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It's just math. If you don't print much, you can get a HP printer for $30. The cheapest Brother laser printer is $100 + ink. At $1/mo, it's going to 6 years (

It's just math. If you don't print much, you can get a HP printer for $30. The cheapest Brother laser printer is $100 + ink. At $1/mo, it's going to 6 years (thanks Ansil) for the price to work out in favor of the Brother. And to the people saying brothers last forever: they don't. I've owned 3. When the drum wears out, the printer is trash because brother charges almost the cost of the printer for a replacement. That $100 brother has a drum that costs $89 and lasts for 12000 pages. So 12000 pages is the life of that printer. Edit: Re: ink drying out. HP doesn't consider printer cleaning and maintenance pages in their page count. So you can actually clean the printer regularly so the ink doesnt dry out, and they'll keep sending you new cartridges.

jasonjayr 6y ago
For that $30; you also get 1GB of software installed to your computer with all sorts of ads and telemetry sending data back to HP, and making any print operation bring your computer to it's knees, and invoke all sorts of popups.
- t0astbread 6y ago
  I don't know what comes with a $30 HP printer these days but I'm using HPLIP and I'm quite happy with it. Granted, I've never audited it but it's in the Debian repos and I've never heard anything bad about it either. Or did you mean something else?
  - jasonjayr 6y ago
    On Windows, it's pretty bad. I understand HP has acceptable Linux support, and the driver package on a Linux platform is not as intrusive as the Windows side.
    - t0astbread 6y ago
      Ah, I see. I suspected that but I wasn't sure. Which makes me wonder why they're even doing HPLIP in the first place. Printing is only really a thing on the desktop and in business networks but in both cases I'd guess the majority of HP's customers are using Windows.
robbyt 6y ago
If you don't print much, your inkjet printer will probably not work when you actually need it.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- mike-cardwell 6y ago
  This was me until a few months ago. If you don't print frequently you have two options: 1. Buy an inkjet and pray that it prints every time you need to use it. 2. Spend a little more for a lazer and never worry again.
  - himlion 6y ago
    3. Use the public library
    - jfk13 6y ago
      Not such an attractive option this year.
    - sethhochberg 6y ago
      I don't know exactly what premium I'm paying per-page to print stuff at the FedEx Office location a couple of blocks away on the rare occasions when I really need something on paper, but whenever I see a discussion like this about the endless compromises and annoyances in home printer ownership I feel like I'm really getting a bargain by comparison
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    Inkjets only make sense if you print a lot of photographs, which is a vanishingly tiny portion of the market.
- 8ytecoder 6y ago
  Don’t print much != never print anything. I print approximately 20 pages a month. I have been paying $1 every two months for it. Now I’ll be paying on average $3 every two months. I hate HP for doing this but this is not enough of an impetus for me to move now. I paid $30 for the printer. I prefer inkjet because I print photos and recipes. I’ll be moving to an EPSON tank when I decide I’m done with HP. But for now it’s actually a great service for me. (It’s just my preference)
everdrive 6y ago
That still sounds cheaper than the HP when the cost of ink is considered. More importantly, if you don't print often, your dry toner will continue to be useful after sitting for 3 months.
ponker 6y ago
If you leave an HP inkjet for a few months will it still print or be clogged?
- albatross13 6y ago
  Not without it doing a substantial amount of 'self cleaning'. If you print infrequently, a laser printer is actually a better use case. Frequent printing, namely of photographs, is a good use case for inkjet.
  - rootusrootus 6y ago
    And even then, a consumer inkjet doesn't do that great a job on photos. You're much better off having someone like Walgreens do it for you. Faster and better, still cheap.
  - GekkePrutser 6y ago
    And, many printers pick up the spilled 'self cleaning' ink in a tank, and when it's full they refuse to work any longer. It a total scam.
  - jfk13 6y ago
    Although depending on the paper and ink involved, the quality and longevity of your inkjet-printed photographs may turn out to be disappointing.
  - secabeen 6y ago
    HP's Instant ink does solve this problem. They charge per-page, so you can automatically run self-cleaning every few days at zero cost to the consumer.
