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For those of you who haven't already, I highly recommend just biting the bullet and switching from HP to Brother for your home printing needs. I was a HP custo
by lchengify 4y ago
For those of you who haven't already, I highly recommend just biting the bullet and switching from HP to Brother for your home printing needs.
I was a HP customer for decades. I had models going back to perforated paper dot-matrix printers. Finally last year I had a down-and-out fight to get my HP to do a basic task, and I bit the bullet and ordered a Brother at the recommendation of my friend.
My mfc-l3750cdw Brother printer is a bit of a beast, but it does it's job amazingly well. It's 2x the size, weight, and price of my old HP but it's worth every penny for the peace of mind. It prints when I need it to print. It shuts down when it's not printing. It connects to wifi and doesn't try to serve me an ad while doing it. It uses ink logically. And I don't feel like I'm trying to resolve a problem that was effectively solved in 1995.
The hard fact is that printers and copiers as a market has been shrinking (outside of China) for years now [1]. It's gone from a necessity to a niche need, and even then people have kinkos / WeWork / their parents house as a backup.
HP isn't going back, just switch. Save yourself like I did.
[1] https://www.statista.com/outlook/cmo/consumer-electronics/computing/printers-copiers/united-states https://www.statista.com/outlook/cmo/consumer-electronics/co...
- xbar 4y agoI'm keeping my HP color inkjet for what it's good at: scanning and printing in color. I'm buying a Brother laser today. I've hated this HP since I bought it, but it was a necessary evil for raising elementary school-aged children.
- kqr2 4y agoAccording to this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131, Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia ? If so, that's unfortunate.
- shp0ngle 4y agobrother both inkjets and laser ones started doing exactly the same as the OP is talking about. I don’t know why people cut them so much slack.
- psychphysic 4y agoUntil manufacturers sell the printers at thick profit it won't work out.
- lucideer 4y agoI recently bought a Brother laser (the linked commenter bought an inkjet, not sure if it matters) & have replaced the toner with non-OEMs from a local shop: when I was buying, the (very helpful & generous) shop-owner warned me there was a reasonable chance it might not work & offered a full refund if it didn't. I queried him further & according to him its random because he's heard both positive & negative stories with the exact same model numbers (which makes me think it must be firmware updates). Thankfully my (very new) laser didn't have this issue: print quality is perfect. Afraid to do any fw updates now though.
- smsm42 4y agoUgh too bad. I guess I'll be happy with my old one and hope it lives very long life.
- coda_ 4y agoI also like my brother, but it will attempt to detect and reject non-authentic ink. I don't update mine anymore because the last time I did, it rejected my cartridges.
- 2muchcoffeeman 4y agoI have an old 3170cdw that I got 2nd hand. At least all the consumables and parts that eventually need replacing are easy to get and seem readily available.
- m463 4y agoI have a brother HL-2360DW circa 2017, with a new brother large-size authentic toner cartridge. I never hooked it to the internet, never updated the firmware. And it started saying low toner even though I've put (far?) less than 250 sheets through it. There was a way to turn off the low toner warnings, I did it, and seem to be ok, but it makes me wonder. EDIT: wow, it sells for $449 on amazon. I paid $115 in 2017.
- AuthorizedCust 4y agoThe Amazon price is high because you’re buying a discontinued product from a niche seller.
- pbhjpbhj 4y agoOr in other words, the price is high because there is consumer demand for printers that work, without advertising, without drm, without screwing you around to squeeze you for cash. Surely DRM here, and allowing closed firmware, and such, are anti-Capitalist? Don't they prevent the market from optimising?
- AuthorizedCust 4y agoUnlikely. I see this frequently, where niche vendors charge a lot for discontinued products.
- shimonabi 4y agoI bought a Brother HL-L5100DN last week, after seeing several people like you recommending Brother printers on HN.
- hallway_monitor 4y agoI have been using brother laser printers for years. You can get them on sale for $100 and they last a decade. Recommended.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- throw0101c 4y ago> For those of you who haven't already, I highly recommend just biting the bullet and switching from HP to Brother for your home printing needs. I was under the impression that newer Brother firmware versions had restrictions: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131 I have an HL-L2360D, but my firmware is from 2015 (with no plans to upgrade), so have no idea if anything has changed recently.
