. The printer just needs to be wired into the access point via Ethernet.
Printers that support Wi-Fi Direct (or its equivalent; some vendors use their own names for it) can connect directly to most
Output Quality
Printers vary significantly in output quality. You'll want to consider output quality for text, graphics, and photos separately, since high quality for one kind of output doesn't necessarily mean high quality for the others. Read deep-dive reviews like ours for the details.
See How We Test Printers
Speed
If almost everything you print is one or two pages long, you probably don't need to concern yourself too much with how fast a printer is. If you output a lot of longer documents, speed is more important, which means you probably want a laser printer. As a rule, laser printers will be close to their claimed speeds for uncomplicated text documents, which don't need much processing time.
Inkjet printers often claim faster speeds than more expensive lasers, but
How Much Will You Print?
If you print only a few pages a day, you don't have to worry about how much a printer is designed to print, as defined by its recommended (not maximum) monthly duty cycle. If you print enough for the duty cycle to matter, however, don't buy a printer that doesn't include that information in its specifications. Figure out how much you print by how often you buy paper and in what amounts. Then pick a printer that's designed to print at least that much.
Cost Considerations
Finally, be sure to consider the total cost of ownership. Most manufacturers will rate the cost per page, and many give a cost per photo. To get the total cost of ownership, calculate the cost per year for each kind of output (monochrome, color document, photo) by multiplying the cost per page by the number of those pages you'll print each year. Add these amounts to get the total cost per year. Then multiply that by the number of years you expect to own the printer, and add the initial cost of the printer. Compare the total cost of ownership figures between printers to find out which model will be least expensive in the long run.
For a head start on finding the right printer for your needs, check out our top picks below. We refresh the list monthly to include the newest high-rated products, but because of the large number of printers we review every year, not every top-rated product makes the cut. For the very latest reviews, and to search for more top-rated products, check out our printer product guide, as well as our favorite wireless printers, and our roundup of the best printers for Macs. You can also dig deeper—by print technology or paper type—and see our favorite inkjet, laser, and wide-format printers.
Best Printers Featured in This Roundup:
Brother HL-L8360CDW Review
MSRP: $399.99Pros: Excellent print quality overall. Fast print speeds. Competitively low running costs. Highly expandable paper capacity. High-yield toner cartridges. Latest security features.
Cons: Slightly below average photo quality.
Bottom Line: The very well rounded HL-L8360CDW is a fast color laser printer with good output quality, low running costs, and flexible expandability for its class.
Read ReviewBrother MFC-J6945DW INKvestment Tank Color Inkjet All-In-One Printer Review
MSRP: $349.99Pros: Low running costs. Good print quality. Prints, scans, copies, and faxes tabloid-size pages. Single-pass duplexing ADF. Three paper input sources.
Cons: Super-tabloid support would provide greater value.
Bottom Line: The Brother MFC-J6945DW is a wide-format color inkjet all-in-one printer that prints well and is feature-packed and inexpensive to use, making it an exceptional value for small offices.
Read ReviewCanon Pixma G6020 MegaTank All-in-One Printer Review
MSRP: $299.99Pros: Rock-bottom running costs. Up to 18,000 pages worth of black ink included. Excellent print quality, especially photos. Good feature set, software bundle, and paper capacity. Auto-duplexing print engine.
Cons: No automatic document feeder. Archaic control panel.
Bottom Line: The entry-level Canon Pixma G6020 is a bulk-ink all-in-one printer that produces excellent output for home offices. And better yet, it costs very little to use over time.
Read ReviewCanon Pixma TR8520 Wireless Home Office All-In-One Printer Review
MSRP: $199.99Pros: Excellent print quality. Light and compact. SD card slot. Ethernet support. Two black inks. Two paper input trays. 20-sheet ADF. XXL ink cartridges available.
Cons: A little pricey. Somewhat high running costs.
Bottom Line: It may be a little pricey, but the Canon Pixma TR8520 all-in-one printer produces terrific text, graphics and photos, and it has a strong feature set.
Read ReviewEpson EcoTank ET-4760 All-In-One Printer Review
MSRP: $499.99Pros: Excellent print quality. Very low running costs. Light and compact. Single-pass auto-duplexing ADF. Excellent mobile connectivity options.
Cons: Relatively low duty cycle and recommended volume ratings. Lacks support for flash memory devices.
Bottom Line: The Epson EcoTank ET-4760 is an excellent multifunction color printer for small offices that don't want to sacrifice features to get low long-term running costs.
Read ReviewEpson Expression Photo HD XP-15000 Wide-Format Inkjet Printer Review
MSRP: $349.99Pros: Excellent photo quality. Prints borderless images from 4 by 6 inches to 13 by 19 inches. Uses new Claria Photo HD inks. Small and light for an oversize printer.
Cons: Running costs a bit high. Prints speeds are slower than the competition.
Bottom Line: The consumer-grade Epson Expression Photo HD XP-15000 Wide-Format Inkjet Printer produces output quality that's comparable with much more expensive professional models.
Read ReviewEpson WorkForce Pro WF-M5299 Monochrome Printer Review
MSRP: $209.99Pros: Exceptional cost per page. Above-average print quality. Expandable paper input capacity. Low price.
Cons: Recommended monthly print volume is low. A bit slower than competing laser machines. Out-of-the-box paper input capacity is low.
Bottom Line: An entry-level monochrome inkjet printer, the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-M5299 prints well and is very inexpensive to use, making it an exceptional value for small- to medium-size offices.
Read ReviewHP LaserJet Pro M15w Review
MSRP: $99.99Pros: Tiny footprint. Low purchase price. Robust smartphone integration. Good overall print quality.
Cons: High running costs. No Ethernet port.
Bottom Line: The HP LaserJet Pro M15w is an excellent, inexpensive, and tiny monochrome laser printer that's as easy to use on the road as it is to tuck away in a small office.
Read ReviewHP Sprocket 2nd Edition Review
MSRP: $129.99Pros: Impressive print quality. Lower price and running costs than original Sprocket. Expressive colors. Sprocket App has lots of new functionality. Nascent augmented-reality aspects.
Cons: A few features (notably, multi-user connections and print queue) are under-developed.
Bottom Line: HP's Sprocket 2nd Edition portable photo printer stands out with its unique design and quirky AR angle. But most impressive is the improved print quality.
Read ReviewHP Tango X Review
MSRP: $199.00Pros: Small and spiffy. Voice control with supported smart home UIs. IFTTT scripting for extending smart capabilities. Impressive print quality. Competitive ink costs with Instant Ink, plus free snapshot printing from your smartphone.
Cons: Borderless prints limited to 5-by-7-inch. Single, small paper input. 'Scans' and 'copies' only via smartphone.
Bottom Line: HP's Tango X 'smart printer,' the first we've tested with voice activation and smart home features, is all about printing from mobile devices. It's not perfect, but given its unique free-snapshot printing angle, it will be a tough act for future models to follow.
Read Review
Your guide
Ben Keough
We’ve spent more than 300 hours researching and testing laser printers over the past seven years, and we’ve come away convinced that the best choice for a full-featured laser printer is the HP Color LaserJet Pro M254dw. Of the 40 current laser printer models we considered in 2018, it’s the most reliable and least annoying to use of the bunch, and it can print just about anything most people would want, with beautiful results.
Our pick
HP Color LaserJet Pro M254dw
The HP M254dw has a great user interface, prints faster than the competition, and produces crisp black text with vibrant color graphics.
Buying Options
If you need a laser printer that can handle any print job—from tax forms and labels to envelopes and corporate reports—the HP Color LaserJet Pro M254dw is hard to beat. Its easy-to-use touchscreen interface and HP Smart software really stand out from the competition and make setup and daily use far less frustrating than with other printers we’ve tried. It produces crisp black text and vibrant full-color graphics with equal ease. The M254dw is also faster than competing models, pumping out around 17 single-sided pages per minute, and it has a convenient bypass slot that makes printing on envelopes and other odd-sized media easy.
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Budget pick
Brother HL-L2350DW
With low operating costs, quick operation, and useful features, the HL-L2350DW is the best laser printer you can get for around $100.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $100.
If you’re looking for a cheap laser printer for occasional black-and-white print jobs, we recommend the Brother HL-L2350DW. Setup is painless and the machine is compatible with all major platforms, including Windows, MacOS, ChromeOS, Linux, iOS, and Android. Its cost per page is a reasonable 3.3 cents, it sticks to Wi-Fi like glue, and its price generally hovers around $100. Its print quality is merely adequate right out of the box, but you can improve it with a few simple settings tweaks. Just be aware that the L2350DW can’t scan or copy; if you need that functionality, look to our monochrome all-in-one pick.
Also great
Brother MFC-L2750DW
This multifunction printer adds a flatbed scanner and automatic document feeder to the L2350DW, significantly upping its home-office utility.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $136.
If you like the sound of our budget pick but want the ability to scan and copy documents and photos, the MFC-L2750DW should fit the bill. At its core it’s a very similar printer—and it’s just as easy to set up—but it also has a flatbed scanner and a fast, single-pass duplexing automatic document feeder on top. Its print quality is slightly better out of the box, and you get the same operating costs, the same print speed, and the same connectivity options as you do with the L2350DW. For home offices it’s a great do-it-all option—as long as you don’t need color.
Upgrade pick
HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M477fdw
This color laser all-in-one is a great choice for small businesses that need a fast, versatile printer.
Buying Options
May be out of stock
*At the time of publishing, the price was $560.
If you have a small business with more serious productivity needs, the HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M477fdw is a worthwhile upgrade over our other picks. It’s easy enough to set up and also offers more robust admin settings and security options for a multiuser environment. All-in-one color lasers like the M477fdw cost more and are more expensive to operate than inkjet printers with comparable features, but they deliver high-quality color prints, copies, and scans at a quicker pace than cheaper models. They’re also sturdier and more reliable than inkjets.
Everything we recommend
Our pick
HP Color LaserJet Pro M254dw
The HP M254dw has a great user interface, prints faster than the competition, and produces crisp black text with vibrant color graphics.
Buying Options
Budget pick
Brother HL-L2350DW
With low operating costs, quick operation, and useful features, the HL-L2350DW is the best laser printer you can get for around $100.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $100.
Also great
Best Printers For Mac Pro
Brother MFC-L2750DW
This multifunction printer adds a flatbed scanner and automatic document feeder to the L2350DW, significantly upping its home-office utility.
Buying Options
Best Printers For Mac
*At the time of publishing, the price was $136.
Upgrade pick
HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M477fdw
This color laser all-in-one is a great choice for small businesses that need a fast, versatile printer.
Buying Options
May be out of stock
*At the time of publishing, the price was $560.
The research
Why you should trust us
Wirecutter has covered printers for seven years, and I’ve written about them since 2016. My editors and I have kept an eye on feedback from comment threads, email, and Twitter to better understand our readers’ real-world needs. We’ve considered reviews from other editorial sources, including CNET, Computer Shopper, and PCMag. We’ve scanned thousands of customer reviews to pick out recurring issues with specific models. And we’ve lived with many printers as long-term test units, learning how they can fail and disappoint in the long run.
For this guide to laser printers, we’ve considered 142 different printers and tested 16 of them since 2011. And for this particular update, we’ve put in about 35 hours of research and testing, looking at 40 different models and ultimately testing five.
Who should get this
We think laser printers are best for people who need to print a lot, like small-business owners. They’re also great for people who don’t print often but want a machine that will work without complaint on the rare occasions when they do need to print.
To help you decide if a laser printer is right for you, take a look at this brief list of things laser printers tend to do better than inkjets:
- Laser printers are less frustrating to maintain. Laser toner cartridges don’t have to be replaced as often as ink tanks, and they won’t clog—as inkjet print heads sometimes do—if you go weeks or months between print jobs.
- They’re faster. If you have a home office or run a home business, you may be more conscious of printer speed than regular people. Our laser picks can pump out as many as 27 pages per minute; the fastest inkjets we’ve tested maxed out at 13 pages per minute.
- They print sharper text and graphics. The best inkjets do a good job, but even a mediocre laser printer will do a better job delivering crisp results, especially when it comes to fine lines and small font sizes.
- They may be more economical to run in the long term. Some inkjets have a lower cost per page than home laser printers, but they also waste more ink on cleaning. That waste isn’t reflected in the estimates manufacturers provide for how many pages you can get out of a tank. Laser printers don’t waste toner in the same way, and because they don’t gunk up like inkjets, they may last longer before needing to be replaced.
- Toner doesn’t smear and run when it gets wet. If you need prints that can get wet without becoming unreadable, you want a laser printer.
But laser printers aren’t for everyone, because they’re not great at everything. Here are a few reasons why you might want to stick to an inkjet:
- Inkjets cost less to start with. A basic inkjet can cost as little as $40, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a laser at that price.
- Their ink tanks are cheaper to replace. Toner cartridges may last longer, but replacing an entire set of them will cost you several hundred dollars. Replacing smaller, less expensive ink tanks more often can be easier on your budget, even if it doesn’t really save you money in the long run.
- They can print glossy photos. Sure, laser printers can print a photo on plain paper, but they can’t deliver prints on glossy or matte photo paper. If you want to make frame-worthy prints, an inkjet is your only choice.
- They can print on other stuff besides paper. CDs, metal, and other unusual media are fair game, which makes them much more versatile for crafty types.
If you think you want an inkjet instead of a laser, we recommend the best inkjet machines here.
How we picked
Laser printers have a few clear subcategories, and for this guide we looked for good options in each of them.
Color print-only
In the past, we considered color laser printers an extravagance for home use, due to the high cost of color toner and the higher up-front cost of the machines themselves. However, prices have gradually dropped into a more acceptable range, and we think that these printers now provide the best all-around value for people who want a trouble-free printing experience. They’re still expensive compared with inkjets and monochrome lasers, but the convenience factor and flexibility of a color laser machine can’t be overstated.
To find the best color laser printers, we scouted all of the current color laser printers we could find for less than $300, our cutoff for affordability. Then we refined the results by considering only those with automatic duplex printing, Wi-Fi, and support for today’s mobile printing standards. We favored models with cheaper toner costs. To weed out any clunkers that had good specs but poor real-world performance, we read through hundreds of customer and professional reviews. This netted us two serious contenders: the Canon ImageClass LBP612Cdw and the HP Color LaserJet Pro M254dw.
Monochrome print-only
Because they’re fundamentally similar machines, we applied most of the same criteria we used to find our color laser pick, but reduced the price ceiling to $200 because mono laser printers tend to be much less expensive. With those parameters, we ended up with just two contenders. Unfortunately, we found out that one of them is unlikely to be available for much longer, so we decided to test the other—the Brother HL-L2350DW—to confirm that it’s the best choice for people with just occasional printing needs. The L2350DW is the successor to the L2340DW, our pick for a low-cost monochrome laser printer for the past two iterations of this guide.
Best Hp Printer For Mac
Monochrome multifunction
Although a print-only machine is sufficient for most people, plenty of other people—particularly small- and home-business owners—also want a copier and scanner. So we sought out monochrome multifunction printers with a reasonable purchase price (under $250), low toner costs (around 3¢ or less per page), Wi-Fi connectivity, mobile apps, duplex printing, and an automatic document feeder (rather than just a flatbed scanner).
Our research turned up 14 mono MFPs that fit those criteria. We read owner and professional reviews to seek out the best of these, and ultimately selected two test models: the Brother MFC-L2750DW and Canon ImageClass MF249dw.
Color multifunction
Finally, we looked for a high-end color laser all-in-one for people with more serious small-office or home-office needs. It needed to be fast and flexible, offer great print and scan quality, and have a relatively affordable price (though none of these machines are cheap).
