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The trick is to buy a laser printer. Inkjet is garbage and cannot handle being left idle for any period of time. Laser does not suffer from this problem.

roland35 6y ago
My color laser printer has been working well for years now! Each toner cartridge lasts at least 1000 pages (current winner in my printer is black with 1553 pages). It is a little slow to load big documents but I don't see any need to upgrade any time soon. Wifi was really the latest beneficial technology. HP CP1525nw
- myself248 6y ago
  Ditto, I picked up a Samsung CLP-620ND in 2010 and it's still going strong. I get about 5000 pages on a black cartridge, about half that on the colors, and it's time for a transfer belt but I think I can probably clean the old one and get a few more years out of it. Screw. Inkjets.
- mechanicalpulse 6y ago
  I have the same one. Haven’t had any issues with it. I don’t know when I originally bought it, but according to my records, I purchased toner cartridges in 2012, 2015, and 2020. The usage report says I’ve printed 6,111 pages. It has been a fantastic product.
White_Wolf 6y ago
Spot on. Have a laser printer since 2010 and the only thing apart from toner that I had to buy for it was a drum about 2-3 years ago. Not even buying branded toner. Only from Aliexpress. One thing though - it's slow compared to new models.
Quekid5 6y ago
Laser all the way, baby! ... although I was disappointed recently by my usual go-to of the Brother brand. Their Linux/CUPS drivers are some sort of bizarre concoction of Perl scripts and x32 binaries... and still cannot print in duplex :/. (I believe the duplex problem is probably a typo somewhere in the PPD or Perl script, but I don't know enough about PPDs and/or Perl scripts to be sure. I do know programming, hence my suspicion.) Lesson is: Research if the EXACT printer you're purchasing is supported by the usual Gutenprint or whatever.
- Blackthorn 6y ago
  Brother drivers are every bit as crap as every other brand. I have one of their all-in-one office machines. It prints pretty well. The wireless scan is complete garbage. A known issue with their drivers, apparently.
- lmm 6y ago
  Brother's Linux support is notoriously awful. HP are the only manufacturer who treats Linux as first-class; Epson comes close.
  - vetinari 6y ago
    Warning: HP has bought Samsung printer division few years ago. As a result, there are HP-branded printers that are really Samsung inside, and they need the uld driver, which is binary-only abandonware. So caveat emptor.
    - chongli 6y ago
      Is there an easy way to identify these cloaked Samsung printers? Like a different model number or something?
      - vetinari 6y ago
        Not sure whether there is any systematic way to identify them. I've been looking for a cheap b/w laser for my parents and have found HP LaserJet 135/135w. It looked very familiar, and behold, it is a rebranded Samsung SL-M2070w that I have in the office. Hardware-wise, it is actually a nice printer. Software-wise... It works in Linux, but you have to install the binary-only uld driver. For MacOS it is more interesting: printing is not a problem, scanning in B/w is also OK, but scanning in Image Capture/Preview in color into PDF produces garbage output. What works is scanning in color into TIFF, then stitching and reexporting into PDF manually. The alternative, the EasyScan Samsung software no longer works in Catalina, it has 32-bit components. Edit: from the ppds in the driver package, they are: * HP Laser 10x Series * HP Laser MFP 13x Series * HP Color Laser 15x Series * HP Color MFP 17x Series
shwoopdiwoop 6y ago
Laser printers are better in so many ways. Just make sure that they are not placed too closely next to your desk or in rooms where you spend a lot of time in since they can emit toner dust and volatile compounds that could potentially be harmful to one’s health over a long period of time.
- franga2000 6y ago
  Seriously? If that is true, how have the manufacturers not gotten sued into oblivion?? This seems like the kind of thing that would be easy to prevent and a liability nightmare if you don't, so I doubt the companies would sell that kind of product.
  - bananasbandanas 6y ago
    In Germany at least, companies are not allowed to put the printer in 'busy' areas. Starting from a certain company size, a seperate room may even be required. I believe particulates are explicitly given as a reason for this. I'm also not sure how this would be 'easy' to prevent, without adding a whole sealed enclosure around the printer.
    - amelius 6y ago
      At least they could provide a fume/dust extraction point, similar to those found on things like SMD reflow ovens.
  - hurrrrrrrr 6y ago
    Because the danger of fume is negligible. It's a thing if you put it in a 2m^2 storeroom and sniff the exhaust for 8 hours straight but in any other case it doesn't come close to concentrations you get on the street anyway.
- Koliakis 6y ago
  I've been looking into this and couldn't find any studies or reports that showed any notable negative effect of particulate emissions by laser printers.
rektide 6y ago