falcolas 6y ago
Sometimes, $100 is worth not being stuck in a crappy "ink as a service" contract designed to extract the maximum amount of money from your pocket. As an aside, for a "don't print much" point of view, 12,000 pages is a long time (I, for example, print about 100 or so pages a year, which would give me a lot of time with my hypothetical Brother printer).
- goldcd 6y ago
  I don't think that's the point of the service. It's: A) A way of getting people over that "How much for an official replacement cart‽" hump, which often causes them to buy 'fake' ahem carts, or a new printer B) A way of getting people who "don't think they need a printer" to get a printer knowing what their costs will actually be up front.
  - falcolas 6y ago
    > causes them to buy 'fake' ahem carts A system that addresses one point is still capable of addressing a second - extracting a maximum 'value' from their customers. > get a printer knowing what their costs will actually be up front I'm sorry, but a company that changes the price of the contract is the complete - ideologically and practically - opposite of "knowing [your] costs up front".
    - goldcd 6y ago
      From HP's point of view of not given them a penny for maybe 20 years - and now I'm paying them $2 a month. They can knock off the cost of making and sending me a new cart - but they're ahead from this. A transaction has occurred due to this innovation and both sides are 'happy'. Innovation/Capitalism - should be catnip to this audience. I agree that I can't predict the costs exactly - but ballpark is good enough. Like cutting the cord. You don't know how your cable price might change, Netflix prices might increase, your provider might shift cost to your broadband to compensate - but for now it works out and presuming nothing major changes, you'll be fine with incremental stuff and maybe make another bold decision in a few years.
idiot900 6y ago
You can get an aftermarket drum for a bit cheaper in many cases.
- born_a_skeptic 6y ago
  Yea, I've done this several times. My brother printer finally wore out at 3 years of pretty heavy use.
rootusrootus 6y ago
That laser printer goes on sale often, frequently for $50, and periodically for $40. [0] Also, it comes with toner. Just a starter cartridge, granted, but if you're not printing much it will last years. [0] https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B00NQ1CLTI https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B00NQ1CLTI
- B1FF_PSUVM 6y ago
  Brother HL-L2300D Monochrome Laser Printer with Duplex Printing Thank you, that's exactly what I needed: a reliable compact duplex printer (to carry most of the burden of the old color MFP that now jams every second page ...) Edit: Seems to have been replaced by the HL-L2310D, or HL-L2350DW with WiFi
kingnothing 6y ago
I've had my Brother laser printer since '11 and have replaced the toner cartridge once in '15. Still works great. I probably would have gone through 5 HP printers in that span.
Nursie 6y ago
So far I'm still going on the 3000 page toner "starter kit" that came with my (HP) colour laser four years ago. If that $100 brother is 'only' going to last me around ten years, it's probably beating the HP inkjet on price. That $30 HP isn't going to last forever either, and will need periodic replacement.
daveFNbuck 6y ago
If you don't print much, 12000 pages is the lifetime of the printer. I've had a cheap laser printer for about 6 years now, and I only think about it once or twice a year when I need to print something. I don't do any maintenance, and I don't worry about the ink drying out. I wouldn't take a one-time payment of $70 in exchange for having to do regular printer ink maintenance for 6 years, so it makes sense to pay an extra $70 to avoid that. Paying the extra $70 makes even more sense if you factor in the fact that I'd actually have saved $72 in monthly payments over that time period.
Ansil849 6y ago
> It's just math. If you don't print much, you can get a HP printer for $30. > > The cheapest Brother laser printer is $100 + ink. > > At $1/mo, it's going to take the rest of your life for the price to work out in favor of the Brother. What? At $1/mo, it is going to take under six years for the price to work out in favor of the Brother. Are you suggesting the person you're responding to has six years to live?
- rgbrenner 6y ago
  lol thanks... should have had more coffee before writing. Was thinking $1/year.
  - snvzz 6y ago
    >$1/year. At that rate of printing, ink is going to dry up in the headers. Which would require running the cleaning procedures. Which use a lot of ink. Ink printers are a really bad proposition.