Filtering through the color laser AIOs from top manufacturers, we arrived at four models that checked off all our requirements for less than $500: the Brother MFC-9340CDW, the Canon Color ImageClass MF733Cdw, and the HP Color LaserJet Pro M477fdw, the upgrade pick in our all-in-one printer guide.
How we tested
Your first experience with a printer sets the tone for the relationship to come. If setup is a breeze, you’ll have a much more positive attitude toward the machine going forward. That’s why we paid especially close attention to the installation process, from the physical unboxing to wirelessly connecting each machine to a Windows PC, Mac, iPhone, and Android device. We considered setup a success when we were able to print a two-sided document from each platform over Wi-Fi, turn the machine off and back on, and do it again.
Because simply getting a job to print can be frustrating, we also tested other ways to wirelessly interact with these machines. Halo download mac os x. As it’s vital for Chromebook owners, we made sure each printer worked with Google Cloud Print. We considered it a success when we could print using Google Cloud Print from a phone using cellular data. Where available, we also checked out other mobile printing standards and proprietary systems, like Mopria and HP ePrint.
You’d have to try hard to find a laser printer that doesn’t offer at least respectable print quality, but some still manage to stand out from the pack. To separate the great from the merely good, we printed several text-based reference documents that also included elements like columns, tables, or charts: instructions for the 1099 tax form (PDF), a star chart designed for lens sharpness testing, a document from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) meant to mimic a typical office report, and a simple Word/PDF document with the same sentence repeated in descending font size from 72 points to 1 point. We printed a few high-resolution photos, too, because more data is always better, and seeing how each printer handles material that really pushes against the limits of its capabilities can be instructive.
Bentley audi a4 b5 manual download. As it’s vital for Chromebook owners, we made sure each printer worked with Google Cloud Print.
We also checked out each printer’s quality options, including toner-density sliders and any available print-resolution settings to see what you can expect with toner-saving options, and to find out if we could eke out better-looking text.
Experimenting with quality settings also helped us get familiar with the print menus. We spent time in the standard print box, as well as the more arcane, Web-based control panels that most printers employ for more technical adjustments.
To test printing speed, we ran off four copies of the four-page ISO document in both duplex (two-sided) and simplex (one-sided) modes. We timed the whole process, from hitting Print to the last sheet coming out of the feeder, so that it included any warm-up time required from a cold start. We also tried duplex printing at the highest quality setting for each printer. These tests give us a feel for not only how fast a printer will be able to spit out a 10-page book report, but if the differences between them are substantial enough to make a difference in day-to-day life.
For the multifunction printers, we added speed tests for copying and scanning a large (50-page) document composed of mixed output from our printing tests, again considering both duplex and simplex speed. We also tested the flatbed scan quality of each multifunction printer using a glossy test photo printed on our inkjet all-in-one pick, the HP OfficeJet Pro 8720. We scanned at all available resolutions and looked for notable qualitative differences between each machine’s output, from sharpness to color rendition and contrast.
We timed the whole printing process—from hitting print to the last sheet coming out of the feeder—so that it included any warm-up time required from a cold start.
Finally, we stress-tested all of the paper-feeding parts of each printer, including not just the main paper tray, but also the bypass tray and document feeder, if the printer had them. We (slightly) overstuffed them with paper to see if they’d jam, and we also fed them single sheets to see if they could pick each up. We also fed the multifunction printers a crumpled piece of paper to see if their ADFs could handle the unexpected.
Our pick: HP Color LaserJet Pro M254dw
Our pick
HP Color LaserJet Pro M254dw
The HP M254dw has a great user interface, prints faster than the competition, and produces crisp black text with vibrant color graphics.
Buying Options
The HP Color LaserJet Pro M254dw is fast, powerful, flexible, and—most important—easy to use, which in our book makes it the best laser printer for most people. We love the responsive control panel, the modern design of HP’s PC and mobile software, and how easy the printer is to set up and get on Wi-Fi. Toner is affordable, and you can get it in extra-large cartridges that are good for more than 3,000 pages, which should last most people a very long time before needing replacement. Print quality is excellent across the board, and all of the features you’d expect from a high-end machine are here: auto-duplexing, plenty of networking options, support for common mobile printing standards, and a bypass slot for odd-sized media.
Setting up the M254dw is painless, thanks in large part to the surprisingly helpful Getting Started guide. It lays out three different ways to set up a printer-PC connection: USB, Ethernet, and Wi-Fi. Despite the included USB cable (a rarity these days), we think most people will use Wi-Fi, so that’s the path we chose. With the touchscreen, establishing a wireless connection was as easy as picking our router out of a list and typing in the password. Unlike most other printers we tested, the HP also provides a full QWERTY keyboard, which made entering a complex passkey a lot less frustrating.
The bright, colorful, smartphone-style touchscreen interface is easy to work with, though it's not as large as the one on our upgrade pick.Photo: Rozette Rago
You can use the M254dw’s top USB port to print photos, PDFs, and Word documents. It stays hidden behind a little flap when not in use. Photo: Rozette Rago
The bright, colorful, smartphone-style touchscreen interface is easy to work with, though it's not as large as the one on our upgrade pick.Photo: Rozette Rago
You can use the M254dw’s top USB port to print photos, PDFs, and Word documents. It stays hidden behind a little flap when not in use. Photo: Rozette Rago
Wi-Fi and that touchscreen interface are a couple of areas where the M254dw excels. Maintaining a solid wireless connection has traditionally been a struggle for printers, but this HP performed without fail during our testing, boosted by a first-in-class feature: dual-band Wi-Fi. Yep, the M254dw works on either the standard 2.4 GHz band or the typically less populated and faster 5 GHz band.
The bright and high-resolution color touchscreen display makes navigating the printer’s many settings menus easy. All of the other printers we tested for this guide use old-school resistive touchscreens that aren’t nearly as accurate or easy to use as the capacitive touchscreens on most smartphones. This screen isn’t as big as the ones on larger all-in-one printers, like our upgrade pick, but it’s still a significant upgrade over the one-line mono readout of our budget pick or the blocky, low-res monochrome touchscreen on the Canon ImageClass LBP612Cdw we also tested.
Once the M254dw is connected to your network, you can grab the appropriate drivers and software for your Mac or Windows PC by heading to 123.hp.com and clicking the link for “LaserJets or PageWides” at the bottom of the page. (Alternatively, you can just click here.) That’ll get you the HP Easy Start installer, which walks you through getting the printer connected, registered, and working with your computer. This process took longer with this printer than with other HPs we’ve tested, but we were still able to wrap everything up within a half an hour. Connecting a smartphone or tablet is much quicker. You can download the HP Smart app (Android and iOS) and add the printer with just a couple taps.
Operating costs for the M254dw are low. Black-and-white pages cost around 3¢ each, and color pages are about 15¢. Bear in mind that these numbers are only estimates; if you’re printing full-page color photos, you can expect to get fewer pages out of each toner cartridge, while a mostly text-based page with a few color graphics could stretch the toner further and lower your cost per page. HP’s toner cartridges feature an integrated drum, so you don’t have to worry about buying a new one after a couple years. If you want to make your dollar stretch a little further, you can make the printer default to duplex printing and adjust menu settings to reduce toner usage. We don’t recommend handing out reduced-toner prints to clients, but the results are passable for everyday personal use.
The M254dw model’s 250-page main paper tray (which can accept everything up to legal size) is larger than many in its class, so you’ll have to fill it less often. A dedicated bypass slot for odd-sized media means you also won’t have to take your regular paper out if you want to print on envelopes, labels, or card stock. The slot is motorized, which was a little off-putting the first time we used it. When you slide an envelope or label sheet into the slot, rollers grab it and suck it into the guts of the printer, where it sits until you send a print job. (However, we weren’t able to find a way to get the printer to eject paper from this slot without printing, which seems a little strange.)
Above the main tray, a handy single-sheet bypass slot can handle labels, envelopes, and other odd-sized media.Photo: Rozette Rago
With capacity for 250 sheets, the main paper tray of the M254dw is larger than those of many competing models.Photo: Rozette Rago
Above the main tray, a handy single-sheet bypass slot can handle labels, envelopes, and other odd-sized media.Photo: Rozette Rago
With capacity for 250 sheets, the main paper tray of the M254dw is larger than those of many competing models.Photo: Rozette Rago
We couldn’t get the M254dw to jam, no matter how hard we tried. When we crammed the paper tray with as many as 50 extra sheets, a warning popped up on the control panel saying the tray was overstuffed, and the machine refused to print. (In this situation, other printers would try, fail, and jam.) When we put exactly 250 pages in, it printed normally; same with just a single sheet in the tray. If we had run into a jam, however, there printer’s back has a convenient access hatch to remove it.
At default settings, the M254dw produces crisp, dark black text that’s readable down to 2 points. Results are similarly impressive when printing business-style graphics and household miscellany like comics, coloring book pages, and crosswords. We didn’t observe any jagged lines or banding in solid-color areas—two problems that often plague cheaper models. Although it can’t print on photo paper, we ran a few high-resolution test photos through the HP on plain paper and came away generally pleased with the results. The prints are a touch washed out, but you get accurate colors, lots of detail, and relatively low noise. These aren’t photos you’d want to hang on a wall, or even display on your fridge, but they’re more than adequate for the cover of a business presentation or a school paper.
HP claims the M254dw can print as fast as 22 pages per minute in black and white, but in our testing it maxed out around 17 pages per minute while printing a PDF consisting of mixed text and graphics. That’s an impressive result—slightly quicker than the Canon LBP612Cdw we tested it against, and certainly fast enough for most home and home-office purposes. Color printing was just a touch slower at 15 pages per minute, and duplexing in either monochrome or color dropped the speed further, to 11 pages per minute. Again, quicker than the competition.
Flaws but not dealbreakers
Early owner reviews noted various problems, most commonly color accuracy and Wi-Fi stability, though it seems that subsequent firmware updates have fixed many of these issues. During testing, we had trouble getting the printer registered with Google Cloud Print before we updated the firmware; afterward, it worked right away. Our advice: Always attempt a firmware update immediately after setting up any printer. You’re less likely to run into issues that way.
Another common owner complaint is that the M254dw can be slow to start printing. We observed this only once during testing, when printing our high-resolution color test photo. In that case, the machine took a little over a minute from receiving the job to start printing. Every other job we ran started right away, from Word docs and PDFs to smaller JPEGs and PSDs from Photoshop.
The M254dw comes with a skimpy set of “starter” toner cartridges good for 800 black-and-white and 700 color pages. High-capacity replacements are good for up to 3,200 monochrome and 2,500 color pages, but a full set will cost you around $400, or almost twice as much as the printer itself. This isn’t a problem limited to the M254dw—almost all consumer laser printers (including alternatives we considered and tested) come with these corner-cutting cartridges, but it’s annoying nonetheless. Most buyers should be prepared to dish out for replacement toner within the first year or so, but the replacement point could come a lot sooner for people using the printer in a home office. Third-party toner can be had for around half the price of the genuine HP product, but we can’t guarantee it’ll work for you; explore that option at your own risk.
Color laser printers are bigger and heavier than their monochrome counterparts, because they use four toner cartridges rather than just one. The Color LaserJet Pro M254dw is no exception: It’s more than twice as heavy as our budget pick (the Brother HL-L2350DW), but still far smaller and lighter than a color all-in-one like our upgrade pick (the HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M477fdw). It’ll take up significant space on your desk, but it won’t colonize it the way an all-in-one would. It also probably won’t fit on your bookshelf, thanks to its 19-inch depth.
Budget pick: Brother HL-L2350DW
Budget pick
Brother HL-L2350DW
With low operating costs, quick operation, and useful features, the HL-L2350DW is the best laser printer you can get for around $100.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $100.
The Brother HL-L2350DW is a simple, affordable, and dependable monochrome laser printer. For people with basic needs—printing taxes, recipes, boarding passes, and so on—its automatic duplex capability, large 250-sheet paper tray, reliable paper handling, speedy printing, and low per-page costs make it an excellent choice, despite a few quirks.
With a machine this straightforward, physical setup is quick. You only have to remove the packing tape, insert the toner cartridge, adjust the paper-tray guides, and load some paper. Getting the printer on Wi-Fi is a little more complicated to do with this model than with some other printers, because the HL-L2350DW employs a decidedly old-school user interface that consists of a one-line monochrome LED display and an array of rubber buttons. There’s no way to type in a Wi-Fi passkey on the machine itself, so you have to complete the process with the help of a PC. Even so, we were able to get connected to our network within a few minutes, and the printer reliably maintained a connection throughout testing—even several rooms away and a floor below our router. Some owners reported issues with this printer’s predecessor, the L2340DW, refusing to wake up from Deep Sleep mode, so we were happy to find that the new model didn’t give us any issues during our testing. You can operate the L2350DW over USB, if you prefer, but you’ll have to supply your own cable. If you want an Ethernet port for wired Internet, you can upgrade to the otherwise nearly identical HL-L2370DW.
The L2350DW works with Windows PCs, Macs, and even Linux systems. It’s also compatible with all major mobile printing standards, including Google Cloud Print, which means it’s a solid pick for Chromebook owners. However, you may have issues getting the printer to complete Cloud Print registration; we certainly did. For us, the solution was to access the printer’s Web control panel, navigate to the Networking tab, and disable IPv6. With that done, the printer was able to get on Cloud Print right away and worked flawlessly for the remainder of testing. It’s a mystery why Brother ships the L2350DW with this setting enabled, considering that it’s a known fact that Cloud Print doesn’t work with IPv6. How to download video from website mac yosemite. At least it’s an easy fix.
You don’t really need to install any extra software for the L2350DW, because it has native Windows and Mac drivers. It also works automatically with AirPrint on iOS, and can be added with the Brother Print Service on Android. Brother’s iPrint&Scan app is available for all four platforms. It’s perfectly functional, if not as well-designed as HP’s software. Unfortunately, in our testing, printing from iPrint&Scan resulted in horrendous quality, regardless of the quality setting selected. We reached out to Brother for comment, but the company wasn’t able to provide any explanation for the print-quality discrepancy. In general, we’d recommend you avoid the app and print through your operating system’s native print dialog, which works just great.
Right out of the box, the HL-L2350DW produces good-looking text. Tax forms and other documents with tiny fonts (all the way down to 2 points) are perfectly readable, and larger headers come out with crisp edges and dark centers. All in all, this printer should be more than adequate for printing text-heavy documents. Graphics and photos, on the other hand, are merely mediocre at default settings. Some light banding is visible in solid-color areas, and graphics appear a little grainy. The output is good enough for personal use or internal business documents, and you can improve it with adjustments to toner density and resolution settings (at the expense of toner longevity) if you need to hand out documents to clients.
Brother claims the L2350DW can print at up to 32 pages per minute, which is 5 pages per minute faster than the machine it replaces. It wasn’t quite that fast for us, but it was still speedy enough for just about any home or home-office use we can imagine. We clocked it at 25 pages per minute while printing single-sided PDFs, and 12 pages per minute while using duplex—faster than our top pick, the M254dw, in both cases. Print jobs reliably started up within a couple seconds, too, so you won’t be left waiting long in any case.
As with its now-discontinued predecessor (our top pick for the past two years), one of the best things about the HL-L2350DW is its low cost of ownership. It shouldn’t cost you much more than $100 for the printer itself, and we’ve seen it on sale for far less than that. Operating costs are low, too. Even accounting for drum wear, each print will run you about 3.3¢, which is right in line with the other models we recommend. And optional 3,000-page high-yield cartridges mean you won’t need to replace your toner too often. (However, like most other laser printers, the L2350DW comes with a puny starter cartridge good for just 700 pages.)
This printer is extremely small and light. At just 15.9 pounds, it’s more than 10 pounds lighter than our next smallest pick, and its footprint is significantly smaller as well. It’s especially short at 7.2 inches tall, which should help you fit it on a bookshelf. But it’ll just as easily find a space on your desk, or anywhere else you might want to shove it.
