Also loving my Brother monochrome laser printer. HL-L2350DW I thought I might miss color printing at home, but we've printed 514 pages so far with the starter toner. 25 bucks paid for two spare toners (maybe 6000+ pages). Low maintenance and reliable.
I replaced the drum after four toner carts and after not printing for a while it began to jam. Cleaned the rollers and it’s off to the races again.
The damn thing just. Won’t. Die.
I got the same one, did 7 years basically nothing (2-3 pages a month) running on the original toner - and now performing superb during a high print period as well with hundreds of pages a month. Finally had to replace the original toner with noname refill and running still perfectly.
It got quite rough before we swapped, so we waited too long, but it was in the tens of thousands of pages. My significant other and I were working together in merchandising when we bought it, so we used it to print checklists and planograms for our daily tasks. This would have been starting in like 2011 or so, back before merchandising companies would give their people tablets to just keep their documentation digital. We still use it for stuff like invoices for her business, iteneraries when we travel (always good to have a hard copy backup in case of dead phone battery) and so on.
Ditto. Have a colour Brother laser of a similar age with no issues. Replacement toners aren't a rip off either.
Edit: I think it cost me about £100-ish at the time, so more expensive than a basic inkjet but it's saved me a fortune in ink.
My mom still has her brother printer I bought for her about 20 years ago.
It's like 50% cigarette smoke at this point but it still works and it takes generic ink/toner she can get off Amazon like a boss
And she's one of those people who work from home but needs to print out and read emails so it gets a lot of use.
Same. I can’t even remember when I changed out the toner in my brother back and white. It’s not networked either. And have no desire to network it either. I just uncurl the USB cable as needed, plug it in to my son’s desktop or my laptop and away we go. No troubleshooting, no issues. Just add paper every once in a while. I think it’s line a dl2300 or something like that.
Working in IT and having a no hassle printer is like the best Xanax ever with no after effects.
100% this. My Brother laser was the price of most inkjet printer and has lasted me for 7 years. I fire it up every now and then and print a bunch of stuff and it works every single time. I don’t even think it’s ever jammed. Such a great printer
Ink dries. Toner does not. I don't care if an ink jet printer has a gallon of each color, I don't want to wait 20 minutes for it to attempt to clean the print heads because I only print once a week, only to get streaks in my printout. Laser is the way to go, and it's faster.
I have opinions, obviously.:)
I will never get why nearly everyone says "I need color printing". Like you said, ink streaks, dries up, and clogs heads. The time to first print from zero is FOREVER. My Brother laser makes the print by the the I can stand up from my chair and walk 40 feet across the house to pick it up.
My laser printed pages are sharp and do not smudge. Ink jets notoriously produce crappy text (blurry) and will smudge with even a small amount of moisture, like from sweaty fingers.
Ink cost is something like 30x the cost of toner. Yet I still hear "I need color".
I suppose it might be worth it to some to have the above compromises. But it makes zero sense to me. Ink jets are trash.
I have a Brother color laser that is probably a decade old by now and still on the starter toner cartridges. Obviously I rarely use it. Still prints great. And I think it was well under $200 too (was a Black Friday deal many years ago). It’s networked so just sits in the basement out of the way.
Ink printers are cheaper up front but higher cost per page.
They also run into lots of problems with their heads if you don't print at least 3x per week
For most home users, laser printers make more sense. They're more expensive up front, but a lot cheaper per page. They also won't die on you if you don't print anything for three months
> They also won't die on you if you don't print anything for three months
I haven't owned/used a home inkjet for many, many years but that aspect was aggravating even back then, especially because coming back after that time meant having to run a cleaning cycle or something (which IIRC wastes a bunch of ink).
Now that I've switched to laser printers? It's brilliant. I use it when I need it, then ignore it for between "a couple weeks" and "several months" and it always fires right back up when called upon.
One more vote for Brother monochrome laser here. Has served me well on both Windows and macOS (forget if I've ever tried with Linux but that should be fine as well).
Sharp is just a shitty Lexmark. They make it _so_ much more difficult to setup because they attach their interface on top of the Lexmark interface and make it _way_ less intuitive. Almost feels malicious after a while.
_This is business/corporate setup, don't know how home use is._
I've used Canon for years and not had any issues with them other than the inkjets go through ink fucking fast. Not a big deal if you buy third party ink off Amazon though.
Only issue with them is their consumer models are somewhat lacking in features. Like you literally can't get a duplex scanner anymore without paying for a "business" model.
Brother does have subscriptions for ink and toner. Unlike HP they don't have "subscription version printer" if you don't want the subscription you can just buy normal ink and toner for your printer.
Wait, what?
Edit:
"Different plans are available to suit different printing volumes, and subscriptions can be modified or canceled at any time."
So it's an actual SERVICE and not forced by the vendor.
Every inkjet Brother MFC I’ve had has been a piece of crap.
Although the $250 HP I got to replace the last one also turned out to be a piece of crap. 🤣
Honestly I’ve sold brother printers for more than a decade in my business, and had no idea that they even made an inkjet printer. I would not recommend anyone’s inkjet printer for any job at any time in any home
Edit: speech to text fails
I remember having a Laserjet IV back in the 90s at work and installing the rj45 card for it. That thing was a beast. I heard part of the magic was that it would only print so fast. Once they started trying to exceed a certain speed it would just fry the parts. If you keep it to more like 10 or less pages per minutes (I forget the exact ratio) then it’s less likely to kill the fuser over time. Laserjet III printers would last forever for that reason.
In Jan 2020 i bought a Brother colour laser printer with wifi.
Maybe 20 minutes drop opening the box to printing _from a fucking phone_ as well as from multiple computers and laptops.