jellicle 6y ago
Huh, I see two replacement toner cartridges AND a drum for my Brother printer for $40. (Not Brother branded, but that's the point: you can use competing products because Brother doesn't stop you.) You should shop around.
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
>At $1/mo, it's going to take the rest of your life for the price to work out in favor of the Brother. $1/mo = $12/y (7 * 12) + 30 = 114 Do you know something about the rest of my life that I need to know? How much time do I actually have left!?
NortySpock 6y ago
Brother Monochrome Laser Printer, HL-L2320D $100 USD + tax, but you get a starter cartridge, so you don't need to pay for toner immediately. AND it has a duplexer so 2-sided printing is included. Toner is $40 for 1,200 pages. https://www.officedepot.com/a/products/733081/Brother-Monochrome-Laser-Printer-HL-L2320D/ https://www.officedepot.com/a/products/733081/Brother-Monoch... I have not yet hit the drum-replacement point on my Brother color printer yet so we'll see where that goes.
- a_e_k 6y ago
  I picked up that model for $80ish a few years ago on Black Friday at Best Buy. For those with the patience, it could be worth waiting a couple of weeks. (And I've been very happy with it for my needs.)
bityard 6y ago
> If you don't print much, you can get a HP printer for $30. Those $30 printers either don't come with ink cartridges or they come with very small "starter" cartridges, good for a few dozen pages at the most. > The cheapest Brother laser printer is $100 + ink. Toner, actually. The $100 Brother printer does come with a "starter" cartridge but it prints 700 pages. So even if you threw the printer away after the starter cartridge ran out, you'd still be paying $0.17 per sheet as opposed to the $30 inkjet's initial cost of $1.25 per sheet for the first cartridge. If we're talking refills then, I can buy an aftermarket toner cartridge for my laser printer for under $20 and that yields 2600 pages. ($0.008/sheet). Black HP 67XL ink (240 pages) works out to $0.10/sheet. The laser is an order of magnitude less in both scenarios. The drum unit in mine did start going bad after 3-4 years. I bought a new drum on Amazon for $20, far less than what I originally paid for the printer. It has been going strong for a few years since.
- secabeen 6y ago
  HPs instant ink program lets you print full page prints in full color for the same price. Costco charges $2 each for 8x10 enlargements. Given that HPs base add-on rate is $0.10/pg, there are environments where that could make sense. Kinkos and Fedex routinely charge $0.50/pg for color prints. Sure, I wouldn't print 500 pages of B&W text on instant ink, but when printing things that require color, it's not ridiculously expensive.
addicted 6y ago
$1/month buys you 15 pages of printing. That’s a joke. A more realistic plan is the $3/mo for 50 pages (still not much for an average printer owner, but not the joke 15 pages is). At that price your math is adding up in less than 2 years. My highly used $30 Canon printer is in its 4th year, and 3rd cartridge. I’m well ahead of where I would have been with the HP (I print about 3-4 pages a day, so I’d probably have had to shell out for the $5 or $12 plan). Also, much like most subscription services, even if the math works out, it only does until the next change in the pricing plan.
- colinmhayes 6y ago
  I probably print a page every other day at most. So 15 pages isn't a joke for me, it's perfect.
xenocyon 6y ago
> it's going to 6 years (thanks Ansil) for the price to work out in favor of the Brother. 6 years is not a very long time. I've had my Brother laser printer for a decade now, am as happy as the day I bought it, and can easily imagine using it for another decade or more. We need to rid ourselves of the mindset that electronic devices are inherently short-lived.
addicted 6y ago
12000 pages at HP’s $1 plan will cost you $800 to print assuming you actually print 15 pages a month and don’t go months where you printed less. Their most cost effective $25/700 pages plan will cost you over $425 to print that much assuming you use up the entire quota each month.
anigbrowl 6y ago
$100 for a laser printer is stupid cheap. Like, it's kinda wasteful because it will someday end up in a landfill, but I've been printing a few hundred pages a year off this Brother for ages now and it Just Works. It's noisy, the driver is not very user friendly, I don't enjoy scanning with it, but if it dies I'll probably just get another one.
omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
That's assuming they keep the price at $1/month. It was free for "life", so I'm skeptical they'll keep prices at $1/month for 6 years.

