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Review: HP's smallest laser printer – M140w and Linux set up

69 points by robin_reala 5y ago

chaostheory 5y ago
Don’t buy HP printers, even their laser jets. It seems like they’re still using the same business model of making you buy ink cartridges at specific intervals regardless of how much ink that you actually use.
mschuster91 5y ago
Good lord that web interface. It still looks like the JetDirect interface from eons ago... and probably is.
torstenvl 5y ago
For reference, this multifunction device is 1139 cubic inches, whereas the beloved L23xx series is 1431 cubic inches. Mostly its significantly shorter front-to-back, in exchange for modest width and height increases.
HNHatesUsers 5y ago
cripblip 5y ago
As this printer was sent by hp for review. I’m really curious what their take was on the verdict
- edent 5y ago
  I assume they won't send me anything else to review. But that's fine. I'm not a mega publication dependent on getting advertising or a supply of gadgets. Some 1-star reviews I've written don't seem to bother manufacturers. I guess all publicity is good publicity.
contingencies 5y ago
I bought three printers from three different name brands last year: all of them sucked, none of them worked for print and scan across Mac and Windows, much less Linux. We eventually kept the least worst. After 30 years of solid global consumer demand, one can say printers are truly a bullshit industry. Our office is basically paperless now, I tend to use the thing more to scan hand-written notes than to print.
- pkulak 5y ago
  I just got an Epson Eco Tank thing, and I freakin love it. Works great with CUPS (no scanning, but I don’t care about that) and it’s cheaper per page than any laser; full color!
  - fignews 5y ago
    There is actually scanning over the network now under Linux without any special drivers. called eSCL
    - bbojan 5y ago
      It's a bit fiddly to set up, but once set up works well.
    - pkulak 5y ago
      Oh, nice. Gonna give that a shot. Thanks!
- bpye 5y ago
  I bought a Brother HL-L2320D which at the time was the cheapest mono laser with duplexing I could find. On Windows and macOS it's fantastically uneventful, unfortunately on Linux the situation is less great. brlaser [0] does mostly work, but it seems there is a bug as some more complex documents (typically scans) won't print [1]. I ended up patching my version to reduce the size of one of the buffers [2], and haven't seen it fail since, but I doubt I've actually fixed the issue and instead just moved the threshold. [0] - https://github.com/pdewacht/brlaser https://github.com/pdewacht/brlaser [1] - https://github.com/pdewacht/brlaser/issues/79#issuecomment-729263790 https://github.com/pdewacht/brlaser/issues/79#issuecomment-7... [2] - https://github.com/benpye/nix-config/blob/main/overlays/brlaser/lines.patch https://github.com/benpye/nix-config/blob/main/overlays/brla...
loloquwowndueo 5y ago
Last year I got an HP M255dw and it really just works (tm) with all our devices (some iOS and a couple of Ubuntu boxes). This is all over wireless - I have never used a usb cable with this printer. OS-included drivers worked fine, no need to waste hours hunting for drivers on the internet.
neilv 5y ago
The review mentions having to pull down the exit tray, so that's part of the footprint, if you just want it as an always-accessible network appliance on a table (rather than something portable, or hidden in a drawer or on a shelf for rare use). If you want an HP LaserJet, there are a bunch of used ones that might keep running for decades of home use, so long as you buy them a cartridge every few years. I currently run an M401n, with a little print server in front of it, and with the non-HPLIP "HP LaserJet Series PCL 6 CUPS" driver. (The print server is because I don't trust the firmware with network access.) It's not as imposing as my LaserJet 5N, but it works fine, so long as I use the PCL driver.
- jeffreygoesto 5y ago
  Right. My 4050 with duplexer runs since the early 2000s. I had to "reflow solder" the JetDirect card in the oven, but that worked surprisingly well and gave another happy second printer life.
dylan604 5y ago
" Even more annoyingly, it doesn't use USB-C - instead it's that awful square USB plug. Eugh!" Isn't this pretty much synonymous with printer port at this point in time? I have a few other devices with this particular USB port like old old USB1.0 external drives. However, over the course of time, it has been pretty much regulated to the realm of printer port. Also, by not shoving USB-C on it means that it's accessible to a much larger range of users. Doesn't seem so strange of a decision to me. "There's also an "ID copy" button which is specifically for making copies of ID cards and passports. No, I've no idea either. Seems like a feature in search of a user." This is actually handy where it allows you to scan one side of the ID and then flip it over to scan the second side of the ID and then print both sides onto one piece of paper at once. The fact that the author can't figure that out or be bothered to test it for the review yet add this to the review does not give me much confidence in the reviewer.