- ph4te 4y agoI agree on the Brother printers, I’ve only had two Brothers in the past 13 years, and the only reason I upgraded was to go from Black and White Laser, to Color Laser, it was still going strong. The best part about it was you would buy a toner cartridge and when it would tell you it’s getting low, put some electrical tape over the clear hole in the side and it would continue to print for another 1.5k. On top of that I just press the reset button for the toner life and it resets it just like I put in a brand new one. Then I print till it starts getting light. This last round of color toners I bought an off brand from Amazon that came with all the colors plus two black for half the price of the name brand set. I typically don’t buy off brand, but figured I would give it a shot. Still going good since last year.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoI still have an LCD screen Brother color laser printer that works great. The LCD is one or two lines. Works with any toner and paper and linux and wifi and I think AirDrop too (untried). It definitely is a beast but I think all color laser printers are big because they need 5 toner cartridges.
- wil421 4y agoMy Brothers work with Airdrop and I don’t get any weird pages that are zoomed in or some crazy alignment like I have with other printers.
- idontwantthis 4y ago> the best part Is that you can easily circumevent the way this particular brand tries to cheat you.
- zinekeller 4y agoIt's less of cheating and more of toner is not heavy enough to maintain the desired darkness (it's a passive toner system, the toner uses its own weight to print). It's honestly wasteful but unfortunately active toner systems costs more and is much heavier than the already-heavy passive toner systems.
- binkHN 4y ago> ...I highly recommend just biting the bullet and switching ... to Brother... No bullets to bite. My brother laser is over 12 years old and works just like it did when I bought it. I like it so much I bought another for another part of the house. Did I mention it also groks postscript for those that might want to print from a BSD machine right OOTB?
- caned 4y ago15 years and counting here!
- freakynit 4y agoDoes this open up the space for a "framework laptop" like company to open up? For "open" printers? If yes, what other product categories is this applicable?
- kube-system 4y agoPrinters are pretty difficult to manufacture compared to a laptop. They have specialized high precision parts and a lot of mechanical parts that have to work together for a particular design. A laptop can be pretty much made from off the shelf parts aside from the chassis and PCB, which you can easily have made by any number of contractors. And I’m sure printers are probably a minefield of patents.
- dv_dt 4y agoHP LaserJets that were considered tanks were sourced from Canon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_LaserJet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_LaserJet So it makes it not impossible for a new manufacturer to incorporate interface electronics with a core from an experienced manufacturer. The most difficult part might not be the engineering, but getting one of the old line print companies to do business at some reasonable cost with a smaller startup company.
- kube-system 4y agoI suspect Canon licensed that technology to HP rather than letting it be used openly. You might be able to do the same but you’ll just be another proprietary printer company.
- RobotToaster 4y agoThere are dirt cheap printer heads on aliexpress for inkjets, isn't the rest just stepper motors and belts?
- manicpolymath 4y agoIf the market weren’t in decline, maybe. But to pipedream a little: A standardized control board (imagine if it were something like an RPi), with modular carriage (available in several sizes, including capable of 11x17” or A3), with changeable print heads (CMYK, or just a massive black, or hell, pen plotter).
- eitland 4y agoI have fought so much with Brother (multi purpose machines) back in the early 2000s that I can still get reminded about it by ex-colleagues or users I helped back then, so this is certainly a huge change, but I have seen the recommendations for Brother so many times now I am seriously considering it.
- jeromegv 4y agoBeen with a laser Brothers for 10 years. Switched to a newer one 5 years ago but it’s only because I needed the wifi feature. Works great, no bullshit update software, stays connected to my wifi, never had to fight drivers or anything to get a new Mac connected to it. It just works.
- erik_seaberg 4y agoMy HL-2140 still runs, but I can’t use it from my work laptop. Their macOS 13 drivers dropped some models.
- zdw 4y agoThey tend to be repairable as well. I had to recap the power supply last year in my Brother HL-5250DN which is probably nearing the age where it's able to legally drive in the US, and after the output voltages were right again it fired right up and has been working great since.
- benj111 4y ago>legally drive in the US I'm sure it's got enough stepper motors. Not sure about the 'legally' part though.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- birksherty 4y agoJust want to make another suggestion. Ink tank printers are also good, can print coloured prints for cheap. We have one and just need to buy the inks and pour the ink into the tanks of printer.
- silisili 4y agoI'm a fan of Canon lasers, as they put the drums on the cartridge. Mine accepts anything that fits, unsure if newer ones are the same.
- nulbyte 4y agoI also like Canon. Bought one several years ago, ready to take it back if it did not play nice with Linux. I was pleasantly surprised that the drivers worked. I had to fiddle with them initially to get the needed dependencies (not all were configured as dependencies in the package), but they've since fixed it. It's such a breeze. And off-brand toner works just fine, too!
- RajT88 4y agoI recently bought an old Brother laserjet for 100 bucks off Craigslist. The guy thought he was scamming me, because the autofeed tray didn't work. I'll get that fixed in due time. But the manual feed tray which still takes a stack of 15-20 pages works fine. The bigger issue is my wife tells me I can't drill another hole for an Ethernet jack for it and have to make it wireless...