However, don’t expect great build quality from a cheap printer like the HL-L2350DW. Our test unit came in a very banged-up box (thanks, FedEx!) that released a confetti of shattered styrofoam when we opened it. After getting the printer up and running, we immediately noticed that duplex printing wasn’t working; every time we printed a two-sided document, it jammed in exactly the same place. We hopped on the phone and a Brother customer support agent quickly diagnosed the problem: a plastic guide in the paper path that had gotten knocked out of place in transit. It was simple enough to pop it back in where it was supposed to go, but it speaks to the L2350DW’s flimsiness (and shoddy packaging) that the issue happened in the first place.
Also great: Brother MFC-L2750DW
Also great
Brother MFC-L2750DW
This multifunction printer adds a flatbed scanner and automatic document feeder to the L2350DW, significantly upping its home-office utility.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $136.
If you work from home, run a home business, or simply want the flexibility of a laser printer that can also scan and copy, we recommend the Brother MFC-L2750DW. This powerful machine marries the basic utility and reliability of our Brother HL-L2350DW budget pick with the versatility of a flatbed scanner and single-pass duplexing automatic document feeder. It’s dependable, quick, cost-effective, and reasonably compact, and can handle everything except color print jobs. (Yes, including faxing.)
The MFC-L2750DW is even simpler to set up than its little sibling, because you can connect it to Wi-Fi using the color touchscreen control panel. The interface is easy to navigate, if not quite as user-friendly as the one on our main pick. It includes a number of handy built-in apps, including Dropbox and Google Drive, so you can walk up and print directly from your cloud accounts. It also has a scan-to-email app, which is refreshingly simple to configure. It timed out on us a few times when trying to scan very large jobs, but otherwise worked quickly.
The 250-sheet paper tray has adjustable guides for envelopes and other different media.Photo: Rozette Rago
The L2750DW model’s color touchscreen is simple to operate, and much less frustrating than what you’d get from some competing models.Photo: Rozette Rago
The 250-sheet paper tray has adjustable guides for envelopes and other different media.Photo: Rozette Rago
The L2750DW model’s color touchscreen is simple to operate, and much less frustrating than what you’d get from some competing models.Photo: Rozette Rago
Default print quality from the L2750DW is good enough for home and internal business use—a small step ahead of our budget pick Brother HL-L2350DW, with sharper text at small font sizes and marginally better graphics performance. But for professional-looking brochures or presentations, you’d probably want to use a printer like our upgrade pick HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M477fdw, or punt the job to a pro print shop.
Scans from the automatic document feeder look just fine, though they can come out a bit crooked if you don’t micromanage the paper guides on the ADF tray (a fault shared by many all-in-ones). Flatbed scans sidestep this issue and have excellent sharpness thanks to the 1200 dpi maximum resolution (double what some competing machines offer). You can scan to email, a network computer or drive, an FTP server, or cloud apps like Dropbox and Google Drive. Unfortunately, this printer lacks a USB port, so you can’t save your scans directly to a thumb drive.
Thanks to its single-pass duplexing automatic document feeder, scanning is really quick even with two-sided documents—24 pages per minute in black and white and 8 pages per minute in color. The Canon ImageClass MF249dw we tested was just as fast with single-sided documents, but 66 percent slower at duplexing because it took two passes to scan a two-sided sheet.
The L2750DW shares a couple of annoying but easily fixable faults with its print-only stablemate. As with the L2350DW, print quality degrades when you initiate jobs from Brother’s iPrint&Scan app, so you should use your operating system’s native print dialog instead. Google Cloud Print doesn’t work from the get-go—or didn’t for us, anyway—but you can fix that by disabling IPv6 in the Web control panel’s networking options.
This machine feels pretty flimsy, but the upside is that it’s light and compact for its class, which makes it easier to fit into your space. When you first set it up, just be sure to check for any plastic pieces that might have jumped out of place, and run a few print and scan jobs to make sure everything is working properly. If it’s not, give Brother’s customer support a call before returning the machine; the fix might be really simple.
Upgrade pick: HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M477fdw
Upgrade pick
HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M477fdw
This color laser all-in-one is a great choice for small businesses that need a fast, versatile printer.
Buying Options
May be out of stock
*At the time of publishing, the price was $560.
If you need (or just want) a more serious printer than our other picks, the HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M477fdw is a reasonably priced laser all-in-one that can print in color and comes with all of the most important productivity features, including duplex printing and scanning, wireless connectivity, and fax capability. This is a solid fit for small businesses—more powerful than your typical inkjet all-in-one, yet smaller and more affordable than the hulking enterprise machines you’d see at your local cubicle farm.
Though not enterprise-grade, the M477fdw is still huge and heavy at more than 51 pounds. Just removing it from the box can be a struggle, so make sure you have help on hand before you start setting it up. Once it’s unboxed, getting it running is straightforward: remove the packing tape, adjust the paper guides, insert some paper, and power it up. Connecting to Wi-Fi is simple thanks to the touchscreen interface; it’s a huge, colorful, capacitive panel that behaves just like a smartphone screen. As with other HP laser printers, you can head to 123.hp.com, click the “LaserJets or PageWides” link, and acquire all the software your PC or Mac needs to establish a satisfying working relationship with the machine. As we’ve noted elsewhere, we really like the HP Smart software; it’s super user-friendly in both computer and smartphone form.
Like other recent HP printers, the M477fdw is compatible with all major mobile printing standards, including Google Cloud Print and Mopria. HP also offers its own print service, HP ePrint. Essentially, your printer gets its own email address, and you can email it JPEGs, PDFs, and other files (up to 10 MB per email) to be printed. It works great. Scanning is similarly simple. You can use the HP Smart app to scan directly to your phone or PC, or send scans directly to Google Drive, Dropbox, and other cloud storage services via apps on the printer itself. As you’d expect from a business-oriented machine, you can also scan to email or a network drive, and the printer has a USB port so you can scan to a thumb drive. You can also use the same port to print Word files, PDFs, and photos.
We found that the M477fdw produces very sharp text, similar to that of the M254dw, our main pick, and outdoing both of our monochrome laser picks at smaller font sizes. Graphics look clean and crisp, with accurate colors and smooth edges; there was none of the banding and excessive darkness or lightness that we’ve seen from budget laser machines. The results are suitable for everything from personal use to business presentations. You’ll never have to worry about the quality.
Like most laser printers, the M477fdw is very fast. We clocked its print speeds at around 27 pages per minute, even over Wi-Fi. Scanning is nearly as quick. We timed it at 25 single-sided black-and-white pages per minute, or 11 double-sided color pages per minute. The M477fdw can scan both sides of a two-sided document in a single pass, which contributes to its blazing speed. And as befits a professionally oriented machine, this printer is up and printing just a couple of seconds after you begin the print job—even if you’ve let it sit for weeks between uses.
The M477fdw’s toner costs are about the same as those of the Brother MFC-9340CDW, and cheaper than those of the Canon Color ImageClass MF726Cdw and HP’s own Color LaserJet Pro M277dw. Black-and-white pages cost about 2¢, color pages cost about 13¢.
As we noted with the Brother MFC-L2750DW, the M477fdw can sometimes produce slightly crooked scans from the document feeder; to keep your results as uniform as possible, be sure to check that the guides are tight against the sides of your document before you start. Some of our commenters have also pointed out that the M477fdw model’s ADF maxes out at a resolution of just 300 dpi, which is quite pedestrian; if you need higher-quality scans, you’re going to have to use the flatbed scanner, which can go up to 1200 dpi.
HP makes plenty of similar LaserJet models (including variants in the 477 series), so if you don’t think you need all the features that this specific model offers, look around—you can expect similar performance elsewhere in the line.
The competition
Color print-only printers
We tested the Brother HL-L3270CDW and found that it came up short against our top pick due to its lack of single-pass duplex printing, a bypass printing slot for odd-size media, and a USB port for printing from a thumb drive. Print quality was mediocre overall, and colors had a distinctly greenish hue.
We also tested the Canon ImageClass LBP612Cdw but came away disappointed with its interface and Wi-Fi performance. It’s a good machine, but the HP we picked is better.
The HP Color LaserJet Pro M452dw is the big sibling to our main pick, the M254dw, with slightly faster printing, more paper-handling options, and a slightly lower cost per page. But it costs a lot more up front, as well. If you can find one on sale, go for it, but we think the M254dw usually strikes a better balance between price and performance for most people.
The Xerox Phaser 6510/DNI is a powerful color laser machine, and both owner and editorial reviews report very good print quality. However, they also mention networking issues with some routers, along with parts failures.
Monochrome print-only printers
The Brother HL-L2315DW isn’t that much cheaper than our budget pick, the Brother HL-L2350DW, but it’s much slower and has only 25 percent as much memory, so it may struggle with larger print jobs.
The Canon ImageClass LBP6230dw is cheap and small, and has automatic duplexing and Wi-Fi connectivity. But the cost per page is too high, and it doesn’t support AirPrint or Google Cloud Print, which is a problem if you own a Chromebook or want to print from a mobile device.
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The Dell E310dw is nearly identical to our previous budget pick, the Brother HL-L2340DW, but Dell hasn’t updated it in years. It’s probably a fine printer, but newer, better models are available.
The HP LaserJet Pro M203dw has a low cost per page and a reasonable asking price, but owner reviews are poor, complaining of difficult setup, unreliable Internet connections, and breakdowns.
Monochrome multifunction and all-in-one models
The Brother HL-L2380DW, HL-L2390DW, and HL-L2395DW are all essentially the same machine as our budget pick, the Brother HL-L2350DW, but with a flatbed scanner bolted to the top, plus or minus some extra software features. We like these models, but over time reader feedback has led us to favor multifunction printers with automatic document feeders.
The Brother DCP-L2550DW is a good bargain option if you don’t need some of the features that our monochrome multifunction pick offers. Specifically, this one lacks duplex copy and scan, fax capability, and a touchscreen interface.
The Brother MFC-L2710DW is similar to the L2750DW we like, but lacks its touchscreen interface and auto-duplex scanning and copying. It also has just 25 percent as much onboard memory, which means it might balk at large print jobs, and is a little slower.
We tested the Canon ImageClass MF249dw and found that although it produced nice prints and scans, it was much less enjoyable to use than our pick, the HP Color LaserJet Pro M254dw, with a horrible touchscreen interface, annoying software, moderately flaky Wi-Fi, and occasional paper jams.
The Canon ImageClass MF244dw and MF247dw are very similar to the MF249dw we tested, but both have a smaller ADF capacity and neither does duplex scanning and copying. The MF244dw also lacks fax capability.
The Dell E515dw is pretty inexpensive and has solid owner reviews, but also has a high cost per page and isn’t rated to print as many pages per month as the models we tested.
The HP LaserJet Pro MFP M227fdw has an attractive cost per page and a nice touchscreen interface, but owner reviews are deeply mediocre.
Color all-in-one models
We tested the Brother MFC-L3770CDW but found that it couldn’t keep up with our laser AIO pick in usability or raw performance. Its resistive touchscreen wasn’t as responsive as the HP M477fdw’s capacitive panel, the Brother iPrint&Scan software froze repeatedly on our MacBook during multipage scan jobs, and since its duplex printing isn’t single-pass, it took nearly twice as long to print two-sided documents as the HP.
The Brother MFC-9340CDW looks to be a good deal with its all-mode duplexing, affordable toner, and relatively low up-front cost, but it’s slower than our color AIO pick and has had a rash of one-star owner reviews complaining about fused toner rollers and Wi-Fi connectivity problems.
The Canon Color ImageClass MF632Cdw, MF634Cdw, MF731Cdw, and MF733Cdw compete well with our color laser all-in-one pick on paper. Unfortunately, Canon’s user interface and software leave a lot to be desired, and we’ve had more issues with Wi-Fi and paper handling than we did with comparable HP machines.
The HP Color LaserJet Pro M281fdw is essentially a scaled-down version of our pick: slower, smaller, and less robust. If your needs aren’t too demanding, you might want to consider it, but we think the M477fdw is a more complete solution for most home and small businesses.
Footnotes
When a manufacturer says that a cartridge will print 3,000 pages, it means the printer will print 3,000 pages—of a double-spaced document with no headers or footers, basically. Yeah, that’s on the low side of what you usually print in the real world. But it’s an industry standard—all manufacturers use that as a reference point. We’d be willing to guess that most text-only pages have about 7 percent coverage, and graphics bump it up to at least 10 percent. For simplicity’s sake, we stuck with the estimated capacities that the manufacturers advertised.
Jump back.We all know that ink and toner cartridges eventually empty out. But a laser printer’s imaging drum also has a limited lifespan, and the cost of replacement often gets ignored in cost-per-page calculations. Roughly speaking, the wear on the drum adds somewhere between a half a cent and one full cent to the cost of toner for each page. Sometimes the toner and drum are sold as a single unit, so you don’t have to do any additional math to get the real cost per page. We’ve consciously tried to account for toner and drum costs in all of our predictions here, unless otherwise noted.
Jump back.Some people swear by third-party toner and even third-party imaging drums. It’s certainly tempting, because it can cut the cost per page by 75 percent. We’ve never tested any of these products, but based on what we’ve read, it seems like a more reliable option than using third-party ink in an inkjet printer. Toner is a simple substance, and laser printers don’t seem to purposely disable themselves whenever they detect non-OEM cartridges. We’d love to look into this more some day. Use at your own risk, and feel free to share your experiences.
Jump back.
Best Paint For Mac
Mx video player download for mac. Painting software has come a long way in recent years, and there are now superb programs available completely free that offer a realistic simulation of watercolors, oils, pastels, charcoal, and more.
Experience the world's most realistic and professional digital art & painting software for Mac and Windows, featuring hundreds of realistic brushes, paint and tutorials. Paint and tutorials (incl. VAT) BUY NOW. Download Instructions Shipping Policy Upgrade Eligibility. Compatible with. Best of all, these brushes are extra special because. CC&F is the Paint & Sip that LOVES you right back! FREE Mac N' Cheese Bar with every class! No need to lug ice and drinks from your car on your visit!
These free tools work well with a mouse, but are even better with a stylus or touchscreen for direct control over your virtual brushes and pens. A mac address changer download.
Some of the latest painting software also lets you work in three dimensions, creating your own models and then applying your own textures and paint effects. You can combine these with 2D sketched elements to create scenes, and even print them in 3D.
Here, we’ve picked out the very best drawing software for Windows. Some of these tools are designed for serious illustrators, while others are better for keeping children occupied without the mess of real painting. There’s something for everyone – the only limits are your imagination and skill.
1. Krita
Top-quality free painting software, completely free for all artists
Accessible interface
Krita is professional-quality painting software created by a team of artists with the noble aim of putting top-notch creative tools within reach of everyone.
You can use Krita for any kind of drawing and illustration, but it's particularly great for comics and manga. There are panel templates, halftone filters, and perspective tools in addition to the usual brushes, fills and pens. Each brush is totally customizable, and you can save your bespoke brushes to use again later.
Right-clicking anywhere on the canvas in Krita will bring up a selection wheel that lets you pick a new tool and select a colour in seconds – a system that's much easier than trawling through menus and settings
Krita was created by artists for artists, and it shows in the dozens of thoughtful little touches that make it easier to create great paintings. There are handy drawing aids for creating straight lines, vanishing points and smooth shapes. You also get layers, masks, various transform tools, HDR support, and advanced selection functions.
Krita is an incredibly powerful painting program, and it's yours to download and use completely free.
2. Artweaver Free
Realistic traditional media, with a huge selection of brushes
Supports layers
Artweaver Free enables you to create beautifully realistic digital paintings by taking input – from your mouse, a stylus or, if you have a touchscreen PC, from whatever you feel like tapping the screen with – and applying ultra-realistic brush effects.