- MBCook 5y ago
  USB-B ports (the square ones) were designed for peripherals, normal USB-A ports were for hosts. I believe that was so it was clear why you couldn’t plug your hard drive into your printer and expect it to work. There were no B to B cables. Heck there were no A to A cables, right? I think there were some other weird connectors designed to sort of handle the fact that some devices (phones) could act as either a host or peripheral. All that said sticking with that connector makes a lot of sense. If you’re buying your first printer it’s unfortunate that you have to buy a cable. Better ton of people will be replacing a previous printer and already have that exact cable on hand. If they used USB-C those people would have to replace the cable. ID copy? No idea.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    > ID copy? No idea. What do you mean by no idea? Do you mean you have no idea what the reviewer's point was? Do you mean you still have no idea on what it's for even after I just described it?
    - MBCook 5y ago
      I meant I had no idea what it would be useful for. Though another comment on this story made it clear for me. It’s probably for businesses that need to make copies of people’s ID cards or medical cards or such.
ars 5y ago
"which is specifically for making copies of ID cards and passports. No, I've no idea either. Seems like a feature in search of a user." It's so you can print (copy) both sides of the ID on the same page - press it, copy one side, then flip it over. And you get both sides on a single page.
- MBCook 5y ago
  Oh. I guess that would be useful for some businesses that need to keep copies of insurance cards or drivers licenses.
  - cpach 5y ago
    Some hotels does this with ID cards.
deleted 5y ago
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dataflow 5y ago
Tangent, but what is the smallest reliable color laser printer available on the market today? No need for speed, no need for super high quality, no need for scan/fax - just size, color, reliability, and laser (so occasional use doesn't dry out ink). Is there such a thing?
- jjjjoe 5y ago
  Probably the wee Brother 3200-something you can find at any office supply store. We had a rebranded sibling sold by Dell for a decade. CUPS likes them. They're slow, but they work.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mzi 5y ago
  I don't even need a small printer. What is the HP LaserJet 4M of today? That can sustain being the daily driver in a computer lab, survive a couple of million pages and has an at least half-reliable PS engine?
  - jfoutz 5y ago
    for some reason, I thought it was M4. I had to learn pdf, I had to print pdf. the trusty old _4M_ was an absolute tank. I think I went through a box of paper, not ream, but box, working out edge cases and random floating point rounding errors. I can't bring myself to say _hate_ but I dislike printers. I have a grudging respect for HP 4M printers. Yeah, when my home laser printer dies, I'm getting a refurb 4M, I'll set up a little shrine in the garage and print a page once every 2 years.
Jedd 5y ago
I had an HP Laserjet something (twenty years or so ago) that just kinda worked with CUPS on GNU/Linux -- but PS / PCL on those things was not complex, and it only had to print black anyway, with no network connectivity or scanning function. Around the time I was looking to replace it - about 8 years ago - with a colour laser, I'd assumed HP was still popular & 'Linux friendly', but it coincided with a horrendous HP laptop experience (of the 'I am never buying from this vendor again' variety). Forums seemed to have a fair flood of people dissatisfied with HP support on our favourite OS, too -- while Brother was getting very positive reviews, and linuxprinting/openprinting showed consistently good-to-great support across their range. I picked up a HL-3170CDW (colour laser) at around A$350 - which is comparable to the contemporary pricing for TFA's monochrome HP @ £220. I did a pass-me-down of that model a year or so ago, and went to the MFP version - DCP-L3510CDW (colour scanner, copier, laser printer) - for the same price. Print resolution is the same as TFA (600x600), but scan is at least 4x better. My only complaint is that they slightly changed their toner cartridge form between the models ... which felt like a very HP thing to do.
- Aloha 5y ago
  Same. I won't buy a modern HP Printer, they're not well made or particularly user friendly. I have some sub 99 dollar brothers which have given me a decade long service life.
busterarm 5y ago
I've been buying exclusively laser printers for myself and my family for 20 years now and contrary to the experiences described in this thread, I have had no issues whether the brand is HP, Brother or Samsung. The trick is that I exclusively install and use them as network printers. CUPS always works like a charm and I can print from windows, mac and my phones as well. Occasionally on linux I have to reach for foomatic drivers, but it's rare. I haven't plugged a USB cable into a printer since the 90s. Current brother model has been going strong for 4 years now.
