Epson vs Canon?

[The Crow]

I've been looking into good all-rounders, inkjets, for my home office. In
terms of manufacturers, it seems to come down to a battle between Epson and
Canon. Both have good all-round performers in the middle, middle-low price
bracket. The Epson's seem to have a higher resolution, 5700 as compared to
the Canon's 4800 dpi, but people, in review, seem to like the Canon, I think
it's the I865, or something like that, as compared to Epson's R300? I think
those are the model numbers, although I'm working from memory.

The thing is, last time I bought a printer, about six years ago, Epson were
kings of the inkjet pile, with stylus ruling the roost. Last time I bought
anything by Canon, it was a camera, I have no ideas if their printers are
any good. Can anyone tell me if Canon make good printers, and how they
match up to the Epsons? Thanks.

 

[Miss Perspicacia Tick]

I've been looking into good all-rounders, inkjets, for my home
office. In terms of manufacturers, it seems to come down to a battle
between Epson and Canon. Both have good all-round performers in the
middle, middle-low price bracket. The Epson's seem to have a higher
resolution, 5700 as compared to the Canon's 4800 dpi, but people, in
review, seem to like the Canon, I think it's the I865, or something
like that, as compared to Epson's R300? I think those are the model
numbers, although I'm working from memory.

The thing is, last time I bought a printer, about six years ago,
Epson were kings of the inkjet pile, with stylus ruling the roost.
Last time I bought anything by Canon, it was a camera, I have no
ideas if their printers are any good. Can anyone tell me if Canon
make good printers, and how they match up to the Epsons? Thanks.

Do Canon make good printers?! No, they don't. They make the BEST printers!

 

[Taliesyn]

I've been looking into good all-rounders, inkjets, for my home office. In
terms of manufacturers, it seems to come down to a battle between Epson and
Canon. Both have good all-round performers in the middle, middle-low price
bracket. The Epson's seem to have a higher resolution, 5700 as compared to
the Canon's 4800 dpi, but people, in review, seem to like the Canon, I think
it's the I865, or something like that, as compared to Epson's R300? I think
those are the model numbers, although I'm working from memory.

The thing is, last time I bought a printer, about six years ago, Epson were
kings of the inkjet pile, with stylus ruling the roost. Last time I bought
anything by Canon, it was a camera, I have no ideas if their printers are
any good. Can anyone tell me if Canon make good printers, and how they
match up to the Epsons? Thanks.

In terms of visibility in catalogs and newspapers and elsewhere, Epson
has sunk something terrible in recent years. Makes me wonder if they're
abandoning home users for the professional market. It all seems Canon
and HP at the moment. And Lexmarks always seem to be thrown in free
when buying a computer. Sorry, that's my take on the situation.

My Canon i850 is the first fully useful and efficient printer I've
ever owned. Canon's "i" line is excellent. Print head snaps out with
a touch of a lever if it ever needs replacement or you have to unclog
it by placing it in a dish of water. Epsons (the whole printer) has to
be sent to a factory. My Canon print head has never clogged. Canon says
they should last the life of the printer. For me that's 16 perfect
months so far. In another year I'd like an even better printer from
Canon, an i960 or beyond.

-Taliesyn

 

[Safetymom123]

Epson still makes a great printer. I have several with no problems and they
print beautiful photos.

 

[Just Allan]

I've been looking into good all-rounders, inkjets, for my home office. In
terms of manufacturers, it seems to come down to a battle between Epson and
Canon. Both have good all-round performers in the middle, middle-low price
bracket. The Epson's seem to have a higher resolution, 5700 as compared to
the Canon's 4800 dpi, but people, in review, seem to like the Canon, I think
it's the I865, or something like that, as compared to Epson's R300? I think
those are the model numbers, although I'm working from memory.

The thing is, last time I bought a printer, about six years ago, Epson were
kings of the inkjet pile, with stylus ruling the roost. Last time I bought
anything by Canon, it was a camera, I have no ideas if their printers are
any good. Can anyone tell me if Canon make good printers, and how they
match up to the Epsons? Thanks.

Make no mistake - Epsons give SLIGHTLY better print quality (that most
people can't notice anyway). The real difference tho' is, reliability
& ease of use. Do you want to do a printout every hour, 7 days a week
to keep your printer working? If no, then forget epson. Constant
printing is required to prevent heads from clogging. You need to use
expensive epson-only ink in most cases too, unless you feel lucky.
Canon you can get the price of ink down considerably. Yes, there are
many people who will now pipe up, that don't have this problem with
their epson - but keep this in mind as they chant their mantras...
There's many people who DO have that problem. Put it this way. Do a
www.google.com search for "canon head clog" and you'll get probably 2%
of the matches you'd get if you did the same search with "epson".