I like the suggestion. For most people I think laser printers probably are a huge win. As someone who mainly wants to print some photos now & then, sometimes in large-ish sizes, I'm not sure if there are offerings that will suit me here. Where-as, when they are running well, there are some very nice many color inkjets. There have been some neat attempts to make economical better inkjet printers. Epson make a L1800 wide format printer with 6 refillable "ecotank" ink tanks, but it was targeted for non-primary markets & vanished with no replacement. Whether it was any more reliable than the other notoriously finnicky inkjets, and what, exactly, it's quality was, are unknown. But I think it's an interesting example of a product that was willing to break product segmentation boundaries that have been long standing, and deliver a lot of great capabilities- tank based rather than cartridges, many colors, wide format, good specs- at a very competitive price point, many times less expensive than what one would normally have to pay for such a printer. To me, it seems like strong evidence that the problem is markets, markets that don't want to compete, & that are reluctant to deliver better capabilities. Companies would rather raise the limbo bar, allow a little more fat; pushing for better is hard, but also, why do it, if you don't have to? Sell & compete at the next tier up.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  If you print less than monthly, you are likely better just taking your print jobs to Kinkos, Costco, FedEx, etc... you'll likely get better quality prints too.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    But then your e.g. tax return may be stored on a hard drive that gets found when the printer/copier is recycled.
    - ogre_codes 6y ago
      The comment I was replying to was referring to photos, not tax returns. I file taxes electronically, in fact almost every legal document I've had to print in years has been done electronically. But if you are worried about that, this thread is about having laser printers which are quite good at leaving in the closet so you can print your annual tax returns.
ogre_codes 6y ago
This is almost exactly my reply. I don't print a ton anymore, but I've bought exactly 2 laser printers in the past 25 years, the first I think I replaced because it was less expensive to replace than buy toner. The second I still own. Ink jet never seems to last more than a year.
jjav 6y ago
Absolutely. Went through several inkjet printers and all they did was raise my blood pressure. Finally wisened up and bought a (Brother) color laser ~9 years ago and it has been flawless.
kayson 6y ago
I completely agree. I have a Samsung ML-2510 laser printer that's been going on at least 15 years now. It's old enough that it has a parallel port...
mcv 6y ago
There are still many ways for laser printers to suck. My Samsung C460, for example, gets a paper jam just about every other sheet. Or imagines a paper jam, because quite often there's no problem at all, but it complains anyway. I also suspect that just about any wireless printer will suck when used with Windows. Windows certainly has a lot of trouble finding mine.
- abfan1127 6y ago
  My Canon works pretty seamlessly with my windows and mac computers. I've had it for a while and its reliable. https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/products/details/printers/color-laser/color-imageclass-lbp612cdw https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/products/d...
youeseh 6y ago
This advice was true 20 years ago, and it is just as true today.
crazygringo 6y ago
Seriously. Brother has sold laser printers under $100 for many years now -- they're reliable and last seemingly forever, and toner is cheap. Why any average consumer buys inkjets anymore is a mystery to me. If you need to print documents for personal or basic business use, a B&W laser printer is the way to go. If you need fancier printouts of slides or product info to hand out to clients, a color laser printer is the way to go. And if you need to print photos, order them online from a professional photo printing service. I don't actually understand who the market for home inkjet printers is anymore. (Inkjets have their place for certain niche uses like larger-format photography printing, but that's not really the "home" market anymore, more a professional or at minimum prosumer market.)
- calmworm 6y ago
  Agreed. Inkjet makes little sense. I’ve had a $60 (on sale) Brother laser printer for 10+ years. I finally had to buy new toner just this year. Still prints like the day I bought it.
  - qes 6y ago
    I had a B&W LaserJet for so long that I couldn't easily get it to work on Windows anymore, which is rare, especially for a basic printer. It seemed likely possible as a slightly later but very similar model was still in the included drivers, but it was a decade+ old. Even color laserjets are decently cheap these days.
- simias 6y ago
  I think many people don't know better and when you go to a store you see ultra-cheap inkjet that can print in color or significantly more expensive B&W laser (or much more significantly expensive color laser, that's still not as good for pictures) and if you don't know any better it's hard to justify going for the laser. I suspect that they might also be a strange factor that inkjet managed to corner the market by being crap, and not despite of it. People now effectively expect two things about personal printers: - They're cheap - They're crap TFA is an example of this mindset. But then if you go to the store expecting to get a piece of shit printer, you're clearly going for the cheapest available option. Which means that you get a crap inkjet that you'll have to replace in two years, and then you'll buy an other crap cheap inkjet. But I agree with both of you: after a few iterations of this cycle I finally decided to know better and bought the cheapest Brother B&W laser printer and it's been a joy. It just works.
vaccinator 6y ago
I like the laser printer that I bought a year ago because it is fast but I haven't had issues with the HP PSC 1410 inkjet printer that I bought about 10 years ago...
daniellarusso 6y ago