- PennRobotics 5y ago
  seconding Brother's laser printers They simply work with most modern Linux distros and Android releases. There's no nickel and diming. They are reliable and maintainable. When I need high-quality photos? I drive to the drugstore and use the kiosk.
simonjgreen 5y ago
Minor nitpicking, but this isn't the smallest printer they do. It's the smallest with a scanner. The smallest printer they do is the MFP110we. It's essentially identical but without the scanner. I know this is recently bought and returned one (nothing fundamentally wrong, just couldn't print on the cardstock I needed to use). I'm still trying to work out how to cancel the ink subscription...
ComradePhil 5y ago
I have a similar model from HP. Every time I have to print (which is once every couple of months), I have to reinstall the software or otherwise troubleshoot.
- pacifika 5y ago
  Had this problem. Enabling the preference so it powers off automatically instead of sleeping fixed that.
- G3rn0ti 5y ago
  If you connect using WiFi make sure you assign the printer a fixed IP address in your router. Missing out on that I think explained 60% of the printing problems friends and family had. I also noticed the standard Windows supplied drivers for my Office Jet Pro 8500 do not work well. After printing a job (successfully), the Windows printer queue always would get stuck. Installing the >1GB (wtf) driver package provided by HP resolved this issue and Windows printing worked fine. With Linux and even Mac I never had problems. My printer runs fine even after >10 years of service.
Laura69 5y ago
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AceJohnny2 5y ago
This is kind of out there but... are there open-source laser printer designs? I guess the key elements (scanner, toner dispenser, heater) aren't exactly commodity/interchangeable, so maybe better: are there open-source laser printer firmware? I feel like the technology has been established for a few decades now, and the latest consumer iterations often add ridiculous "features" and outright user-hostility that maybe there's room for an alternate solution. Edit: see rdw's answer elsewhere here, for why a laser printer is a pretty complicated piece of control system
- fho 5y ago
  I guess we are over "peak printing" already. Every open hardware printer design would be one or two decades too late.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    Open source hardware is quite limited so far, what have we got besides 3D printers and drones? There is no opensource car or house or motorbike, is there? How about an oven, microwave?
londons_explore 5y ago
It seems rather large for the smallest printer... I'm imagining a micro printer/scanner where to scan a document you pass it through the same route as the printer. And the printer is the width of the page and a cylinder about 3 inches diameter containing the toner, electronics, developer, fuser, and feed rollers. If there's a little spare room, put in a lithium battery good for printing 50 pages or so while out and about.
- robin_reala 5y ago
  Most people want to scan things that can’t be folded through a print route though: the aforementioned id cards, passports, pages of books, fragile old documents, photos, certificates, etc.
darkwater 5y ago
The "every wifi gadget out there is only 2.4GHz" is really annoying. I understand that it's probably because 2.4GHz chips are extremely cheap but we will forced to keep those slow and overcrowded networks for 15 extra years at very least.
detuur 5y ago
The square USB plug is intentional. USB-C is not always the best plug. Take a look at USB channel loss budgets[1]. This is a very simple read, even for people who are not at home in electronics and signals. To summarise the document, the "square USB plug" aka USB-B was conceived when USB client devices were simple, had short traces, little noise, and thus were expected to emit a signal with very little signal loss. This allowed for a relatively long cable. USB-C was conceived to deal with complex devices, which incurred more signal loss, allowing for a shorter cable to keep the total signal loss in the system in check. So even today, A-to-B cables can be longer than C-to-C (even though it is only marginally). The odd thing is that the spec defines legacy C-to-B cables at far below their true capabilities. According to the spec the loss budget for a C host device is 6.5dB, as opposed to the 10dB of an old A/B host. This should allow for a cable assembly with a channel loss of 11dB! And yet the spec insists on a mere 4dB. So technically someone could make a "non-standard" 11dB cable that should just work, given the guarantees by the rest of the spec. [1]: https://usb.org/sites/default/files/USB_3.1_Loss_Budget_Rev_1.0_-_2015-03-02.pdf https://usb.org/sites/default/files/USB_3.1_Loss_Budget_Rev_...
- amelius 5y ago
  Why no error correction in the USB-C protocol, though?
