Working in a school, a private school for that matter, I’ve come to realize that there are always going to be fundraisers. Schools need money, and fundraisers help them with this. I’m sure if you have kids, you dread when those fundraisers start because it usually means you’ll end up buying way too many candy bars, or oodles of wrapping paper, just so your child sells something. Or, you butter-up to your co-workers and hope they’ll help you out, but then of course, you’ll be expected to return the favor come the time their child is selling popcorn or Girl Scout cookies.
Anyhow, what does fundraising have to do with printer brands? At my school, one of the fundraisers they run is a printer cartridge collection. A company called Funding Factory gives the school money for certain qualifying cartridges (and cell phones). At the end of the school year, we sort through all of the cartridges, ship them off, and then receive money. The great thing about this is that it’s a no hassle way for parents to contribute. The bad? I’m the lucky one who gets to sort through all of the used cartridges to find the ones on the qualifying list. This is tedious, and a little messy, as you can imagine.
This past week I finally decided to sort through the collection, and from it, was able to see what I believe to be trends in printer brands. This leads us to our new poll:
New Poll: What brand of printer is “the best”?
What brand of printer is “the best”? Have you found a certain brand to be better than others over the years? Our personal preference is HP, and if the small sampling of cartridges my school collected means anything, it looks as though HP is the preferred brand as well.
Based upon the cartridges collected, let’s see if your preference matches what I found:
- #1 – HP
- #2 – Lexmark
- #3 – Epson
- #4 – Canon
- #5 – Dell
You can vote below if you have Flash enabled, or vote in the sidebar of the site.
You’re asking for the most popular printer here, especially without a definition of “best”
I think HP is both the most popular and the best printer around. Their printing quality towers above all the rest. A runner up in my opinion, would be Epson.
Canon is the only printer mfg’er with which I have not had problems. Now both my b&w laser and my color inkjet are Canons.
That’s why I put “best” in quotes… I was leaving you to define what best is.
No Brother printers? Although pretty new to the market I feel like they’ve made a serious move over the past few years. They’ve certainly won my heart by being cheaper
HP Inkjets … i had a 3 or 4 of them. No problems except expensive cartridges.
EPSON … hardware malfunctions, extremely noisy on older models …
Lately i’ve been into Brother printers, both b/w laser, and multifunctional inkjets. Cheap, reliable and inexpensive ink packs.
Yet i had one that went broken due to excessive work
I had a good relation also with Canon laser industrial printers. On home printers the word around here is: AVOID at all cost.
Lexmark = AVOID at all cost.
Dell = not selled here.
Basicly HP, EPSON and Brother are the 3 selling tops at home printers. Canon for industrial printing.
There’s also “OKI” printers … but i have no relevant experience with them.
I’ve had HP, Canon, and Lexmark printers in the last couple/three years. HP wins out for quality, Cannon is second and produces quick, good-looking output. Lexmark printers just simply suck. I bought a ~$50 model and hated it so much that I tossed the thing in the trash when the first cartridges ran out.
My opinion… HP *used* to be the best. They are still good, but I prefer Epson’s quality over HP.
Lexmark, like everyone else says, is crap.
Dell printers, for the most part, are made by Lexmark.
If you buy the cheapest printers, when the first cartridges run out, it’s about as cheap to just buy a new printer as it is to buy new cartridges.
Personally I’ve always jumped around between brands. I’m not sure if one is necessarily better than the others, but I have a tendency to go with more HP printers than anything else. Of course that’s probably because they also have one of the widest selections of printers available, too.
I’ve always gone with inkjet printers as well, mostly because laser printers are so darn expensive to get toner cartridges for.