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Loucypher ,

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

PurpleTentacle ,

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

news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131

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

Anonymouse ,

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.

LoveSausage ,

Then I’m lucky mine only been connected to Linux. Thanks for the headsup

_ed ,

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

Vulwsztyn ,

I thought you meant happy brother as an euphemism for hp

Carighan ,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

If you want to print in oversized, I can readily recommend the Epson ET 8550.

It’s a 6 tank A3+ photo/poster printer for under €800. If you got the use case for these (say as a photographer or an artist or you just want to print your own posters) then it’s a really good model.
Unlike it’s closest rival in the semi-professional market from Canon, the tanks make ink very cheap to operate, the vast vast vast majority of the printing cost is going to be the paper. It has a damn good printing quality even on mostly dark prints, it’s quite fast for documents spitting them out in 3-5 seconds each so for personal use it’s not meaningfully behind a laser. Quite variable, too, you can take the back off and feed whatever material you want in there with a huge clearance for thick plates to print on.

Sure, it’s not something the average user ever needs but if you are looking for something like this, I can recommend it.

Lemmy_2019 ,

Interesting. What’s the total price per sheet on decent paper? I do a few hundred A3 prints a week.

Carighan ,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

It’s difficult to say as a lot depends on your specific use case and what you print and on which paper.

For my main use case, I bought a 100-pack of relatively inexpensive satin a3+ poster paper (so only 280g, but eh, they get put on the wall with something like poster strips or tack, I hardly need them to be thicker) which comes down to ~78cents per sheet. Ink usage is difficult to measure because my prints differ wildly in how much color is on them but my average so far seems to be ~50 cents per max quality a3+ print. So ~€1,30 per full size print if I want to be slightly pessimistic about it. But some of them were probably more like 85 cents total. 😅

The ink bottles really last a long time. Check your local prices but over here they cost €22 a bottle to replace, the printer has two blacks (one is pigment based for documents and stationary and so on), CMY and a 60% Gray, they all cost the same here but might be different for you. And then of course depends on what you print.

What I sadly cannot say is what A3 would cost, but scaling down you should be looking at roughly 20% less ink costs per print for full-size graphics prints, and then of course the paper you’re printing on. But that’s just mathing it down from my A3+ prints.

Lemmy_2019 ,

Thanks for doing the math. I have a deal with a commercial printer for slightly less, so it appears I won’t be changing. Rather not have the hassle either, in fairness.

Carighan ,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

Oh that’s quite fair, plus at that volume it helps to not have the risk of the printing process on yourself on top of everything else. 😅

MadMadBunny ,

Brother. Don’t ever look at anything else.

corsicanguppy ,

as mentioned above, reddit.com/…/brother_mfc_firmware_update_nongenui…

MadMadBunny ,

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.

otherbarry ,

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.

esc27 ,

Same. We have dozens of M477s and M479s in production and few issues. Recently started deploying 4301s and so far so good. I bought an M479 on a good sale a few years ago for personal use and never had a problem. No mandatory subscription, hp account or any of that mess, and the toner lasts a long time. Not sure if it even will expire.

Many years ago we maintained a fleet of 4050s and 2200s (had to purchase parallel port add on cards to use those…) Those were rock solid for many years and very repairable, but at a certain point part availability and time lost doing repairs adds up and we had to move on.

calmluck9349 ,
@calmluck9349@infosec.pub avatar

I love my cannon megatank

aeharding ,
@aeharding@lemmy.world avatar

I’m pretty happy with my Canon GX7021.

It’s pigment based inkjet, so no bleed, and it also prints thick card stock that lasers can’t. And way cheaper than lasers.

Otherwise ticks all the boxes, double side print and scan, Ethernet etc

otherbarry ,

That’s interesting & somewhat surprising, we are currently testing a Canon MAXIFY GX5020 and everyone in the office hates its color output. It’s in the same MegaTank family that your Canon is in.

I’m trying to figure out if maybe Canon sent us a bad printer or if these Canons just don’t do colors that well. If you have a chance can you do these two color test prints & let me know how yours does?

cmyktool.com/cmyk-test-print/ (download the PDF and print it)

printtester.com/-color-test-page (download the Color Test Page PDF and print it, the one with the color wheel)

What I’ve found is that our Canon does fine with the CMYK Test Print but doesn’t do as well on the Color Test. For us in the color wheel when the colors blend from Blue into Red (e.g. the dark blue / purple / dark red) the mixed colors look sort of dull and generally off. So any images with purple or around that color come out sort of darker/dull compared to our old color laser printer. I can’t really explain colors that well but you get the gist :D

When we first received the printer magenta was barely printing so all the colors were especially bad, after doing the printer maintenance functions that color at least started printing but I wonder if the printer heads are just screwed up on this one, hmm.

aeharding ,
@aeharding@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t have anything to directly compare against, but it seems fine to me! Then again, I bought this for productivity (not photos).

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/4e1c2e20-6efd-48ae-a543-698015b71d14.jpeg

IMongoose ,

I love my HP printer. Always prints when I ask it to every few months, uses third party toner, 0 issues whole time I’ve had it. Of course it’s a laserjet from 2004 so it’s built a bit different. I wouldn’t recommend a new HP though lol.

snooggums ,
@snooggums@kbin.social avatar

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.

Scary_le_Poo ,
@Scary_le_Poo@beehaw.org avatar

HP purchased Samsung’s printer department about 5 years ago

snooggums ,
@snooggums@kbin.social avatar

Dammit!

lemmefixdat4u ,

Samsung’s printer division was acquired by HP. I had a computer drive failure and after reinstalling the Samsung (now HP) driver I had nothing but printer connection issues (printer doesn’t wake up, driver says printer unavailable). Wish I had copied the original driver to a flash drive. Finally gave up and bought a Brother MFD laser. That’s been working flawlessly.

Gormadt ,
@Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

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

Lettuceeatlettuce ,
@Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml avatar

All Brother all the time.

Imgonnatrythis ,

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

promitheas ,
@promitheas@iusearchlinux.fyi avatar

This thread is pretty much all brother 🤣

Gormadt ,
@Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

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

cyberpunk007 ,

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.

bob_lemon ,

We’re all brothers in Brother

deadbeef ,

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.

Zerlyna ,
@Zerlyna@lemmy.world avatar

I have a brother laser at home and on the rare occasion I need color prints I send them to Office Depot.

cultsuperstar ,

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.

thru_dangers_untold ,

Same model here. Love it!

IHeartBadCode ,
@IHeartBadCode@kbin.social avatar

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.

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