- blagie 5y ago
  I think the other issue is mechanical robustness. μUSB, mUSB, and USB-C were engineered to fit on small devices like phones, cameras, and laptops. μUSB ports and cables fail all the time. mUSB and USB-C are better, but the large USB-B connector is king. The original idea was to have a few sizes corresponding to a few sizes of devices. For large devices expected to last many years, like printers, scanners, multi-drive storage devices, many types of pro-AV equipment (e.g. one of those pan/tilt/zoom cameras permanently installed in some lecture halls), scientific equipment, and so on, the square plug is king. You don't want to lose a $5000 device due to a failed connector. I mind having a proprietary cable for each device. I don't mind having a few types of cables as they make sense.
gambiting 5y ago
>>Annoyingly, it doesn't come with a USB cable! I thought that was to save money - but they included a UK and EU power cable, so I think it's just to "encourage" using the WiFi. I don't think any domestic laser printer came with a USB cable in the last 20 years. It's not a conspiracy to make you use wi-fi - it's just manufacturers being cheap and not including the USB cable has been the standard for a really really long time. >>" Even more annoyingly, it doesn't use USB-C - instead it's that awful square USB plug. Eugh!" Again, that has been the standard in printers since forever.
- b112 5y ago
  Yet what will happen, is some marketing yukity-yuk, will see this blog, and proclaim it's getting "lots of comments and traffic". Ports will be changed, for no good reason, as well as a dozen other things. (See! That ID mode confuses people, axe it!) Meanwhile, they won't look at discussions like this, and on other sites linking to similar discussions about this blog post. And thus, more dumbing down of computing. More reduction in capability, and ease of use. I bet calling toner, ink, is due to a single person in Iowa, being confused for 12 seconds, and posting about it. Meanwhile, they got it, are not still confused, but of course who updates a post to reflect that. (The above is how I view the competences of marketing types)
trhoad 5y ago
I bought a Brother HL-L5000D mono laser off eBay for £50. It's been going for 2 years and hasn't needed any maintenance whatsoever (or any new toner). It just works.
vishwajeetv 5y ago
You can't write "Printer" and "Linux" in the same sentence! :D
- fmajid 5y ago
  My experience is that Ubuntu auto-detects and auto-configures all my network printers, even the Brother QL label printers. Far easier than MacOS.
fmajid 5y ago
It's ridiculously hard to get the Web UI on printers use proper Let's Encrypt certificates. You often can do it manually, but there is no provision for automation and doing it every 3 months get old. Not to mention the printers that won't accept 4096-bit certificates or old firmwares that don't do SHA-256. Then you have the wide variety of baroque protocols used by Windows. I don't do Windows and I'd like to reduce the attack surface, but if you disable them, often standard IPP/CUPS or lpd stops working for no reason. I'm surprised printers are not more commonly used by botnets, their security is abysmal and they usually stop getting firmware updates just a couple years after being discontinued, which is itself only a couple of years after being introduced.
bbojan 5y ago
An interesting thing happened to me since I started using an inkjet printer with user refillable ink tanks. I actually like to print! I don't have to deliberate "Do I really need this printed?" I don't mind printing a bunch of stuff for the kids. I can print interesting photos and put them up somewhere or give them away to the family. Previously with an HP inkjet, I would dread printing because what if I use up the ink, and then need to print something urgently (e.g. a government form)? The feeling is that now the printer is serving me, as opposed to previously where I felt I am its servant.
luke2m 5y ago
Most popular 3D printers are open source hardware. I would love to see some conventional printers as well. Does anyone know the limitations or challenges that make it hard to do this?
kkfx 5y ago
My own personal non-review: - WiFi is optional (and I prefer not having it) BUT having a physical ethernet port should be universal; - do not have nor require any specific "app" must be mandatory, we have made "driverless" printers, we have pdf and ps printers, we have a2ps, nothing more should be needed for printing; - bit toner issue: no "chip" must be required, no issues with third party cartridge should be present, at least not those made by design choice by the printer OEM. Long story short: in the past HP have made various nice enough printer, after Samsung deal overall quality is descending to a level I can't buy them anymore. The rest are minor things to choose from like automatic double-side printing, covered paper so if one do not print for a certain period of time sheets do not get dusty, easy access to all paper path in case of jammed paper, easy cleaning/change for printer pad just in case etc.

