Remember the Epson LX-300 printer?

We went on a media tour of Bicol in the last 3 days with Epson and during their presentation, I asked if they still sell the LX-300 dot-matrix printer.

Having bought the LX-300 back in 1997 (my very first printer) and still seeing a lot of these units until now, I wondered if it’s the longest running printer in history.

Epson reps told me they have an even older model that’s still in production. The LX-300 though have gone thru several refresh and been made more compact and it’s the most familiar model of dot-matrix printers I know of. In fact, it’s the only printer I know that’s been around for 15 years and actually become more expensive thru the years (I bought my LX-300 for about Php5k back then and the LX-300+ II now costs over Php8k).

Dot-matrix printers still exists because of a number of inherent advantages over newer and more advanced printing technologies — they’re way cheaper and allows for printing multiple copies at once (by layering carbon paper). As such, they’re pretty useful with printing invoices, receipts and other office documents.

Epson’s been selling tons of them every year and it looks like the dot-matrix printers are still here to stay.