this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024
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Fuck HP

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[–] [email protected] 57 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Brother lasers are pretty great.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Yep. We have a black and white Brother laser printer, and it's lasted* for at least five years now. Toner is so much cheaper than those stupid, tiny cartridges with not-enough-cyan.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

I got mine as a display model when Office Depot/Max were killing off stores that were too close together and I had had no issues in the at least 7 years I’ve had it. Its a black and white printer and have used CVS or where for printing pictures the off chance I need to. I also have only bought toner a time or two over the years. Dual sided scanning and printing? For my occasional use its perfect.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

This is the way.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Can you print photos on photo paper?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

How many photos are you printing to not use a professional service?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I don't know, just wondering if you can print photos.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

How dare you.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Generally no, image quality on color lasers isn't great but you can print them, just not great. I usually want glossy prints for frames but not often enough for me to print them at home on a consumer quality ink jet printer. I usually go to a print shop or somewhere that has a professional printer.

Hell, even CVS Walgreens and Walmart have better photo printers than any consumer off the shelf model.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

For now at least yes. I would have said the same thing about HP 25years ago.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 9 months ago (3 children)

This thread is pretty much all brother 🀣

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

It's the first printer I've owned that didn't make me want to throw it off my balcony

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

Count me in as a happy Brother user. I used to think they were the knock off crappy printer but once I started to see more of them poo up and how much better they worked... I just bought myself an all in one laser one. Couldn't be happier. It works so well, and no bullshit in Linux either. Works there too. Hp used to be the easy way but they're not so great anymore.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

We're all brothers in Brother

[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Brother. Don’t ever look at anything else.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 9 months ago
[–] [email protected] 21 points 9 months ago

I've been happy with my Brother printer. If you don't need an inkjet printer, I highly recommend just getting a toner printer. The toner is significantly cheaper, for a significantly greater volume (at least it was the last time I had to buy some, which was ages ago).

[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Did well with Brother laser printer. Canon was okay.

I had setup a friend's HP printer and noticed he was constantly switching to WiFi Direct in order to print. I did him the favor of connecting it to the AP, so he wouldn't have to manually switch all the time.

The moment it got online, the printer locked itself down and refused to continue print until he paid for a subscription service on the ink.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Happy brother user here. We had a hp and the bastard had connection troubles then ended up only printing blank pages. Never again.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

I thought you meant happy brother as an euphemism for hp

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago

Brother. Strong, reliable, durable, in my own experience.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago

Get a laser printer not an inkjet printer

Inkjet printers will crap out if not used constantly due to the ink lines getting blocked with dry ink

I've got a brother laser printer and it works great

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago

Joining the brother bandwagon here

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (3 children)

In addition to the Brotherly love, we have multiple Samsung ML-1865W laser printers that have been consistently reliable for years with no janky printing software and I have even used the $6 or whatever bottle of loose powder to refill although the regular cartridges are more convenient.

Going laser and not HP is the most important parts.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It's Brother: https://www.theverge.com/23642073/best-printer-2023-brother-laser-wi-fi-its-fine

We went with their black and white MFC which also does double sided ADF scanning... and I recently had a bit of FOMO when a colour MFC went on sale (ofc, for like three-four times the price, and at that price I might as well just print colour at a local print shop).

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago

Another good thing about the Brother printers is they work on Linux without too much fiddling

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I've had a Brother MFC-9330CDW for a long time and it's been great. No driver updates in like 5 years but don't really need updates when everything works. I moved away from buying official Brother toner several years and buy a budget brand off Amazon. Basically 4 toner carts for less than the price of one official Brother cart.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (5 children)

Also Fuck Epson Ecotank series.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

Brother. Mine, a laser monochrome, is 12 years old and works perfectly fine

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago
[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

Brother monochrome laser

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Brother, my brother. My little HL1200 serves my needs nicely, is cheap to run with both genuine and third party toner, ~~and the company isn't run by a bunch of greedy pigs. Probably the only printer brand I'll ever buy again.~~ Fuck HP indeed.