In addition to familiar brushes such as conte brushes, calligraphy pens and airbrushes you also get a huge range of patterns and pens, enabling you to produce very complex images with the minimum of effort. It’s layer-based too, so you can build up your masterpiece in layers without losing the ability to change anything.
Artweaver Free designed for artists of all ages, but we’ve found it particularly useful for children. Kids love experimenting with all the different brushes, and we love not having to clean up any mess afterwards.
3. Microsoft Paint 3D
Kid-friendly art software for making and painting 3D models
Wide choice of paint effects
Like the classic version of Microsoft Paint (which is was originally intended to replace), Paint 3D offers a small selection of drawing tools for doodling on a flat canvas. However, the real fun happens when you click the 3D Objects button. Here you can pick a model to import (current choices include people and animals), or better yet, draw your own shape and ‘inflate’ it to turn it into a three-dimensional model that can be rotated and viewed from different angles.
You can choose a finish for your shape (options include matte, gloss, dull metal, and polished metal), paint its surface, and apply lighting effects. There’s no way to control the thickness of the 3D effect, so your object will always resemble something created with Puff Paints, but it’s great fun for kids of all ages.
Cmaptools mac download gratis ita. Multiple models can be positioned at different depths and combined to create a scene, and you can even bring doodles into the real world if you have access to a 3D printer.
4. Microsoft Fresh Paint
Another child-friendly app from Microsoft, with convincing brushes
Easy for kids to enjoy
Fresh Paint is another art app from Microsoft – this time designed to replicate the feeling of putting brush or pen to paper.
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The interface really goes to town with skeumorphism, with a plastic palette of colours that splatter when you dip your virtual brush, showing which shade you’re currently using and making a pleasing splat. You can wash the bristles in a cup of water before picking a different color, or use one immediately after another to blend them together on the brush.
Fresh Paint can simulate watercolors, gouache, and all kinds of other material. As the name implies, you can interact with your work as though it’s not yet dry, smearing it and mixing colors together on the canvas.
Experienced artists will be able to achieve great results with tools that behave like their real-life counterparts, while kids and novices will make an equally realistic mess.
5. MyPaint
Open source software for artists with time to master a new tool
Designed for graphics tablets
MyPaint is the brainchild of artist Martin Renold, who was frustrated by the limitations of his Wacom tablet’s proprietary software and decided to take matters into his own hands. Today, the open source software is an accomplished tool for serious artists.
Its background as a Linux app means MyPaint works a little differently to most Windows apps, and it’ll take a little while to master its interface, but it’s well worth the effort if you’re a hobbyist illustrator and Krita’s focus on comics means it doesn’t quite fit your needs.
MyPaint works best when used with a graphics tablet, but you can also use it with any other input device, including touchscreens.
There’s the usual selection of customizable brushes, plus support for layers, and a handy scratchpad for creating sketches. You can also download and install additional brush packages created by other users – a perk of the source code being publicly available.
- Take a look at our roundup of the best free photo editors
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Related:
Tux Paint
This is an awesome paint software download for kids that runs on a great variety of platforms and works and even works well on older and slower systems. It includes several drawing tools and as the drawing canvas is of fixed shape and size, you will not have to worry about the inches or pixels in the new picture.
Avance Paint
This paint software online is an advanced paint program that is designed for easy learning and uses with the aid of unique intuitive interface. It has all the features that would suit an advanced learner and simple enough to help a beginner. With this software, you can unleash multiple photos and unfold your artistic talents.
Fresh Paint
This is yet another very popular Microsoft paint software download that can help you to be the creative artist that you are. It is fun and easy to use as you can draw original paintings with it and even turn a photo into a delightful painting automatically. Its advanced features include front-facing camera support and improved camera lenses along with several others.
The Best Computer Paint Software for other Platforms
The best computer paint software allows you to create images and offers a profound support for layers, special effects and other advanced features that allow unlimited undo. When you are looking for some of the best paint software specifically designed for particular operating systems, then you may check these out.
Substance Painter for Linux
This painter software is a three-dimensional software that would allow the user to texture and then render and share the artistic creation with others. With this software, you may access a whole new range of advanced artistic tools like paint, spray particles, erase, project, clone, and smudge when and where you want.
Paintbrush for Mac
This computer paint software is a simple yet useful paint program which would enable you to paint pictures quickly. It has been boosted by a series of new features which include an updated and new UI, transparent selection and marching ants, rewritten text tool for accurate insertion. The airbrush, zoom, eyedropper and rounded rectangle are added to the software.
Best Paint For Machine Restoration
Paintshop Pro for Windows
Best Paint For Machinery
This is the most creative photo editing software for Windows user as it enables you to design a project or a photo sooner with simpler and even more responsive image editing features, gradient tools, fresh project templates and Text Presets. You can opt for the trial version and use a screenshot for capturing the screen and communicating with clarity.
Most Popular Software – SketchBook Pro
This computer paint software is by far the top rated owing to its matchless features that include multi-platform support, familiar brush and tool types, iterate and annotate with the layers, flipbook animation toolset, custom brushes, perspective tool, custom colours and more which would enable you to create and save your own work with ease. You can also see Digital Painting Software
What is Computer Paint Software?
The paint software are meant for enabling you to draw the pictures right on the display screen that are represented as bitmaps or bit-mapped graphics. In contrast, the drawing programs make use of the vector graphics or the object-oriented images that scale better. Most painting programs offer tools in the form of icons selecting which, you may perform the functions related to the tool. You can also see Drawing Software
Besides these helpful tools, the paint software also allows easy means of drawing common shapes like ovals, straight lines, rectangles, circles, squares and since you can work on ready images, they are also termed as image editing programs.
Thus the computer paint software offers an easy means of painting on the computer with the aid of a mouse or the graphics tablet. Some of them come with advanced features that allow the user to edit a ready image or paint everything from scratch. Thus, with the aid of these tools, anyone can be an adept artist.
Free Paint Program For Mac
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Best External Storage For Mac Pro
USB-C is certainly the port of the future, so grabbing a USB-C hard drive for your MacBook or MacBook Pro is the best way to take all of your files, music, photos, and more with you wherever you go without clogging up your Mac's own hard drive.
- Best External Storage For Apple Mac Pro
- Best External Storage For Computers
- Best External Storage For Iphone
- 1-16 of 931 results for 'external storage for macbook pro' Amazon's Choice for 'external storage for macbook pro' Seagate Backup Plus Slim 1TB Portable External Hard Drive for Mac USB 3.0 + 2mo Adobe CC Photography (STDS1000100) by Seagate. $54.99 $ 54 99 $79.99 Prime. FREE Shipping on eligible orders.
- Best external storage for iPhone & iPad Boost the storage capacity of your iPhone or iPad with our guide to the best external Wi-Fi drives and Lightning-enabled flash storage devices. By Cliff Joseph.
- From top to bottom: the 2018 MacBook Air, the 13-inch MacBook Pro, and the 2017 MacBook Air. Photo: Andrew Cunningham As of this writing, Apple offers half a dozen laptops in the MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro lines.
Our editors independently research, test, and recommend the best products; you can learn more about our review process here. We may receive commissions on purchases made from our chosen links.
The Rundown
- Best Overall: Western Digital My Passport at Amazon, “Offers outstanding performance that rivals that of pricier competitors.”
- Runner-Up, Best Overall:Samsung T5 SSD at Amazon, “The all-metal, shock-resistant enclosure is rugged and portable.”
- Best for Business:WD 8TB My Book Desktop at Amazon, “Offers far more capacity than more portable drives for far less cash.”
- Best Splurge:Seagate Backup Plus Hub 6TB at Amazon, “This drive offers a lot of capacity and it’s fast and flexible.”
- Best for Gaming:U32 ShadowUSB at Amazon, “A USB 3.0 device that has plug-and-play compatibility with the Xbox One.”
- Best for Apple:LaCie Rugged 2TB Thunderbolt USB-C at Amazon, “Super fast drive that can handle plenty of bumps, rain, and bounces.”
- Best Portability:Toshiba Canvio Advance at Amazon, “Users delight in the small size, transfer speeds, and cool running temperature.”
- Best Durability: Silicon Power 1TB Rugged Armor at Amazon, “Offering a tough exterior with a shockproof design.”
Our Top Picks
Best Overall, Best for Fast Transfers: Western Digital My Passport
4.2
What We Like
Excellent storage capacity for the price
Encryption built-in
Automatic backup
What We Don't Like
Slower than a portable SSD
No fancy features
My Passport is an inexpensive drive, but it offers outstanding performance that rivals that of pricier competitors thanks to a 3.0 USB port and excellent disk controller. This drive allows a maximum transfer speed of 174 MBps read, and 168 MBps write. It’s available in sizes ranging from 1 TB to 4 TB. Our tester thought it was a great overall value for the price: 'If you're on a budget and looking for a cheap and cheerful storage solution, the My Passport isn't very fancy but it does a reliable job of storing your precious files,' he said.
Runner-Up, Best Overall: Samsung T5 Portable SSD
What We Like
Compact design
Lightning fast transfer speeds
Compatible with multiple devices
What We Don't Like
Smaller storage space
Outdated aesthetic
Pricey
The Samsung T5 Portable DDS is on the pricey side (especially in the larger capacities), but the speed and security it comes with are worth it for those looking for durable performance. Weighing less than 2 ounces, the all-metal, shock-resistant enclosure is very portable. What really makes this device stand out, though, is its super-fast transfer speed, with up to 540 MB/s thanks to the SSD design, making it ideal for transferring giant files like 4K videos. Our tester, agreed, raving that its speed was 'unbeatable.' The T5 connects to just about anything, too, with its USB 3.1 Type-C and Type-A ports and works with Windows, Mac, and Android devices. Plus, integrated AES 256-bit hardware encryption ensures the safety of your data.
Best for Business: WD 8TB My Book Desktop External Hard Drive - USB 3.0
What We Like
Automatic backup system
Fantastic storage capacity
Above average transfer speeds
What We Don't Like
Needs external power to function
Limited portability
The My Book Desktop External Hard Drive from Western Digital, while large, fits the bill for business owners in need of serious space: It comes in 3, 4, 6, 8, or 10TB varieties and offers Western Digital’s own backup solution for Windows users. It’s also compatible with Time Machine for Mac users (though you may need to reformat). It has 256-bit AES hardware encryption for strong security and has both USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports to connect to a wide range of computers. You'll have to rely on the device's wall-based power supply, but according to our tester, that’s worth the trade-off for this spacious vault that holds your invaluable digital data: 'Though it's not really a portable hard drive,' he explained, 'it's definitely the best option if you want a static drive that sits on your desk storing and backing up your files in a secure manner.'
Best Splurge: Seagate Backup Plus Hub 6TB STEL6000100
4.6
What We Like
Massive capacity
Great value for size
Solid speed
What We Don't Like
A few interrupted connections
Must reformat for Mac OS
If cost is no concern, we recommend taking a close look at the Seagate Backup Plus Hub. It houses SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) drives, which allow more physical bits of memory in the same space without decreasing the size of the bits. This drive offers a lot of capacity — available in 3TB, 4TB, 6TB, and 8TB versions — and is fast and flexible. Our testers appreciated the two extra USB ports on the front where you can charge other devices while you work. One of our reviewers reported that it took 12 minutes to do a 9 GB transfer, which equates to a write speed of about 107 Mbps. “It feels like a good value to me,” one of our testers said.
Best for Gaming: U32 ShadowUSB Hard Drive
3.6
What We Don't Like
Limited color options
This USB 3.0 connective device has plug-and-play compatibility with the Xbox One, which means your gaming console will immediately recognize the drive as soon as it’s plugged in. Our testers took advantage of the drive’s 1TB capacity by storing Forza Horizon 3, Titanfall 2, Halo 5, Sea of Thieves, Fortnite, PUBG, and Madden 19 — and didn’t experience a single issue. If you plan to use this device to store more than just games, 1TB is large enough to hold 650,000 photos, 250,000 songs, and over 500 hours of video. The small black device is stylish and even comes with a three-year warranty.
Best for Apple: LaCie Rugged 2TB Thunderbolt USB-C Portable Hard Drive
What We Like
Extremely durable
Integrated connecting cable
Large capacity Avast for maç.
If you’re looking for a Mac-friendly external hard drive that’s built for durability, take a look at LaCie’s Rugged Thunderbolt USB-C portable hard drive. With its distinctive rubber bumpers and brushed aluminum chassis, the drive offers drop resistance up to 5 feet, crush resistance that can withstand up to a 1-ton car, and IP54 water and dust resistance. You’ll never worry about losing your connecting cable, either, as this series of hard drives, available in 2 to 5 TB capacities, have an attached USB cord in your favorite flavor (USB-C, USB-C Thunderbolt, Thunderbolt, or USB 3.0). https://skieytablet267.weebly.com/festo-fluidsim-42-portugues-download.html. It's fast, too, with up to 510MB/s with the SSD version and up to 130MB/s with the HDD version.
Best Portability: Toshiba Canvio Advance 3TB Portable Hard Drive HDTC930XR3CA
What We Don't Like
Must reformat for Mac OS
Not much bigger than a deck of cards, Toshiba’s Canvio Advance portable hard drive offers 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, and 3TB models to fill with as much media as can fit. It plugs into your Mac or PC with USB 3.0 and USB 2.0. Some customers report seeing around 110 Mbps of throughput when using a USB 3.0 port. It also features an internal shock sensor that will make sure your data isn’t corrupted if the drive is jostled while in use. Users delight in the small size, fast transfer speeds, and cool running temperature of this little portable drive.
Best Durability: Silicon Power 1TB Rugged Armor A60 Military-Grade
What We Like
Gta 4 for mac digital download. Water resistant
Drop-proof and shockproof
Reasonable price
Silicon Power’s Armor A60 external hard drive, in 1, 2, or 5 TB versions, is no joke, offering a tough, drop-proof (up to 4 feet) exterior with a shockproof design andIPX4 water-resistant protection. The textured casing is also scratch and slip-proof with a silicon bumper around the sides. The A60 reads and writes super fast thanks to the USB 3.0 cable, which conveniently affixes to the drive itself, and is compatible with Mac and PC devices courtesy of the FAT32 file system. While there might be higher performing everyday options, for photographers and others looking for a device that's adventure compatible, the A60 is a perfect choice.
FAQs
Why would I need an external hard drive?
External hard drives provide portable storage space for files, allowing you to increase the total storage of your computer, share files between computers, or simply keep backed-up files secure in case something happens to the originals. If your computer is slowing down or you’re getting warnings about low storage space, it might be time to invest in an external hard drive to free up some space on your computer’s internal hard drive.
What’s the difference between a hard disk drive (HDD) and a solid-state drive (SSD)?
You’ll find external hard drives in HDD and SSD versions, and they both perform the same function—with a few distinct advantages. HDDs have been around much longer and stores files by way of a spinning electromagnetic disk, whereas SSDs rely on flash memory chips for storage and therefore have no moving parts. This means SSDs are usually faster, more dependable, and more expensive. You can get much more storage for a fairly cheap price with an HDD.
How are external hard drives powered?
Some external hard drives get their power from the computer itself transmitted over the data cable, and others require the additional power from an AC outlet. All external hard drives connect to the computer either by USB, FireWire, eSATA, or wirelessly, and this connection type is directly linked to transfer speed.
Digital storage is changing. Internal storage drives are getting bigger, cloud storage is getting cheaper, and USB drives are getting less common. But that doesn’t necessarily negate the need for a good external hard drive — in fact, sometimes they’re the best way to go.