The reason I prefer HP Laserjets to Brother laser printers, I believe when you replace the cartridge in the HP, it contains the fuser and the toner. The Brother is a separate fuser that is replaced after some number of toner replacements. I am not sure if it is still like this for Brothers.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  For the brother multifunctions I've used, the fuser is replaced at 100k-120k pages; the large toner cartridges are like 6k pages. So, yeah, you don't replace the fuser with every toner replacement, but I don't see how that's a mark in favor of HP, if they replaced it with the toner (but doing some googling, it looks like HP also uses separate fuser kits.)
vmception 6y ago
this doesn't answer everything outside the print capabilities such as: why can't I scan to the SD card inserted, is there no write capability? why is this wireless printer looking for a wired computer to scan to? why can I only scan to Google Drive or Dropbox? why is it app so slow? why can't I just tap it with NFC or bluetooth to get this data? Just like really common frustrations which should be default by now in even the cheapest models.
squarefoot 6y ago
> Inkjet is garbage and cannot handle being left idle for any period of time. Modern printers are much better in this context, however what you pointed is true. To avoid heads clogging, when I moved from Laser to Inkjet, I planned a way to save the printer from inactivity by preparing a directory of family photos I already planned to print, but instead of printing lots of them in a single take, I print each of them every two weeks, so the printer heads never get dried. The printer is a Epson WP4515, and of course I use refilled consumables (€3.50 per cartridge). Admittedly from time to time I forgot about printing my photos, nothing that one or two heads cleaning passes couldn't solve. In short, it is definitely possible to have an Inkjet printer, make it print no more than a few hundred photos in years, but never clog a head or have to ditch new cartridges or worse, that is, an extremely low cost of operation. It requires some attention though.
- duozerk 6y ago
  Even assuming you dedicate such time to it, very often the hardware itself is pretty poor and fails you. I recently had to basically take apart an (admittedly cheap) HP inkjet printer in order to reposition part of a hall-effect switch that helped it detect a paper jam - it was detecting a jam continuously because of it. And because the same printer hadn't been used in 5 months, I also had to clean the clogged head with a syringe afterwards.
ValentineC 6y ago
Laser printers aren't excluded from toner DRM. I have a Samsung CLP-315W, and kept having problems detecting my first-party replacement toner cartridges because there were DRM chips in them [1]. I think a firmware upgrade even made the DRM worse. This was almost a decade ago. If I had to get a high-volume home printer now, I'd probably consider one with refillable ink tanks. [1] http://fcartegnie.free.fr/lines/?p=25 http://fcartegnie.free.fr/lines/?p=25
jimmaswell 6y ago
The cheap laser printer I got on Amazon a while ago has been trouble-free so far.
userbinator 6y ago
I suspect you are not in SE Asia or another region with a very humid climate, where the opposite is true. In dry climates, inkjet heads will clog. In wet climates, laser toner will clump. Inkjets with CIS mods (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_ink_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_ink_system ) are extremely popular in SE Asia.
dghughes 6y ago
I've had an HP multifunction laser printer for at least 5 years maybe 8 years. In that time I've bought two black toner cartridges and no colour cartridges. This time period included going back to school, a technical college, where I printed a ton of reports (and many misprints).
pitay 6y ago
Try to get a laser with automatic duplex printing if you want to save paper. With manual duplex printing mistakes can cost a significant proportion of paper and may require significant amounts of effort to do correctly. I currently have a Brother HL-2140 (also has HL-21 model number) and it has 'manual duplex'. This means if I want to save paper I have to mark a corner of the first page before printing and see what orientation it prints compared to that mark (it is not intuitive). I have been printing one page at a time because of this, although now I have written this down I realise I could do better.
gtm1260 6y ago
If you read the article, the reason why he cannot print has nothing to do with the type of printer he has :) It's all to do with an idiotic "always connected to the internet" subscription plan.
abrookewood 6y ago
Yes, this is the answer. I'm looking at a HP LaserJet 1320N next to my desk that is yellow with age and it still manages to smash out B&W pages at a solid clip. I think it's close to 16 years old and I've bought exactly 3 ink refills.
- josh64 6y ago
  I have this exact printer and I love it. Just bought another toner cartridge (non-Genuine) for it.
- jabl 6y ago
  I had a laserjet 1200 for a very long time, must have been 15 years or so. But it developed a problem where it would often pull multiple sheets at a time, and when the toner ran out I conveniently got my hands on a laserjet P2055dn that my old job was throwing out. Threw in a 3rd party toner cartridge (I guess that model is old enough to not suffer from the DRM crap of newer models) and it was good to go. Been rock solid so far. That being said, based on what people write every time this topic comes up, whenever this one dies I'll replace it with a Brother.
nogabebop23 6y ago
I fear I will jinx my 20-yr-old hp 1200 laser jet that's on maybe it's 4(?) toner and hooked up to our home network via a parallel port to usb adapter. It's yellower than an 8-bit computer but still prints great and fast. One of my best tech purchases ever; I'm glad I resisted the lure of color inkjet and spent 3x much for a b&w laser.
- wooptoo 6y ago
  I have one of the same model but it prints very slow. Did you upgrade the RAM on yours?
angled 6y ago