69 points by robin_reala 5y ago

Don’t buy HP printers, even their laser jets. It seems like they’re still using the same business model of making you buy ink cartridges at specific intervals regardless of how much ink that you actually use.

mschuster91 5y ago

Good lord that web interface. It still looks like the JetDirect interface from eons ago... and probably is.

torstenvl 5y ago

For reference, this multifunction device is 1139 cubic inches, whereas the beloved L23xx series is 1431 cubic inches. Mostly its significantly shorter front-to-back, in exchange for modest width and height increases.

HNHatesUsers 5y ago

cripblip 5y ago

As this printer was sent by hp for review. I’m really curious what their take was on the verdict

edent 5y ago
I assume they won't send me anything else to review. But that's fine. I'm not a mega publication dependent on getting advertising or a supply of gadgets. Some 1-star reviews I've written don't seem to bother manufacturers. I guess all publicity is good publicity.

contingencies 5y ago

I bought three printers from three different name brands last year: all of them sucked, none of them worked for print and scan across Mac and Windows, much less Linux. We eventually kept the least worst. After 30 years of solid global consumer demand, one can say printers are truly a bullshit industry. Our office is basically paperless now, I tend to use the thing more to scan hand-written notes than to print.

pkulak 5y ago
I just got an Epson Eco Tank thing, and I freakin love it. Works great with CUPS (no scanning, but I don’t care about that) and it’s cheaper per page than any laser; full color!
- fignews 5y ago
  There is actually scanning over the network now under Linux without any special drivers. called eSCL
  - bbojan 5y ago
    It's a bit fiddly to set up, but once set up works well.
  - pkulak 5y ago
    Oh, nice. Gonna give that a shot. Thanks!
bpye 5y ago
I bought a Brother HL-L2320D which at the time was the cheapest mono laser with duplexing I could find. On Windows and macOS it's fantastically uneventful, unfortunately on Linux the situation is less great. brlaser [0] does mostly work, but it seems there is a bug as some more complex documents (typically scans) won't print [1]. I ended up patching my version to reduce the size of one of the buffers [2], and haven't seen it fail since, but I doubt I've actually fixed the issue and instead just moved the threshold. [0] - https://github.com/pdewacht/brlaser https://github.com/pdewacht/brlaser [1] - https://github.com/pdewacht/brlaser/issues/79#issuecomment-729263790 https://github.com/pdewacht/brlaser/issues/79#issuecomment-7... [2] - https://github.com/benpye/nix-config/blob/main/overlays/brlaser/lines.patch https://github.com/benpye/nix-config/blob/main/overlays/brla...

loloquwowndueo 5y ago

Last year I got an HP M255dw and it really just works (tm) with all our devices (some iOS and a couple of Ubuntu boxes). This is all over wireless - I have never used a usb cable with this printer. OS-included drivers worked fine, no need to waste hours hunting for drivers on the internet.

neilv 5y ago

The review mentions having to pull down the exit tray, so that's part of the footprint, if you just want it as an always-accessible network appliance on a table (rather than something portable, or hidden in a drawer or on a shelf for rare use). If you want an HP LaserJet, there are a bunch of used ones that might keep running for decades of home use, so long as you buy them a cartridge every few years. I currently run an M401n, with a little print server in front of it, and with the non-HPLIP "HP LaserJet Series PCL 6 CUPS" driver. (The print server is because I don't trust the firmware with network access.) It's not as imposing as my LaserJet 5N, but it works fine, so long as I use the PCL driver.

jeffreygoesto 5y ago
Right. My 4050 with duplexer runs since the early 2000s. I had to "reflow solder" the JetDirect card in the oven, but that worked surprisingly well and gave another happy second printer life.

dylan604 5y ago

" Even more annoyingly, it doesn't use USB-C - instead it's that awful square USB plug. Eugh!" Isn't this pretty much synonymous with printer port at this point in time? I have a few other devices with this particular USB port like old old USB1.0 external drives. However, over the course of time, it has been pretty much regulated to the realm of printer port. Also, by not shoving USB-C on it means that it's accessible to a much larger range of users. Doesn't seem so strange of a decision to me. "There's also an "ID copy" button which is specifically for making copies of ID cards and passports. No, I've no idea either. Seems like a feature in search of a user." This is actually handy where it allows you to scan one side of the ID and then flip it over to scan the second side of the ID and then print both sides onto one piece of paper at once. The fact that the author can't figure that out or be bothered to test it for the review yet add this to the review does not give me much confidence in the reviewer.

