Four different boxes can put one USB printer on the network. They all 'share the printer' - and they behave so differently afterwards that choosing the wrong one just moves your problem to a new shelf.
When PC-hosted sharing starts failing, the instinct is to plug the printer into something that stays on - the router's USB port, the office NAS, a small print server. All four homes work, and none is best at everything. They differ in who supplies the driver, which printer features survive the trip, and what breaks when the box reboots. This comparison is deliberately honest about the fine print, because the differences only show up after you have moved everything.
Example summary. 'Always on' is only one line of the story; the driver and features lines decide whether the office is actually happier.
A Windows host is the only option here that serves the driver: clients connect and pull the correct driver from the host, with the printer's full feature set - trays, duplex defaults, secure print - intact. The cost is availability. The printer's uptime is that PC's uptime, its user's holidays and its update reboots, which is the whole reason this comparison exists.
Many routers can share a USB printer, and being always-on is a real advantage. Read the manual for your model before moving anything: on many routers each PC must run the maker's USB printer utility, printing then behaves almost as if the printer were plugged in locally, feature support varies, and some models quietly dropped printer sharing altogether - the USB port may be for storage only. On all-in-one printers, scanning almost never comes across a router share.
A Synology or QNAP-class NAS can share a USB printer to the network and, like the router, never sleeps at someone's desk. Dedicated print servers do this one job with the fewest surprises. With both, expect clients to install the printer model's driver themselves - these boxes pass print jobs through rather than serving drivers like a Windows host - so keeping client driver versions tidy becomes your job again.
See the Windows-host setup done right first - for many offices it remains the best of the four.
▶️ Watch Full VideoUsually not. USB printer sharing on routers and NAS boxes generally carries printing only. If scanning matters to the office, the all-in-one needs its own network connection, where scan-to-folder and scan-to-email live.
Typically yes - the model's driver installed on each client, because a print server passes the job through instead of serving a driver the way a Windows host does. Keep those client drivers at the same version to avoid odd differences between desks.
No. On many models the USB port is for storage only, and printer support varies even between similar models. Check the router manual for printer sharing support before unplugging anything.