The i865 is probably better for you than the i965, because the i865
has a large black ink cartridge for text.

PS. I bought epson - and never will again - their printers STINK and
their support are buffoons and their service techs are liars & thieves
in Australia anyway - but that's another story. I'm about to purchase
an i965 myself and smash my epson into a million pieces with a large
hammer.

Good luck - you'll need it too, if you buy an epson. :-D

Allan.

 

[Paul]

I've been looking into good all-rounders, inkjets, for my home office. In
terms of manufacturers, it seems to come down to a battle between Epson and
Canon. Both have good all-round performers in the middle, middle-low price
bracket. The Epson's seem to have a higher resolution, 5700 as compared to
the Canon's 4800 dpi, but people, in review, seem to like the Canon, I think
it's the I865, or something like that, as compared to Epson's R300? I think
those are the model numbers, although I'm working from memory.

The thing is, last time I bought a printer, about six years ago, Epson were
kings of the inkjet pile, with stylus ruling the roost. Last time I bought
anything by Canon, it was a camera, I have no ideas if their printers are
any good. Can anyone tell me if Canon make good printers, and how they
match up to the Epsons? Thanks.

What you will hear with this question is

Epson are crap, Canon never go wrong

Just like we get

Canon are best Nikon are crap

Hasselblad are best Bronica/Mamiya are crap

If they where all crap would they really sell so many.

Sure some people have problems with Epson printers, but then they do outsell
there nearest competitor by a very large margin, so if they all had a 1%
fault rate you would still hear about faulty Epson's, because they sell so
many more than for example Canon.

Which ever you pick you still stand a very good chance of getting a good
one.

Paul

 

[Lou]

In terms of visibility in catalogs and newspapers and elsewhere, Epson
has sunk something terrible in recent years. Makes me wonder if they're
abandoning home users for the professional market. It all seems Canon
and HP at the moment. And Lexmarks always seem to be thrown in free
when buying a computer. Sorry, that's my take on the situation.

My Canon i850 is the first fully useful and efficient printer I've
ever owned. Canon's "i" line is excellent. Print head snaps out with
a touch of a lever if it ever needs replacement or you have to unclog
it by placing it in a dish of water. Epsons (the whole printer) has to
be sent to a factory. My Canon print head has never clogged. Canon says
they should last the life of the printer. For me that's 16 perfect
months so far. In another year I'd like an even better printer from
Canon, an i960 or beyond.

-Taliesyn

I second that. I really like my Canon i850 too. It's easy to refill or
generic cartridges work quite well in it too. It isn't always jamming paper
and envelopes the way my old HPs did. I've had several HPs and I always ran
into mechanical difficulties with them and the cost of their ink cartridges
is outrageous. I've had my Canon almost a year and a half. I could have
bought two or three new printers for what I've saved on ink. I do think it
is a little bit pickier about what paper works best for plain everyday
printing than HP printers are.

 

[Taliesyn]

If they where all crap would they really sell so many.

Sure some people have problems with Epson printers, but then they do outsell
there nearest competitor by a very large margin...

I strongly disagree with you. I'll bet my life that Epson sells the
least printers. HPs and Canons saturate the media - catalogs,
newspapers, stores, etc. Hard to find an advertised or even visible
Epson these days in stores. Even Lexmarks have long passed Epson in
quantity, often because they're given away with computers.

-Taliesyn

 

[Traveling]

The resolution as you mentioned is somewhat meaningless for photo quality
printing since anything beyond 300 dpi can not been differentiated by the
human eye in most viewing situations.

Both the Epson and canon make good images.

One thing you want to do is take an image that is on a disk and at the
selling store see if they will print it. Most will let you do that and you
can then compare the difference.

I use a Canon i960 and impressed with the fine quality of prints, the speed,
and the quiet operations.


: I've been looking into good all-rounders, inkjets, for my home office. In
: terms of manufacturers, it seems to come down to a battle between Epson
and
: Canon. Both have good all-round performers in the middle, middle-low
price
: bracket. The Epson's seem to have a higher resolution, 5700 as compared
to
: the Canon's 4800 dpi, but people, in review, seem to like the Canon, I
think
: it's the I865, or something like that, as compared to Epson's R300? I
think
: those are the model numbers, although I'm working from memory.
:
: The thing is, last time I bought a printer, about six years ago, Epson
were
: kings of the inkjet pile, with stylus ruling the roost. Last time I
bought
: anything by Canon, it was a camera, I have no ideas if their printers are
: any good. Can anyone tell me if Canon make good printers, and how they
: match up to the Epsons? Thanks.
:
:

 

[Safetymom123]

Epson is the #1 printer in the photography market. It terms of amount of
printers sold it is HP, Epson, Canon, Lexmark.

