Readers' Choice Awards 2019: Printers

Spinal Tap would be proud: Brother has gone to 11. For the eleventh year in a row, Brother wins the PCMag Readers' Choice Award for home printers. As was the case last year, the competition wasn't even close.

WINNERS: PRINTERS

Readers' Choice 2010 AwardBrother
Brother has won the PCMag Readers' Choice Award for printers every year since 2009. No matter what type of printer you're looking for, no other brand is delivers across-the-board satisfaction like Brother, readers tell us. It's the printer brand you should always consider first when getting a printer, as you're likely to keep it around for a long time.

According to the market research firm, Statista, the average price of a printer is $122.31, virtually the same as it was five years ago. By contrast, in that same time laptops have gone up nearly 12 percent and smartphones a whopping 52 percent.

Of course, the total cost of a printer isn't just the initial price of the unit itself. A major part of the expense is in the consumables: ink for inkjets and toners and drums for lasers and other page printers. Some manufacturers are addressing this by lowering the cost of consumables and increasing capacities, but 28 percent of our survey respondents primarily use third-party ink and toner cartridges to keep costs down.

More than a fifth of our respondents (22 percent) have had printers for more than four years. As long as your manufacturer continues to update drivers and firmware so the printer works with the latest systems, you should have similar success, assuming you choose well. According to PCMag readers, there is really only one choice.

Brother had the highest overall satisfaction rating of any printer brand (8.9 out of 10) across all types of printers. Samsung, whose printers are sold by HP these days, had the second highest overall satisfaction rating, at nearly half a point behind (8.5). Brother's rating for likelihood to recommend (9.0), a very important measure of satisfaction, was nearly a full point ahead of its nearest competitors, Samsung and Canon (8.2 for both).

In addition to rating printers on a variety of criteria, survey respondents were given the opportunity to describe their experience in their own words. Here are a few comments that typified most of the feedback we received for Brother:

"My Brother printer has worked flawlessly for over 3 years. I recently recommended a replacement Brother printer for my dad and a co-worker due to the reliability and lack of issues with my printer."

"I find Brother printers, in general, to be dependable, work as specified, and are reasonably priced."

"This Brother printer uses much less ink than the Canon I used to own and is much more reliable."

Few people are satisfied with how much they pay for ink from their printer's manufacturer, but Brother's rating for satisfaction with the cost of the manufacturer's inks (6.5) was more than a point ahead of everyone else who got a score. Many respondents opt to use inks and toner from third parties to keep costs down.

In nearly every instance, satisfaction with the quality of documents and photos printed with the manufacturer's inks was higher than satisfaction with the output from third-party consumables. However, this is offset by satisfaction with cost, which was 8.8 for third-party inks compared to only 6.5 for those from the manufacturer. In short: enjoy the price of your third-party ink, but don't expect the prints to look as good.

The most commonly used type of printer among those surveyed were color inkjet all-in-one (AIO) printers, also known as multi-function printers. These printers include scanners and can make copies and, in some cases, send faxes (because that is still a thing). Brother's overall satisfaction rating for inkjet AIOs alone was 8.7; the only vendor over 8.0. Brother AIO's reliability rating of 9.0 was far ahead of the competition, as was its 8.8 score for likelihood to be recommended.

Brother also had the highest overall satisfaction rating in the monochrome laser printers category (9.1), but HP was right behind (9.0). Brother's AIO mono lasers earned an 8.9. Most laser printers excel at printing text, but HP lasers were rated best at 9.4. On the other hand, HP's rating for satisfaction with paper handling was only 8.1, far behind the numbers that Brother received for its mono laser printers and mono laser AIOs, respectively.

Recommended by Our Editors

Business Choice Awards 2019: Printers

How We Test Printers

In the color laser AIO printer category (which includes other color page printing technologies such as solid ink), Brother's machines received the best rating for overall satisfaction (9.0) and likelihood to recommend (9.3). If you need an all-in-one, it was a clear winner over HP which only received ratings of 8.2 for overall satisfaction and 8.4 for likelihood to recommend. HP is worth a look, though, if you don't need a color laser that also can scan and copy. Its regular color laser printers fared better in overall satisfaction (8.7).

See all of our survey results for printers.

The PCMag Readers' Choice survey for Printers was in the field from June 3, 2019 through June 24, 2019. For more information on how the survey is conducted, read the survey methodology.