jasonjayr 6y ago

For that $30; you also get 1GB of software installed to your computer with all sorts of ads and telemetry sending data back to HP, and making any print operation bring your computer to it's knees, and invoke all sorts of popups.

t0astbread 6y ago
I don't know what comes with a $30 HP printer these days but I'm using HPLIP and I'm quite happy with it. Granted, I've never audited it but it's in the Debian repos and I've never heard anything bad about it either. Or did you mean something else?
- jasonjayr 6y ago
  On Windows, it's pretty bad. I understand HP has acceptable Linux support, and the driver package on a Linux platform is not as intrusive as the Windows side.
  - t0astbread 6y ago
    Ah, I see. I suspected that but I wasn't sure. Which makes me wonder why they're even doing HPLIP in the first place. Printing is only really a thing on the desktop and in business networks but in both cases I'd guess the majority of HP's customers are using Windows.

robbyt 6y ago

If you don't print much, your inkjet printer will probably not work when you actually need it.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mike-cardwell 6y ago
This was me until a few months ago. If you don't print frequently you have two options: 1. Buy an inkjet and pray that it prints every time you need to use it. 2. Spend a little more for a lazer and never worry again.
- himlion 6y ago
  3. Use the public library
  - jfk13 6y ago
    Not such an attractive option this year.
  - sethhochberg 6y ago
    I don't know exactly what premium I'm paying per-page to print stuff at the FedEx Office location a couple of blocks away on the rare occasions when I really need something on paper, but whenever I see a discussion like this about the endless compromises and annoyances in home printer ownership I feel like I'm really getting a bargain by comparison
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Inkjets only make sense if you print a lot of photographs, which is a vanishingly tiny portion of the market.
8ytecoder 6y ago
Don’t print much != never print anything. I print approximately 20 pages a month. I have been paying $1 every two months for it. Now I’ll be paying on average $3 every two months. I hate HP for doing this but this is not enough of an impetus for me to move now. I paid $30 for the printer. I prefer inkjet because I print photos and recipes. I’ll be moving to an EPSON tank when I decide I’m done with HP. But for now it’s actually a great service for me. (It’s just my preference)

everdrive 6y ago

That still sounds cheaper than the HP when the cost of ink is considered. More importantly, if you don't print often, your dry toner will continue to be useful after sitting for 3 months.

ponker 6y ago

If you leave an HP inkjet for a few months will it still print or be clogged?

albatross13 6y ago
Not without it doing a substantial amount of 'self cleaning'. If you print infrequently, a laser printer is actually a better use case. Frequent printing, namely of photographs, is a good use case for inkjet.
- rootusrootus 6y ago
  And even then, a consumer inkjet doesn't do that great a job on photos. You're much better off having someone like Walgreens do it for you. Faster and better, still cheap.
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  And, many printers pick up the spilled 'self cleaning' ink in a tank, and when it's full they refuse to work any longer. It a total scam.
- jfk13 6y ago
  Although depending on the paper and ink involved, the quality and longevity of your inkjet-printed photographs may turn out to be disappointing.
- secabeen 6y ago
  HP's Instant ink does solve this problem. They charge per-page, so you can automatically run self-cleaning every few days at zero cost to the consumer.

falcolas 6y ago

Sometimes, $100 is worth not being stuck in a crappy "ink as a service" contract designed to extract the maximum amount of money from your pocket. As an aside, for a "don't print much" point of view, 12,000 pages is a long time (I, for example, print about 100 or so pages a year, which would give me a lot of time with my hypothetical Brother printer).