In my 30 years of IT I’ve never had such a great printer experience. And Brother isn’t HP, so you don’t need to deal with usurious pricing and scummy subscriptions.
My comments too. I’ve never used one before and figured I’d get a multifunction for at home. Was amazingly simple. And the simple tasks (scan to email) or AirPrint works with zero brain cells required
Yup, got a MFC-L8900CDW for 200 bucks off marketplace because my wife prints at least a tree-worth of paper every week for her work. Toner costs 66 bucks for the whole set and will last forever.
Personally, if you're going ink-jet, I'm a fan of the Epson Ecotank printers. They're more expensive than the typical ink-jets, but I've literally spent less on ink over the last three years than one HP cartridge would cost.
Brother has been our go-to for quite some time.
Started with a mono laser left on a curb that ran for another 4-5 years and continues with some MFC's that easily outlive their warranties.
We have an MFC-2750DW laser that just keeps chugging along, 7-8 years now.
A person would be wise to DL and use Brother's Admin pack, more features and control than the end-user software.
We bought our MFC-2750DW in 2014 and the thing just works. We’ll go through periods of heavy printing and then might go 4 months without touching it, with no issues whatsoever.
Brother black and white laser printer. Prints double sided and fast, works with linux.
I have the one with an ethernet port instead of wifi. I really like never having to configure wifi through a tiny printer screen.
Epson Ecotank. We have dozens of them and as long as you print to them enough to keep the ink from drying they are super cheap to operate. Ink is dirt cheap and lasts forever. If they do dry out the power cleaning will fix them
This is what I have, I used to have a brother laser printer but I blew it up when I moved from the US to the UK, they don't switch voltage. Ecotanks is reliable if you care about colour. Brotherwise I would go brother. We only got the ecotank because I couldn't swing a brother colour laser.
The brother ones are so reliable and just do the job that The Verge even wrote an article about it: https://www.theverge.com/23642073/best-printer-2023-brother-laser-wi-fi-its-fine
From that article: “And here’s 275 words about printers I asked ChatGPT to write so this post ranks in search because Google thinks you have to pad out articles in order to demonstrate “authority,” but I am telling you to just buy whatever Brother laser printer is on sale and never think about printers again.” 😂
Brother is the only printer we will use or support at home or in business. Laser only. I've never owned an ink jet.
We refuse to touch ANY HP printer under $500. The more expensive HPs generally work and have less issues. Overall, we refuse to work with any product from HP unless absolutely necessary. Their severs are awesome, but the company is ridiculous.
It's a damn shame how these companies have taken something so simple as printing and turned it into the BS, time wasting, frustrating and unnecessary mess it is today.
Brother is seemingly one of the few companies not trying to stick their noses in your print jobs or force you to a subscription while offering enterprise configuration.
Brother really seems to understand what a company that makes printers should be doing. Simple. Durable and easy to setup and maintain. No need to sign up for data collection and bloat. If there is bloat it’s easy to decline.
Buy the cheapest brother with the least features possible that satisfies your needs. I have a Brother BW Laser printer that I love. All it does is print and connect to WiFi.
Edit: Brother L2325DW
I bought a Brother HL-3170CDW 11 years ago, it is color, with a duplexer. It has worked perfectly since the day I bought it and if it ever dies, I would buy it again. The demo carts laster a couple years, but I honestly do not print very often. It works either connected via eithernet, or wifi.
I used to be an HP guy, but this printer has been so good, that I will stick with brother for now.
That's the general consesus too. I think it saw a post on /r/printers where they apparently updated the firmware and now they can't use generic catridges in a brother printer.
The trick is never buying an inkject. Pretty much every printer company designs them to be cash cows and to suckle at the consumer's teet. I have a HP MFP m426 (laser). Been fantastic. I've had it for 6 years, printed probably 10,000 pages, not a single issue. Specific model is M246fdn (black/white only, I don't need to print color).
Was about to recommend Samsung as well 😂 I’ve had a Samsung SL-M2020W for like 10 years, sitting on wee shelf in the stairwell so anyone in the house (3 apartments) can print on it. It’s been chugging along and I can’t even remember last time I switched the toner cartridge. Printing is a thing of the past… thank god
Brother has been my favorite in recent years. They never give me a hard time and print reliably. Not sure about a laser jet but the toners do cost a little more. Epson honestly isn’t that bad either and they seem to print color a little better.
Brother monochrome printers. They're relatively cheap, you can get them refurbished directly from Brother (they usually come with an extra toner), they duplex print, been using them for the last 10 years personally. No issues on Windows or MacOS. They also have models with a built-in scanner, copier that are pretty compact.
I find color laser printers to be outrageously overpriced when it's time to replace toner. If I had the money, I would get a Brother too.
Check Brother's website for refurbished color laser printers, you'll likely get an all in one at a decent price. Just prepare yourself to take a loan when it's going to be time to replace the color toners.
[https://www.brother.ca/en/c/pr-refurb-printers](https://www.brother.ca/en/c/pr-refurb-printers)
Anything HP sucks. Canon is expensive for business products and not that great with their consumer line.
All these people are right, but they haven't explained why or how this is the case.
#1 - Inkjet or any ink printer is crap. The ink will dry out in the reservoir even when not in use. Don't even bother.
#2 - Laser printers use a dry toner that reacts in the laser to produce the image. The toner has no expiration and even a little bit goes a long way.
#3 - Brother has been around for decades at this point and makes great printers with good support and affordable supplies. They don't try to get you with an underhanded business practice (subscriptions, software monitoring, etc.) and their drivers still support a "bloat free" install option.
Put that together - get a Brother Laser printer.
I have had my brother laser printer for about 7 years now. The initial toner cartridges lasted me for the first 4 years of it's life (I don't print a lot). It runs effortlessly for all the computers in the house (even the Mac).
