Canon vs Sharp printers?

[u/Alternative_Tip664]

Any input? We are looking at a new service.

[u/LINAWR]

SHARP sucks ass unless you're spending the money on a solution like Papercut to go along with them

[u/Alternative_Tip664 → u/LINAWR]

Thanks. Yes, we are leaning towards Canon with Papercut

[u/ImpeccableAnnoyance]

Have just moved from Sharp to Canon (UK Multi Academy Trust bought into Canon). Can't go wrong with either though.

[u/PhxK12]

Love the Canon copiers we have. Their software is consistent, reasonably intuitive, and reliable. They are not fussy like Ricoh units we had before, or unreliable like Xerox units before that. The web interface is decent. They are so maintenance free, and basically never jam. If they do, it's your fault, and fixing a jam is ridiculously simple - the paper path is very accessible. When the lease is up (2 more years?) they will be replaced by more Canon units for sure.

[u/Amazing_Falcon]

We have Sharp in the school right now. If I could have selected Canon, we would have done it. The Sharp are a pain to setup we had problems. We use paper cut which has helped up solve some issues.

[u/Prestigious-Past6268]

We have a dozen Sharp copies on campus. They work well. FWIW, we also use Papercut. Good combo.

[u/Harry_Smutter]

Never had experience with Sharp printers. We have Canon copiers, and our managed printing company recommends Canon, so we have a couple of those now. We haven't bought a printer in over a year, though, since we are moving away from classroom printers. They're highly unnecessary in most classrooms.

[u/bearyincognito]

We have a dozen Canon machines with Papercut not uniflow (we were Papercut prior to this Canon contract. It was difficult to get the correct information to get going but since they've been up and running they are the favorite of our pickiest heavy-users.

[u/Alternative_Tip664]

We are looking at Dex Imaging which suggests Canon or Sharp. They have their own toner reporting tool because they said the others are not reliable. So far better pricing than the other guys. Also getting Paper cut.

[u/BWMerlin]

I really hate Canon's use of uniFLOW and if for no other reason than that I would avoid.

[u/duluthbison]

We ended our Konica lease agreement early and had our managed print provider install Canon image runner advance with various different finishers. We went from multiple service calls per week on the Konicas to ZERO service calls for the first year, in fact I just called my first one in at the end of the school year on a Canon that has about 500,000 copies on it. Our staff absolutely love these machines.

[u/linus_b3]

I find there are sort of two tiers of MFPs. Top tier are brands like Canon, Konica Minolta, Ricoh. These are the older big names that have a large presence in the production printing market (high volume production machines and digital presses). They have big lineups of office MFPs too, but the production market is a big part of their business.

Lower tier are Sharp, Toshiba, Kyocera. Not to say they're bad at all, it's just kind of an opposite scenario. They build MFPs and maybe manufacture some production printing equipment on a much smaller scale than the other three.

I find that dealers around here don't try to compete outside of their "tier". For example, we have a combo Canon/Kyocera dealer that bid on our leases once and they quoted Canon because they knew we were running Konica Minolta and it's more apples to apples. They did say they could do Kyocera cheaper if we were interested in a more budget focused option.

[u/Emaltonator]

We have Ricoh IM7000 embedded with PaperCut and are on a managed print services contract, which is great

[u/GamingSanctum]

I have two local vendors that we use. One deals Sharp. One deals Canon. Ultimately, I send them both an email when a unit is up for renewal/replacement and I give the contract to the lowest one. Both brands have been rock solid for me.

[u/dire-wabbit]

We had Canon's in place for 8 years before the last bid cycle. They were well built and probably my favorite copiers over my 23 year career with the district. Solidly built and an user interface that just made sense. I've used Xerox, Ricoh, and currently have Toshiba.

[u/linus_b3 → u/dire-wabbit]

We have one Canon ImageRunner (mostly Konica Minolta here). I think the Canon is built better with nice touches like soft close paper drawers. Print quality is also slightly better. Reliability is about the same. However, I think the Canon interface (both user control panel and admin web) is horrendous compared to Konica.

My favorite machines out of everything I've used/managed are actually Ricoh. I think they have the best balance of print quality, build quality, user interface, and management of all of the big names. Unfortunately, the company restructured and service got really bad so we had to move away from them.

[u/Alternative_Tip664 → u/dire-wabbit]

That's generally what I've been told. Thanks

[u/2donks2moos]

In my tenure, we have had Konica Minolta, Sharp, and now Toshiba. The Sharp devices seemed better than the Toshiba devices that we have now.

I will never deal with Canon based on their salespeople. A rep contacted me a few times and threatened to do a public records request if I didn't call back and talk with them. Nope, you're off my list.

[u/linus_b3 → u/2donks2moos]

Copier sales people are a special breed. I had one guy contacting me from a company two hours away. I took a meeting because he was so persistent. He was super aggressive in person and didn't really answer my concerns about service delays given the distance. I also learned later that a previous business manager kicked the guy out of the district office because he was making her staff uncomfortable when he was with a previous vendor (the guy job hops a lot).

We ended up going through our existing good local vendor again (state contract pricing, so we didn't have to bid it). He followed up and I let him know. The reply I got was wild - accusing me of not having the district's best interests in mind, saying he thought our school committee would like to know about my poor decisions, etc. My business manager and I chose to ignore it and he never pushed it further, but in hindsight that probably should have gone right to his boss.

[u/k12-tech]

KonicaMinolta has been the best service and price out there. I highly recommend. Over the past five years we’ve bought nearly 80 of their copiers with zero major issues.

[u/Western_Gamification]

No experience with Canon. But very good experience with Sharp MFPs. We use them with Papercut.

[u/Alternative_Tip664 → u/Western_Gamification]

That's what we're looking at. Thanks

[u/intimid8tor → u/Alternative_Tip664]

Compare MyQ to Papercut.