Every person, their dog, and their printer has provided a recommendation thus far, so here are mine: I have a Brother colour duplex printer for bulk printing (was useful for printing weekly school plans before schools went back a few months ago: https://support.brother.com/g/b/spec.aspx?c=us&lang=en&prod=hll3270cdw_us_eu_as https://support.brother.com/g/b/spec.aspx?c=us&lang=en&prod=... . As noted by others, it only supports 2.4GHz WiFi. I use this Canon for scanning and photo printing: https://www.canon.co.uk/printers/pixma-ts9150-series/ https://www.canon.co.uk/printers/pixma-ts9150-series/ It seems to be the best of both worlds for the price point and physical space.
zaarn 6y ago
One year ago I bought a Lexmark Laser Printer (Color) for 60€. I've barely printed more than 12 pages but it doesn't care about the long idling (currently working on disconnecting power when not in use). It prints full-duplex pages with no hardware margin in A4. The color is on par with all the color printers I've used in my life. The replacement toner is 20€. Why would I ever touch anything else?
- roel_v 6y ago
  " (currently working on disconnecting power when not in use" Watch out, modern printers run a full OS that doesn't expect power to be fully cut regularly. My Xerox does a full filesystem check every time I turn the power to it on, which takes about 5 mins. For my next printer I will carefully research how this works on it.
  - zaarn 6y ago
    I'm fine with that. It sits in my homelab rack on the lowest rung, it uses a bunch of power that could be saved. I only print once a month or so, for those cases, it's entirely fine if it takes the 5 minutes it needs to boot.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
ux-app 6y ago
yup 100%. I've been laser now for at least 15 years. The final nail in the coffin for me was when inkjet clearly became a loss leader on the printer made up through exorbitant ink replacement. The final-final nail was when manufacturers started selling all in one cartridges, so that when cyan ran out you could no longer print b/w. fuck.that.
hellweaver666 6y ago
I concur, back in 2011 I bought a Dell 3210 on an amazing deal (buy the toner get the printer free). It has built in networking (wired and wireless). It’s survived four house moves including one international move and works every day. Third party toner cartridges work in it no problem and last forever. I think I’ve bought maybe two sets of toner in the time I’ve owned it. Prints fast and rarely jams. We use online services for photo printing so we almost entirely only use it for documents and for that it’s been flawless.
hlehmann 6y ago
I'm on my 2nd Brother laser printer now, the first one lasted nearly nine years with pretty heavy use (for a home office user). I would never consider going back to the dark days of ink jet.
franga2000 6y ago
The problem is that once you start adding features they get absurdly expensive. The bare minimum for me is color (printing colored things as grayscale in 2020 is frankly an embarrassment), built-in networking, automatic duplex printing and a scanner. But you can't buy just that. The only printers that have those features also have a feeder on the scanner, a fax machine, all kinds of cloud crap, an "app" system (?!?), access control... which drive the price way up the their own - and that's before they slap on the "enterprise" markup because that is no longer considered a SOHO device.
raindropm 6y ago
I bought mine (Canon Laser) about what, 10 years ago? I'd say it's one of the best office appliance I bought and I think it can comfortably last my lifetime. I print some pages about 5 times/year max. The toner that comes with it is nearly running out, but still able to print some greyish image if I want quick physical form of some files. ZERO maintenance. and it's not even the expensive model, it's the base model, almost the cheapest. Such quality, really. On another story, I also used to own Brother's multifunction scanner-inkjet printer. It was a nightmare.
- traceroute66 6y ago
  Canon Laser. Fine, unless you forget the admin PIN/Passowrd, then you're screwed. ;-)
112233 6y ago
I have a smallish Brother inkjet MFD, that absolutely can be left idle, unless you pull the power plug (clogged a few nozzles by leaving it without power) It periodically, uh, does that printhead thing, was idle for a few months, no new clogs. Why it is not common practice for other brands?
hedora 6y ago
I see lots of recommendations for brother laser printers here. One word of warning: Avoid their inkjets. I had one with permanent heads. Less than 100 sheets in, it jammed (this ream was fine with the printer before and after it). It failed to put the head back on top of the seal that keeps it from drying out. I didn’t notice the jam, and a few days later it was permanently ruined. I do recommend the brother ADS line (standalone USB document scanners), with the caveat that the Linux drivers on my old one are x86-only. Inkjets suck. Don’t even think about it. Dye sublimation is (was?) nice. We have a Samsung laser, which is great, except there’s a “disable the wifi until you plug me into ethernet” button labeled WPS on the top that the cats like to press. Also their printer business was acquired by HP, so it’s only a matter of time until HP manages to somehow remote brick it or stop selling consumables.
Koliakis 6y ago
I started up my laser printer after letting it gather dust for a good 4-5 years. It still works as good as new (and it was already 6 years old by then). This thing is unkillable and the toner lasts what feels like forever (while also being absurdly cheap).
EricE 6y ago
And DO NOT buy a multifunction. If you get a printer printer with nothing else Linux, macOS and Windows will probably auto detect and configure it automatically and every time. I freaking hate multifunction printers.