 

[Taliesyn]

Epson is the #1 printer in the photography market. It terms of amount of
printers sold it is HP, Epson, Canon, Lexmark.

These figures are noted somewhere?
Are they world figures?... North American? ...

I have a hard time believing Epson would be #2, judging from how little
I see them being marketed or in stores. You can't buy what you can't
see, and people buy what is heavily advertised and at low prices.

I definitely recall not seeing Lexmark in last place. Recall seeing HP
being #1 though.

There was an article in Time magazine last year, I should try to find
it. I recall reading a Lexmark exec stating that they expected one major
player to leave the consumer market - and they weren't one of them.
With HPs and Canons both offering a huge line of printers, and tons
of advertising, that to me points the inky finger at Epson. But
naturally, I can't prove it at this stage. Anyone heard or read any
strong gossip recently on this matter?

-Taliesyn

 

[Just Allan]

There was an article in Time magazine last year, I should try to find
it. I recall reading a Lexmark exec stating that they expected one major
player to leave the consumer market - and they weren't one of them.
With HPs and Canons both offering a huge line of printers, and tons
of advertising, that to me points the inky finger at Epson.

And GOOD RIDDENCE!

Sorry - couldn't help myself. : )

 

[Hecate]

The resolution as you mentioned is somewhat meaningless for photo quality
printing since anything beyond 300 dpi can not been differentiated by the
human eye in most viewing situations.

Actually, that's a misunderstanding of the difference between dpi and
ppi. PPI is what your image is when on the screen and a level of 300
ppi is usually sufficient for printing. But, that image will be best
printed at something like 1440 dpi. The two numbers describe
different things.

 

[Hecate]

Epson is the #1 printer in the photography market. It terms of amount of
printers sold it is HP, Epson, Canon, Lexmark.

And that's why you get more complaints about HP or Epson. I'd love to
see the complaints expressed as a percentage of printers sold. Of
course, no manufacturer is *ever* going to tell you that. ;-)

 

[Kennedy McEwen]

These figures are noted somewhere?
Are they world figures?... North American? ...

I have a hard time believing Epson would be #2, judging from how little
I see them being marketed or in stores. You can't buy what you can't
see, and people buy what is heavily advertised and at low prices.

I definitely recall not seeing Lexmark in last place. Recall seeing HP
being #1 though.

There was an article in Time magazine last year, I should try to find
it. I recall reading a Lexmark exec stating that they expected one major
player to leave the consumer market - and they weren't one of them.
With HPs and Canons both offering a huge line of printers, and tons
of advertising, that to me points the inky finger at Epson. But
naturally, I can't prove it at this stage. Anyone heard or read any
strong gossip recently on this matter?

Lexmark printers are as bad as they have always been and so falling
further behind the others in terms of print quality, particularly photo
print quality. Consequently I would take anything their CEO says with a
very large mountain of sodium chloride - its every bottom of the league
team's dream that those above it will quit, as its the only way they
will ever get a chance to increase their share.

 

[Taliesyn]

Lexmark printers are as bad as they have always been and so falling
further behind the others in terms of print quality, particularly photo
print quality. Consequently I would take anything their CEO says with a
very large mountain of sodium chloride - its every bottom of the league
team's dream that those above it will quit, as its the only way they
will ever get a chance to increase their share.

Lexmarks are not very good at all, agreed. However, they are often given
away as inducements or simply sell for ridiculously low prices. They
move an awful lot of printers. You must remember that a large part of
printer buyers are clueless as to quality. What they often fail to
realize is that later they will be stuck buying Lexmark's very expensive
and small cartridges (depending on model). There are no legal clones as
far as I know. Epsons are far better printers. But the last I heard,
Lexmark had passed Epson in "sales". That's not good news for Epson,
regardless of how good it is.

Beta was also considered a superior recording system to VHS, but it
too lost in the video "popularity" contest.

-Taliesyn

 

[Kennedy McEwen]

Lexmarks are not very good at all, agreed. However, they are often given
away as inducements or simply sell for ridiculously low prices. They
move an awful lot of printers. You must remember that a large part of
printer buyers are clueless as to quality. What they often fail to
realize is that later they will be stuck buying Lexmark's very expensive
and small cartridges (depending on model). There are no legal clones as
far as I know. Epsons are far better printers. But the last I heard,
Lexmark had passed Epson in "sales". That's not good news for Epson,
regardless of how good it is.