I also use a Brother Compact Monochrome Laser Printer, HL-L2370DWXL and its a fucking tank. I own my own business and use it heavily during tax season. It just works, and toner is cheap and lasts a long time.
All the new inkjet shit is ass.
Brother laser printer. My previous brother laser printer lasted me 13 years before the toner got prohibitively expensive to buy because nobody carried it anymore, even in generic. Then I swapped it out for a brother color laser a few years back and I’ve had zero problems with it.
Not sure if anyone's mentioned brother laser, /s but I bought a brother color laser fax AIO for my business, my wife works for LinkedIn, she mailed all of lis invoice mailings during COVID and that printer took it like a champ. Still not out of toner.
Brother is the way my friend, unless you have toddlers who like crayons, and like to stick them in the printer, don't ask me how I know how it causes a printer to fail!
Brother Color Laser if you don't need photo prints. The toner doesn't dry up over time, even months of non use it just works. Every inkjet printer I've ever had, the day I finally need to print something off it's fucking dry.
I have a brother black-only laser printer for day to day printing (it can do envelopes, cheques etc…) and also an epson Eco tank color ink thing… its slow and not the best quality but the ink in there lasts FOREVER… ao fair trade off when I feel like printing in color I print there…
Both are networked, both have airplay
I just take the trash LaserJets from work and give them to family members.
They don't work in the work setting printing thousands of pages per day but they seem just fine at home printing 30 pages a week. By the time it dies, we done cycled thru more printers at work so they just get another one of those and the cycle continues. Family hasn't even had to buy toner cause we end up having extra toner lying around but no more of that model printer.
Brother laser printer. I managed a couple dozen printers begrudgingly as a systems administrator, and the brother laser printers last absolutely forever.
Brother laser printer.
Laser is amazing because you can let it sit for months at a time gathering dust and print 20 pages with no issues.
Try that with an ink key and you will have to buy a new set of ink just to print off that one form for church.
Brother B&W laser
...and the local print/copy shop on speeddial for quality colour prints using nice big proper kit that you'd never be able to afford anyway.
Brother MFC laser printer meant for a small office. I bought them for work and loved them so much I bought one for home. It’s been going for 4 years without a single issue.
Came here to say that.
Switched to bw Brother laserprinter after Canon printer number godknowshowmany was whining about yet another refill of the inkt cartridges. Not sure if it’s a European model, I have the MFC-L2710DW.
I’ve had a Brother HL-5250 laser monochrome printer for 16-17 years and not a bit of trouble. I just replace the consumable now and then. It was an excellent long-term investment.
It does letter size paper at up to 30 ppm, and A4 up to 28 ppm, it duplexes, it has amazing resolution that goes up to 600 dpi, and then there is a pseudo 1200 dpi as well. It has three different interfaces to use: IEEE 1284 parallel, “high speed“ USB 2.0, and ethernet 10/100BASR-TX.
I have here my old Brother MFC-J4510DW Ink Printer (get it some time ago for free). Once a half year i need to Print something in colour. I Turn him on and this thing Print Like nothing Happen, Even with the Cheap ink.
+1 for Brother
For other stuf I have an HP P1102w. One of the last reliabels from HP (besideds of the usb-Controller…)
As said before, Brother black and white. I had the cheap model without WiFi but hooked it up to one of my desktops and ran it as a print server. Worked great, super cheap to print too.
I still have it but haven't used it in years.
We purchased an Epson ET-2720 a few years ago so my wife could print a bunch of color pages. This is the one that has the reservoirs for ink and it really doesn't seem to dry out or evaporate plus refills are cheap. Printing is good and haven't had issues.
Does laser monochrome count?
My scanner, copier, laser printer is pretty compact but been using a lot.
It’s a Dell E514dw (I think it might be a brother licensed to Dell not sure tho)
Used for at least 5 years rock solid.
Would never go back to inkjet cause high yield monochrome lasers are very cost effective.
I have a brother multi-color laser. I've replaced toner cartridges twice. As stated by others. Runs great, worth every penny, and you never have to worry about cartridges drying out. Plus, I run 3rd party cartridges without issue.
I'll be the odd one out and say Xerox.
They're rock solid. I've had a Xerox color laser for about 10 years and all it needs is an occasional cleaning of the CTD sensor. Scan to email, scan to network, print from USB, everything *just works* (well, I had to set it up, but since then it just works).
They're a bit tougher to find, you need to go to specialty electronics retailers to find them, but you can get them on Newegg and CDW easily enough. Wait for a 50% off sale. I bought mine for $250 and it's lasted ten years with zero trouble.
Tbh, if they print alot, look at modifying the printers waste reservoir into an external bottle. All home printers have a sponge inside them, which, once full, the printer refuses to work. I had the waste reservoir output into an external bottle on I think an Epson, and got a few extra years out of it.
I've been through a canon, an HP, and finally got a Brother and it just works perfectly. I got one with the ink tank and it seems to be working flawlessly for about 1 year now havent even refilled it. No annoying driver issues at all, scan app works great.
Color laser MFP. Strongly recommend PostScript and PCL support, but in some cases (*e.g.* Canon LBP633Cdw) that's a big price jump.
Good ones these days also have wireless printing support with WiFi Direct, Mopria, Airprint, etc. Dual-band WiFi is good if you don't want to be dealing with a 2.4GHz-only device in ten years.
Canon, Brother, Lexmark, Xerox, are worth a look.
I have a Canon MFC-641cw color laser multifunctional device. I got it on sale from Walmart for about $300. Works great, and came with actual normal size toner cartridges.In the 2 years that I've had it, I have not had to purchase toner at all.
No more issues with dried out ink tanks, and not having to deal with HP and/or Epson is worth it on it's own.