roland35 6y ago

My color laser printer has been working well for years now! Each toner cartridge lasts at least 1000 pages (current winner in my printer is black with 1553 pages). It is a little slow to load big documents but I don't see any need to upgrade any time soon. Wifi was really the latest beneficial technology. HP CP1525nw

myself248 6y ago
Ditto, I picked up a Samsung CLP-620ND in 2010 and it's still going strong. I get about 5000 pages on a black cartridge, about half that on the colors, and it's time for a transfer belt but I think I can probably clean the old one and get a few more years out of it. Screw. Inkjets.
mechanicalpulse 6y ago
I have the same one. Haven’t had any issues with it. I don’t know when I originally bought it, but according to my records, I purchased toner cartridges in 2012, 2015, and 2020. The usage report says I’ve printed 6,111 pages. It has been a fantastic product.

White_Wolf 6y ago

Spot on. Have a laser printer since 2010 and the only thing apart from toner that I had to buy for it was a drum about 2-3 years ago. Not even buying branded toner. Only from Aliexpress. One thing though - it's slow compared to new models.

Quekid5 6y ago

Laser all the way, baby! ... although I was disappointed recently by my usual go-to of the Brother brand. Their Linux/CUPS drivers are some sort of bizarre concoction of Perl scripts and x32 binaries... and still cannot print in duplex :/. (I believe the duplex problem is probably a typo somewhere in the PPD or Perl script, but I don't know enough about PPDs and/or Perl scripts to be sure. I do know programming, hence my suspicion.) Lesson is: Research if the EXACT printer you're purchasing is supported by the usual Gutenprint or whatever.

Blackthorn 6y ago
Brother drivers are every bit as crap as every other brand. I have one of their all-in-one office machines. It prints pretty well. The wireless scan is complete garbage. A known issue with their drivers, apparently.
lmm 6y ago
Brother's Linux support is notoriously awful. HP are the only manufacturer who treats Linux as first-class; Epson comes close.
- vetinari 6y ago
  Warning: HP has bought Samsung printer division few years ago. As a result, there are HP-branded printers that are really Samsung inside, and they need the uld driver, which is binary-only abandonware. So caveat emptor.
  - chongli 6y ago
    Is there an easy way to identify these cloaked Samsung printers? Like a different model number or something?
    - vetinari 6y ago
      Not sure whether there is any systematic way to identify them. I've been looking for a cheap b/w laser for my parents and have found HP LaserJet 135/135w. It looked very familiar, and behold, it is a rebranded Samsung SL-M2070w that I have in the office. Hardware-wise, it is actually a nice printer. Software-wise... It works in Linux, but you have to install the binary-only uld driver. For MacOS it is more interesting: printing is not a problem, scanning in B/w is also OK, but scanning in Image Capture/Preview in color into PDF produces garbage output. What works is scanning in color into TIFF, then stitching and reexporting into PDF manually. The alternative, the EasyScan Samsung software no longer works in Catalina, it has 32-bit components. Edit: from the ppds in the driver package, they are: * HP Laser 10x Series * HP Laser MFP 13x Series * HP Color Laser 15x Series * HP Color MFP 17x Series

shwoopdiwoop 6y ago

Laser printers are better in so many ways. Just make sure that they are not placed too closely next to your desk or in rooms where you spend a lot of time in since they can emit toner dust and volatile compounds that could potentially be harmful to one’s health over a long period of time.

franga2000 6y ago
Seriously? If that is true, how have the manufacturers not gotten sued into oblivion?? This seems like the kind of thing that would be easy to prevent and a liability nightmare if you don't, so I doubt the companies would sell that kind of product.
- bananasbandanas 6y ago
  In Germany at least, companies are not allowed to put the printer in 'busy' areas. Starting from a certain company size, a seperate room may even be required. I believe particulates are explicitly given as a reason for this. I'm also not sure how this would be 'easy' to prevent, without adding a whole sealed enclosure around the printer.
  - amelius 6y ago
    At least they could provide a fume/dust extraction point, similar to those found on things like SMD reflow ovens.
- hurrrrrrrr 6y ago
  Because the danger of fume is negligible. It's a thing if you put it in a 2m^2 storeroom and sniff the exhaust for 8 hours straight but in any other case it doesn't come close to concentrations you get on the street anyway.
Koliakis 6y ago
I've been looking into this and couldn't find any studies or reports that showed any notable negative effect of particulate emissions by laser printers.