goldcd 6y ago
I don't think that's the point of the service. It's: A) A way of getting people over that "How much for an official replacement cart‽" hump, which often causes them to buy 'fake' ahem carts, or a new printer B) A way of getting people who "don't think they need a printer" to get a printer knowing what their costs will actually be up front.
- falcolas 6y ago
  > causes them to buy 'fake' ahem carts A system that addresses one point is still capable of addressing a second - extracting a maximum 'value' from their customers. > get a printer knowing what their costs will actually be up front I'm sorry, but a company that changes the price of the contract is the complete - ideologically and practically - opposite of "knowing [your] costs up front".
  - goldcd 6y ago
    From HP's point of view of not given them a penny for maybe 20 years - and now I'm paying them $2 a month. They can knock off the cost of making and sending me a new cart - but they're ahead from this. A transaction has occurred due to this innovation and both sides are 'happy'. Innovation/Capitalism - should be catnip to this audience. I agree that I can't predict the costs exactly - but ballpark is good enough. Like cutting the cord. You don't know how your cable price might change, Netflix prices might increase, your provider might shift cost to your broadband to compensate - but for now it works out and presuming nothing major changes, you'll be fine with incremental stuff and maybe make another bold decision in a few years.

idiot900 6y ago

You can get an aftermarket drum for a bit cheaper in many cases.

born_a_skeptic 6y ago
Yea, I've done this several times. My brother printer finally wore out at 3 years of pretty heavy use.

rootusrootus 6y ago

That laser printer goes on sale often, frequently for $50, and periodically for $40. [0] Also, it comes with toner. Just a starter cartridge, granted, but if you're not printing much it will last years. [0] https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B00NQ1CLTI https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B00NQ1CLTI

B1FF_PSUVM 6y ago
Brother HL-L2300D Monochrome Laser Printer with Duplex Printing Thank you, that's exactly what I needed: a reliable compact duplex printer (to carry most of the burden of the old color MFP that now jams every second page ...) Edit: Seems to have been replaced by the HL-L2310D, or HL-L2350DW with WiFi

kingnothing 6y ago

I've had my Brother laser printer since '11 and have replaced the toner cartridge once in '15. Still works great. I probably would have gone through 5 HP printers in that span.

Nursie 6y ago

So far I'm still going on the 3000 page toner "starter kit" that came with my (HP) colour laser four years ago. If that $100 brother is 'only' going to last me around ten years, it's probably beating the HP inkjet on price. That $30 HP isn't going to last forever either, and will need periodic replacement.

daveFNbuck 6y ago

If you don't print much, 12000 pages is the lifetime of the printer. I've had a cheap laser printer for about 6 years now, and I only think about it once or twice a year when I need to print something. I don't do any maintenance, and I don't worry about the ink drying out. I wouldn't take a one-time payment of $70 in exchange for having to do regular printer ink maintenance for 6 years, so it makes sense to pay an extra $70 to avoid that. Paying the extra $70 makes even more sense if you factor in the fact that I'd actually have saved $72 in monthly payments over that time period.

Ansil849 6y ago

> It's just math. If you don't print much, you can get a HP printer for $30. > > The cheapest Brother laser printer is $100 + ink. > > At $1/mo, it's going to take the rest of your life for the price to work out in favor of the Brother. What? At $1/mo, it is going to take under six years for the price to work out in favor of the Brother. Are you suggesting the person you're responding to has six years to live?

rgbrenner 6y ago
lol thanks... should have had more coffee before writing. Was thinking $1/year.
- snvzz 6y ago
  >$1/year. At that rate of printing, ink is going to dry up in the headers. Which would require running the cleaning procedures. Which use a lot of ink. Ink printers are a really bad proposition.

jellicle 6y ago

Huh, I see two replacement toner cartridges AND a drum for my Brother printer for $40. (Not Brother branded, but that's the point: you can use competing products because Brother doesn't stop you.) You should shop around.

bryanrasmussen 6y ago

>At $1/mo, it's going to take the rest of your life for the price to work out in favor of the Brother. $1/mo = $12/y (7 * 12) + 30 = 114 Do you know something about the rest of my life that I need to know? How much time do I actually have left!?

