PC Magazine Reveals Winners of Reader’s Choice Awards

PC Magazine recently released on it’s website, the results of its 22nd annual Reader’s Choice awards. The big winner this year in printers was Canon, whose “significantly better than average”, or SBA, rose from an overall of 8.2 last year to 8.3 this year (out of 10). There were moderate gains across several other categories as well. Canon’s biggest jump was in technical support, from a “better than average”, or BA, of 7.3 to 7.7 this year. These statistics combined to make Canon the top rated “Reader’s Choice” award winner.

The surprise second place winner in the survey was Brother. In the two most recent surveys, Brother had managed a BA score of 8.0 in the midst of top competition from the likes of HP and Canon, but this year they came in with an overall SBA score of 8.2, right behind Canon. The figures on first glance would seem to indicate a close proximity between Canon and Brother, but in reality across other categories such as business printers and home printers.

The third Reader’s Choice rating recipient should come as no surprise, HP. HP had an overall SBA of 8.0, which is about what rating it has consistently gotten from the readers on a consistent basis. What PC Magazine was impressed with was the consistency of high marks across the board, which is one of the reasons it was given the award. The one category where HP needs improvement according the poll, is technical support, receiving it’s lowest score.

As for the rest, Kodak was not able to capitalize on it’s success from last year where it took the competition by storm with it’s printers featuring inexpensive consumables. It suffered a drop in overall BA of 8.3 last year to a disappointing 8.0 this year. It also received the dubious distinction of having a higher percentage of their printers needing repair than Xerox (making Kodak the first to “accomplish” this milestone). The percentage last year was 14% compared to Xerox’s 18%, but this year while Xerox remained relatively stable jumping up to 22%, Kodak more than doubled, with a score of 31%. Despite those troubles, Kodak still trounced the rest of the competition with reader’s satisfaction in cost of consumables, registering a SBA score of 8.9, with the next closest being average score of 5.9 registered by Brother.

Explanation of scoring - Basically with the scoring, any significantly better than average or SBA score, represents a score that is at least two confidence levels away from the average, better than average or BA represents a score that is one confidence level away from the average, and the overall scores are calculated only from the following question: “Overall, how would you rate this printer?” and is not an average of the other scores.