These days, many people look to internet reviews to try and discover the best printer all-in-one answer for their requirements. But, do printer all-in-one ratings actually provide you with the right details on which to base your purchasing decisions?
The answer is, yes… and no…
Other peoples’ experiences are extremely beneficial – after all, these experiences help save us the discomfort of having to make mistakes ourselves and understand the tough way!
For those who have an hour to spare reading through 20 to 30 reviews about an all-in-one printer that’s stated to be the best home printer around, then you’ll definitely get a fair understanding of its advantages and disadvantages. But that’s only just one printer – you’ll really need to review that one against many other types to create a preference of which printer to buy… this sounds exhausting just thinking about the idea!
At the same time as the time and effort needed to evaluate numerous printers, there is yet another problem. Most of us human beings have a tendency to arrange and filter data in a fairly subjective way. A remark from 1 printer review might leap out at us and ‘make an impression’ with considerably more weight than it truly is worth.
“Buyer be warned! This all-in-one printer is a heap of rubbish – it does not set up properly and takes hours to get anywhere… do not purchase it!”
This type of remark will make a lot of people simply click off to review some other make of printer. But is this kind of remark really accurate? What if this particular purchaser had been shipped a defective printer and that a 100 other consumers were actually quite happy with their purchase?
Ah, ‘but that’s where the star-ratings come in’, you say. And indeed, you’re appropriate. If 99 individuals tell you a printer is superb and just one states it’s rubbish, then you’d be wise to think about ordering that printer. The star-rating methods utilised within reviews do allow an all round ‘average’ for customers feedback and that’s helpful.
But an ‘overall average’ is only what you’ll get. What if perhaps you’re really worried about how simple a wifi all-in-one printer would be to set up? The ‘overall’ star-ratings do not usually go into that sort of detail, and even though the all-in-one printer might be assessed as ‘amazing quality’ with 4 or 5 stars out of 5, it may be a complete hassle to set up…
So you might have to go back to looking through the critiques one by one… yawn…
And then you hit one more difficulty which you do not in fact notice since it is quite subtle. You click on ‘most helpful’ reviews (especially in a review internet site such as Amazon . com) and go through the first few pages of reviews. Readers rate these reviews as ‘I found this review useful’ or not really. The particular trouble is that people are a bit like sheep – they like to follow. Consequently the ‘most helpful’ reviews are generally displayed far more regularly (they’re 1st in the list)… and so get clicked on as being ‘I found this review helpful’ a lot more oftentimes. The result is to artificially keep these reviews at the top of the most read review listing – due to the fact they are shown far more frequently than other reviews which might be just as helpful, if not much more so.
This may be fine, except at times the first several reviews which are high up in the ‘most helpful’ list can be way off mark.
For instance, the first 6 reviews for a recent all-in-one wireless inkjet printer (it was in fact the Canon Pixma MP495) all mentioned that setting up the wi-fi network was a Major problem. At initial glance then, a lot of people who were concerned about the setting up aspect would most likely keep away from this printer and begin reading alternative reviews… However, when you continue to read the next thirty reviews, you would find that 71% of people discovered setting up to be quite simple!
The handful have ‘soured the pot’ for the a multitude!
The initial impression was totally off-target and you might well fail to see an outstanding printer that fits every one of your needs.
So exactly how do we gather fair information to make an educated and non-biased choice? Well, nowadays you can find review web sites that ask clients to rate the device on a number of criteria and this undoubtedly will help.
There are also different printer all-in-one reviews websites that in actual fact review the reviews in an unbiased fashion based on whether or not comments in customer feedback surveys are good or bad. They then add the results up and display them to ensure that everyone looking at the scores can decide on the category which is most critical to them. There are not many of these internet sites around simply because the process of reviewing hundreds of customer reviews is really time and labour consuming. Nevertheless, they certainly save a tonne of time and assist you to to form superior choices based on a reasonable assessment from the experiences of other individuals.
Making selections about the best printer all-in-one solution driven by a fair analysis of information can be challenging to attain – at times you think you’ve made a choice based on high quality information, however it could actually be distorted with out you knowing it!
So select your printer all-in-one reviews internet sites with care!
There are now hundreds of printer all-in-one reviews on the web, ranging from simple Amazon reviews all the way to bells-and-whistles review websites with pretty colours… But do the review scores really help you to identify the best home printers or find the most suitable all-in-one for your office?
The Basic Review Process
Which Printer should I choose? Which Printer Reviews should I read?
The basic idea behind nearly every customer review site is that each individual who has bought and tried the product then rates his or her experience on a point-scale. For example, an all-in-one printer might receive a total review score of 4 stars out of 5 stars, or a score of 8 out of 10. But what exactly does that mean?
