Japanese electronics manufacturer Epson recently put the spotlight on poor printer ink usage during a recent press launch of a new product line. Epson singled out HP, Canon and Kodak for all having sub-par standards, especially when it came to ink cartridges.

To back up their claims, Epson cited a study they commissioned from TUV Rheinland, a large testing and assessment company. The study showed, amongst other things, that ink cartridges often do not use the majority of their ink before they are replaced. Kodak took the brunt of the abuse in the Epson press event, with the Kodak EasyShare 5300 being cited as one extreme example of poor ink use. In the TUV Rheinland study, the Kodak EasyShare 5300 only used 36 per cent of the overall ink from the ink tank was used before one color ran out, and the tank needed replacing.

Robert Clark, Epson's Director of Inkjet Business, also refuted that “the Kodak proposition will work,” in a reference to Kodak's claim that consumers would recoup the cost of more expensive printers by being able to buy less expensive Kodak ink tanks and cartridges.

Epson also belittled their rivals' scanners, with a demonstration of the lack of quality differences between HP's G4050's 48-bit and 96-bit scanning. Then a Canoscan 8600F was pointed out for having supposedly poor performance.

It is fairly uncommon for the direct naming of competitors, but Robert Clark defended this recent practice by saying that he “took the decision to do it. . . to give you more value.” He then went on to label the more usual 'competitors' term as “nebulous.”