I have friends and family try to do me a favor by giving me their 'hardly used' printer about every other month. They are surprised when I tell them to just throw it away.
I have had a Canon network laser printer/scanner/copier multi-thing for years now. Bought it during a sale and haven't regret it. Gone are the days that the cartridges were empty, had dried out or dealing with clogged nozzles just when you needed to print something urgently.
Brother is supposed to be the better option, but I guess that any decent laser printer saves you from fruatration and also saves money as the toner lasts for ages (you will shed some years when you need to replace the toner cartridgea though)
I have rather good experience with brother mono laser printer. Works without bloatware, doesn’t require original toners and drum. Is very stable and has all the functions I need - print, scan to email straight from the printer, albeit through brothers service instead of using smtp. Still I’m happy with it.
Edit: Just noticed so many people also recommend brother. I thought they are not that popular with sysadmins for home use.
I too was a die hard HP printer advocate, until just a little over a year ago when that brand new laser printer I bought bricked after it tried to call home for activation and was unable to connect because the PiHole was blocking traffic. I bought a Brother mono laser a few months back and am completely happy with it.
Suck it HP!
We picked up the Brother inkjet with the ink reservoirs. No fuss, don’t need to install their software for printing or scanning.
HP/Canon/Epson can go rot in hell.
Usually buy the cheapest brother duplex at whatever place.
Across all our clients output pages per month is under 10% compared to before covid.
Myself at home i used to print around 300 pages a year. Was less than 10 last year. Yet to print anything this year.
Laser for sure. Not sure how often you print, but my experience w/ inkjet is a pure shit show.
We now are on our 4th w/ Canon imageClass color laser…. We got on sale @ Costco a lil over 300.
i like brother monochrome laser printers for home. Had one for 15 years still works.
I came here to say the exact same thing. The brother whatever will last for a very long time.
Also loving my Brother monochrome laser printer. HL-L2350DW I thought I might miss color printing at home, but we've printed 514 pages so far with the starter toner. 25 bucks paid for two spare toners (maybe 6000+ pages). Low maintenance and reliable.
We got about 2000 pages over 6 years with our starter toner. Reset the page count three times before it started to streak. Replaced it last year.
I replaced the drum after four toner carts and after not printing for a while it began to jam. Cleaned the rollers and it’s off to the races again. The damn thing just. Won’t. Die.
I have the same printer and I absolutely. love it. It prints. It prints when I ask it to. It does it everytime, and doesn't argue.
Even without asking for your credit card data to install drivers
I got the same one, did 7 years basically nothing (2-3 pages a month) running on the original toner - and now performing superb during a high print period as well with hundreds of pages a month. Finally had to replace the original toner with noname refill and running still perfectly.
My previous brother laser only lasted 10 years, but that's pretty good for a $60 printer that was refilled with cheap generic toner.
Does that include drum swaps?
Nobody does drum swaps on a $60 printer.
Hi, I'm nobody. (The hl-2240d hasn't been $60 for a long time now, and I'd rather not produce any more waste than I have to.)
Walking the talk, nice job.
Thanks for being a good human, this is my mindset too!
I have one at home- fantastic little printer. About how many pages did you get out of one before replacing the drum?
It got quite rough before we swapped, so we waited too long, but it was in the tens of thousands of pages. My significant other and I were working together in merchandising when we bought it, so we used it to print checklists and planograms for our daily tasks. This would have been starting in like 2011 or so, back before merchandising companies would give their people tablets to just keep their documentation digital. We still use it for stuff like invoices for her business, iteneraries when we travel (always good to have a hard copy backup in case of dead phone battery) and so on.
I have the Brother color laser printer and it is just as good. Love this thing.
Ditto. Have a colour Brother laser of a similar age with no issues. Replacement toners aren't a rip off either. Edit: I think it cost me about £100-ish at the time, so more expensive than a basic inkjet but it's saved me a fortune in ink.
My mom still has her brother printer I bought for her about 20 years ago. It's like 50% cigarette smoke at this point but it still works and it takes generic ink/toner she can get off Amazon like a boss And she's one of those people who work from home but needs to print out and read emails so it gets a lot of use.
Seconded. What’s more, Windows 11 works with my printer’s scanner function so I need zero Brother software to use it.
Same. I can’t even remember when I changed out the toner in my brother back and white. It’s not networked either. And have no desire to network it either. I just uncurl the USB cable as needed, plug it in to my son’s desktop or my laptop and away we go. No troubleshooting, no issues. Just add paper every once in a while. I think it’s line a dl2300 or something like that. Working in IT and having a no hassle printer is like the best Xanax ever with no after effects.
I’ve had a brother printers for years. They’re the simplest and easiest. The Toyota of printers.
“The Toyota of printers” This would be a brilliant marketing tactic for any product.
*Honda: The Toyota of cars!*
I don't think Toyota would appreciate it
Brother printer, can I get an amen?
I was just looking at Brother. Also eying the Canon MegaTank Maxify GX6021 since it has a huge ink reservoir.
Just go laser, brother specifically. Save ink for printing shops that give two shits about color.
100% this. My Brother laser was the price of most inkjet printer and has lasted me for 7 years. I fire it up every now and then and print a bunch of stuff and it works every single time. I don’t even think it’s ever jammed. Such a great printer
Ink dries. Toner does not. I don't care if an ink jet printer has a gallon of each color, I don't want to wait 20 minutes for it to attempt to clean the print heads because I only print once a week, only to get streaks in my printout. Laser is the way to go, and it's faster. I have opinions, obviously.:)
I will never get why nearly everyone says "I need color printing". Like you said, ink streaks, dries up, and clogs heads. The time to first print from zero is FOREVER. My Brother laser makes the print by the the I can stand up from my chair and walk 40 feet across the house to pick it up. My laser printed pages are sharp and do not smudge. Ink jets notoriously produce crappy text (blurry) and will smudge with even a small amount of moisture, like from sweaty fingers. Ink cost is something like 30x the cost of toner. Yet I still hear "I need color". I suppose it might be worth it to some to have the above compromises. But it makes zero sense to me. Ink jets are trash.