Edit: discovered Brother plays that game too

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Brother laser , no WiFi , no color , prints perfect everytime. Cost like 200 euro. Edit checked model HL-L23100

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

Also here to shill Brother laser printers

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

At work we sell our customers (small but high volume printing) regular brozher laser printers.
For s/w: HL-L5100DN or MFC-L5750D(W or N? Don't remember)

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

No printer. Unless you really print frequently, just use printing services from place like Staples, FedEx or UPS. Your local library probably even does printing. The drive is better than dealing with a printer.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

I had a Brother black and white laser (I think a HL1240?) for almost 10 years and then we started having to print a ton of education related stuff for our kid and colour made sense, so I got the closest thing that I could to the colour one that I use at work which ended up being a DCPL3551CDW.

Printing a little in Windows and Linux, but more often from apps on my Android phone and my partners iPhone.

I absolutely hate printers, but they have been fine.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Check the EFF's list of printers without tracking dots

They are probably all pretty old, but you should be able to make a good Ebay search

printer (model-a,b,c) -replacement -for

or similar

But,

WarningREMINDER: IT APPEARS LIKELY THAT ALL RECENT COMMERCIAL COLOR LASER PRINTERS PRINT SOME KIND OF FORENSIC TRACKING CODES, NOT NECESSARILY USING YELLOW DOTS. THIS IS TRUE WHETHER OR NOT THOSE CODES ARE VISIBLE TO THE EYE AND WHETHER OR NOT THE PRINTER MODELS ARE LISTED HERE. THIS ALSO INCLUDES THE PRINTERS THAT ARE LISTED HERE AS NOT PRODUCING YELLOW DOTS.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

Brother had one for almost a decade now and not 1 issue

Ink jet printers are a cartel and a scam

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Everyone talking about Brother but does the point still stands for the newer models?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (2 children)

No, it doesn't. Not even the old ones, because Brother is rolling out malicious firmware updates even to older models:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131

If you have one of the remaining good Brother printers, make sure firmware updates are disabled.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

Upvote for.disabling firmware. It's a sad state when the average printer consumer needs to know how to disable firmware updates and even needs sysadmin skills to know how to block a host from the internet.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

I have a Brother HL-L3230CDW. It has been a horse and has quickly become my most prized possession of all things that I own. It takes anyone's toner and produces quality without question. It works with my various Linux, Macs, Windows, and Android devices without hesitation and minimal fuss to get setup.

So that's what I would recommend. Is a good bit of coin up front but in my opinion, it has paid for itself in cheaper long run TCO and sanity in that it just fucking works.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

Brother here too. I bought a used one to save some money. It did come with a small printing problem that wasn't stated in the refurb description, but it was a problem i could live with for the savings, and has worked perfectly except for that one problem ever since.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

Another vote for Brother . I have a black & white laser printer (mfc-L2675). And I can get a 3-pack of toner off Amazon for around $20.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I got myself a Xerox printer because I figured I'd be familiar with the interface since all the offices I worked in had Xerox printers, plus I figured getting a near-corporate printer might keep some of the bullshit away since Xerox would probably not want to motivate their corporate customers to switch brands. AFAICT they probably get most of their business through service, not so much product.

So far it has worked out well. I have yet to buy a Xerox brand toner cartridge, and I've had this printer for several years and I keep getting consistent high quality prints. Some of the features are not super intuitive, but I don't think it's terrible to have to read the manual once in awhile.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I have a funny story about a Xerox printer!

I had a problem where there was ink left (this was a solid-ink printer, the ink came in blocks you could easily see), but the page count had run out and it wouldn't print. So we found the flash memory IC that held the info -- it used I2C to communicate. There's a similar IC on consumer RAM to store the manufacturer info. We swapped it in, hex-edited it so there were a huge number of pages left, and put it back in the printer.

It worked fine!

Then, days later, I noticed that the printer's web interface let you reset the page counter by just pressing a button in a web browser. So the whole hack had been completely unnecessary :D

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