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I have no idea why anyone would buy an HP printer in the first place. The company is pretty much built entirely out of dark patterns ("You want to print a black

I have no idea why anyone would buy an HP printer in the first place. The company is pretty much built entirely out of dark patterns ("You want to print a black and white document? Not while your magenta ink is low! Better buy a new ink pack. Or a new printer, they cost about the same.") I've had much better experience with Brother.

nobodyandproud 3y ago
I heard Brother is following the same dark pattern. Is the company aware of why they’re so loved/respected these days?
- woliveirajr 3y ago
  Canon printers are the only ones that gave me peace of mind. I avoid everything from HP and everything from the top 3 brands as default.
- deaddabe 3y ago
  Do you have a source or a link? From my experience Brother is the best brand of printers that I have worked with (monochrome, laser).
  - josephcsible 3y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131
- plussed_reader 3y ago
  I would love to know the source of this uttering.
duxup 3y ago
I've had "better" experiences with Brother, but it still seems to suffer from being a printer in the ecosystem of "printer hell". My Brother printer no matter what I do likes to go into this deep sleep mode that may as well be powered off, nothing wakes it up, power cycle and it drops right back into deep sleep immediately.... The software for it is bulky, wants to run on my PC all the time (why?). Is it better than an HP printer, yeah probably in some sense, but the landscape of printers all being a pain is still true. I don't have a functional printer right now. I need one ... but I keep procrastinating buying one. I just don't want to deal with it.
- booi 3y ago
  I'm a big fan of Brother printers. I've got a B&W multifunction one that's 10 years old with 50,000+ printed pages in still going strong. Our new color laser has been nothing but a dream to work with too but it's only about a year old. If your printer is not waking up from deep sleep, I've found it due to poor multicast support on your network. I've had to debug various issues related to waking/discovery and once I resolved the multicast issues this problem went away. Specifically I ran into a UniFi bug with mesh networking and this problem is significantly exacerbated by poor mesh networking equipment. Brother printers rarely, if ever, need the full software suite and they indeed have a "driver-only" install available most of the time.
  - desro 3y ago
    Interested if you've got a write-up somewhere of the multicast issues you tracked down and fixed as I'm currently in a nearly-identical predicament with my home network, except I'm using mikroTik hardware instead of Unifi (ever since I mournfully retired my AirPort Extreme and Express's)
- addaon 3y ago
  I have a Brother HL-L2350W that I paid $120 for, and is a basically perfect black and white printer for my needs. Plugged it in, set it up on Wi-Fi (LAN only). It goes into deep sleep after a few minutes of zero use, but even after weeks hitting print on any system in the house (no third-party drivers needed, at least on Mac) wakes it and the first page is out of the machine before I can walk over there. I'm sure that, like any other company, they have better and worse products -- but I did very little research on this, bought to price point, and have been very happy. Certainly not the HP experience.
- 14 3y ago
  That doesn’t sound right. I have 2 brother printers at different locations and neither suffer from anything like that. One is a colour the other is a black and white. Both print perfectly with no issues so far. I wonder if you could update and reinstall the software to fix it.
- 3y ago
kevincox 3y ago
They are cheap. Most people don't realize the extra long-term cost. They only realize how hard they were fucked over when they need to get their first ink refill. I doubt many people buy more than a few printers in their life so the brand loyalty isn't strong. I think the solution should be something like the EnerGuide labels that reveal the long-term cost. Then customers would be able to tell that this cheap printer sold at a loss will have crazy expensive ink.
- rascul 3y ago
  Some years back I could usually find a cheap HP printer on sale for around $30. For the amount of printing I did, the starter ink would usually dry up before it was empty, and new ink cartridges would run over $40. It was more cost effective for me to throw away the printer and buy a new one instead of replacing the ink.
VTimofeenko 3y ago
At the risk of going against the grain here: I deliberately bought an HP laser printer and scanner combo(m148dw) a couple of years ago. Granted, the thing immediately got vlaned off from the Internet -- but that would apply to any device I don't fully control. So far the performance has been rock-solid across several Linux and macOS machines and I almost forgot the saying "printers sense your fear and will break at the worst possible moment".
- macNchz 3y ago
  The newest consumer oriented HP printers (with model numbers ending in 'e') will not tolerate being disconnected from the internet. Even if you only ever print over USB, the printer has to maintain a wifi connection with internet access, or it will stop letting you print.
- VTimofeenko 3y ago
  Out of idle curiosity I googled the current price for m148dw. I definitely don't think it justifies the current 400$+ price tag. Two years ago the prices were much more reasonable.
lawn 3y ago
I bought one because I was ignorant and I just wanted a cheap printer. I mean, printing a paper, how problematic could it be? I finally got fed up with it a few weeks ago and bought a Brother printer.
- Frenchgeek 3y ago
  They're the reason why I sort my potential new printers by refill price before buying.
kylehotchkiss 3y ago
Because Wirecutter said a specific model was “less worse” than the rest of them and that’s all a lot of people really care to research.

