Bigger screens, the increasing popularity of mobile devices, and the ease of sharing documents electronically have all reduced our dependence on paper. But the need for printed materials is not going away anytime soon. Choosing the right printer company for your users can help them get work done faster and impress their clients—as well as reduce headaches for all involved.
Brother and Canon dominated the satisfaction ratings in our survey and both companies share the 2013 Business Choice Award for printers. Brother had a slightly higher overall satisfaction rating than Canon (8.5 versus 8.4) whereas respondents were somewhat more likely to recommend Canon (8.8 compared with 8.6). The two companies had identical, category-leading satisfaction with reliability ratings (8.8), although a lower percentage of Brother business printers needed repairs in the 12 months leading up to our survey (3%) than Canon (5%). Still, both had the lowest repair rates among all manufacturers. (Epson also had only five percent needing repairs compared with 20 percent for Xerox.)
Satisfaction ratings – printers
Consumables can represent a significant portion of printer operating costs, so businesses often turn to third-party toner and ink to save money. Xerox was rated the best for satisfaction with the quality of everyday
documents created using the manufacturer’s consumables—(9.1) and the cost (6.4). This is an area of weakness for Canon, which had the lowest satisfaction with the cost of the manufacturer’s consumables at 5.2, tied with HP. Both Canon and HP rose to ratings of 7.5 for cost with third-party consumables. Satisfaction with Canon’s output quality of everyday documents barely suffers with third-party consumables, dropping from 8.8 to 8.7. Satisfaction with photos drops somewhat more, from 8.4 to 8.1. HP had a larger difference in its output ratings: everyday documents went from 8.8 to 8.4 and photo-output dropped from 8.0 to 7.5.
Brother received the highest ratings from our respondents for overall satisfaction and reliability (tied with Canon), and was consistently at the top of the charts.
Overall satisfaction and reliability