Let me start with a confession: I'm not here to tell you that Canon is the single best printer brand for every office. I've been running supply and equipment ordering for a 140-person company since 2020—about $40k a year across eight vendors—and I report to both operations and finance. The word 'best' changes depending on the room, the staff, and the monthly print volume.
Right now we run both. Marketing uses a Canon PIXMA for color. Operations uses a Brother mono laser for forms. I've also supported Canon imageCLASS and Brother MFC units in smaller branches. When I took over purchasing, I wanted to standardize on one brand. It didn't stick. These two brands do some things very differently, and that's why I'm comparing them on the dimensions that actually create work for me.
How I Compare Printers for Our Office
I don't spend much time comparing 'print quality' in the marketing sense. Instead, I look at four things: wireless setup, ink or toner cost, driver behavior, and—critically—troubleshooting. If you came here by way of weight loss calculator by date, this isn't that kind of calculator advice. But if the real problem is why is my printer not printing, the answer is usually simpler than you think.
1. Wireless Setup: Connecting a Laptop to a Canon Printer
People will call me with something like 'I need to connect laptop to Canon printer wireless' before they've tried anything. Most of the time, the printer is fine and the laptop is on the wrong Wi-Fi band. If the printer is on 2.4GHz and the computer is on 5GHz, they can't see each other. Canon's setup app does a decent job of showing this, but it doesn't make you read the instructions.
Brother's setup utility is less pretty, but it's also more direct. It finds the printer, asks for the network password, and moves on. Canon makes you go through more confirmation screens. For one laptop, either one is fine. For onboarding a new employee, I lose less time with Brother.
That said, Canon's mobile printing has been more consistent when people are off-site. If you're trying to print from a phone in a hotel lobby, the Canon app has fewer 'why won't this connect' moments. Your mileage may vary.
2. Ink vs. Toner: What a Canon Printer Really Costs
I have mixed feelings about ink cartridges for a Canon printer. The upfront price is easy to justify in a small office budget, but the yield can disappoint you if everyone prints to the same machine. As of January 2025, I pulled typical list prices at a major office supply reseller: a black XL ink cartridge for a common Canon PIXMA ran about $32 and the manufacturer's yield is roughly 300 pages. A Brother TN-730 toner cartridge, used in many compact mono lasers, was about $65 and rated for 1,200 pages.
Yield figures are manufacturer ratings under ISO/IEC 24712. Prices are public list prices as of January 2025. Verify current pricing before ordering.
Do the math. That's around 10.5 cents per page for the Canon ink and about 5.5 cents per page for the Brother toner. Over a year of 5,000 pages, the difference is about $250 per printer. That's not a rounding error when you are responsible for 12 printers.
But toner isn't magic. If you only print 300 pages a year, the Canon cartridge is cheaper up front and you won't feel the per-page cost. And if you order a high-yield Canon G-series refillable ink tank system, the math flips completely. I'm not including that in the main comparison because so many offices still default to cartridge-based PIXMAs, but it's worth knowing before you settle on a 'standard' Canon printer.
3. Brother Printer Drivers vs. Canon Drivers
This is the section that surprises people. Brother printer drivers are boring. That's a compliment. In our environment, a Brother driver update behaves predictably. It installs, finds the print queue, and holds. Canon's drivers are not terrible, but they seem to update more often, and I've seen more spooler hiccups on Canon machines than on Brother ones.
For a managed office with a print server, that matters. The smoother the driver, the fewer late-night calls about something not coming out of the tray. For a simple peer-to-peer setup with three MacBooks, you won't notice a big difference. But if you are the person responsible for 40 laptops and 6 printers, driver management becomes a part of the quiet stability that nobody thanks you for.
I'd still order a Canon machine for a creative team, because the color output is worth the occasional driver frustration. But if the job is 'put this printer in a room and let it work,' Brother wins this dimension.
4. Why Is My Printer Not Printing?
I've answered 'why is my printer not printing' more times than I can count. Most of the time it's not a brand problem. It's a paused print queue, a paper size mismatch, or a stale driver after an OS update. But the way each brand handles those moments is different.
Canon's status monitor is more user-friendly. It tells you things like 'front cover open' or 'paper jam in cassette A' in plain language. That's helpful for a small office where nobody wants to be the printer whisperer. Brother's message screen is less chatty, but the machine seems to recover faster from common issues. When a Canon printer gets a spooler error, I sometimes have to restart the service. With Brother, a device reboot is usually enough.
The one exception was a Canon firmware update that silently reset the network settings. We only found out when someone was late to a client call. That's the kind of rare, annoying issue that sticks in your memory.
If someone asks why is my printer not printing, my advice is brand-agnostic: check the queue first, then the Wi-Fi band, then the driver. Nine times out of ten, the printer is fine.
5. So, Canon or Brother for Your Office?
If you expected a single recommendation, I'm going to disappoint you. The right answer is scenario-based.
Pick a Canon printer if: you need color, you have a small team, and you're willing to spend a little more on ink to get an easier setup app and a friendlier status screen. I'd also lean Canon if your office is in a creative field. Once you're comfortable with the connect laptop to Canon printer wireless workflow, it becomes second nature.
Pick a Brother printer if: print volume is high, the job is mostly black-and-white documents, and you want less input from your IT team. Brother printer drivers and toner economics make it easier to budget and support.
Consider running both. That's what we do. Canon for color, Brother for mono. It sounds like overkill, but it's cheaper in the long run than forcing one machine to do what it wasn't made for.
One caveat: my experience is based on about 300 printer orders and support incidents across three locations in a mid-size B2B company. If you're a one-person shop or a company with a dedicated IT team that scripts printer installs, the calculus might be different. I can only speak to what I've seen.
Bottom Line
Canon isn't the answer to every office printer question, and neither is Brother. But after five years of ordering both, I know what I'd do in each situation. For color and small teams, Canon is the first call. For high-volume mono and driver consistency, Brother is the no-brainer. If someone in your office is asking why is my printer not printing, start with the queue, not the brand.
And if you landed here looking for a weight loss calculator by date, I'm sorry—the only calculation that matters in a print room is cost per page.