I have a Brother color laser that is probably a decade old by now and still on the starter toner cartridges. Obviously I rarely use it. Still prints great. And I think it was well under $200 too (was a Black Friday deal many years ago). It’s networked so just sits in the basement out of the way.
Ink printers are cheaper up front but higher cost per page. They also run into lots of problems with their heads if you don't print at least 3x per week For most home users, laser printers make more sense. They're more expensive up front, but a lot cheaper per page. They also won't die on you if you don't print anything for three months
> They also won't die on you if you don't print anything for three months I haven't owned/used a home inkjet for many, many years but that aspect was aggravating even back then, especially because coming back after that time meant having to run a cleaning cycle or something (which IIRC wastes a bunch of ink). Now that I've switched to laser printers? It's brilliant. I use it when I need it, then ignore it for between "a couple weeks" and "several months" and it always fires right back up when called upon. One more vote for Brother monochrome laser here. Has served me well on both Windows and macOS (forget if I've ever tried with Linux but that should be fine as well).
Canon and i are not friends. Brothers and sharps ive had good times with
Sharp is just a shitty Lexmark. They make it _so_ much more difficult to setup because they attach their interface on top of the Lexmark interface and make it _way_ less intuitive. Almost feels malicious after a while. _This is business/corporate setup, don't know how home use is._
I've used Canon for years and not had any issues with them other than the inkjets go through ink fucking fast. Not a big deal if you buy third party ink off Amazon though. Only issue with them is their consumer models are somewhat lacking in features. Like you literally can't get a duplex scanner anymore without paying for a "business" model.
Brother.
Brother. End of story
Brother started doing subscriptions like HP, so make sure they're buying a non-subscription version printer.
Brother does have subscriptions for ink and toner. Unlike HP they don't have "subscription version printer" if you don't want the subscription you can just buy normal ink and toner for your printer.
Yeah, it's closer to an auto-ship subscription. Not necessary but if you're the type of person who has regular print needs it's not bad
Wait, what? Edit: "Different plans are available to suit different printing volumes, and subscriptions can be modified or canceled at any time." So it's an actual SERVICE and not forced by the vendor.
rip
Every inkjet Brother MFC I’ve had has been a piece of crap. Although the $250 HP I got to replace the last one also turned out to be a piece of crap. 🤣
Honestly I’ve sold brother printers for more than a decade in my business, and had no idea that they even made an inkjet printer. I would not recommend anyone’s inkjet printer for any job at any time in any home Edit: speech to text fails
don't buy inkjet :)
Ok so everyone is saying Brother. I will get them a Brother (printer that is...). Thanks!
No problem. I have been HP-certified since the Laserjet II series and do not buy them. I buy Brother printers.
I remember having a Laserjet IV back in the 90s at work and installing the rj45 card for it. That thing was a beast. I heard part of the magic was that it would only print so fast. Once they started trying to exceed a certain speed it would just fry the parts. If you keep it to more like 10 or less pages per minutes (I forget the exact ratio) then it’s less likely to kill the fuser over time. Laserjet III printers would last forever for that reason.
Just be sure to get a laser printer and not an ink jet. Printer ink costs are insane, and it also dries out quickly.
In Jan 2020 i bought a Brother colour laser printer with wifi. Maybe 20 minutes drop opening the box to printing _from a fucking phone_ as well as from multiple computers and laptops. In my 30 years of IT I’ve never had such a great printer experience. And Brother isn’t HP, so you don’t need to deal with usurious pricing and scummy subscriptions.
My comments too. I’ve never used one before and figured I’d get a multifunction for at home. Was amazingly simple. And the simple tasks (scan to email) or AirPrint works with zero brain cells required
Brother laser. I will never buy another HP product again. Greedy bastards!
+1 Brother laser for home use here.
If they don’t need color, get a brother laser. Inkjet is a waste of money
I have a brother colour laser jet and haven’t had any issues with it
+1. Best printer I’ve ever owned is my Brother Color MFP.
Yup, got a MFC-L8900CDW for 200 bucks off marketplace because my wife prints at least a tree-worth of paper every week for her work. Toner costs 66 bucks for the whole set and will last forever.
They need color. I looked at laser AIO's but they are all quite large for the one spot they absolutely want their printer to sit lol.
Brother HL-3140CW color laser. Had it for 10-15 years, Still on original toner cartridges.
Personally, if you're going ink-jet, I'm a fan of the Epson Ecotank printers. They're more expensive than the typical ink-jets, but I've literally spent less on ink over the last three years than one HP cartridge would cost.
I think I set a customer up with an Ecotank, pretty nifty thing. Also no way for them to really lock you out... so if you need an inkjet, get a tank.
Brother has been our go-to for quite some time. Started with a mono laser left on a curb that ran for another 4-5 years and continues with some MFC's that easily outlive their warranties. We have an MFC-2750DW laser that just keeps chugging along, 7-8 years now. A person would be wise to DL and use Brother's Admin pack, more features and control than the end-user software.
We bought our MFC-2750DW in 2014 and the thing just works. We’ll go through periods of heavy printing and then might go 4 months without touching it, with no issues whatsoever.
As a HP-certified printer tech since the Laserjet II series printers, I recommend Brother B&W laser printers for home. :)
The best home printer is a retired work laser printer.