MBCook 5y ago
USB-B ports (the square ones) were designed for peripherals, normal USB-A ports were for hosts. I believe that was so it was clear why you couldn’t plug your hard drive into your printer and expect it to work. There were no B to B cables. Heck there were no A to A cables, right? I think there were some other weird connectors designed to sort of handle the fact that some devices (phones) could act as either a host or peripheral. All that said sticking with that connector makes a lot of sense. If you’re buying your first printer it’s unfortunate that you have to buy a cable. Better ton of people will be replacing a previous printer and already have that exact cable on hand. If they used USB-C those people would have to replace the cable. ID copy? No idea.
- dylan604 5y ago
  > ID copy? No idea. What do you mean by no idea? Do you mean you have no idea what the reviewer's point was? Do you mean you still have no idea on what it's for even after I just described it?
  - MBCook 5y ago
    I meant I had no idea what it would be useful for. Though another comment on this story made it clear for me. It’s probably for businesses that need to make copies of people’s ID cards or medical cards or such.

ars 5y ago

"which is specifically for making copies of ID cards and passports. No, I've no idea either. Seems like a feature in search of a user." It's so you can print (copy) both sides of the ID on the same page - press it, copy one side, then flip it over. And you get both sides on a single page.

MBCook 5y ago
Oh. I guess that would be useful for some businesses that need to keep copies of insurance cards or drivers licenses.
- cpach 5y ago
  Some hotels does this with ID cards.

deleted 5y ago

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dataflow 5y ago

Tangent, but what is the smallest reliable color laser printer available on the market today? No need for speed, no need for super high quality, no need for scan/fax - just size, color, reliability, and laser (so occasional use doesn't dry out ink). Is there such a thing?

jjjjoe 5y ago
Probably the wee Brother 3200-something you can find at any office supply store. We had a rebranded sibling sold by Dell for a decade. CUPS likes them. They're slow, but they work.
deleted 5y ago
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mzi 5y ago
I don't even need a small printer. What is the HP LaserJet 4M of today? That can sustain being the daily driver in a computer lab, survive a couple of million pages and has an at least half-reliable PS engine?
- jfoutz 5y ago
  for some reason, I thought it was M4. I had to learn pdf, I had to print pdf. the trusty old _4M_ was an absolute tank. I think I went through a box of paper, not ream, but box, working out edge cases and random floating point rounding errors. I can't bring myself to say _hate_ but I dislike printers. I have a grudging respect for HP 4M printers. Yeah, when my home laser printer dies, I'm getting a refurb 4M, I'll set up a little shrine in the garage and print a page once every 2 years.

Jedd 5y ago

I had an HP Laserjet something (twenty years or so ago) that just kinda worked with CUPS on GNU/Linux -- but PS / PCL on those things was not complex, and it only had to print black anyway, with no network connectivity or scanning function. Around the time I was looking to replace it - about 8 years ago - with a colour laser, I'd assumed HP was still popular & 'Linux friendly', but it coincided with a horrendous HP laptop experience (of the 'I am never buying from this vendor again' variety). Forums seemed to have a fair flood of people dissatisfied with HP support on our favourite OS, too -- while Brother was getting very positive reviews, and linuxprinting/openprinting showed consistently good-to-great support across their range. I picked up a HL-3170CDW (colour laser) at around A$350 - which is comparable to the contemporary pricing for TFA's monochrome HP @ £220. I did a pass-me-down of that model a year or so ago, and went to the MFP version - DCP-L3510CDW (colour scanner, copier, laser printer) - for the same price. Print resolution is the same as TFA (600x600), but scan is at least 4x better. My only complaint is that they slightly changed their toner cartridge form between the models ... which felt like a very HP thing to do.

Aloha 5y ago
Same. I won't buy a modern HP Printer, they're not well made or particularly user friendly. I have some sub 99 dollar brothers which have given me a decade long service life.

busterarm 5y ago

I've been buying exclusively laser printers for myself and my family for 20 years now and contrary to the experiences described in this thread, I have had no issues whether the brand is HP, Brother or Samsung. The trick is that I exclusively install and use them as network printers. CUPS always works like a charm and I can print from windows, mac and my phones as well. Occasionally on linux I have to reach for foomatic drivers, but it's rare. I haven't plugged a USB cable into a printer since the 90s. Current brother model has been going strong for 4 years now.