- cute_boi 4y agoYou can make it wireless by adding some router and link two wifi if you want :)
- cricalix 4y agoDo you need it to be available over wireless for direct printing, or just on the network without making holes? If it's the latter, are you aware of Ethernet over power (aka powerline networking)?
- RajT88 4y agoYep. Tried that long before we bought the printer; won't work here. And yes, it's the latter - no holes. I settled on trying one of these things or similar: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014SK2H6W https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014SK2H6W
- ashton314 4y agoHave you looked at things like power line adapters? I’ve got one and it works brilliantly. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-line_communication https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-line_communication
- password4321 4y agoAlso MoCA (coax) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_over_Coax_Alliance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_over_Coax_Allianc...
- RajT88 4y ago
- parker_mountain 4y agoabout 7 years ago, i bought a brother mfc laser for $200 about a year ago, the drum gave out. it cost me $40 to replace over those 7 years, i printed about 2000 pages: somewhat less than 1 page a day take from what that what you will
- Double_a_92 4y agoThe InkJet ones are still not perfect though. E.g. mine needs to clean itself all the time, wasting my ink every 4-5 months. I understand that it regularly needs to print so it doesn't clog up, but it's going at it for minutes at a time and is horribly loud...
- dustymcp 4y agoThis is the key answer here, i switched from a HP to a brother everything just works now, and i dont have to download 1gb "driver packages". Hp is the worst company for any hardware needs, all their laptops/dektops sucked so much, back in the day in my electronics shop they where the ones with the worst return/faults rate, by a big margin.
- jart 4y agoWhat HP actually shines is their "FreeDOS" (i.e. Linux) workstations. They're like the total opposite of their printers, since they grant the owner a reasonable amount of control and outstanding performance at rock bottom prices. Google buys these things for all their employees, which is all the proof I needed that HP as an OEM isn't doing anything creepy to these workstations before shipping them from the factory. You really can't do better, unless you're willing to shell out at least twice the money.
- dustymcp 4y agoThats nice to hear i was only on the consumer side, and dont know b2b what i was referring to was the laptops/desktops they where pretty poor quality and would break more often than their competitors :)
- thiht 4y agoI bought a Brother inkjet printer last year. It was a bit expensive but it just works flawlessly. I don't even use it that often but it doesn't betray me when I need it, I press print and it works.
- adql 4y agoTheir label printers also don't do DRM like now Dymo does. The scum even introduced drm-checking printers under same model name and number so the previous good reviews stay
- llimos 4y agoI did exactly this. After one too many bad experiences with HP, I said as soon as this printer dies, I'm getting a Brother. Then I gave up waiting, and switched as soon as the cartridge ran out, and I am so happy I did. I now recommend friends and family to avoid HP like the plague, including laptops (which I've also had bad experiences with). Such a shame, their stuff used to be great.
- sneak 4y agoFor as long as I can remember, HP has hated their customers, and I'm nearly middle-aged. It's been a loooong time since HP has been great (but it was true at one point, just not in the last 25-30 years). I also love my Brother laser printer, and don't hate my p-touch.
- thesaintlives 4y agoTotally agree! HP back in the day were rock solid. I had one that would print onto virtually anything I stuffed into it (I exaggerate but you get my point). All it wants to do now is download 'updates' or some other crap. Finally I switched to Brother, not perfect but guess what... It just prints!!!!
- rookderby 4y agoI have a brother printer/scanner as well (model HL-L2395DW). I've been using at home since 2020 to supplement at-home office and school work once the pandemic started. It takes third-party black toner cartridges that you can buy from amazon/office stores. It's never jammed, I've replaced the starter toner cartridge, and have fed it several reams of paper. Scanning works well with a USB cable to PC and wireless printing works well from Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android. I expect it to last 10-20 years, overall a good product. I would not worry about getting this exact model, I'd expect any brother toner printer to work well.
- yencabulator 4y agoYou are completely ignoring the role of newer firmware being the part that enforces this.
- smsm42 4y agoBeen using Brother printers for years, never had any issues. Surprisingly, in our times, they just keep making printers that work. I don't know how long this would last, but I am planning on staying with them while it does.
- time0ut 4y agoA year ago I came home to find my wife on the verge of tears. She needed to print something for our child’s school and the printer was out of ink. Again. After having only printed 50 pages since the last time. I bought a brother color laser (HL-L3290CDW). She was skeptical as it was much more expensive than the HP inkjet we had. A few weeks later, she called me randomly to thank me for getting it telling me how fantastic it was and how much easier it had made her life. First time she’s done that for any tech stuff I’ve gotten her. I’ll never but another HP product.