On the contrary - its great news for Epson, Canon and HP! The more
printers that Lexmark have to sell at less than manufacturing cost (and
all consumer printers are sold at ridiculously low margins if not less
than cost) the more money that Lexmark lose and the less able they'll be
to stay in the printer business. The market has long passed the
commodity downsizing stage, and Lexmark are the weakest in the remaining
pack, no matter how you view it. Statements to the effect that those
running a better business model with a better product/consumable balance
will pull out before they do is wishful thinking in the extreme.

The biggest growing sector of the inkjet market is for photo quality
printers to new digital camera owners - and Lexmark have never made a
printer than would even match the photo quality of a Box Brownie in
their entire history - and Lexmark colour is only marginally better!
They could give their printers away for spit (which is ten times what
they are worth but almost infinitely less than they cost to make) and it
still wouldn't improve their chances of survival. All reduced hardware
costs do is lower the threshold for owners to trash their Lexmark and
buy a printer that is capable of producing results at least as good as
their grannies Kodak-110 from their latest digicam.

Beta was also considered a superior recording system to VHS, but it
too lost in the video "popularity" contest.

Sure, but the commercial printer market is a completely different model
from the early VCR one. Neither VHS nor Betamax were being sold below
manufacturing cost with a business sustained by consumables (eg. tape
sales) and the printer market isn't driven by decisions made by ink
cartridge rental corporations. When Lexmark team up with Blockbuster to
rent their printers nightly with costs of used ink and paper on top then
you might get something close to that type of model, but it would only
convince folks they need to buy a decent Epson/Canon/HP printer rather
than rent a crap Lexmark one, and hasten their demise.

As for the others - well, HP have to build a head unit into all of their
carts, while Epson just put ink in a plastic box. So who do you think
makes most money from ink sales per printer installed printer? Sorry,
but no matter how you look at it, Epson have the more profitable
business model at the moment - even though I don't agree with their
ethics.

 

[Arthur Entlich]

For many years, Epson was the driving force to get inkjet printers to
the quality they are today. However, the quality of most of the better
quality printers (Canon, Epson, and some HP) has become so close that
you really are splitting hairs in most cases.

Don't look at the dpi specs as a good measurement. Years ago that was
meaningful information, but today is it more about specsmanship that
quality. Also, keep in mind that what's important is print output and
speed of that output. Some printers become very slow at their highest
resolution, and give very little advantage, if any in terms of print
quality when using that high resolution.

Quite honestly, since the i Canon printers came out the output quality
differences between Epson and Canon are minimal, if any. The Canon is
faster, and overall maintenance is proving to be easier. The Canon
heads have proven to be more reliable than first anticipated, although
time will tell if they last several years.

The main differences between the two printers (Epson versus Canon) is
ink types available. Since Epson uses a piezo head and has been
embraced by artists and photographers, OEM and 3rd party inks are
available in many types, including pigmented, which right now, are still
the most permanent. I have heard some Canon pigmented ink exist but I
am not familiar with them or how they work with the Canon heads. Dye
inks tend to be less permanent in terms of fading, but they are
improving all the time , and some new papers are reaching the market now
which will make dye inks more permanent still.

There are probably more versions of continuous inking systems for the
Epson's, although some are made for the Canons now. Canon usually
charges less for the OEM replacement ink and they do not use a microchip
in the cartridges which can render them unfillable without a resetter
device for the Epson printers.

Both products are good, and if ink type isn't a major issue, look at
cost versus features, and speed of printing (and, of course, print
quality). Most printer companies will send you print samples, which may
help somewhat in your decision.

Art

 

[Roland Marsey]

I don't know if it matters, but Epson is waterproof and smearproof
when you use thier photo paper. See this link for more information:
http://groups.google.com/[email protected]#link1

 

[Anoni Moose]

Sure, but the commercial printer market is a completely different model
from the early VCR one. Neither VHS nor Betamax were being sold below
manufacturing cost with a business sustained by consumables (eg. tape
sales) and the printer market isn't driven by decisions made by ink
cartridge rental corporations.

It's more than that. VHS actually had a killer technical advantage in
the early days of the 'war'. VHS could record a movie off one's TV
unattended. At that time, Beta could only record one hour per tape.
VHS could do two. Beta had to have a manual tape change during the
movie, VHS could record most movies unattended (usually using a timer).
Beta fixed that, but only later on when the war's outcome had been
already decided.

So for a LOT of people beta was actually vastly poorer. Great picture
or the first half of a movie. Second half was blank.

The comparison would be if one printer company could only do great
3x5 prints while the other could do that as well as bigger prints
that weren't quite as good as the 3x5's.

That said, the "VHS" printer now is as good or better than the
beta one.

Mike