Last September, our small landscape design firm moved to a bigger space. I'm the one who manages procurement—everything from mulch to marketing materials. When the old inkjet finally died, my boss said, “Find us a printer that won't eat our budget.” No pressure.
I've been tracking our office supply costs for about 6 years—every invoice, every toner cartridge. So when I started looking for a printer, I knew I couldn't just pick the cheapest one. I needed something that could handle printing design proofs, label sheets for plant tags, and the occasional envelope for client proposals.
Here's the story of how I ended up with a Canon printer—and why my gut beat the spreadsheet.
The Setup: Three Contenders and Two Calculators
I narrowed it down to three brands: Canon, HP, and Epson. All had models in the $200–$350 range. But I couldn't just compare retail prices. I had to think about total cost of ownership over three years.
That's where my two custom tools came in:
- AFT Calculator – my Annual Financial Tool, which factors in purchase price, ink costs per page, replacement intervals, and any hidden setup fees. (I built it after getting burned on a ‘free' installation that cost $450 in extra charges.)
- Grow a Garden Calculator – yes, a weird name, but it's what we call our internal volume projection tool. We input our expected job growth (more designs, more labels, more client mailings) and it estimates how many pages we'll print each year.
Using the AFT calculator, I ran the numbers. The HP model was about 15% cheaper on the shelf. But when I added ink costs over 3 years—especially after plugging in the expected growth from our Grow a Garden Calculator—the Canon came out ahead. The Canon LX label printer, specifically, had the lowest cost per label for our plant tags.
The Twist: Data Said HP, But Something Felt Off
Every spreadsheet pointed to the HP. The upfront price was lower, ink was slightly cheaper per page, and the reviews were good. My AFT calculator showed a $230 savings over 3 years compared to Canon.
But my gut said wait.
I'd dealt with HP support before—once, for a home printer, and it took three calls and a week to get a basic issue resolved. For a small business like ours, downtime is expensive. If a printer goes down in the middle of printing labels for a client's spring planting kit, that's not just a $50 problem—it's a lost contract.
I hesitated. Should I trust the numbers or the intuition?
If I'm being honest, I almost went with the data. But something about Canon's business support page caught my eye. They had a dedicated small business portal, a toll-free number, and live chat. I called them—a real person answered in under two minutes. She walked me through the warranty details and even offered a remote setup guide for free.
That clinched it. I ordered the Canon LX label printer and a standard Canon PIXMA for our design prints.
The Result: Getting Online and Staying Productive
When the printer arrived, I had one immediate concern: how do I get my Canon printer online? We needed it on the network so both designers could print from their desks. I expected a headache—previous printer setups were always a pain. But Canon's mobile app guided me through. I connected it to our Wi-Fi in about 10 minutes. (If I remember correctly, I just scanned a QR code on the printer's screen. Don't quote me on the exact steps, but it was way easier than I thought.)
Since then, we've printed thousands of labels for plant tags using the LX, and standard documents on the PIXMA. Ink consumption has been predictable, which makes my annual budget forecasting easier—I can just plug numbers into my AFT calculator and it's never been off by more than 8%.
And that question “which printer is best” that everyone asks? For us, it was Canon. Not because it was the cheapest upfront, but because the total cost—including reliability, support, and ease of setup—was the lowest over time.
“The total cost of ownership includes base product price, setup fees, shipping, and potential reprint costs. The lowest quoted price often isn't the lowest total cost.” — My own procurement mantra, learned the hard way.
Lessons Learned (and a Reality Check)
Looking back, I should have involved the design team earlier. At the time, I thought I could evaluate specs alone. But our lead designer pointed out that the Canon LX could also print shipping labels, which we hadn't considered. That alone saved us from buying a separate label printer.
My experience is based on about 40 office supply orders over 6 years, mostly in the small/mid-range segment. If you're running a large enterprise with thousands of employees, your printer decision might be totally different. I can't speak to that. But for small businesses like ours (under 15 people), Canon worked well, and they didn't treat us like small fry—something I really appreciated.
One more note: when we started mailing client proposals, I used the USPS stamp price to calculate total mailing cost. According to USPS (usps.com), as of January 2025, a First-Class Mail letter (1 oz) costs $0.73. Printing a proposal on a Canon PIXMA costs about $0.05 in paper and ink, so the total per proposal is $0.78. That's a small but useful data point for budget tracking.
So if you're asking yourself “which printer is best for my small business?”, don't just look at the shelf price. Run the numbers, trust your gut about service quality, and—if you can—talk to a real human at the company before you decide.
My gut says you'll be glad you did.