Buying a hard drive isn’t as simple as purchasing the first (or cheapest) one you see. There are a number of factors to consider when buying an external storage drive, and the kind of drive you ultimately end up buying could dictate what you’re able to do with it.
So what should you keep in mind? For starters, you’ll want to decide between a hard drive and a solid-state drive, both of which offer some major advantages and disadvantages. You’ll also want to think about drive speed, hard drive format, connectivity, and special protection features.
Before diving into our guide, there are a few terms you should know. You'll most likely be deciding between a drive of multiple gigabytes (GB), or multiple terabytes (TB). One terabyte is 1,000 gigabytes, and one gigabyte is 1,000 megabytes (MB). An MP3 file takes around 3.5MB, meaning that one gigabyte can store around 285 songs. One HD movie takes up around 3.5GB — so one terabyte can store 285 HD movies.
Here’s everything to consider when buying an external drive.
Storage Size
The most important thing to consider is the size of your drive. We’re not talking how physically big, but rather, how much storage you want. It’s hard to recommend a storage size because it varies from person to person and largely depends on what you plan on storing. A good rule of thumb, however, is to determine how much storage you think you’ll need and then buy a drive that’s double.
If you plan on storing documents only, you probably don’t need much more than 80GB. If you’re storing a small to medium music collection and photos, then up to 256GB should be fine. For storing movies and other video content, the amount you need could range into the multiple terabytes, especially if the movies are in 4K. Ultimately, it’s always good to get more storage than you think you’ll need — even if it means shelling out more money.
Types of External Drives
Next, it’s time to decide on the kind of storage drive you want. There are two main types of external storage drives, and while they ultimately serve the same purpose, the way they store files is markedly different.
Traditionally, if you wanted a storage drive it meant buying a hard disk drive. There are some advantages and some disadvantages to this. For starters, hard disk drives have been around for quite some time, so they’ve become relatively cheap. They function by storing files on an electromagnetic disk that spins around and is read by a moving arm.
Because of those moving parts, they’re much more likely to break with a lot of movement. The speed of a hard disk drive is essentially dictated by how fast the electromagnetic disk spins, and they're generally slower than solid-state drives. (We’ll get more into the different speeds later.) Hard disk drives are the way to go, however, if you want a lot of storage at a cheap price and don’t plan on moving them a lot.
Solid state drives do away with the moving electromagnetic disk, and replace it with what’s called “flash storage.” That’s the same kind of storage that’s used in smartphones, RAM in computers, and, these days, many of the internal storage drives in computers. Solid-state storage essentially uses microchips to store information, and as a result, there are no moving parts. That means there’s a lower failure rate, higher speed, and simply better overall performance. In particular, that means they’re great for running software or an operating system off of.
Of course, there is a downside to all of those advantages — and that’s price. Download imagebrowser ex for mac. Solid-state drives are much more expensive than hard disk drives, and while they are going down in price, you simply can’t get multi-terabyte solid-state drives without spending at least a few hundred dollars.
Performance
There are a few things that can affect the performance of a hard drive beyond simply what type of hard drive it is. That’s truer of a hard disk drive than a solid-state drive, but solid-state drives still have performance-related metrics that you should pay attention to.
The transfer speed of a hard drive largely has to do with the type of connector that the hard drive comes with. Newer connection standards have higher transfer speeds. The term “transfer speed” is technically a little misleading, as it doesn’t really dictate exactly how fast a hard drive can transfer files to and from your computer. Instead, it tells you how fast a hard drive can theoretically transfer files, based on the connection protocol the hard drive uses.
In the past, the connector was the main limiting factor in how fast a drive could transfer files: USB 2.0 hard drives, in the real world, could transfer data at up to 20 MB/second, while FireWire 800 drives limited things to 85 MB/second. These days, the newer USB 3.0 standard allows for data transfer at up to 460 MB/second, while Thunderbolt allows for speeds of over 1GB/second. Because of that, the connection type isn’t the bottleneck. Instead, the speed is dictated by how fast the hard drive can read and write data, which is referred to as the read/write speed.
Read/write speeds refer to how quickly a hard drive can access the files stored within it — not how quickly those files are transferred to or from a computer. The “read” speed refers to how quickly a hard drive can access a stored file, while the “write” speed refers to how quickly a drive can save a new file. Given the development in transfer protocols, read/write speeds are a much better indicator of how fast your hard drive will be able to actually transfer files than “transfer speed,” especially when it comes to hard disk drives.
Read/write speeds change a lot depending on whether it’s an HDD or SDD, and even within those categories there can be some variation. As mentioned, HDDs have a spinning disk inside of them, and the rate at which drives can access data depends on how quickly that disk spins. Commonly, drives spin at 5,400RPM, or rotations per minute, and drives at that speed generally have a read/write speed of around 100MB/s. Some HDDs have a physical speed of 7,200RPM, which allows for a slightly faster read/write speed of 120MB/s.
Read/write speeds can vary a lot with SSDs, but typically they range from 200MB/s at the slowest to multiple GB per second at the fastest. If all you’re doing is transferring files, then any of those speeds should be more than enough, but if you’re using your drive to store software or your operating system, then something on the fast end might help. In that case, look for speeds of 500MB/s or more.
Other Features and Considerations
While the type of hard drive and performance of the hard drive are perhaps the most important factors to consider, there are a few other features to keep in mind.
While most consumer-level hard drives connect to your computer through a USB cable, some offer network connectivity instead, meaning you can access your hard drive from any computer or phone that’s on the same network. That can be pretty helpful for those who have multiple computers set up and simply want to use an external hard drive to back up files and transfer files between computers.
You can actually give any external hard drive network features by simply plugging it into your router — providing your router has a compatible port on it — but it will require a little more tweaking to get set up properly. Still, special network-connected drives have some advantages. For example, so-called “Network Attached Storage” or NAS, can be used as a media server by apps like Plex, while standard router-connected drives aren’t necessarily able to do so. NAS is a little more expensive, but it’s also often expandable thanks to extra slots in the enclosure, which can accept more actual hard drives.
Check out our guide to the best NAS (Network Attached Storage).
The kind of port or ports that your hard drive uses to connect to a computer is very much linked to transfer speed. Most hard drives connect to a computer through a form of USB. That could mean the now-outdated USB 2.0 or the newer USB 3.0 or USB 3.1, and if it is USB 3.1, it could also connect through the newer USB-C connector, while still using the USB 3.1 standard.
Other ports, which are increasingly less common, include FireWire 400 and FireWire 800, though fewer and fewer computers support those ports, so you should be wary of that when purchasing.
We recommend looking for a hard drive with USB 3.1 support and a USB-C connector, especially if your computer is relatively new. It might mean having to buy an adapter to use with your current computer that may not have USB-C, but it means that when you upgrade to a new computer, your external hard drive will stay usable.
Check out our guide to the best USB-C adapters available.
External hard drives come in a few different formats, though it’s very easy to reformat a hard drive if you happen to buy the wrong kind. Hard drive formats are largely linked to the operating system that you’re going to be using the hard drive with. Here’s a quick rundown.
NTFS is the most common format for new external hard drives and can be used with Windows computers. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work as well with any other operating systems. Macs can read NTFS-formatted hard drives, but can’t write to them.
HFS+, which stands for “Hierarchical File System,” is a hard drive format that works much better with Macs, and it’s an improvement on the older HFS format in that it can support larger file types. Unfortunately, HFS+ drives don’t really work with Windows computers. HFS+ drives are the way to go for those who plan on using them with Macs that are running slightly older versions of macOS.
APFS is a newer hard drive format that works with Mac computers, but it only works with Mac running macOS High Sierra or newer. Like HFS+ drives, APFS drives can’t be read by Windows computers.
exFAT is essentially a mix of NTFS and FAT32, an older drive format that’s not used much anymore. There are a number of advantages to exFAT drives — namely that they can be recognized by both Windows and Mac computers, so if you need support for both, it’s worth formatting your drive to exFAT.
If you’re not sure what hard drive format to go for, then go for exFAT, since it works with most operating systems. Most hard drives come in NTFS, though, so you may need to buy one and then reformat it. Keep in mind it's not as easy to reformat a HFS+ or APFS drive if you need to use it on Windows.
Best External Storage For Apple Mac Pro
The physical size of an external hard drive doesn't necessarily translate to the amount of storage space, particularly with the advent of flash storage. You really only have a say in the physical size of a hard drive when it comes to solid-state drives, as there are standard sizes for hard disk drives. Hard disk drives’ spinning disks can come in either 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch sizes. A standard size for a portable hard disk drive, for example, is the Western Digital Elements 2TB hard drive, which comes in at 4.35 x 3.23 x 0.59 inches. Smaller desktop hard drives come in at around 7 x 5 inches and range up from there.
Solid-state hard drives can be much smaller, making them much more portable. The SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD, for example, comes in a size of 3.79 x 1.95 x 0.35 inches — a fairly average size for solid-state drives.
External hard drives can come with features designed to keep files more secure, which might be important if you plan on using yours to store sensitive information. For example, some hard drives offer password-protection by default, meaning you can easily set a password to keep all your files safe. Some also offer high-level encryption, rendering your files useless to those who don’t have your password, even if they manage to somehow hack into the drive.
A hard drive buffer is essentially storage that exists between the computer and the actual storage in a hard drive. Files stored by the hard drive in the buffer can be accessed far quicker than those stored in the main storage of a hard drive, and the bigger the hard drive buffer — sometimes called the cache — the better the overall performance the drive is likely to have.
Generally speaking, you really only need to care about the size of the buffer if you plan on running software from your hard drive. If all you’re doing is storing files, the type of drive and the speed of the disk will be much more important.
If you do feel as though you need a hard drive with a larger buffer, then we recommend getting one with at least a 64MB cache, though those with 128MB and even 256MB are pretty common, too.
Price
Depending on the type of hard drive and the amount of storage you opt for, the price can vary drastically.
Hard disk drives, as mentioned, are much cheaper than solid-state drives, so if you need a lot of storage at a reasonable price, a HDD might be the way to go. You can expect to pay around as little as 3 cents per GB for a HDD.
On the other hand, it's not uncommon to see a solid-state drive that runs into 25 cents per GB. Lower-capacity SSDs might range up to 40 cents per GB, while 2TB SSDs might come at 20 cents. Of course, that still makes for a drive that costs hundreds of dollars.
Best External Storage For Computers
Conclusion
While there's a lot to keep in mind when buying an external hard drive, hopefully, this will help you narrow down your selection. Our overall recommendations? If you want lots of storage at a reasonable price, and don’t plan on moving your hard drive around a lot, go for an HDD. If you want fast performance and either don’t need a lot of storage or are willing to spend more, then an SSD is your best best. In both cases, it’s a good idea to find a drive that supports USB 3.0 or later, and a USB-C port might be helpful depending on whether your computer has a USB-C port.
There are a few brands that have built a reputation for quality external hard drives, including Western Digital, SanDisk, and Seagate. It’s often worth buying a hard drive from a reputable brand, as smaller companies may not offer much in the way of support for faulty drives.
Best External Storage For Iphone
Rest assured, no matter what your needs are there’s likely a hard drive out there for you, and hopefully purchasing is a little easier with your new-found knowledge of their key features.
Best Mac For Xcode
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Any mac that is relatively new with at least 8gb or ram and an i5 or i7 processor will do. Look into the imac, mac mini or macbook pros. Let me know if you need anymore help:). This Xcode tutorial is updated for Xcode 8.2. If you’re using an earlier version, I’d recommend to update to the latest version because there are significant changes to the Swift programming language that you’ll only get with the latest version of Xcode. The version of Xcode is 7.2.1 and the OS is Yosemite 10.10.5. My Mac is not able to run Sierra, but I do have El Capitan installed in a different partition. I have not yet installed Xcode under El Capitan. In these images, you can clearly see how Apple will lead with the dark UI design in Xcode 10, the next major version of its IDE for developing iPhone and Mac apps.
Active2 years ago
I'm going to be working on some iPhone apps so I've been given a golden ticket to buy a Mac. However the golden ticket isn't worth that much, and I'm thinking iMac. Now, Macs are great, I love 'em and use 'em at home, but I know that the iMac is geared more towards the average consumer than the professional. Is an iMac going to be powerful enough to do iPhone development on?
If it helps any, the only thing I envision doing on the Mac is running XCode and maybe a web browser.
Is there anybody out there doing iPhone development and having trouble running the required tools on their machine? If so, what do you have?
Vadim Kotov5,4277 gold badges36 silver badges49 bronze badges
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19 Answers
Any modern Mac will be fine. I work on a two year old MacBook (2GHz) with 2Gb of memory and its perfectly usable. The biggest constraint I find it screen real-estate. I am way more productive on my 22' external screen. Go big if you get an iMac or consider adding an external monitor to the base model.
Stephen DarlingtonStephen Darlington46.8k9 gold badges96 silver badges143 bronze badges
The iMac is a very fast machine and will be more than suitable for iPhone development. In most cases, a Mac Mini with maxed out ram is good enough.
Keep in mind that out of the box, the Mac Mini can only accommodate one monitor.
Kevin ChanKevin Chan
My main Mac is a MacBook, juiced with 4GB of RAM, and I find that perfectly good for development (in either Windows or OSX). I could have got an iMac for a bit more money, but I already had a 20' LCD monitor laying around, and I wanted the portability.
The MacBooks are as powerful as the iMacs (excluding the graphics card, which may or may not be important to you; it wasn't to me), and are perfectly suitable for development.
TheSmurfTheSmurf13.9k2 gold badges36 silver badges47 bronze badges
I'd say that any of the current iMac models are more that good enough for development with their dual core, 6MB cache, 1066MHz FSB cpus. You might consider going with more than 1GB of ram, but compare aftermarket prices at places like NewEgg to what Apple wants (for example, I upgraded my MacBook Pro to 4GB for hundreds less than getting installed from Apple).
Which model you picked would be more about HD and LCD size and how much you have to spend.
crashmstrcrashmstr24.5k7 gold badges54 silver badges75 bronze badges
I run XCode for Mac development on a 20' current-gen iMac and it works perfectly with plenty of other processes running. You can definitely use the iMac to develop software.
Brian WarshawBrian Warshaw14.8k8 gold badges49 silver badges70 bronze badges
An iMac is easily powerful enough to use for development work.
Best Mac Mini For Xcode
John TopleyJohn Topley87.4k42 gold badges183 silver badges231 bronze badges
I run XCode on a current-gen Macbook with only ONE GB of RAM and it runs fine, so long as I limit the amount of total applications running.
btwbtw3,6009 gold badges36 silver badges39 bronze badges
You aren't gonna have a problem running Xcode on an iMac. Any iMac. https://vinoyellow273.weebly.com/minecraft-sphax-texture-pack-download-mac.html. Any development project can be done on an iMac. They're fast and modern machines. The cheapest iMac has a Dual Core Duo 2 chip with 1 gig RAM. Boost the RAM to 2 if you can (a cheap option - cheaper if you buy 3rd party RAM). Makes a huge difference running OSX.
Stephen CoxStephen Cox2,0482 gold badges17 silver badges15 bronze badges
In terms of power, any current Mac is fine for iPhone development. You might want to consider other factors that depend on how you like to work.
Do you like to sometimes grab the machine and just get in a different work environment (or show your stuff to people)? The MacBooks are comparable power-wise, but give you that freedom.
Can you work with glossy screens, or do they irritate you? In the latter case, an iMac or MacBook may be suboptimal and you should make sure that you get a larger, non-glossy display as main screen. A second display is generally very helpful for development, so you might want to have one anyway.
And you will indeed want to push RAM to at least 2GB (4GB are nice of course, but not absolutely necessary).
Marcus Schröder
I would suggest going for a maxed out Mac Mini and the best monitor you can fit in your budget.