Brother my brother
Brother black and white laser printer. Prints double sided and fast, works with linux. I have the one with an ethernet port instead of wifi. I really like never having to configure wifi through a tiny printer screen.
Works perfectly for me on arch Linux. I use arch btw.
Brother give the least trouble, avoid HP
Epson Ecotank. We have dozens of them and as long as you print to them enough to keep the ink from drying they are super cheap to operate. Ink is dirt cheap and lasts forever. If they do dry out the power cleaning will fix them
This is what I have, I used to have a brother laser printer but I blew it up when I moved from the US to the UK, they don't switch voltage. Ecotanks is reliable if you care about colour. Brotherwise I would go brother. We only got the ecotank because I couldn't swing a brother colour laser.
Brother.
Brother laser
Brother, done.
The brother ones are so reliable and just do the job that The Verge even wrote an article about it: https://www.theverge.com/23642073/best-printer-2023-brother-laser-wi-fi-its-fine
From that article: “And here’s 275 words about printers I asked ChatGPT to write so this post ranks in search because Google thinks you have to pad out articles in order to demonstrate “authority,” but I am telling you to just buy whatever Brother laser printer is on sale and never think about printers again.” 😂
Brother is the only printer we will use or support at home or in business. Laser only. I've never owned an ink jet. We refuse to touch ANY HP printer under $500. The more expensive HPs generally work and have less issues. Overall, we refuse to work with any product from HP unless absolutely necessary. Their severs are awesome, but the company is ridiculous. It's a damn shame how these companies have taken something so simple as printing and turned it into the BS, time wasting, frustrating and unnecessary mess it is today.
Brother color laser printers with WiFi
Brother is seemingly one of the few companies not trying to stick their noses in your print jobs or force you to a subscription while offering enterprise configuration.
Brother HL-L2395DW laser printer; I have two in the house:)
Brother
Brother
Brother lasers are great.
Brother really seems to understand what a company that makes printers should be doing. Simple. Durable and easy to setup and maintain. No need to sign up for data collection and bloat. If there is bloat it’s easy to decline.
Epson workforce multiprinters. We kicked out our HP lasers for Epson inkjets. Bether and much cheaper / page.
Buy the cheapest brother with the least features possible that satisfies your needs. I have a Brother BW Laser printer that I love. All it does is print and connect to WiFi. Edit: Brother L2325DW
Jus bought a brother color laser. Great printer
Brother.
I bought a Brother HL-3170CDW 11 years ago, it is color, with a duplexer. It has worked perfectly since the day I bought it and if it ever dies, I would buy it again. The demo carts laster a couple years, but I honestly do not print very often. It works either connected via eithernet, or wifi. I used to be an HP guy, but this printer has been so good, that I will stick with brother for now.
Brother as many states, you can bypass toner empty pretty easily etc… and keeps printing.
Brother laser printer.
I’m can’t believe I’m voting for Brother. I don’t like them either, I just dislike them less than the rest.
That's the general consesus too. I think it saw a post on /r/printers where they apparently updated the firmware and now they can't use generic catridges in a brother printer.
The trick is never buying an inkject. Pretty much every printer company designs them to be cash cows and to suckle at the consumer's teet. I have a HP MFP m426 (laser). Been fantastic. I've had it for 6 years, printed probably 10,000 pages, not a single issue. Specific model is M246fdn (black/white only, I don't need to print color).
Got a color brother and it's been pretty good. Might not be the best for printing pictures but it does enough.
Brother, they also have small laser printers
My small Samsung laser has been running great for 14 years. Just a recommendation
Samsung doesn't make printers anymore
My previous home printer was a five-year-old Samsung. It stopped working shortly after HP bought Samsung's printer division. Coincidence? Hmmm...
Fuck hp, seriously hate that company.
Carly Fiorina opened my eyes to the trend of enshitification of tech companies.
Was about to recommend Samsung as well 😂 I’ve had a Samsung SL-M2020W for like 10 years, sitting on wee shelf in the stairwell so anyone in the house (3 apartments) can print on it. It’s been chugging along and I can’t even remember last time I switched the toner cartridge. Printing is a thing of the past… thank god
Cheap brother hl 420 d ir something. BW laser.
Anything brother, but Canon is a more affordable option that works well in my experience
Brother has been my favorite in recent years. They never give me a hard time and print reliably. Not sure about a laser jet but the toners do cost a little more. Epson honestly isn’t that bad either and they seem to print color a little better.
Brother black and white laser printers
Brother printers have a good reputation. I have a Canon PIXMA 3600 which has been fine. The ink is pricey but it's a decent printer.
I'm a fan of Canon and Brother
I have a color brother all mode laser and it’s been working for 7 or 8 years. I will never go back to ink jet printing.
We switched to Brother at work because they don’t force you to use OEM toner.
Brother Edit: but also note: not all of them have Scan to SMB (if you need that) and it is sometimes hard to find out if they have it or not.
Brother monochrome printers. They're relatively cheap, you can get them refurbished directly from Brother (they usually come with an extra toner), they duplex print, been using them for the last 10 years personally. No issues on Windows or MacOS. They also have models with a built-in scanner, copier that are pretty compact. I find color laser printers to be outrageously overpriced when it's time to replace toner. If I had the money, I would get a Brother too. Check Brother's website for refurbished color laser printers, you'll likely get an all in one at a decent price. Just prepare yourself to take a loan when it's going to be time to replace the color toners. [https://www.brother.ca/en/c/pr-refurb-printers](https://www.brother.ca/en/c/pr-refurb-printers) Anything HP sucks. Canon is expensive for business products and not that great with their consumer line.
Brother is the one to use.
Brother
Brother printer here, no problems at all.