PennRobotics 5y ago
seconding Brother's laser printers They simply work with most modern Linux distros and Android releases. There's no nickel and diming. They are reliable and maintainable. When I need high-quality photos? I drive to the drugstore and use the kiosk.

simonjgreen 5y ago

Minor nitpicking, but this isn't the smallest printer they do. It's the smallest with a scanner. The smallest printer they do is the MFP110we. It's essentially identical but without the scanner. I know this is recently bought and returned one (nothing fundamentally wrong, just couldn't print on the cardstock I needed to use). I'm still trying to work out how to cancel the ink subscription...

ComradePhil 5y ago

I have a similar model from HP. Every time I have to print (which is once every couple of months), I have to reinstall the software or otherwise troubleshoot.

pacifika 5y ago
Had this problem. Enabling the preference so it powers off automatically instead of sleeping fixed that.
G3rn0ti 5y ago
If you connect using WiFi make sure you assign the printer a fixed IP address in your router. Missing out on that I think explained 60% of the printing problems friends and family had. I also noticed the standard Windows supplied drivers for my Office Jet Pro 8500 do not work well. After printing a job (successfully), the Windows printer queue always would get stuck. Installing the >1GB (wtf) driver package provided by HP resolved this issue and Windows printing worked fine. With Linux and even Mac I never had problems. My printer runs fine even after >10 years of service.

Laura69 5y ago

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AceJohnny2 5y ago

This is kind of out there but... are there open-source laser printer designs? I guess the key elements (scanner, toner dispenser, heater) aren't exactly commodity/interchangeable, so maybe better: are there open-source laser printer firmware? I feel like the technology has been established for a few decades now, and the latest consumer iterations often add ridiculous "features" and outright user-hostility that maybe there's room for an alternate solution. Edit: see rdw's answer elsewhere here, for why a laser printer is a pretty complicated piece of control system

fho 5y ago
I guess we are over "peak printing" already. Every open hardware printer design would be one or two decades too late.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  Open source hardware is quite limited so far, what have we got besides 3D printers and drones? There is no opensource car or house or motorbike, is there? How about an oven, microwave?

londons_explore 5y ago

It seems rather large for the smallest printer... I'm imagining a micro printer/scanner where to scan a document you pass it through the same route as the printer. And the printer is the width of the page and a cylinder about 3 inches diameter containing the toner, electronics, developer, fuser, and feed rollers. If there's a little spare room, put in a lithium battery good for printing 50 pages or so while out and about.

robin_reala 5y ago
Most people want to scan things that can’t be folded through a print route though: the aforementioned id cards, passports, pages of books, fragile old documents, photos, certificates, etc.

darkwater 5y ago

The "every wifi gadget out there is only 2.4GHz" is really annoying. I understand that it's probably because 2.4GHz chips are extremely cheap but we will forced to keep those slow and overcrowded networks for 15 extra years at very least.

detuur 5y ago

The square USB plug is intentional. USB-C is not always the best plug. Take a look at USB channel loss budgets[1]. This is a very simple read, even for people who are not at home in electronics and signals. To summarise the document, the "square USB plug" aka USB-B was conceived when USB client devices were simple, had short traces, little noise, and thus were expected to emit a signal with very little signal loss. This allowed for a relatively long cable. USB-C was conceived to deal with complex devices, which incurred more signal loss, allowing for a shorter cable to keep the total signal loss in the system in check. So even today, A-to-B cables can be longer than C-to-C (even though it is only marginally). The odd thing is that the spec defines legacy C-to-B cables at far below their true capabilities. According to the spec the loss budget for a C host device is 6.5dB, as opposed to the 10dB of an old A/B host. This should allow for a cable assembly with a channel loss of 11dB! And yet the spec insists on a mere 4dB. So technically someone could make a "non-standard" 11dB cable that should just work, given the guarantees by the rest of the spec. [1]: https://usb.org/sites/default/files/USB_3.1_Loss_Budget_Rev_1.0_-_2015-03-02.pdf https://usb.org/sites/default/files/USB_3.1_Loss_Budget_Rev_...