Bear in mind that both the iMac and the Mac Mini are essentially laptops (in terms of their internal components). Facetime mac download 10.5.8. Admittedly, the iMac has a large screen (as laptops go) and a proper hard drive.
VihungVihung6,15514 gold badges46 silver badges68 bronze badges
I run XCode on a 17' iMac (2 yrs old) with 2GB of RAM and haven't had any trouble.
gbcgbc6,2775 gold badges31 silver badges30 bronze badges
I'm managing just fine on a Mac mini. It only has the stock 1GB RAM at the moment so thats the current bottleneck.
craigbcraigbBest Mac For X Code For Windows
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Developing for the iPhone isn't particularly intensive work, the only way to go up from an iMac is the Mac Pro, which I assume you can't afford. The only reason to go up up to a Mac Pro is if you're doing video or image work where you really need the horsepower.
https://tracabdel.hatenablog.com/entry/2020/11/23/111906. I saw a chart in MacFormat this month that suggested the base iMac was faster than the base Mac Pro anyway, although obviously there's more room for expansion in the Pro.
Buy more RAM, though, up it to 4Gb you won't regret it.
alimackalimack4962 gold badges8 silver badges16 bronze badges
I've bought the mid 2010 Unibody Mac mini and it's a good machine to do iPhone development. Liquid cd mac free download.
I didn't want to spend a lot of money buying a new computer. So I opted for the bare minimum necessary to develop for iPhone.
The post bellow shows my impressions about it..
Best Mac For Running Xcode
Leniel MaccaferriLeniel Maccaferri83.6k36 gold badges302 silver badges409 bronze badges
I'm also thinking of buying an Mac. I wanted to create a new question, but now I'm trying to ask with this 'answer'. There are a few possibilities:
- iMac: Powerful hardware, large screen (27') -> perfect for development
- MacBook Pro: portable, but you need a bigger screen than 13' -> expensive
- Mac mini: small, no noise, as powerfull as the 13' MacBook Pro, cheap, you need an external display and a RAM upgrade
I have worked for a few months on a 13' MacBook Pro, but you really need a second screen if you want to develop (despite through the touchpad scrolling is very easy). The hardware (2.66 Core2Duo, 4 GB RAM, 320 GB) was strong enough for the development with Xcode.
But how often do you really need a portable solution? The most of the time I was working on the same place. And a 27' iMac would be great for that, but isn't as cheap as a Mac mini. You could buy a Mac Mini with three 23' IPS panels (1080p) for the same money (including Matrox DualHead2Go) but not as powerfull as the 27' iMac with i5-680.
Questions:
- Is portability for you essential or a nice-to-have?
- What is better for Xcode? More GHz or more cores?
- What brings a faster experience? A faster CPU (e.g. 400 MHz faster) or a SSD instead?
The best solution would be an iMac and a MacBook I think. But for the beginning it's too much money. https://ameblo.jp/apofconga1988/entry-12639563111.html.
PS: you also need one device too. The cheapest device is a 8GB iPod Touch 4G.
testingtesting9,56631 gold badges172 silver badges325 bronze badges
Please get a Mac that has SSD, either the MacBook Air, or the built-to-order options.
Compiling big frameworks such as Three20 would be at least 2 to 3 times faster. XCode 4 should open a lot faster with SSD drive.
Kenneth AnguishKenneth Anguish
As with all development, screen size is paramount so I would suggest the 24' iMac if your golden ticket stretches that far or a mac mini with a large (probably non-Apple) monitor if it doesn't.
Dave VerwerDave Verwer4,8365 gold badges31 silver badges29 bronze badges
I often use my PowerMac G5. Sure, you need to hack the developer tools to install on a PPC and there are some Device SDK issues but it runs.
Oh wait, you said 'good'. Nevermind.
Matt GallagherBest Macos For Xcode
Matt GallagherApple Xcode For Mac
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Best Mac For X Code For Mac
The only other comment I have is that sometimes I wish I had the portable so I could code on the train, plane or sitting in the park!
Best Mac For X Code Tutorial
I bought an iMac and have had no problems whatsoever developing my 'simple' app except for the scrolling thingee freezing on me sometimes.
MadProfitMadProfit
Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged iosmacos or ask your own question.
Best Thunderbolt Drives For Mac
Welcome to our guide to buying the best external hard drive or backup hard drive in 2019. When looking to buy the best external hard drive for your needs, there are quite a lot of things you need to consider - and this guide will help you.
Last, but certainly not the least in our list of top Thunderbolt storage drives for Mac is Western Digital’s My Book Dup Thunderbolt Drive. The large desktop drive with 8TB (4TB and 6TB available) worth of storage is enclosed in a shiny plastic casing. Find the best thunderbolt drives for mac based on what customers said. Best thunderbolt drives for mac What makes these the best picks? Customers said these are the best for mac. Top Three Picks LaCie Rugged 2TB Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive + 1mo Adobe CC All Apps (LAC9000489) 4.4 275 $.
Plus, with Amazon Prime Day 2019 rapidly approaching, there's a good chance that we're going to see some major price cuts to the best external hard drives out there. If you do find a killer deal for any of the drives on this best external hard drive list, then you can buy in full confidence that you're getting a brilliant external drive for your money.
When buying the best external hard drive for your needs, you need to make sure you get a device that can safely and securely store your important files. Reliability is of the upmost importance here, as you do not want to buy an external hard drive that fails on you - making you lose all your important backups.
The best external hard drives will also be quick - either because they use SSD (Solid State Drive) technology, or because they use the latest connectivity technology, such as USB-C.
The biggest deciding factors when it comes to data transfer rates is the connection the drive uses, and whether it is a standard hard drive or a solid state drive (SSD). Many external hard drives use USB 2.0 connections, but for faster speeds you'll want USB 3.0 or ideally the newer USB Type-C connection. You'll need to ensure your PC or laptop also has a USB Type-C port.
You'll also need to think about how much storage space you need. The best external hard drives offer a range of capacities. We'd recommend 500GB to start with, as that gives you plenty of space to store your files without costing too much money.
However, if you deal in large files, such as high resolution photos and videos, then you may want to consider buying a bigger drive, with external hard drives offering terabytes (TB) of storage space.
Buying the best external hard drive for your needs involves figuring out how much space you need. You don't want to buy an external hard drive that's too small, and end up running out of space, but neither do you really want to pay over the odds for storage space you'll never need.
So, we've listed the best external hard drives money can buy in 2019. Each external drive (or backup hard drive) on this page has been carefully picked to make sure it offers fast data transfer speeds – essential if you move lots of big files regularly – while also offering sturdy build quality so you don't have to worry about them breaking and losing your files. https://skieytweets.weebly.com/previous-windows-installations-windows-10.html.
When buying the best external hard drive for your needs, there are certain things you need to take into account. For example, you'll want to make sure you have a drive that offers fast data transfer speeds.
In this guide we list the best external hard drives with both traditional hard drives and faster (and more expensive) solid state drives.
Still, the best external hard drives are also dependable and rugged, so you can safely store your data without worry. The best external drives will also be light enough to carry in your bag, with large capacities so that you can keep your data safe when travelling.
There's a huge range of external hard drives on offer, so we've put together this list of the best external hard drives to help you find the perfect one for your needs.
1. Buffalo MiniStation Extreme NFC external hard drive
Wireless security
Capacity: 2TB | Interface: USB 3.0
Today's best Buffalo MiniStation Extreme NFC 2TB deals
NFC security
Not the fastest drive
An external hard drive you can buy without breaking the bank, Buffalo's MiniStation Extreme NFC could be your match made in heaven.
With compatibility for both Mac and Windows machines, the Buffalo MiniStation Extreme NFC is very flexible, and comes with a rugged case that's dust and water resistant, along with a built-in USB 3.0 cable.
Not only is your data kept protected from knocks and drops with the rugged shell, but it's also got 256-bit AES security features and NFC (Near Field Communication) features as well.
Essentially it allows you to unlock the drive to get to your files quickly and easily by tapping the supplied NFC card onto the drive's body. Pretty neat!
- This product is only available in the US at the time of this writing. UK and Australian readers: check out a fine alternative in the Western Digital My Passport Wireless Pro
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2. Western Digital My Passport Ultra 4TB external hard drive
Comes with Encryption and a long warranty
Capacity: 4TB | Interface: USB 3.0
Large capacity
Suite of applications
The latest generation of the Western Digital My Passport Ultra range of external hard drives has landed, coming in sizes from 1TB to 4TB. It features cloud storage and 256-AES encryption, along with WD's own software suite.
It is a good performer when it comes to data transfer speeds but doesn't come near the top of the leaderboard. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't reach the top speeds of solid state external drives, but for external hard drives based on traditional HDDs, this is the drive to consider. https://shoespowerful372.weebly.com/choices-free-keys-and-diamonds-generator.html.
3. Samsung T5 SSD external hard drive
The best external SSD of 2018
Capacity: 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB | Interface: USB Type-C
Incredibly fast
Expensive
If you'd rather have an external hard drive that took advantage of solid state drive (SSD) speeds, then the Samsung Portable SSD T5 is definitely the best external hard drive for you. Samsung has a brilliant reputation for external SSDs, thanks to products like the T3, and the T5 builds on its predecessor by adding a fast USB Type-C connection that ekes out every last drop of performance from the solid state drive inside. Of course, it's also backwards compatible with USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 if your PC doesn't have USB Type-C. It's expensive, but it's well worth the cash.
Read the full review: Samsung Portable SSD T5
4. Adata SD700 External SSD
Capacity: 256GB, 512GB or 1TB | Interface: USB 3.0
Great performance
No USB Type-C
The Adata SD700 will suit those looking for a rugged storage device that can provide ample capacity without costing too much. It performs superbly well and remains the only SSD we’ve seen that is IP68 rated.
Thanks to the solid state drive that resides in this external hard drive, it's a lot faster than external drives that use traditional spinning hard drives - so you're getting great transfer speeds as well as rugged protection.
It also comes in capacities up to 1TB, so you don't have to worry about missing out on storage space just because it uses an SSD - this drive really does hit all the right notes.
5. WD My Book Duo 4TB external hard drive
Capacity: 4TB | Interface: USB 3.0 x 2
Huge amounts of space
Expensive
If you're looking for the absolute largest capacity external hard drive, then the WD My Book Duo 4TB is the one to get, offering a huge 4TB (you can also get versions with up to 20TB) of storage space over two hard drives.
If you don't mind sacrificing some of the ample storage space you can set the drives up in a RAID array, so you have file backups of your files should one of the drives die.
This USB 3.0 drive has many of the features of a fully-fledged NAS device (including a high price), and if you have a router with a USB 3.0 port you could use this as a network attached storage device in its own right.
Best Thunderbolt Drives For Mac
The device, which comes with two-year warranty, has 256-bit AES hardware encryption, and automatic backup software (WD SmartWare Pro).
Worth noting that the enclosure used is fully serviceable and that WD ships the drive already pre-formatted for Windows users (NTFS).
6. Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt external hard drive
Best Thunderbolt external hard drive
Capacity: 1TB, 2TB | Interface: Thunderbolt, USB 3.0
Low price compared to other Thunderbolt drives
Not SSD
If you have a device with a Thunderbolt port, then this is a great option, as it provides twice the speeds of standard USB 3.0 drives. It's also not especially expensive compared to other Thunderbolt drives. The price is kept down due to its use of a traditional hard drive, rather than an SSD, which limits the potential speeds. It also comes with a USB 3.0 port for people without access to Thunderbolt.
- This product is only available in the US and UK at the time of this writing. Australian readers: check out a fine alternative in the WD MyBook Duo
7. Seagate Backup Plus Desktop Drive 5TB
Capacity: 5TB | Interface: USB 3.0
Today's best Seagate Backup Plus Desktop Drive 5TB deals
Very fast data transfer speeds
You pay more for the Mac-formatted version
If you want to combine speed and capacity, then the Seagate Backup Plus Desktop Drive 5TB is definitely worth considering. It comes in a range of sizes up to 8TB and it beats the competition when it comes to read and write speeds as well.
On top of this storage and speed, you get a decent amount of peace of mind thanks to Seagate's lower than average failure rates, especially in bigger capacity hard drives.
You also get backup software, and the drive is compatible with both Windows and Macs, though it's formatted for Windows out of the box unless you go for a Mac-specific hard drive - though these are more expensive.
8. Western Digital My Passport Wireless Pro external hard drive
Capacity: 2TB | Interface: USB 3.0 and Wi-Fi
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Wireless AC
Good battery life
Expensive due to Wi-Fi features
Even if we had mixed feelings on past versions of the My Passport Wireless, the 2016 “pro” variant of the external HDD restores faith in the Western Digital name. The design, for one, has been overhauled and no longer resembles the My Passport Ultra or My Passport for Mac. Instead, there’s now a more premium feel to the My Passport Wireless Pro. It resembles an external DVD drive, but considering the onboard SD card slot, don’t worry about getting it confused with anything else. For photographers, this will make the Wireless Pro stand out.
For everyone else, there’s a massive 6,400mAh battery built into the device. This lets the drive be used completely free of wires over 2.4GHz or 5GHz channels. When it’s wired up, however, don’t expect cutting edge connection tech, as the My Passport Wireless Pro uses only USB Type-B to Type-A. Completely absent is the latest and greatest USB-C connection.
Where the My Passport Wireless Pro compromises on affordability, it’s able to benefit in just about every other area. Of course, not everyone needs a wireless hard drive or SD card support, but for those who do, it’s almost essential.
Read the full review:Western Digital My Passport Wireless Pro
9. LaCie Porsche Design Mobile Drive 4TB
Capacity: 4TB | Interface: USB-C
Today's best LaCie Porsche Design Mobile Drive 4TB deals
Fast USB-C connection
Best Thunderbolt 2 External Drives
Expensive
You may have stumbled upon the LaCie Porsche Design Mobile Drive when perusing the Apple website for USB-C accessories. There’s a reason for that: the Porsche Design ships with both USB Type-C to Type-A and USB Type-C to Type-C connectors, making it a worthy candidate regardless of your setup.
Ultra viewer download for mac. It’s expensive for an external hard drive, don’t get us wrong, especially if you’re in the market for the top-end 4TB option. On the other hand, this is an HDD that could theoretically output speeds of up to 5Gbps, if it weren’t hindered by the limits of SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) technology.
Comprising five 800GB platters in a 15mm form factor, the LaCie Porsche Design Mobile is an excellent challenger to the Seagate M3, though it’s notably bigger in both weight and dimensions.
Sure, it packs an extra convenience factor in the form of USB-C, but it should be noted that the Porsche Design Mobile is still limited to USB 3.0 speeds. Plus, even an aluminum finish can’t prevent it from clashing with your Rose Gold MacBook. Nevertheless, LaCie’s offering is the best USB-C external HDD money can buy, at least for the time being.
Read our full review:LaCie Porsche Design Mobile Drive 4TB
10. iStorage diskAshur 2TB external hard drive
Best for security
Capacity: 2TB | Interface: USB 3.0
Physical security
Expensive
Typically, iStorage hard disks cater best to governments and multinational organizations around the world, for good reason too – they offer tight security like no other drives around.
If someone tries to tamper with your iStorage drive, you can configure it to self-desturct. What's more, the data is encrypted by the 256-bit AES protocol, with multiple forms of protection in place to ensure the bad guys don't get in no matter how persistent. When you consider all that extra security, the prices won't scare you away either.
Sure, it's still expensive, four times the price of an equivalent 2TB drive, and unlikely to be the most nimble performer. But, you're paying for a product that's virtually uncrackable. Bear in mind, though, you'll get no help from the manufacturer if things go awry and you lose your password.