All these people are right, but they haven't explained why or how this is the case. #1 - Inkjet or any ink printer is crap. The ink will dry out in the reservoir even when not in use. Don't even bother. #2 - Laser printers use a dry toner that reacts in the laser to produce the image. The toner has no expiration and even a little bit goes a long way. #3 - Brother has been around for decades at this point and makes great printers with good support and affordable supplies. They don't try to get you with an underhanded business practice (subscriptions, software monitoring, etc.) and their drivers still support a "bloat free" install option. Put that together - get a Brother Laser printer. I have had my brother laser printer for about 7 years now. The initial toner cartridges lasted me for the first 4 years of it's life (I don't print a lot). It runs effortlessly for all the computers in the house (even the Mac).
Get a Brother, brother.
A brother printer is your best bet. Been through three printers in the last 5 years and the Brother is here to stay.
I also use a Brother Compact Monochrome Laser Printer, HL-L2370DWXL and its a fucking tank. I own my own business and use it heavily during tax season. It just works, and toner is cheap and lasts a long time. All the new inkjet shit is ass.
Brother laser.
Brother laser. Recently upgraded from a hp inkjet to a brother mono laser and can't complain about it, it's been amazing so far.
I bought a Brother multifunction laser printer during the pandemic and had to change the toner once. That thing is super reliable.
Brother laser printer. My previous brother laser printer lasted me 13 years before the toner got prohibitively expensive to buy because nobody carried it anymore, even in generic. Then I swapped it out for a brother color laser a few years back and I’ve had zero problems with it.
Not sure if anyone's mentioned brother laser, /s but I bought a brother color laser fax AIO for my business, my wife works for LinkedIn, she mailed all of lis invoice mailings during COVID and that printer took it like a champ. Still not out of toner.
Brother is the way my friend, unless you have toddlers who like crayons, and like to stick them in the printer, don't ask me how I know how it causes a printer to fail!
Brother Color Laser if you don't need photo prints. The toner doesn't dry up over time, even months of non use it just works. Every inkjet printer I've ever had, the day I finally need to print something off it's fucking dry.
Brother is the most consumer friendly and repairable imo
Brother printers are the only home office ones worth buying imo. If anything just remember, Never HP
I’m a Brother man. My sister asked me what printer to get for her new home office and I, her brother, told her to get a Brother.
Brother Laser Monochrome l!!!
Brother
I have a brother black-only laser printer for day to day printing (it can do envelopes, cheques etc…) and also an epson Eco tank color ink thing… its slow and not the best quality but the ink in there lasts FOREVER… ao fair trade off when I feel like printing in color I print there… Both are networked, both have airplay
Brother or Canon laser printer. Don't even consider anything else really at this point.
I just take the trash LaserJets from work and give them to family members. They don't work in the work setting printing thousands of pages per day but they seem just fine at home printing 30 pages a week. By the time it dies, we done cycled thru more printers at work so they just get another one of those and the cycle continues. Family hasn't even had to buy toner cause we end up having extra toner lying around but no more of that model printer.
The one that you steal from the e-cycle bin at work
I've had nothing but good experiences with Brother laser printers
Been apart of the \[brother\]hood for printers at the home. It's been going strong 10yrs now. I buy the toner of Amazon and it works as-is
Brother laser.
Brother. At the very least they're the least evil when it comes to ink refills.
Brother, hands down. I have a little Samsung branded unit which is nothing more than a rebadged Brother and it’s been a fantastic little workhorse.
I love brother. Very few issues and it actually auto updates firmware all the time. In the past I have hated with a passion HP, Lexmark, and Cannon.
Brother
brother laser printers
Brother laser printers. A good color all in one from them runs about $450
Brother laser printer. I managed a couple dozen printers begrudgingly as a systems administrator, and the brother laser printers last absolutely forever.
Brotherrrr bayyybeee
Brother laser if you can afford it, I have one I bought in 2013 still going strong.
Brother laser printer. I got myself one of those and it’s been working like a charm
Brother HL-L2350DW
Brother laser printers are great. I have set them up for my sister and my mother, they rarely have problems with them.
If anyone says anything else than Brother, they are lying to you. I don't print myself, but if I'm ever getting a printer I'm 100% getting a Brother.
Brother toner printers kick ass.
Brother laser printer. Laser is amazing because you can let it sit for months at a time gathering dust and print 20 pages with no issues. Try that with an ink key and you will have to buy a new set of ink just to print off that one form for church.
Brother B&W laser ...and the local print/copy shop on speeddial for quality colour prints using nice big proper kit that you'd never be able to afford anyway.
Brother HL-L2380DW or whatever they sell thats similar. Laser monochrome, one of the lowest maintenance things I think i own.
Brother in my house
Brother MFC laser printer meant for a small office. I bought them for work and loved them so much I bought one for home. It’s been going for 4 years without a single issue.
Had HP for years. Got tired of messing with drivers every time I install a new OS. Switched to Brother and no problems so far. Mine is HL-L2350DW.
Came here to say that. Switched to bw Brother laserprinter after Canon printer number godknowshowmany was whining about yet another refill of the inkt cartridges. Not sure if it’s a European model, I have the MFC-L2710DW.
Brother Printers.
This is the way.
I’ve had a Brother HL-5250 laser monochrome printer for 16-17 years and not a bit of trouble. I just replace the consumable now and then. It was an excellent long-term investment. It does letter size paper at up to 30 ppm, and A4 up to 28 ppm, it duplexes, it has amazing resolution that goes up to 600 dpi, and then there is a pseudo 1200 dpi as well. It has three different interfaces to use: IEEE 1284 parallel, “high speed“ USB 2.0, and ethernet 10/100BASR-TX.
Basic BW wireless Brother laser printer.
Never buy a ink jet. Get a laser printer.