amelius 5y ago
Why no error correction in the USB-C protocol, though?
blagie 5y ago
I think the other issue is mechanical robustness. μUSB, mUSB, and USB-C were engineered to fit on small devices like phones, cameras, and laptops. μUSB ports and cables fail all the time. mUSB and USB-C are better, but the large USB-B connector is king. The original idea was to have a few sizes corresponding to a few sizes of devices. For large devices expected to last many years, like printers, scanners, multi-drive storage devices, many types of pro-AV equipment (e.g. one of those pan/tilt/zoom cameras permanently installed in some lecture halls), scientific equipment, and so on, the square plug is king. You don't want to lose a $5000 device due to a failed connector. I mind having a proprietary cable for each device. I don't mind having a few types of cables as they make sense.

gambiting 5y ago

>>Annoyingly, it doesn't come with a USB cable! I thought that was to save money - but they included a UK and EU power cable, so I think it's just to "encourage" using the WiFi. I don't think any domestic laser printer came with a USB cable in the last 20 years. It's not a conspiracy to make you use wi-fi - it's just manufacturers being cheap and not including the USB cable has been the standard for a really really long time. >>" Even more annoyingly, it doesn't use USB-C - instead it's that awful square USB plug. Eugh!" Again, that has been the standard in printers since forever.

b112 5y ago
Yet what will happen, is some marketing yukity-yuk, will see this blog, and proclaim it's getting "lots of comments and traffic". Ports will be changed, for no good reason, as well as a dozen other things. (See! That ID mode confuses people, axe it!) Meanwhile, they won't look at discussions like this, and on other sites linking to similar discussions about this blog post. And thus, more dumbing down of computing. More reduction in capability, and ease of use. I bet calling toner, ink, is due to a single person in Iowa, being confused for 12 seconds, and posting about it. Meanwhile, they got it, are not still confused, but of course who updates a post to reflect that. (The above is how I view the competences of marketing types)

trhoad 5y ago

I bought a Brother HL-L5000D mono laser off eBay for £50. It's been going for 2 years and hasn't needed any maintenance whatsoever (or any new toner). It just works.

vishwajeetv 5y ago

You can't write "Printer" and "Linux" in the same sentence! :D

fmajid 5y ago
My experience is that Ubuntu auto-detects and auto-configures all my network printers, even the Brother QL label printers. Far easier than MacOS.

fmajid 5y ago

It's ridiculously hard to get the Web UI on printers use proper Let's Encrypt certificates. You often can do it manually, but there is no provision for automation and doing it every 3 months get old. Not to mention the printers that won't accept 4096-bit certificates or old firmwares that don't do SHA-256. Then you have the wide variety of baroque protocols used by Windows. I don't do Windows and I'd like to reduce the attack surface, but if you disable them, often standard IPP/CUPS or lpd stops working for no reason. I'm surprised printers are not more commonly used by botnets, their security is abysmal and they usually stop getting firmware updates just a couple years after being discontinued, which is itself only a couple of years after being introduced.

bbojan 5y ago

An interesting thing happened to me since I started using an inkjet printer with user refillable ink tanks. I actually like to print! I don't have to deliberate "Do I really need this printed?" I don't mind printing a bunch of stuff for the kids. I can print interesting photos and put them up somewhere or give them away to the family. Previously with an HP inkjet, I would dread printing because what if I use up the ink, and then need to print something urgently (e.g. a government form)? The feeling is that now the printer is serving me, as opposed to previously where I felt I am its servant.

luke2m 5y ago

Most popular 3D printers are open source hardware. I would love to see some conventional printers as well. Does anyone know the limitations or challenges that make it hard to do this?

kkfx 5y ago

My own personal non-review: - WiFi is optional (and I prefer not having it) BUT having a physical ethernet port should be universal; - do not have nor require any specific "app" must be mandatory, we have made "driverless" printers, we have pdf and ps printers, we have a2ps, nothing more should be needed for printing; - bit toner issue: no "chip" must be required, no issues with third party cartridge should be present, at least not those made by design choice by the printer OEM. Long story short: in the past HP have made various nice enough printer, after Samsung deal overall quality is descending to a level I can't buy them anymore. The rest are minor things to choose from like automatic double-side printing, covered paper so if one do not print for a certain period of time sheets do not get dusty, easy access to all paper path in case of jammed paper, easy cleaning/change for printer pad just in case etc.