When the iPad was first introduced last year, Apple did not offer any way to print from the device. Sure, you could print by syncing to a PC or Mac, but by not providing a means to print directly, Apple clearly implied that it feels printing isn’t all that important anymore. Why, in this day and age with everyone tethered to connected devices 24 hours a day, would anyone need or even want printed output?
Consumers and business people think otherwise. We like paper, and we keep buying printers for our computers—and even for iPads (Apple caved and introduced AirPrint in iOS 4.2). These days, the key difference is that more and more of the printers that we buy are networked, just like our other devices. In our latest survey on the printers that PCMag.com readers own, the vast majority purchased in the last year (71 percent) are shared over a network. And that’s not just business printers being shared at the office. The percentage was the same for both work and home.
In terms of their preferred brands, little has changed since we surveyed readers about printers last year. Brother and Canon receive our Readers’ Choice award, remaining the head of the class. They both shared the award in 2010, too. Canon has been a Readers’ Choice for eight straight years, going back to 2004.
Brother had the highest overall rating (8.2 on a scale of 0 to 10, compared to Canon’s 8.1) but respondents were slightly more likely to recommend Canon’s printers (8.7 versus 8.6).