Sayonara Canon

I have been using Canon printers for many years. I have had high brand loyalty because I respect the quality of Canon products, but there are a number of things that I have been dissatisfied with. The family printer stopped working this week, and tax season is an especially inconvenient time for that to happen. After a few days of deliberation, I have decided to switch to a different brand.

My wife and I have used our current printer for just over ten years, which is probably not too bad for a home printer. When powered on, it now displays the following message on the LED screen. The device cannot be used at all, not even the scanner.

プリンタートラブルが発生しました

電源プラグを抜いて、修理受付窓口へ修理をご依頼ください

Here is a rough translation.

Printer trouble has occurred. Please unplug the printer and request repair from the service center.

Printers from over ten years ago are no longer serviced, so getting it fixed by Canon is not an option.

We need a replacement soon, so I started looking for one immediately. There are many options, but none seem great. In fact, the specs for recent Canon models seem to be worse than that of the model I purchased over ten years ago! I find the home printer industry to be pretty disappointing in general.

The biggest issue is of course ink. Ink for home printers is expensive! The cost of ink after just a few refills is higher than the cost of the printer itself, and the ink is consumed quite quickly. My wife and I stopped using “genuine” ink many years ago. Non-genuine brands are generally sold in packs containing all colors, but some colors are used faster, so we end up accumulating spare cartridges of colors that we do not use as much.

Speaking of ink, some printers now have ink tanks that are refilled from bottles instead of using cartridges. I wonder if it is more cost effective. I will not purchase such a printer without getting experience using one first.

Another problem with the home printer industry, which is common for many types of consumer electronics, is that there is a constant stream of new models. Each new model seems to use a different type of ink. I suspect that this is done to increase profit by taking advantage of people’s desire to always own the latest stuff. A new printer will likely not be an improvement over the one I purchased over ten years ago. I wish that companies would create more products that are long-lasting and repairable. Since the broken printer is not serviceable, it is unnecessarily turned into a large chunk of garbage.

After discussion with my wife, we decided to purchase an entry model printer instead of getting a more expensive model with features similar to the broken one. We can simply use professional printing services when we need high quality prints.

We have decided to purchase an EPSON EW-452A at a fraction of the price of the Canon model that we were considering. The biggest complaint I see about this printer is that it uses ink quickly. The ink is also a fraction of the price of the Canon ink, however, so perhaps it will balance out. We shall see.

The primary reason for choosing EPSON over Canon is Linux support. EPSON provides current Linux drivers for both scanning and printing. With Canon, I have been accumulating documents (mostly bills and tax documents) until I have enough to make it worth booting Windows for scanning. With EPSON, I look forward easily scanning such documents as I receive them, making the process less painful through amortization.