Looking for a new printer. My new HP Inkjet is a piece of fucking garbage and I’m going to smash it to pieces in my driveway.
Looking for something with good Linux support, and as little proprietary online HP-type bullshit as possible. Also, should I get a laser printer?
Do yourself a favor and don’t buy another inkjet printer, let alone a shitty HP product. Definitely get yourself a Brother laser printer. Brothers are bulletproof.
This is the advice I heard on the Vergecast. The best printer for anyone is whatever Brother laserjet is currently on sale.
Wish i knew that before i opened fire at my inkjet
Well, now you can replace it with a laser.
LOL! I actually did that to a printer that pissed me off. Cool thing is it was in the middle of the Arizona desert and we basically vaporized it.
Yes Brother are fine or Lexmark 😺
Lexmark is just as bad as hp and is made by a Chinese company. Brother is the wave.
We’ve got some Brother laser printers at work and they’ve been great. We get third-party toner from a local company for peanuts too, as well as sending them the old cartridges to reuse/recycle. If I ever need a printer at home, this is the route I’ll go!
EDIT: Also, checkout company closing auctions (there’s a few around again!) and you can pick-up some decent office stuff including printers for cheap!
Smart! I have a very well used brother laser that I picked up for 50 bucks and it still take a licking and keeps on ticking.
@ablackcatstail @MashingBundle
I had some issues with predatory pricing of “genuine Brother” cartridges and quality alternatives, in which Brother changed the codes or something, it seems, locking my device. Brother’s monochrome lasers are fine (reasonable printer and supply costs), but I have a sore spot with their color printers.I’ve never had a color laser printer so I would be none the wiser on that front. I hate the whole “genuine product” movement. I thought a federal court ruled that companies cannot force their customers to use only company-branded cartridges. I don’t know. Maybe I am not remembering correctly.
@ablackcatstail @MashingBundle Absolutely
Brother laser printer owner. The only printer I’ve ever not hated with a firey passion. I actually quite like it. It’s not a color printer, but it’s fine.
HL-L2320D brother laser printer, had it for years with no fuss. It doesn’t have wifi but who needs it when you can just plug it into a raspberry pi and share it on the network.
Obviously look for a new printer under a street lamp, duh
As with everyone else, Brother laser printers are the way. I have owned multiple. I think one which my family uses is about 10 years old now, another which is about 5-6, and one which I got at the start of the pandemic, so around 3.5 years. Zero problems with any of them.
All the ones I have tried work fine on both Linux and Windows, work over wifi for both scanning and printing, and the toner drums last ages without needing to be replaced unlike inkjet cartridges which constantly need replacing or dry out if you don’t use them often enough.
Brother work fine on Linux, but be aware they’ve directly fucked using third party cartridges
They have??? I’m still on my original toner cartridge from like 8 years ago so I haven’t tried any 3rd party stuff but that’s really disappointing to hear.
Brother colour laser. Surprisingly good price, fantastic quality.
I haven’t changed toner since buying it 2 years ago.
Hardly know anything about Linux, but if you need a printer, buy a Brother one. It just fucking works.
My Brother HL2170W has been reliable for over a decade. Whatever has replaced it is the one I’d buy if I needed to replace it.
I’ve had a Brother HL2130 B/W laser for as long as I can remember, perfect ! 😊
+1 for Brother. Works great printing from Linux.
I recommend kyocera. maybe you’ll say, “man, you can buy 4 inkjet for the price of ecosys”, but on the other hand, you bought a ecosys and you can fill it with toner just from a balloon until the drum unit wears out.
I agree with nearly everything I’m seeing. Maybe to summarize:
Laser of any kind is shelf stable. Liquid ink dries out and different printers compensate for this in different ways. Even dumb ink tank printers - where you add liquid and there’s no chip to be read anywhere - can have internal ink sponges that fill up and cause failures. Just a different kind of chipped consumable.
Color laser means four smaller cartridges and an extra wear part to replace after a few years: ITB or intermediate transfer belt. Instead of going from toner drum to paper, toner goes onto this belt first and then to the paper.
Different printer manufacturers have different behaviors to lock you into only buying their consumables. HP tends to be the worst offender, but it varies.
I got lucky, bought a used HP Color Laserjet Pro MFP M477fdw. Basically two generations old, and the top of their desktop / tabletop printer line without being tabloid / large-format or being a huge copy machine / document station.
Toner chip validation is an option you can turn off. For now. But individual components have firmware versions and can be incompatible with each other, so I’m fully confident I’m one part replacement away from needing to update firmware on everything else and losing this tolerant behavior. A full refill of all four cartridges (5000 pages) totals like $65 right now, so that will suck.
Also here to say Brother. I bought a 2170w like 10-15 years ago for $99, have bought toner for it twice, and it’s chugged along the whole time. I see someone else saying they don’t deal with 3rd party cartridges, and mine def does, but that might be because of it’s age.
I’d also strongly recommend against another inkjet printer. We didn’t print enough in color even 10 years ago that when we did want to the cartridges were dry and it wasn’t just worth it to go to a Staples or Walgreens or whatever for photos or the occasional kid’s school project. If you do have to do a lot of color printing, laser jet is still where it’s at.
Brother laser printers. Never buy a consumer inkjet. especially from HP.
