If you could look at the piles of prematurely died HPs and the complete lack of pileable Canons, although I've been selling many more Canons than HPs over the years, you wouldn't say that. Especially the 900 series HPs, the final incarnation of the ever faster and ever flimsier legacy that started out with the original DeskJet, is quite bad.
That said, the S8x0 and 900/9000 printers are extremely well built, on a recent mechanical basis that was engineered for that print speed. Separate inks you get nowhere else, and you don't get to throw a perfectly good print head away every time one of the inks runs dry either. Consumables cost is dramatically lower than with any other printer, and you won't be able to destroy it with any amount of use either.
Casual home users can aim much lower and use an S300 for $80 or so. No more separate inks on that one, but almost the same print quality, and still solidly built hardware.
regards, Peter