The Problem I have had with a Canon S520 Printer. – 3958 days old

[Skamp]

I bought the printer in question about 3 months ago,and straight away I noticed its hunger for Ink,especially compared to any Epson printer I have owned.The first set of cartriges I used did alot of printing,and headcleaning because of a blocked ink nozzel problem I was having from the beggining,in which a new print head had to be put in.
So the second lot of cartriges I used seem to run out very quickly with very little printing that I recall doing.
So when the time came to put a third set of cartriges in I made a point to make a mental note of what printing I had done till the cartriges ran out,maily the black cartrige.
This time round I only used the printer for document printing like bill reciepts and DVD order receipts.Now before I continue,Ill make the point that these printers will do an automatic head clean every 2 or 3 days,regardless of how much printing it has done.
So over a 3-4 week period,I printed no more than an average 1-2 pages of text print a day,with its periodic head clean routine,and then the black ink was empty.Very dissapointing and not to mention very expensive to run.

In conclusion,this printer seems to be only good for people who do alot of printing in one hit,not good for the casual printer like me.

I took it in the the Canon repair shop,and after 3 weeks he told me there was no fault with it,and said that he had copied well over 200 text pages in the 2-3 week period he had it for.So I told him what problem I had with it and told him to keep it for another month and to document every page he prints,but this time to do only 1-2 prints every other day,to see if its the head cleaning routine this machine does that eats up the ink.

And By the way,before this was noticed,the Canon techs at the place its getting fixed at,told me that its heavy duty head clean uses 70 odd pages worth of ink ,and about half that in its minor head clean.

Something to think about when purchasing your next printer.
I will never by canon again,this one will be given to my dad when it returns,he does alot of printing in one hit,and I will be replacing it with some kind of Laser printer.

[AmStoned]

Well, my suggetion's simple. If you only print documents and bills, get a Laser Printer. Yes, the unit is expensive (700+), so's the toner (70) and drum (125), but you rarely get probs and the toner lasts much longer (5K pages) than inkjets. We have a HP LaserJet 4000N and a Brother HL-1670N, both network printers, both very fast, and both maintenance free.

[prod]

Sorry to hear skamps.
I would have recommended not to buy a canon. Out of the top 4 or 5 printer manufacturers, they are the worst. They have proven to use more ink as you say, and also in my experience the RMA rate is as much as ten times the rate of epson or HP. At least you got one of the best canon models. I have not seen as many problems with those. But their low end models are simply junk.
Around here the BJC 2000 sold for less than the cost of ink that came with it

[Montana]

I'm happy to report that my husband's cheapie Canon BJC 2010 has been problem free. However, its hunger for ink makes him VERY picky as to what he prints.

[James]

We have the HP 4000n at work as well,flawless!about 2 years old,on it's 4th toner.est. 20 pages per day.rock solid preformer.
my only complaint,slow queing,could be network or lack of memory though,IT sucks!

[floppybootstomp]

Is there no way you can disable the programmed head cleaning Skamp? That sucks

I'd definitely go for a Laser printer, very economical. I have a cheapo Samsung ML-4600 laser printer, has lots of use, it's great. Also have an HP 843C which I just use for colour printing. It's slow, but very, very good quality.

Also got an old ('bout 13 years) HP Laser IIP which is going strong, not used regularly but sometimes used if I have a large print batch to do (flyers, brochures & stuff for work).

[Skamp]

I dont think you can disable it,I think its part of the printer Hardware-software,if ya know what I mean!

[ImaginAsian]

Stoner r u on drugs? You can pick up a decent home laser printer for much cheaper now...around $200 starting (in the states of course). I got my Xerox DocuPrint P8, which i never use, for $220 about 2 years ago. Amazing how much the prices have come down.

And that Samsung model Flops is reporting is a good one...great price for good quality. No more inkjets for me - too high overhead and nothing beats good laser printing for text documents IMO.