Read our full review: iStorage diskAshur DT
Gabe Carey and Matt Hanson also contributed to this article
App mockup software for mac. You have a PC or Mac with Thunderbolt capability and you want a super-fast Thunderbolt SSD hard drive to be its companion. You’re requirements for I/O speed go far beyond that of the average user and you need a lot of storage with the best reliability as well. A Thunderbolt SSD hard drive is the perfect match for your needs.
There are not a lot of choices in Thunderbolt SSD hard drives 1TB and above. They are much more expensive per GB than a regular Thunderbolt external hard drive and only a few manufacturers have released these larger drives as of this writing. That should all change in the coming months as the price comes down and more manufacturers provide options. If you need to be on the bleeding edge, for the speed, reliability, and capacity, a Thunderbolt SSD hard drive is the only way to go. If you need the portability and flexibility to move the drive between computers, then you need an external model.
Interested in learning about other popular laptop accessories? Be sure to see our other articles about some of the best!
A couple of the drives in our list were designed and formatted specifically for the Mac. Lbp 2900 driver for mac. If you have a PC, make sure the drive you buy supports your PC.
We took a look at what is available and researched forums, retail sites, reviews, and manufacturers’ sites to gain a picture of which drives standout from the others. We found what we think are the top-rated 1 TB Thunderbolt SSD external drives out there.
Take a look and see if one of these 1TB drives is the best Thunderbolt external SSD drive for your needs!
#5 – LaCie LAC301558 Rugged Thunderbolt 1TB SSD
Take your project with you even to the boondocks with the LaCie LAC301558 Rugged Thunderbolt 1TB SSD SATAIII External Drive. With dual Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 ports, you can take your work home and perform the fastest transfer available over Thunderbolt or transfer nearly anywhere using the handy USB 3.0 port. Unlike most drives, this external SSD hard drive is ruggedized and has an IP 54 moisture resistance rating to ensure you can take it with you just about anywhere. Here’s what you need to know about this LaCie hard drive.
Thunderbolt SSD Hard Drive: Features
- LaCie brand reputation for reliability and quality
- 1TB Thunderbolt Ruggedized External SSD with additional USB 3.0 port
- Shock, pressure, drop, and moisture resistance
- IP 54 moisture resistance rating
- Compact size and weight
- Secure password protection built-in
- Dimensions: 3.5W x 5.5L x 1.0D inches
Ports
- 1 – Thunderbolt
- 1 – USB 3.0
Customer Reviews
Pros
- Ultra-fast performance
- Exterior makes it easy to hold
- Rugged design
- Value price
Cons
Best Thunderbolt 3 External Hard Drive For Macbook Pro
- Some reports of inadvertent automatic ejections
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#4 – Glyph BBPLSSD1000 BlackBox Plus SSD 1TB (USB-C, Thunderbolt 3)
The BBPLSSD1000 BlackBox Plus SSD 1TB (USB-C, Thunderbolt 3) by Glyph is a rugged, mobile hard drive designed for creative professionals. It features the latest USB-C and Thunderbolt3 technologies, optimized passive cooling and integrated health monitoring. Plus, it’s built to take a beating with an all aluminum chassis and tough rugged rubber bumper. It’s small enough to fit in your pocket, yet powerful enough to be a key player in your data storage plans. It comes preformatted HFS+ with Journaling and is Time Machine compatible out of the box. A simple reformat is all it takes for the Blackbox Plus to work with Windows systems.
Features
- 1 TB rugged, portable Thunderbolt and USB-compatible SSD
- USB-C (3.1) is compatible with USB 3.0/2.0 and Thunderbolt 3
- Compatible with Mac OS X 10.4 and above and Windows XP and above
- Optimized, fanless passive cooling and integrated health monitoring insure long life
- Comes preformatted HFS+ with Journaling and is Time Machine compatible out of the box with only a simple reformat required to work with Windows systems
- It fits right in your pocket, allowing you to take your important documents, photos, videos and other files with you on the go
- Lightweight, rugged and lightning fast with speeds and equipped with the latest USB-C (3.1) connection
- All aluminum enclosure and rugged bumper protect drive against damage
- Compatible with Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3.0/2.0
- 3-Year limited hardware warranty, 2-Year Level 1 Data Recovery warranty, and 1-Year advanced replacement warranty
Included Accessories
- 1 – USB-C to USB-C (3.1) cable
- 1 – USB-C to USB 3.0/2.0 cable
Customer Reviews
Pros
- Lightweight and very rugged drive
- Fast performance
- Nice styling
- Optimized passive cooling and integrated health monitoring promise long life
Cons
- None noted
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#3 – Glyph Atom 1TB SSD, USB-C (3.1, Gen 2), USB 3.0, Compatible with Thunderbolt 3 in Black
The Glyph Atom 1TB SSD, USB-C (3.1, Gen 2), USB 3.0, Compatible with Thunderbolt 3 in Black is compact enough to fit in your pocket so you can take all of your most important documents, photos, videos, and more everywhere you go. Don’t let its light weight and diminutive size fool you though. It’s a heavyweight when it comes to performance and rugged design. It features an all aluminum enclosure and rugged bumper protection for peace of mind. With speeds up to 480 MB/s and the latest USB-C (3.1 Gen 2) connection, this is one very powerful and versatile external SSB drive.
Features
- 1TB Thunderbolt-compatible, portable, bus-powered SSD drive with USB-C (3.1, Gen 2) external drive
- It fits right in your pocket, allowing you to take your important documents, photos, videos and other files with you on the go
- Lightweight, rugged and lightning fast with speeds up to 480 MB/s and equipped with the latest USB-C (3.1, Gen 2) connection
- All aluminum enclosure and rugged bumper protect drive against damage
- Compatible with Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C 3.1/Gen2
- Comes preformatted HFS+ with Journaling and is Time Machine compatible out of the box
- Works with Windows systems after a simple reformat
- Available in four colors including Grey, Gold, Silver, and Black to suit your style
- Dimensions are 1.88 x 4.8 x 0.59 inches
Included Accessories
- USB-C to USB-C (3.1) Cable
- USB-C to USB 3.0 Cable
- Rugged sleeve
Customer Reviews
Pros
- Fast performance
- Compact and lightweight for easy portability
- Quiet operation
- Smart design
Cons
- None noted
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The Monster Digital Overdrive Thunderbolt External Drive is a high-quality device wrapped in a stainless steel case which houses a high-performance SSD rugged enough to travel just about anywhere. Here’s what you need to know.
Features
- 1TB Thunderbolt high-performance external SSD
- Compact and rugged design with stainless steel case and impact resistant to 1500g
- Built-in LED data transfer indicator keeps you in the know
- Integrated Thunderbolt cable
- 3-Year free data recovery
- Long 3-Year limited warranty
Included Accessories
- 1 – Protective soft cloth pouch
Customer Reviews
Pros
- Slim, lightweight, stylish design
- Lightning fast performance
- Value priced
- Highly portable
Cons
- Some reports that the drive runs hot
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#1 – Transcend TS2TSJM300 2TB Thunderbolt SSD for MAC
Complete with both Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 capability, the Transcend TS2TSJM300 2TB Thunderbolt SSD for MAC provides great flexibility. This solid state external hard drive has a sleek, elegant, tough metallic exterior designed to match your Mac and can be a USB hard drive if needed. Here’s what you need to know about this Thunderbolt external hard drive.
Features
- 1TB Thunderbolt and USB3.0 capable external SSD designed for Mac computers
- Elegant, lightweight metallic design matches your Mac
- UASP support
- Pre-formatted for your Mac
- LED power/data transfer activity indicator
- Built-in support for Mac Time Machine backups making it the perfect backup hard drive
- Bus powered drive requires no external power adapter
- Cool and quiet operation
- Comes with Transcend Elite advanced data management software
- Dimensions are 4.77L x 2.96W x 0.53D inches and it weighs only 4.9 ounces
- 3-Year limited warranty
Included Accessories
- 1 – Thunderbolt cable
- 1 – USB 3.0 cable
- 1 – Travel pouch
Customer Reviews
Pros
- Fast and easy to setup
- Very compact
- Flexible with both USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt connections
Cons
- Pricey
- Runs very warm (manufacturer says it’s due to metal case and Thunderbolt IC but won’t affect longevity)
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Thunderbolt SSD Hard Drive
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What do you think of these Thunderbolt SSD external hard drives? Which SSD external hard drive are you planning to buy? Please take a moment to leave a comment below.
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Best Portable Hard Drive For Mac
USB-C is certainly the port of the future, so grabbing a USB-C hard drive for your MacBook or MacBook Pro is the best way to take all of your files, music, photos, and more with you wherever you go without clogging up your Mac's own hard drive. Toshiba Canvio Premium for Mac. This one is the best for MacBook owners. Most portable hard drives are made for Windows. It shouldn't put off any but the most technophobic Mac owners, but the. The newest hard drive like: best buy external hard drive for mac External hard disk drives are manufactured by all major pcs makers such as Maxtor, Western Digital, Sony, iOmega, Seagate and several others.
Finding the best external hard drive for your Mac can breathe new life into your workflow. Especially if you have a MacBook, iMac or Mac Mini, you may have limited internal upgrade options. Adding an external hard drive can increase your storage by orders of magnitude, giving you ample room for backups, movie collections, music libraries, ongoing projects and more.
Regardless of whether you will be storing personal memories or files from work, choosing the right Mac external hard drive is vital to protecting your digital valuables. With that in mind, what features are most important in an external hard drive? What are some of the hard drives currently available for your Mac?
Microsoft database daemon error outlook 2011 mac. Contents
Top 6 External Hard Drives for Mac
| WD My Book 3TB | Seagate 2TB USB 3.0 Backup Plus Slim Portable | LaCie Porsche Design P'9233 3TB | WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo 8TB | Silicon Power Armor A60 | |
| Rank | #1 - Editor's Choice | #2 | #3 | #4 | #5 |
| Amazon Rating | |||||
| Capacity | 3 TB | 2 TB | 3 TB | 8 TB | 1 TB |
| Architecture | Magnetic hard drive | Magnetic Hard Drive | Magnetic Hard Drive | Magnetic Hard Drive | Magnetic Hard Drive |
| Filesystem | HFS+ | HFS+ | HFS+ | HFS+ | Unformatted |
| Connectivity | USB 3.0 | USB 3.0 | USB 3.0 | Thunderbolt | USB 3.0 |
| Weight | 2.23 lb | 4.8 oz | 2.3 lb | 5.1 lb | 8 oz |
| Time Machine Support | |||||
| Special Features | Hardware encryption | Free 200GB OneDrive Storage | Automatic Eco Mode | RAID Support | Shockproof and Waterproof |
| Price | $109 | $119 | $139 | $576 | $58 |
| Buy Now | Buy Now | Buy Now | Buy Now | Buy Now |
#1 Pick WD My Book 3TB
WD My Book Duo Hard Drive, a top hard drive for mac.
The Western Digital My Book (model: WDBFJK0030HBK) for Mac 3TB hard drive offers a good balance of storage, features and speed. With 3TB of storage, the drive is HFS+ formatted out-of-the-box, ensuring compatibility with OS X. It is fully compatible with Time Machine and uses USB 3.0 for its connectivity, ensuring fairly fast I/O. Unfortunately, Western Digital does not advertise the speed at which the drive spins. It can be found as cheap as $109.
#2 Pick Seagate 2TB USB 3.0 Backup Plus Slim Portable Hard Drive
Seagate Backup Plus Slim Hard Drive, is portable and a top pick for your Mac.
The Seagate Backup Plus Slim (model: STDR2000102) is designed for users on the go. Its slim profile can easily be fit in virtually any computer bag. Like the My Book, the Backup Plus Slim uses USB 3.0, but also has wireless syncing for mobile devices. iOS and Android devices can sync via WiFi with the accompanying backup app. Users even receive 200GB of free Microsoft OneDrive storage for two years. In spite of having 2TB, rather than the My Book’s 3TB, the Backup Plus Slim retails for $119. Users will need to determine if the extra features are worth the reduced storage and higher price.
#3 Pick LaCie Porsche Design P’9233 3TB Hard Drive
LaCie Porsche Design P’9233 3TB, a beautifully designed hard drive to complement your Mac.
In 2003 LaCie and Porsche teamed up to create a hard drive. The P’9233 (model: 9000302) continues that tradition, offering a combination of performance, portability and sleek looks. The case is made from sleek, rugged aluminum, ensuring it matches with your MacBook or MacBook Pro. Like the other top contenders, the P’9233 comes formatted for OS X and is fully compatible with Time Machine. The 3TB model is available for $139, with more expensive models reaching up to 8TB of storage.
#4 Pick WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo w/TB Cable 8TB Hard Drive
The WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo provide massive storage and exceptional looks. Download the punisher no cd crack.
When it comes to top-of-the-line performance and storage, it’s hard to beat the WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo. Unlike the other drives, this external drive relies on Thunderbolt to handle I/O. Book creator free download for mac. While this restricts its usage to the last couple of generations of Macs, those machines that have Thunderbolt ports will see significant speed improvements over USB 3 or competing technologies. The Thunderbolt interface also allows the drive to be daisy-chained with other devices, while the 8TB of storage should satisfy even the most data-hungry user. All this comes at a price, however, with the My Book Thunderbolt Duo coming in at $576.
#5 Pick Silicon Power Armor A60 External Hard Drive
The Silicon Power Armor A60 Shockproof Hard Drive is tough and practical.
The Silicon Power Armor A60 is an extremely rugged external hard drive that offers military-grade shockproof and waterproof performance. Football manager 2014 download free mac full version. This USB 3.0 hard drive is ideal for on-the-go and outdoor use, and is available in both 1TB and 2TB configurations. The drive can be found for $58 and $97 respectively. We think this as one of the best portable external hard drives for macs.
#6 Pick Transcend 1TB Thunderbolt SSD
A bit pricey, but fast and realiable, the Transcend 1TB Thunderbolt Solid State Drive makes our list of top hard drives for Mac.
The Transcend 1TB Thunderbolt offers the very best in performance, combining an SSD with Thunderbolt connectivity. It also includes USB 3.0 for machines that may not have Thunderbolt, and comes pre-formatted for HFS+. The performance comes at a premium, however, with the Transcend 1TB listed at $1,199, although it can be found for $590.
Things to Look for in Top Hard Drive
Ruggedness is less important for a hard drive that will stay on your desk and rarely, if ever, leave the home or office. If, on the other hand, your hard drive will accompany you wherever you go, then ruggedness becomes a critical factor in your decision.
Speed is another factor to consider. The speed you require will depend largely on what you will be using the hard drive for. If you’ll be using it primarily for backups, a slower 5,400RPM drive should suffice. If you will be using it for more intensive tasks, such as editing video or audio files, a 7,200RPM or solid-state drive (SSD) would be a better choice.
Warranty: While virtually all hard drive manufacturers offer a warranty, not all warranties are created equal. Lengths, terms and what is covered vary from one manufacturer to another. Hopefully you will not have any issues with your new drive. If you do, however, a longer, more comprehensive warranty may be worth an additional upfront cost.
Features to Look For
Connectivity
- The most important part of any external hard drive is the mechanism by which it connects to your computer. Without the right I/O, the best hard drive in the world is little more than a paperweight.
- If you have the Retina MacBook, Apple’s newest portable that only has one USB-C port, you’ll need a hard drive that supports USB-C, or a USB-C adapter.
- Other Macs ship with a combination of USB, Thunderbolt and FireWire ports, giving you the option to choose the interface that’s best for you.
- For example, Thunderbolt offers transfer speeds in the neighborhood of 10Gbps, while USB 3.0 and FireWire 800 offer speeds of 5Gbps and 800 Mbps respectively. This makes Thunderbolt the obvious choice for data intensive operations where speed is of paramount importance, while USB 3.0 is more widely used with a greater variety of available devices.
Network Support
- Many modern external hard drives offer built-in wireless support.
