canon vs epson ink tank printrers

[monte01]

Canon vs Epson ink tank printers

I have just bought a Canon G1010 ink tank printer.  I thought I might write a few notes about it vs my old printer, an Epson L800.

The Epson L800 is a discontinued model, but its replacement the L805 uses the same print head and inks, and shares the same casing.  I may be wrong but I think the only difference is that the L805 has wifi connection.  Printing is the same.  The Epson L805 is dedicated photo printer with 6 colour tanks and costs around B10,000.

In contrast the Canon G1010 is the cheapest ink tank printer currently available in Thailand.  It has 4 tanks, and the black one is not used for photo printing.  It costs around B3,000 only ... a third of the cost of the L800, so bear that in mind in this comparison.

The reason that I am replacing my Epson is because it gave up the ghost.  I went back to the UK for two months and the ink had dried and ruined the print head (though I suspect it had been showing some faults for awhile before that).  I went to the service centre in Surat and was told that a new head would be nearly B4,500 and would take 6 to 10 weeks to come from Epson.  They then added that 'wasn't is a shame that it isn't still in warranty, we could have fixed it in 3 or 4 days'!  I was not impressed!

I am a keen amateur photographer, and had already replaced my Epson with a Canon Pro 100 printer for my photos (amazing printer but expensive to run) but was going to keep the Epson for general documents.  So now my requirements are a little different.  I need a general purpose printer for letters and documents, and less important  photos.  I considered the Canon G1010 and the Epson L370.  I already have a seperate scanner so I do not need an all-in-one printer.

I chose the Canon for four reasons.  First, my experience with Epson service; second, reviews on the internet tend to favour the canon;  and 3rd, when I looked at customer reviews on Amazon, over 1/3 of the reviews for the Epson were bad, compared to around 10 percent with the canon.   Fourth, my old Epson printed brilliant quality photos when they were first printed, but I found that the inks were very susceptible to humidity on certain papers.  Here in Chumphon Hi- Jet paper is about the only option.  I found their cheaper glossy photo paper to be much better that their lab photo paper for the Epson ink. Admittedly these inks are not the Epson long life inks, and are not sold as such, but after 6 months of seaside air and humidity, the colours on the photos blended into one another to make a smudgy mess, even when the pictures were stored in books.  I have no idea whether canon inks will be any better, but their printing system is different ... so I am hoping.  For what it is worth, I have noticed that the Canon ink dries onto the paper much quicker that the Epson ink.  Both printers use dye inks for colour printing and neither use proprietary long life inks.  Dye inks are generally brighter than pigment, but not as long lasting.

Both the Epson L800 and Canon G1010 are rather boring black boxes, made from hard plastic.  I don't think it would do to force the plastic hinges!  That said, they are both quite robust.  The canon has its ink tank internally, but the Epson inks are in an external clip on box.  I found the canon tanks to be much easier to fill.  The Epson has a code to be entered and validated for each bottle.  The canon has no such system.  I have no idea what they do to stop you using 3rd party inks, I am sure they must do something.  The canon inks for the ink tanks are reasonably priced anyway (much cheaper that the inks for the Epson L800, but remember that is a dedicated photo printer).  With the canon, I found that some bottles are more squeezy than others.  I had to squeeze and squeeze the yellow bottle to get the ink out, but the red splurted everywhere.  My fault ... and not a complaint, just a warning to go slower than I did!

And so to the important bit ... Print quality.  I have seen complaints that the Canon G1010 is slow, but I have found it ok.  It is quicker that the Epson L800 (but that is a photo printer).  The Canon has separate pigment black ink for documents (good!).  The quality maybe not quite as good as the Epson, but it is plenty good enough. 

However pictures are not quite so good.  The Canon uses only three inks to produce black.  The pigment black ink is used only for documents.  I was worried because whenever I mixed my paint-pot colours as a kid, I always got a dirty brown colour ... not black.  In fact the Canon does a remarkably good job.  The pictures show detail and the colour is reasonably accurate, but the pictures lack the depth of colour (and true black) and the lustre that the Epson photo printer managed ... but remember that I am comparing the cheapest ink tank on the market with one of the most expensive.  For the money, I think the Canon does surprisingly well.

In all I am extremely pleased with my new purchase.  For a family all purpose printer, the Canon looks a great buy, but if you are a keen photographer you will probably want to aim higher for a dedicated photo printer ... or do what I have done and end up with two printers.  All indications are that it will be very cheap to run, though I am little sceptical of the quoted figures.  I believe that they are based on ink per page and take no account of cleaning which uses a lot of ink, and which the printer does of its own accord with alarming regularity.

Hope that helps.  It is a pretty non-technical review of my own experiences.

[guzzi850m2]

I have a Epson l200 I think the name is (offshore working) with 4 tanks in total.

The ink refill bottles is cheap (relatively).

I have same problem, when printing a A4 photo on good quality photo paper, the colours starts fading away after 1-2 months, the photos mostly hanging on the wall in the office in my house and never exposed to sun light.

The only way avoiding this is by laminate the photos or put them in a frame (not as good as laminating, they slowly fade). Sadly a laminated photo don't pop so much.

I now given up printing photos, as getting good A3 prints from own printer will be very expensive and further I am gone 2 months at a time for offshore work and print heads don't like sitting for that long as you mentioned.

I will try finding someone overseas that will do prints and sending them to Thailand. I might also try finding a shop in Pattaya that can do good prints in large size of files from my Fuji cameras.

[canuckamuck]

I have been buying printers since 93 My first was an HP, it was a terror. I replaced it with an Epson and was delighted. Then over the years and different businesses, I bought many printers, at least one a year, Sticking with Epson, and always being pleased. Replacing them when the cartridges became obsolete. I did buy one Kodak Dye sublimation printer because we needed photo quality prints before the time that photo quality ink jets were available. Anyhow, I bought a Canon about  three years ago, Just for personal use, because everybody seems to like their Canons. The thing was a nightmare, It printed nice when it worked, but it usually didn't. The photocopy feature quit working early on, and the WiFi never did work. Since I didn't need it much I kept it around until last year when I bought another Epson. Back to flawless function and all the features work. I know it might just be a coincidence that the Canon I bought was a lemon. But I certainly don't feel the need to experiment again.

[n210mp]

 

Thanks OP for a great review.

 

I wish you had done it a couple of  weeks ago becasue yesterday I went out and bought the Canon Pixma G3010 just out of  "Gut instinct" after  getting terribly frustrated  looking around for  for a reasonably priced multi function printer with its own built in ink tanks!

There were just too many "biased" reviews to take any one review seriously!

 

Setting  the Canon up for the first time yesterday was not a hard job and yes I too noticed a difference in the ink tanks having different plastic "squeezable" qualities.

 

Up to now it has performed well and there have been no issues .  

The Canon "Print App"  to my Samsung  Smartphone was easy enough to synchronise and works well as do  all the functions and software  of the Printer itself.

 

One thing I did have a small problem with  though was the setting up of WiFi.  I found a way to get round the fact that the Printer could not be found on the "setting up CD" when searching for  a WiFi connection  to the  printer and this was to use the USB connection cable and let that detect the printer and then run the software CD again   which then found the printer on WiFi