Brother lasers are pretty great.
this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024
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This thread is pretty much all brother 🤣
We're all brothers in Brother
It's the first printer I've owned that didn't make me want to throw it off my balcony
All Brother all the time.
Brother
Brother. Don’t ever look at anything else.
My previous Brother laser lasted me over 14 years using only the original toner provided inside the box. I merely had to shake it once a year to redistribute the toner inside it.
Even if I had to buy another genuine cartridge during that 12 year run, it would have been worth it. I had to get another printer simply because that specific model had been discontinued for years, and I couldn’t find a replacement drum.
Not bad for a $109 printer.
HP cartridges barely last a month, costs $40 each, and if you don’t use it for a couple of weeks, they no longer work.
Had to buy an HP inkjet to make custom printed shirts for an event; never again.
That thing ended costing upwards of $200 for 2 months of use.
I’ll buy Brother and their genuine laser toner cartridges anytime.
Brother. Strong, reliable, durable, in my own experience.
Brother laser , no WiFi , no color , prints perfect everytime. Cost like 200 euro. Edit checked model HL-L23100
The ones that have a network jack, and WiFi that you can turn off are OK too!
Happy brother user here. We had a hp and the bastard had connection troubles then ended up only printing blank pages. Never again.
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
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.
HP purchased Samsung's printer department about 5 years ago
Dammit!
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.
Everyone talking about Brother but does the point still stands for the newer models?
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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.
20 year old HP LaserJet
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)
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, Warning
REMINDER: 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.
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.
Nope. They’re all shit.
Partially because ink/toner scam.
Partially because fuck you, I bought the damn thing. If I am ok with stripy printouts until I squeeze the last molecule of toner from your hellcartridge, imma do it and you can’t stop me.
Ex. I bought a $30 printer off eBay. Burned thru the toner quickly. Bought cartridge.
Turns out that this printer counts pages - and only pages - and hangs itself at an arbitrary number of the same.
Twenty pages of the cartridge were lettter sized.
Ten were A4.
The remaining pages? A fucking 5.
IOW, I printed thirty total pages of US letter. And the remainder were half-letter.
Printer doesn’t care, a page is a page.
Admittedly, printers have to sol e a fairly difficult MechEng problem - grab one and only one sheet, pull it just right, and don’t wrinkle it.
That doesn’t give the mfg the right to extort us. I literally should have 2x the A5 pages I’ve remaining bc by def each one is half of (roughly) a full page.
I’ve gone from printing general templates for my day to day, to developing things that feel native to me to draw - but I’m also a fountain pen hobbyist and truly care about paper quality, etc.
TL;dr - I just want some damn lines to color between, as I organize and journal my life. Printer manufacturers have abs ruined that. There are zero good ones.
Srsly I’d rather spend the time to carefully develop a template for day to day use and trace it (max 1 hr, tracing it then takes zero time to speak to) than deal with printers.
But that’s just me, an IT guy who values organizing in an analog world.
Oh, also, a 40ish IT guy who remembers LaserJets that were nearly bulletproof and still weren’t worth screwing with.
Interestingly, here in Asia some inkjet printers are sold with huge (like 500ml per color) external ink tanks that take very cheap 3rd party ink. They're not terribly expensive. I see all the print shops and some businesses using them, they seem to work OK. I don't have one personally, but recently I've been tempted to get one.
If I do, I'll post about it somewhere. It sounds like it's nearly worth physically flying all the way over here, buying one, and carrying it back. If you're a small business owner and print a lot or something.
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.
Sort of depends on what type of printer you're aiming towards. At work we've been mainly using HP Laserjet (the more expensive business class types with multiple trays) & those things are workhorses, they do last a good while. I also did work for a guy whose office still runs an ancient HP Laserejet from probably 20 years ago & somehow the thing still works (old enough to still have a parallel port on it haha).
On a related note more recently I've been testing a Canon MegaTank color inkjet to replace our dying Lexmark color laserjet, so far everyone in the office hates the Canon.
I love my cannon megatank
Have one of the last decent HP printers.
I've gone from being able to easily and happily recycling my laser printer cartridges to HP - print off the label and send free post - to going through some convoluted account sign-up bullshit pictures of my inside leg whilst upside down. Yeah not happening.
Eventually my toner is going to be too expensive to support and the printer scanner will break.
Thank-you for asking this question.
Canon laser, no question.
I believe they manufacture for other brands including brother, but I just woke up and I'm too lazy to reference. You like doing online research like this anyway, so you're welcome.
I like my Xerox Phaser 3020. No complaints so far, doesn't even require installing drivers, and cheap non-OEM toners are widely available.
92 comments huh? Well without even reading I'm sure about 90% of them say the same thing: Brother Laser Printer. This is the way. Join us Brother.