Back at school, when you were given a homework grade of 7/10, what did that mean? Good? Ok? Maybe your teacher was really tough and 7/10 meant excellent work?
Well Done – You’ve Scored 7/10. You’re Average… and Excellent…and…
In a printer review, it might simply mean for example, that the user thought that the printer was excellent (10/10), except for one or two things that brought its score down to 8/10 (or the equivalent stars). What were those things? Well, you’d have to read the reviews to find that out.
To get a final review score, all the reviews made so far for that printer are then totalled up, and an average rating is calculated. For example, here is a printer all-in-one reviews page for an HP Printer (that will remain nameless for the moment):
A Typical All-in-One Printer Review
Usefully, this reviews website has split the scores into 4 categories of ‘Features’, ‘Print Quality’, ‘Print Speed’ and ‘Value’. Customers have entered these scores when they gave their review.
The problem is that one person’s “7/10” is different to another person’s “7/10” as each reviewer has a different set of judgement criteria in their heads. So do these scores provide objective enough information on which to base a purchase decision? Probably not… these scores may be less useful than you think…
How To Distinguish A Good Printer… From a Better Printer
If you take a look through the best selling all-in-one printers on the web you’ll see that pretty much all of them have total scores (or equivalent star-scores) between 6/10 and 9/10.
So why are there few – if any – review scores below 6/10? Some review websites don’t even give 10/10 for ANY printers! This type of scoring doesn’t leave the reader with much ‘score clarity’ to distinguish the best printer all-in-one.
And At The Bottom Of The Scoring Scale…
Looking at the bottom end of the scale, do people really ever give scores of 2/10? It’s rare. Most people who rate an all-in-one’s printing speed as ‘annoyingly slow’ would give it 4/10. Perhaps in our minds, a score of 1 or 2 out of 10 means the printer doesn’t actually work at all…
So that means most review sites which score out of 10 points or stars, are actually only using a scale of 4 points (6/10 to 9/10).
The Case Of The Defective All-In-One Printer
Unfortunately, every so often, a defective printer gets delivered to a customer. It happens. Most of the time, the customer realises because the fault is obvious – the printer just doesn’t work. They send it back to the supplier for a replacement and everybody’s happy because the replacement works fine.
However sometimes, the defect is harder to spot. Perhaps there has been a manufacturing glitch in the print head, which keeps giving the printer the wrong signals… The customer battles on and just about copes with the struggling printer’s performance. The customer concludes that the printer is a load of rubbish and gives an online review of 3/10 because it’s so slow or the print quality is not up to standard. However, the printer was defective and should have been replaced.
In this situation, the rest of the reviews have been skewed as the scores given for a defective printer have been included with all the normally working printers. Not very useful.
A Different Type Of Printer All-In-One Reviews Website?
So far then, we’ve seen that the review scores given to printer all-in-ones (and for many other products for that matter) are not actually that useful for finding the best home or office printers. They will certainly give you an indication and if you read all the reviews from customers, then you’ll get a much better idea. You’ll need a fair amount of time and effort for that though.
The Bigger-Thinking Printer AIO Review Websites...
So, is there a way to present the experiences of previous users in a more objective and fair way, so that others can make better choices?
Well, recently, a different type of all-in-one printer reviews site has made it’s appearance. There are not many of them around, but these gems actually analyse the customers’ written reviews – not the customers’ scores. The way they usually work is that a human being (yes – a real person!) reads the reviews and keeps a tally of scores in different categories, depending on the comments made.
For example:
“I found the WiFi setting up to be a piece of cake – really easy!…” = plus 1 point for the ‘Setting Up’ category.
“Wow, this printer is so heavy and it certainly doesn’t win the looks-award of the year…” = minus 1 point for the ‘Design’ category
“You can print envelopes from tray one, and normal paper from tray 2…” = 0 points, i.e. not a relevant comment.
The Scores are In!
The Scores Are In…
The scores for each category are then added up and hey presto! You have an unbiased picture of the printer’s true performance characteristics. The scores are not skewed by the customer’s judgement criteria (which can change with the wind), and you’ll find that these review websites give a wider range of scores in different performance categories. Any reader can then easily spot the best printer all-in-one for their printing requirements.
The downside for the review website team is that it takes time and effort to read through the hundreds of printer reviews in order to crunch the numbers. However, the quality of information is much better, so these websites should see rapid growth as more and more people realise the benefits of making purchase decisions using reliable data.
Finding the Review Websites That Reach The Parts Other Review Websites Can’t Reach…
So next time you’re looking for the best home printer, or perhaps the best printer all-in-one solution for your office, see if you can find a review site that goes that little bit further – save yourself time, effort and money.
Can You Trust Best Printer All-In-One Reviews? 