rektide 6y ago

I like the suggestion. For most people I think laser printers probably are a huge win. As someone who mainly wants to print some photos now & then, sometimes in large-ish sizes, I'm not sure if there are offerings that will suit me here. Where-as, when they are running well, there are some very nice many color inkjets. There have been some neat attempts to make economical better inkjet printers. Epson make a L1800 wide format printer with 6 refillable "ecotank" ink tanks, but it was targeted for non-primary markets & vanished with no replacement. Whether it was any more reliable than the other notoriously finnicky inkjets, and what, exactly, it's quality was, are unknown. But I think it's an interesting example of a product that was willing to break product segmentation boundaries that have been long standing, and deliver a lot of great capabilities- tank based rather than cartridges, many colors, wide format, good specs- at a very competitive price point, many times less expensive than what one would normally have to pay for such a printer. To me, it seems like strong evidence that the problem is markets, markets that don't want to compete, & that are reluctant to deliver better capabilities. Companies would rather raise the limbo bar, allow a little more fat; pushing for better is hard, but also, why do it, if you don't have to? Sell & compete at the next tier up.

ogre_codes 6y ago
If you print less than monthly, you are likely better just taking your print jobs to Kinkos, Costco, FedEx, etc... you'll likely get better quality prints too.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  But then your e.g. tax return may be stored on a hard drive that gets found when the printer/copier is recycled.
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    The comment I was replying to was referring to photos, not tax returns. I file taxes electronically, in fact almost every legal document I've had to print in years has been done electronically. But if you are worried about that, this thread is about having laser printers which are quite good at leaving in the closet so you can print your annual tax returns.

ogre_codes 6y ago

This is almost exactly my reply. I don't print a ton anymore, but I've bought exactly 2 laser printers in the past 25 years, the first I think I replaced because it was less expensive to replace than buy toner. The second I still own. Ink jet never seems to last more than a year.

jjav 6y ago

Absolutely. Went through several inkjet printers and all they did was raise my blood pressure. Finally wisened up and bought a (Brother) color laser ~9 years ago and it has been flawless.

kayson 6y ago

I completely agree. I have a Samsung ML-2510 laser printer that's been going on at least 15 years now. It's old enough that it has a parallel port...

mcv 6y ago

There are still many ways for laser printers to suck. My Samsung C460, for example, gets a paper jam just about every other sheet. Or imagines a paper jam, because quite often there's no problem at all, but it complains anyway. I also suspect that just about any wireless printer will suck when used with Windows. Windows certainly has a lot of trouble finding mine.

abfan1127 6y ago
My Canon works pretty seamlessly with my windows and mac computers. I've had it for a while and its reliable. https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/products/details/printers/color-laser/color-imageclass-lbp612cdw https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/products/d...

youeseh 6y ago

This advice was true 20 years ago, and it is just as true today.

crazygringo 6y ago

Seriously. Brother has sold laser printers under $100 for many years now -- they're reliable and last seemingly forever, and toner is cheap. Why any average consumer buys inkjets anymore is a mystery to me. If you need to print documents for personal or basic business use, a B&W laser printer is the way to go. If you need fancier printouts of slides or product info to hand out to clients, a color laser printer is the way to go. And if you need to print photos, order them online from a professional photo printing service. I don't actually understand who the market for home inkjet printers is anymore. (Inkjets have their place for certain niche uses like larger-format photography printing, but that's not really the "home" market anymore, more a professional or at minimum prosumer market.)

calmworm 6y ago
Agreed. Inkjet makes little sense. I’ve had a $60 (on sale) Brother laser printer for 10+ years. I finally had to buy new toner just this year. Still prints like the day I bought it.
- qes 6y ago
  I had a B&W LaserJet for so long that I couldn't easily get it to work on Windows anymore, which is rare, especially for a basic printer. It seemed likely possible as a slightly later but very similar model was still in the included drivers, but it was a decade+ old. Even color laserjets are decently cheap these days.
simias 6y ago
I think many people don't know better and when you go to a store you see ultra-cheap inkjet that can print in color or significantly more expensive B&W laser (or much more significantly expensive color laser, that's still not as good for pictures) and if you don't know any better it's hard to justify going for the laser. I suspect that they might also be a strange factor that inkjet managed to corner the market by being crap, and not despite of it. People now effectively expect two things about personal printers: - They're cheap - They're crap TFA is an example of this mindset. But then if you go to the store expecting to get a piece of shit printer, you're clearly going for the cheapest available option. Which means that you get a crap inkjet that you'll have to replace in two years, and then you'll buy an other crap cheap inkjet. But I agree with both of you: after a few iterations of this cycle I finally decided to know better and bought the cheapest Brother B&W laser printer and it's been a joy. It just works.

vaccinator 6y ago

I like the laser printer that I bought a year ago because it is fast but I haven't had issues with the HP PSC 1410 inkjet printer that I bought about 10 years ago...

daniellarusso 6y ago

The reason I prefer HP Laserjets to Brother laser printers, I believe when you replace the cartridge in the HP, it contains the fuser and the toner. The Brother is a separate fuser that is replaced after some number of toner replacements. I am not sure if it is still like this for Brothers.

dragonwriter 6y ago
For the brother multifunctions I've used, the fuser is replaced at 100k-120k pages; the large toner cartridges are like 6k pages. So, yeah, you don't replace the fuser with every toner replacement, but I don't see how that's a mark in favor of HP, if they replaced it with the toner (but doing some googling, it looks like HP also uses separate fuser kits.)