- This can be a convenient alternative to the various I/O methods, allowing you to access the drive and transfer files over WiFi.
- Still other external hard drives go a step further by providing the ability to create a mobile hotspot, making it easy for connected devices to access files and stream data and videos from the external drive.
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Portability
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- Another significant factor when considering an external hard drive is the portability of the unit. By their nature, all external hard drives offer a degree of portability. The degree, however, depends on the model.
- Some models offer sleek, slim lines that, while visually appealing, may not offer the rugged mobility you may require. Others, while bulkier, may offer greater padding and shock absorption.
- Will you be using the drive primarily at your desk? Or will the drive travel with you outside of the home or office? Another consideration is whether you need power. How long will you be using the drive on-the-go? If you plan on using it for an extended period, one with an internal battery may be you best option.
Time Machine Compatibility Mac python 3.6 download.
- Time Machine is Apple’s automatic backup solution, keeping multiple revisions of your files. It “makes hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for all previous months. The oldest backups are deleted when your backup drive is full.”
- To get the most of any external hard drive, it needs to be one that supports Time Machine.
Best External Hard Drive For Mac
Drive Architecture
- The architecture of the drive is another important consideration, one which will have a direct bearing on performance, ruggedness and cost.
- For decades the default hard drive mechanism was a spinning, magnetic platter, or disk. As hard drive capacities increased over time, limitations in the capacity of a single platter led to multiple platters being paired together to act as a single drive.
- While this allows hard drives to offer terabytes worth of storage, the more platters a hard drive contains the more complicated they become, and the greater the theoretical risk of corruption or failure.
- In recent years, SSDs have come into wider use. Unlike traditional drives, SSDs are based on flash memory, giving them faster performance. Because they have no moving parts, they are more rugged, less prone to shock damage and are generally more reliable.
- The cost of manufacturing SSDs, however, makes them a more expensive option than traditional hard drives and they currently do not offer the same capacity.
Drive Performance
- Traditional hard drives offer a range of performance, measured in RPMs.
- The most common options are 5,400RPM and 7,200RPM.
- Drives spinning at 7,200 RPM will be faster at both read and write operations, but may come at a premium price compared to their 5,400RPM counterparts. The higher speed may also come at the cost of power consumption, making 5,400RPM drives a more appealing option for mobile drives that have their own battery power supply.
Which External Mac Hard Drive Should You Choose
As with many tech decisions, the choice of hard drive ultimately comes down to your needs. That and information. That’s why we’ve done the hard work and Mac external hard drive reviews. For home and home office users, the WD My Book for Mac 3TB offers one of the best balances of performance, storage and price. Given that current iMacs are shipping with 1TB drives, this option provides plenty of room for backups and future growth.
The most demanding of users will be best served by the WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo. With its Thunderbolt connectivity, 8TB of storage and ability to be daisy-chained with other drives or devices, this external hard drive is ideal for professionals, such as videographers, whose livelihood depends on being able to work with large files as quickly as possible.
Those who work in rugged environments, or who simply don’t want to worry about their external hard drive, would do well to consider the Silicon Power Armor A60.
Genius Compatible.
My Passport™ for Mac portable storage works straight out of the box with Mac devices which makes it easy to keep you moving on your journey. Simply drag and drop files to and from, or setup a backup routine with Apple’s Time Machine software to help protect the contents of your digital life: photos, videos, music and documents.
Plays Nicely.
The My Passport™ for Mac drive includes USB-C™ and USB-A cables, so you can save tomorrow's content with the Mac computers of both today and yesterday.
Locked Down.
The My Passport™ for Mac drive’s built-in 256-bit AES hardware encryption with password protection helps keep your digital life's contents secure. Just activate password protection and set your own personalized password using WD Discovery™.
Best Portable Hard Drive For Mac And Pc
Easy Save.
My Passport™ for Mac portable storage is ready right out of the box including all necessary cables. And with SuperSpeed USB, you can quickly start backing up everything in your life and keep driving forward.
Best Portable Hard Drive For Mac And Pc
Social Friendly.
Included WD Discovery™ software1 lets you connect to popular social media and cloud storage services like Facebook, Dropbox and Google Drive™. Seamlessly import, organise and share your photos, videos and docs to the My Passport for Mac drive to backup your online social life.2 WD Discovery can also manage your drive through WD Drive Utilities™.
Best Portable Hard Drive For Mac And Pc
Ongoing Confidence.
There's no telling what's ahead in your own journey. That's why WD® builds drives to demanding requirements for durability and long-term reliability. On top of that, it comes with a 3-year limited warranty.
Best Virus Scanner For Mac
https://ameblo.jp/regebmarstheat1979/entry-12639601328.html. Bitdefender Virus Scanner finds malware with ease.
- Best Virus Scanner For Mac 2017
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Scan running apps, scan critical locations, scan a specific location or scan the entire system, the award-winning Bitdefender engines will find that malware. For free! Don't put your friends and family at risk by unknowingly passing malware along.
But once Mac o Windows is affected, it is the time to find out a good antivirus or malware scanner. There is dedicated software available for Windows or OS X platform. These antivirus software solutions provide a comprehensive malware solution which necessarily initiates the prevention system. 11 rows After all our testing and research, we feel Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac is the best.
Features:
- Sports full award-winning Bitdefender engines
- Finds Mac malware as well as Windows viruses and other threats
- Always updated before a scan to the latest virus signatures; Bitdefender virus signatures get updated every hour
- Quick scan! Fast scan system areas that are prone to infections
- Searches for malware even in archives, various other file types (i.e., PDF, PKG, ZIP, RAR, etc.)
- Growl notifications
- Easy-to-use interface
- Straightforward security status and recommendations
- Quarantines dangerous files
- Deep system scan
- Scans running applications and daemons
- Scans a custom location (Tip: try scanning by drag-and-drop)
- Exclude files and folders from scan (i.e., Time Machine backups, network shares, etc.)
What Should I Look for in an Antivirus? There are many different antivirus solutions on the market, and choosing one can be difficult. The best antivirus programs provide users with real-time virus, spyware, and malware protection as well as high removal and detection rates. Top 10 Best Free Mac Antivirus Software 2018. Here at Top10BestAntivirus.com we have showcased some of the best free antivirus software for Mac to make it easier for you to find your perfect Mac protection. Scan's and removes viruses, spyware & malware. Includes free tune-up tools.
Best Basic AntivirusBitdefender Antivirus Plus
Superior protection, low system impact
Best Midrange AntivirusKaspersky Internet Security
Djay 2 pc download. Most everything you need
Best Premium PC Security SuiteKaspersky Total Security
Still top of the class
Plenty of Windows users believe they don't need to pay for antivirus software. Many Mac and Android users think they don't need protection at all. Windows' high profile makes it the biggest target, but macOS and Android are also vulnerable to malware, even if they don't encounter as much of it.
We believe it's worth paying for Windows antivirus software, because even the best free software leaves out some protection features we consider essential. But you don't have to spend a lot. Many antivirus products are sold online for much less than their list prices. Mac and Android users have other options: Some of our favorite Mac AV products cost nothing, and most Android security apps have free versions.
Different Types of Antivirus Software
Latest Security Alerts and Threats
—The Android PDF-creation app CamScanner was corrupted with adware, despite being in the Google Play app store. CamScanner's developers may not have been aware. ADVICE: Delete CamScanner from your Android device until a new version appears in the Play Store, and run Android antivirus software.
—Spammers have been sending emails to inject scam or malicious messages in regular people's Google Calendar pages. ADVICE: Follow our instructions to stop phony Google Calendar notifications from happening to you.
—Diagnostic software loaded onto most Lenovo Windows computers made between 2011 and 2018 could be used to hijack a PC. ADVICE: Uninstall Lenovo Solutions Center from your Lenovo PC., and run Windows antivirus software.
How We Tested
Bus driver movie. Can i download on prime video on mac. Our evaluations were based on an antivirus product's interface, performance, protection and extra features. Was the interface intuitive and user-friendly? How badly did malware scans slow performance? How well did the program detect and remove malware? Does the program have any additional tools, and are they useful?
All of our Windows tests were performed on the same Asus X555LA laptop running 64-bit Windows 8.1 (later upgraded to Windows 10), with an Intel Core i3 processor, 6GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive containing 36GB of files. To assess a program's impact on system speed, we used our custom OpenOffice benchmark test, which matches 20,000 names and addresses on a spreadsheet. The longer it took the laptop to finish the test, the heavier the performance impact. For smartphones, we used the Geekbench 3 benchmarking app.
Our Mac evaluations were conducted on a late-2013 MacBook Pro running OS X El Capitan 10.11. The Mac had a 2.6-GHz Intel Core i7 CPU, 8GB of RAM and 23GB of data on a 512GB SSD. For Android, we used a Nexus 6P smartphone running Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow. Dfx audio enhancer free.
For malware-detection scores, we've used the results of four independent testing labs: AV-TEST in Germany, AV-Comparatives in Austria, SE Labs in England and our own labs in Utah. Each lab subjects the major antivirus brands' products to stress tests involving thousands of pieces of malware, including hundreds of previously unseen samples.
Windows Antivirus Software Types
Most antivirus makers have three or four tiers of Windows products, with each price bump adding extra features, such as parental controls or cloud backups. But because each company uses a single malware-detection engine for all its Windows antivirus software, the cheapest item — even a free one — in any product line usually finds malware just as thoroughly as the priciest.
Not all users will need premium suites, or even midrange products. If you don't have kids, or if you already have backup software, the basic product may be enough.
MORE: How to Buy Antivirus Software
Basic or Entry-Level Windows Antivirus
The least-expensive paid Windows antivirus products, which generally list from $40 to $60 per year depending on the number of PCs covered, have the essentials. Definition updates and scans are automatic; websites and email attachments are screened, and the products are mostly easy to use. Some basic AV programs toss in extra features, such as file shredders or system optimizers, that are normally found in pricier products.
Best Basic Antivirus Product
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus
Reasons to Buy
Little performance slowdown
Reasons to Avoid
Not great at blocking targeted attacks
Antivirus Plus 1 Year$23.99
Not only does Bitdefender Antivirus Plus have nearly perfect malware-detection scores, but it also offers great value, with a strong selection of extra tools. You'll find a built-in password manager, a secure browser, VPN client software, protection against encrypting ransomware and automatic profiles that optimize Bitdefender's impact on your system, depending on whether you're working, watching a movie or playing a game.
Midpriced Windows Antivirus
These products usually list from $60 to $80 per year. They generally build on the basic packages by bundling in parental controls and a two-way firewall to catch outgoing data, although many add other features. But for the full feature set each brand offers, you'll have to pony up for the premium products.
Best Midrange Antivirus Product
Kaspersky Internet Security
Reasons to Buy
Many customization options
Password manager, backup software, rich parental controls
Reasons to Avoid
Kaspersky takes first place among midrange antivirus software products, thanks to its excellent malware protection, a moderate system-performance impact and a full assortment of extra features and tools. Kaspersky Internet Security includes a secure browser, a virtual keyboard, specialized protection against ransomware, webcam protection to guard your privacy and VPN client software that automatically switches on when you connect to an unsafe Wi-Fi network.
Premium Windows Antivirus
Top-tier packages are often called suites because they do much more than catch malware. They might also offer file encryption, secure online storage, a password manager or an ad blocker. As most suites cover multiple devices, they also frequently bundle in licenses for Mac and Android antivirus software. For all this, you're meant to pay between $80 and $100 per year — but as with all paid antivirus software, steep discounts can often be found online.
Best Premium Antivirus Product
Kaspersky Total Security
Reasons to Buy
Many customization options
Password manager, backup software, rich parental controls
Reasons to Avoid
Kaspersky Total Security has it all for those who want more than just excellent malware detection. This one rose to the top because it eliminates threats without generating many annoying false positives. We also like the included secure browser, which is ideal for online banking and shopping. Other highlights include a thorough file shredder and Windows backup and recovery software.
Free Windows Antivirus
Free Windows antivirus products have gotten much better, and our top two choices offer excellent malware detection, if little else. The others provide adequate protection with a smattering of goodies such as password managers or parental controls. Among those is Microsoft's built-in Windows Defender, which has risen to the middle of our rankings. However, free antivirus software generally leaves out extra protection features such as dedicated defenses against ransomware or spam blockers.
Best Free Windows Antivirus
Kasperky Free Antivirus
Reasons to Buy
Best Virus Scanner For Mac 2017
Light-to-moderate performance hit
Some customization options
Reasons to Avoid
Best Virus Scanner For Mac
Kaspersky Lab largely keeps quiet about its free antivirus product, but it's a winner, with a user-friendly interface, a fairly light system-performance impact and Kaspersky's nearly flawless malware protection. Just don't expect anything from it but the bare necessities.
Mac Antivirus
Despite what Apple's marketing has implied, Macs do get infected, and the amount of Mac malware keeps rising, with more seen in the first half of 2017 than in any previous year. But there's less money to be made in the Mac antivirus market than in the Windows one, and the products are less standardized. Some Mac antivirus products are free, and some are paid. Of the products we recently evaluated, one of our No. 2 choices, Avast Free Mac Security, doesn't cost a dime.
Best Mac Antivirus
Kaspersky Internet Security for Mac
Reasons to Buy
Minimal system impact
Reasons to Avoid
Kaspersky Internet Security offers both the lowest system impact and some of the best malware-detection rates recorded. It even provides extra security features, including parental controls and options to lock down your webcam and stop websites from tracking your browsing activity. If you're willing to pay to protect your Mac from malware, Kaspersky Internet Security is the best option available.
Android Antivirus Apps
Every Android device, whether it's a smartphone, tablet or TV stick, should have antivirus software. Usually, that software comes with an all-encompassing security app that also includes anti-theft and remote-locating features, and many apps have both a basic free version and a premium version with more features.
The free versions of the Android security apps we reviewed are pretty solid. The paid versions, which cost between $15 and $30 per year, range from being just a bit better than the free ones to becoming practically separate products, with a wide range of capabilities. You'll have to decide what you need and select accordingly.
Best Android Antivirus
Bitdefender Mobile Security
Reasons to Buy
Comprehensive and reliable anti-theft features
Intuitive user interface
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Reasons to Avoid
Can't schedule scans
BitDefender Mobile Security$14.99
The Bitdefender Android security app has flawless malware protection, a small performance hit, privacy-protection tools and Android Wear integration. Yet there are no scheduled malware scans, and no freemium option. (The separate Bitdefender Antivirus Free for Android only scans for malware.) Still, at $15 per year per device, Bitdefender Mobile Security is worth the expense.
iOS Antivirus Apps
A lot of people want iOS antivirus software for their iPhones and iPads. The truth is that such software doesn't exist. Apple won't let third-party apps examine other iOS apps, or even inspect new apps as they're installed. Anything that claims to be antivirus software swiftly gets kicked out of the iTunes App Store.
Many major antivirus vendors, including F-Secure, McAfee, Norton and Trend Micro, do have 'security' apps in the App Store. But these check web links for known malicious sites, locate lost devices or pretend to protect your privacy. None scans an iPhone for malware.
There has been real iOS malware that affects non-jailbroken devices, but it's very rarely cropped up. In each instance, Apple has pushed out a new version of iOS to stop the malware in a matter of days or weeks. Generally, if you keep your Apple mobile device updated to the latest version of iOS, you should be safe.
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[Editor's Note: Best Buy has removed Kaspersky Lab products from its shelves, citing concerns regarding Kaspersky's alleged (but as yet undocumented) ties to the Russian government. Top U.S. newspapers have run stories in which anonymous sources say Kaspersky software helps Russia spy on American spy agencies. However, until we see real evidence that Kaspersky software is a threat to consumers, we will continue to recommend it. Here is further clarification of our position.]