NortySpock 6y ago

Brother Monochrome Laser Printer, HL-L2320D $100 USD + tax, but you get a starter cartridge, so you don't need to pay for toner immediately. AND it has a duplexer so 2-sided printing is included. Toner is $40 for 1,200 pages. https://www.officedepot.com/a/products/733081/Brother-Monochrome-Laser-Printer-HL-L2320D/ https://www.officedepot.com/a/products/733081/Brother-Monoch... I have not yet hit the drum-replacement point on my Brother color printer yet so we'll see where that goes.

a_e_k 6y ago
I picked up that model for $80ish a few years ago on Black Friday at Best Buy. For those with the patience, it could be worth waiting a couple of weeks. (And I've been very happy with it for my needs.)

bityard 6y ago

> If you don't print much, you can get a HP printer for $30. Those $30 printers either don't come with ink cartridges or they come with very small "starter" cartridges, good for a few dozen pages at the most. > The cheapest Brother laser printer is $100 + ink. Toner, actually. The $100 Brother printer does come with a "starter" cartridge but it prints 700 pages. So even if you threw the printer away after the starter cartridge ran out, you'd still be paying $0.17 per sheet as opposed to the $30 inkjet's initial cost of $1.25 per sheet for the first cartridge. If we're talking refills then, I can buy an aftermarket toner cartridge for my laser printer for under $20 and that yields 2600 pages. ($0.008/sheet). Black HP 67XL ink (240 pages) works out to $0.10/sheet. The laser is an order of magnitude less in both scenarios. The drum unit in mine did start going bad after 3-4 years. I bought a new drum on Amazon for $20, far less than what I originally paid for the printer. It has been going strong for a few years since.

secabeen 6y ago
HPs instant ink program lets you print full page prints in full color for the same price. Costco charges $2 each for 8x10 enlargements. Given that HPs base add-on rate is $0.10/pg, there are environments where that could make sense. Kinkos and Fedex routinely charge $0.50/pg for color prints. Sure, I wouldn't print 500 pages of B&W text on instant ink, but when printing things that require color, it's not ridiculously expensive.

addicted 6y ago

$1/month buys you 15 pages of printing. That’s a joke. A more realistic plan is the $3/mo for 50 pages (still not much for an average printer owner, but not the joke 15 pages is). At that price your math is adding up in less than 2 years. My highly used $30 Canon printer is in its 4th year, and 3rd cartridge. I’m well ahead of where I would have been with the HP (I print about 3-4 pages a day, so I’d probably have had to shell out for the $5 or $12 plan). Also, much like most subscription services, even if the math works out, it only does until the next change in the pricing plan.

colinmhayes 6y ago
I probably print a page every other day at most. So 15 pages isn't a joke for me, it's perfect.

xenocyon 6y ago

> it's going to 6 years (thanks Ansil) for the price to work out in favor of the Brother. 6 years is not a very long time. I've had my Brother laser printer for a decade now, am as happy as the day I bought it, and can easily imagine using it for another decade or more. We need to rid ourselves of the mindset that electronic devices are inherently short-lived.

addicted 6y ago

12000 pages at HP’s $1 plan will cost you $800 to print assuming you actually print 15 pages a month and don’t go months where you printed less. Their most cost effective $25/700 pages plan will cost you over $425 to print that much assuming you use up the entire quota each month.

anigbrowl 6y ago

$100 for a laser printer is stupid cheap. Like, it's kinda wasteful because it will someday end up in a landfill, but I've been printing a few hundred pages a year off this Brother for ages now and it Just Works. It's noisy, the driver is not very user friendly, I don't enjoy scanning with it, but if it dies I'll probably just get another one.

omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago

That's assuming they keep the price at $1/month. It was free for "life", so I'm skeptical they'll keep prices at $1/month for 6 years.