vmception 6y ago

this doesn't answer everything outside the print capabilities such as: why can't I scan to the SD card inserted, is there no write capability? why is this wireless printer looking for a wired computer to scan to? why can I only scan to Google Drive or Dropbox? why is it app so slow? why can't I just tap it with NFC or bluetooth to get this data? Just like really common frustrations which should be default by now in even the cheapest models.

squarefoot 6y ago

> Inkjet is garbage and cannot handle being left idle for any period of time. Modern printers are much better in this context, however what you pointed is true. To avoid heads clogging, when I moved from Laser to Inkjet, I planned a way to save the printer from inactivity by preparing a directory of family photos I already planned to print, but instead of printing lots of them in a single take, I print each of them every two weeks, so the printer heads never get dried. The printer is a Epson WP4515, and of course I use refilled consumables (€3.50 per cartridge). Admittedly from time to time I forgot about printing my photos, nothing that one or two heads cleaning passes couldn't solve. In short, it is definitely possible to have an Inkjet printer, make it print no more than a few hundred photos in years, but never clog a head or have to ditch new cartridges or worse, that is, an extremely low cost of operation. It requires some attention though.

duozerk 6y ago
Even assuming you dedicate such time to it, very often the hardware itself is pretty poor and fails you. I recently had to basically take apart an (admittedly cheap) HP inkjet printer in order to reposition part of a hall-effect switch that helped it detect a paper jam - it was detecting a jam continuously because of it. And because the same printer hadn't been used in 5 months, I also had to clean the clogged head with a syringe afterwards.

ValentineC 6y ago

Laser printers aren't excluded from toner DRM. I have a Samsung CLP-315W, and kept having problems detecting my first-party replacement toner cartridges because there were DRM chips in them [1]. I think a firmware upgrade even made the DRM worse. This was almost a decade ago. If I had to get a high-volume home printer now, I'd probably consider one with refillable ink tanks. [1] http://fcartegnie.free.fr/lines/?p=25 http://fcartegnie.free.fr/lines/?p=25

jimmaswell 6y ago

The cheap laser printer I got on Amazon a while ago has been trouble-free so far.

userbinator 6y ago

I suspect you are not in SE Asia or another region with a very humid climate, where the opposite is true. In dry climates, inkjet heads will clog. In wet climates, laser toner will clump. Inkjets with CIS mods (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_ink_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_ink_system ) are extremely popular in SE Asia.

dghughes 6y ago

I've had an HP multifunction laser printer for at least 5 years maybe 8 years. In that time I've bought two black toner cartridges and no colour cartridges. This time period included going back to school, a technical college, where I printed a ton of reports (and many misprints).

pitay 6y ago

Try to get a laser with automatic duplex printing if you want to save paper. With manual duplex printing mistakes can cost a significant proportion of paper and may require significant amounts of effort to do correctly. I currently have a Brother HL-2140 (also has HL-21 model number) and it has 'manual duplex'. This means if I want to save paper I have to mark a corner of the first page before printing and see what orientation it prints compared to that mark (it is not intuitive). I have been printing one page at a time because of this, although now I have written this down I realise I could do better.

gtm1260 6y ago

If you read the article, the reason why he cannot print has nothing to do with the type of printer he has :) It's all to do with an idiotic "always connected to the internet" subscription plan.

abrookewood 6y ago

Yes, this is the answer. I'm looking at a HP LaserJet 1320N next to my desk that is yellow with age and it still manages to smash out B&W pages at a solid clip. I think it's close to 16 years old and I've bought exactly 3 ink refills.

josh64 6y ago
I have this exact printer and I love it. Just bought another toner cartridge (non-Genuine) for it.
jabl 6y ago
I had a laserjet 1200 for a very long time, must have been 15 years or so. But it developed a problem where it would often pull multiple sheets at a time, and when the toner ran out I conveniently got my hands on a laserjet P2055dn that my old job was throwing out. Threw in a 3rd party toner cartridge (I guess that model is old enough to not suffer from the DRM crap of newer models) and it was good to go. Been rock solid so far. That being said, based on what people write every time this topic comes up, whenever this one dies I'll replace it with a Brother.

nogabebop23 6y ago

I fear I will jinx my 20-yr-old hp 1200 laser jet that's on maybe it's 4(?) toner and hooked up to our home network via a parallel port to usb adapter. It's yellower than an 8-bit computer but still prints great and fast. One of my best tech purchases ever; I'm glad I resisted the lure of color inkjet and spent 3x much for a b&w laser.

wooptoo 6y ago
I have one of the same model but it prints very slow. Did you upgrade the RAM on yours?