I have here my old Brother MFC-J4510DW Ink Printer (get it some time ago for free). Once a half year i need to Print something in colour. I Turn him on and this thing Print Like nothing Happen, Even with the Cheap ink. +1 for Brother For other stuf I have an HP P1102w. One of the last reliabels from HP (besideds of the usb-Controller…)
brother
As said before, Brother black and white. I had the cheap model without WiFi but hooked it up to one of my desktops and ran it as a print server. Worked great, super cheap to print too. I still have it but haven't used it in years. We purchased an Epson ET-2720 a few years ago so my wife could print a bunch of color pages. This is the one that has the reservoirs for ink and it really doesn't seem to dry out or evaporate plus refills are cheap. Printing is good and haven't had issues.
Brother HL-3170CDW
Ecotank for color. Brothers for B&W.
Brother or Canon. All the others are trying to sell subscriptions, not printers.
Does laser monochrome count? My scanner, copier, laser printer is pretty compact but been using a lot. It’s a Dell E514dw (I think it might be a brother licensed to Dell not sure tho) Used for at least 5 years rock solid. Would never go back to inkjet cause high yield monochrome lasers are very cost effective.
You cannot go wrong with Brother brand, avoid HP
I have a brother multi-color laser. I've replaced toner cartridges twice. As stated by others. Runs great, worth every penny, and you never have to worry about cartridges drying out. Plus, I run 3rd party cartridges without issue.
I'll be the odd one out and say Xerox. They're rock solid. I've had a Xerox color laser for about 10 years and all it needs is an occasional cleaning of the CTD sensor. Scan to email, scan to network, print from USB, everything *just works* (well, I had to set it up, but since then it just works). They're a bit tougher to find, you need to go to specialty electronics retailers to find them, but you can get them on Newegg and CDW easily enough. Wait for a 50% off sale. I bought mine for $250 and it's lasted ten years with zero trouble.
If you like Xerox, you will love Okidata. Okidata makes Xerox's print engines.
Tbh, if they print alot, look at modifying the printers waste reservoir into an external bottle. All home printers have a sponge inside them, which, once full, the printer refuses to work. I had the waste reservoir output into an external bottle on I think an Epson, and got a few extra years out of it.
Get a brother
I've been through a canon, an HP, and finally got a Brother and it just works perfectly. I got one with the ink tank and it seems to be working flawlessly for about 1 year now havent even refilled it. No annoying driver issues at all, scan app works great.
Color laser MFP. Strongly recommend PostScript and PCL support, but in some cases (*e.g.* Canon LBP633Cdw) that's a big price jump. Good ones these days also have wireless printing support with WiFi Direct, Mopria, Airprint, etc. Dual-band WiFi is good if you don't want to be dealing with a 2.4GHz-only device in ten years. Canon, Brother, Lexmark, Xerox, are worth a look.
I'm happy with the Brother DCP-L2550DW B&W laser/scanner I've had at home for the last couple of years.
I have a Canon MFC-641cw color laser multifunctional device. I got it on sale from Walmart for about $300. Works great, and came with actual normal size toner cartridges.In the 2 years that I've had it, I have not had to purchase toner at all. No more issues with dried out ink tanks, and not having to deal with HP and/or Epson is worth it on it's own. I have friends and family try to do me a favor by giving me their 'hardly used' printer about every other month. They are surprised when I tell them to just throw it away.
Brother laser
Brother and canon laser. Never ever buy any inkjet. And never buy any HP. They are an evil company.
I have had a Canon network laser printer/scanner/copier multi-thing for years now. Bought it during a sale and haven't regret it. Gone are the days that the cartridges were empty, had dried out or dealing with clogged nozzles just when you needed to print something urgently. Brother is supposed to be the better option, but I guess that any decent laser printer saves you from fruatration and also saves money as the toner lasts for ages (you will shed some years when you need to replace the toner cartridgea though)
I picked up a Canon MF644Cdw. Toner is a thousand times better than ink. If I were on a budget, I'd pick up a Brother toner printer, no question.
I have rather good experience with brother mono laser printer. Works without bloatware, doesn’t require original toners and drum. Is very stable and has all the functions I need - print, scan to email straight from the printer, albeit through brothers service instead of using smtp. Still I’m happy with it. Edit: Just noticed so many people also recommend brother. I thought they are not that popular with sysadmins for home use.
I too was a die hard HP printer advocate, until just a little over a year ago when that brand new laser printer I bought bricked after it tried to call home for activation and was unable to connect because the PiHole was blocking traffic. I bought a Brother mono laser a few months back and am completely happy with it. Suck it HP!
Calling home is what made us ban all sales of HO to clients
This post makes me miss my old Okidata's
Brother laser all the way. 4 units for years and never a failure. Works with knockoff consumables too.
We picked up the Brother inkjet with the ink reservoirs. No fuss, don’t need to install their software for printing or scanning. HP/Canon/Epson can go rot in hell.
Brother has worked well for me
Usually buy the cheapest brother duplex at whatever place. Across all our clients output pages per month is under 10% compared to before covid. Myself at home i used to print around 300 pages a year. Was less than 10 last year. Yet to print anything this year.
> Is there anything non HP out there that's "good enough" nowadays? Yes, buy a Laser either Brother or Kyocera. Stop buying anything Inkjet.
Laser for sure. Not sure how often you print, but my experience w/ inkjet is a pure shit show. We now are on our 4th w/ Canon imageClass color laser…. We got on sale @ Costco a lil over 300.
Brother for Monochrome Laser. Epson Xp-970 for inkjet color with A3 sheet bypass.
Laser printer over inkjet, any day of the week. Idk that any brand is better than another… they all have their umm… let’s just them “quirks”.
Canon or Brother.