There is a similar phenomenon going on with home appliances. Since the reliability of most all appliances has declined over the last decade or so (based on talking to repair people and from what I read from self-described repair experts on r/HVAC, so grain of salt) the advice on what appliance to buy is something like: buy the appliance with the fewest features you can get away with (oh and avoid the 2-3 brands that particularly have trouble).
I think the situation with printers and appliances share a common cause, the financialization of firms that is part of “late-stage” capitalism as evidenced by the shift between C-M-C transactions to M-C-M, and now M-M’ (see https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/daskapital/section2/).