angled 6y ago

Every person, their dog, and their printer has provided a recommendation thus far, so here are mine: I have a Brother colour duplex printer for bulk printing (was useful for printing weekly school plans before schools went back a few months ago: https://support.brother.com/g/b/spec.aspx?c=us&lang=en&prod=hll3270cdw_us_eu_as https://support.brother.com/g/b/spec.aspx?c=us&lang=en&prod=... . As noted by others, it only supports 2.4GHz WiFi. I use this Canon for scanning and photo printing: https://www.canon.co.uk/printers/pixma-ts9150-series/ https://www.canon.co.uk/printers/pixma-ts9150-series/ It seems to be the best of both worlds for the price point and physical space.

zaarn 6y ago

One year ago I bought a Lexmark Laser Printer (Color) for 60€. I've barely printed more than 12 pages but it doesn't care about the long idling (currently working on disconnecting power when not in use). It prints full-duplex pages with no hardware margin in A4. The color is on par with all the color printers I've used in my life. The replacement toner is 20€. Why would I ever touch anything else?

roel_v 6y ago
" (currently working on disconnecting power when not in use" Watch out, modern printers run a full OS that doesn't expect power to be fully cut regularly. My Xerox does a full filesystem check every time I turn the power to it on, which takes about 5 mins. For my next printer I will carefully research how this works on it.
- zaarn 6y ago
  I'm fine with that. It sits in my homelab rack on the lowest rung, it uses a bunch of power that could be saved. I only print once a month or so, for those cases, it's entirely fine if it takes the 5 minutes it needs to boot.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

ux-app 6y ago

yup 100%. I've been laser now for at least 15 years. The final nail in the coffin for me was when inkjet clearly became a loss leader on the printer made up through exorbitant ink replacement. The final-final nail was when manufacturers started selling all in one cartridges, so that when cyan ran out you could no longer print b/w. fuck.that.

hellweaver666 6y ago

I concur, back in 2011 I bought a Dell 3210 on an amazing deal (buy the toner get the printer free). It has built in networking (wired and wireless). It’s survived four house moves including one international move and works every day. Third party toner cartridges work in it no problem and last forever. I think I’ve bought maybe two sets of toner in the time I’ve owned it. Prints fast and rarely jams. We use online services for photo printing so we almost entirely only use it for documents and for that it’s been flawless.

hlehmann 6y ago

I'm on my 2nd Brother laser printer now, the first one lasted nearly nine years with pretty heavy use (for a home office user). I would never consider going back to the dark days of ink jet.

franga2000 6y ago

The problem is that once you start adding features they get absurdly expensive. The bare minimum for me is color (printing colored things as grayscale in 2020 is frankly an embarrassment), built-in networking, automatic duplex printing and a scanner. But you can't buy just that. The only printers that have those features also have a feeder on the scanner, a fax machine, all kinds of cloud crap, an "app" system (?!?), access control... which drive the price way up the their own - and that's before they slap on the "enterprise" markup because that is no longer considered a SOHO device.

raindropm 6y ago

I bought mine (Canon Laser) about what, 10 years ago? I'd say it's one of the best office appliance I bought and I think it can comfortably last my lifetime. I print some pages about 5 times/year max. The toner that comes with it is nearly running out, but still able to print some greyish image if I want quick physical form of some files. ZERO maintenance. and it's not even the expensive model, it's the base model, almost the cheapest. Such quality, really. On another story, I also used to own Brother's multifunction scanner-inkjet printer. It was a nightmare.

traceroute66 6y ago
Canon Laser. Fine, unless you forget the admin PIN/Passowrd, then you're screwed. ;-)

112233 6y ago

I have a smallish Brother inkjet MFD, that absolutely can be left idle, unless you pull the power plug (clogged a few nozzles by leaving it without power) It periodically, uh, does that printhead thing, was idle for a few months, no new clogs. Why it is not common practice for other brands?

hedora 6y ago

I see lots of recommendations for brother laser printers here. One word of warning: Avoid their inkjets. I had one with permanent heads. Less than 100 sheets in, it jammed (this ream was fine with the printer before and after it). It failed to put the head back on top of the seal that keeps it from drying out. I didn’t notice the jam, and a few days later it was permanently ruined. I do recommend the brother ADS line (standalone USB document scanners), with the caveat that the Linux drivers on my old one are x86-only. Inkjets suck. Don’t even think about it. Dye sublimation is (was?) nice. We have a Samsung laser, which is great, except there’s a “disable the wifi until you plug me into ethernet” button labeled WPS on the top that the cats like to press. Also their printer business was acquired by HP, so it’s only a matter of time until HP manages to somehow remote brick it or stop selling consumables.

Koliakis 6y ago

I started up my laser printer after letting it gather dust for a good 4-5 years. It still works as good as new (and it was already 6 years old by then). This thing is unkillable and the toner lasts what feels like forever (while also being absurdly cheap).

EricE 6y ago

And DO NOT buy a multifunction. If you get a printer printer with nothing else Linux, macOS and Windows will probably auto detect and configure it automatically and every time. I freaking hate multifunction printers.