nobodyandproud 3y ago

I heard Brother is following the same dark pattern. Is the company aware of why they’re so loved/respected these days?

woliveirajr 3y ago
Canon printers are the only ones that gave me peace of mind. I avoid everything from HP and everything from the top 3 brands as default.
deaddabe 3y ago
Do you have a source or a link? From my experience Brother is the best brand of printers that I have worked with (monochrome, laser).
- josephcsible 3y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131
plussed_reader 3y ago
I would love to know the source of this uttering.

duxup 3y ago

I've had "better" experiences with Brother, but it still seems to suffer from being a printer in the ecosystem of "printer hell". My Brother printer no matter what I do likes to go into this deep sleep mode that may as well be powered off, nothing wakes it up, power cycle and it drops right back into deep sleep immediately.... The software for it is bulky, wants to run on my PC all the time (why?). Is it better than an HP printer, yeah probably in some sense, but the landscape of printers all being a pain is still true. I don't have a functional printer right now. I need one ... but I keep procrastinating buying one. I just don't want to deal with it.

booi 3y ago
I'm a big fan of Brother printers. I've got a B&W multifunction one that's 10 years old with 50,000+ printed pages in still going strong. Our new color laser has been nothing but a dream to work with too but it's only about a year old. If your printer is not waking up from deep sleep, I've found it due to poor multicast support on your network. I've had to debug various issues related to waking/discovery and once I resolved the multicast issues this problem went away. Specifically I ran into a UniFi bug with mesh networking and this problem is significantly exacerbated by poor mesh networking equipment. Brother printers rarely, if ever, need the full software suite and they indeed have a "driver-only" install available most of the time.
- desro 3y ago
  Interested if you've got a write-up somewhere of the multicast issues you tracked down and fixed as I'm currently in a nearly-identical predicament with my home network, except I'm using mikroTik hardware instead of Unifi (ever since I mournfully retired my AirPort Extreme and Express's)
addaon 3y ago
I have a Brother HL-L2350W that I paid $120 for, and is a basically perfect black and white printer for my needs. Plugged it in, set it up on Wi-Fi (LAN only). It goes into deep sleep after a few minutes of zero use, but even after weeks hitting print on any system in the house (no third-party drivers needed, at least on Mac) wakes it and the first page is out of the machine before I can walk over there. I'm sure that, like any other company, they have better and worse products -- but I did very little research on this, bought to price point, and have been very happy. Certainly not the HP experience.
14 3y ago
That doesn’t sound right. I have 2 brother printers at different locations and neither suffer from anything like that. One is a colour the other is a black and white. Both print perfectly with no issues so far. I wonder if you could update and reinstall the software to fix it.
3y ago

kevincox 3y ago

They are cheap. Most people don't realize the extra long-term cost. They only realize how hard they were fucked over when they need to get their first ink refill. I doubt many people buy more than a few printers in their life so the brand loyalty isn't strong. I think the solution should be something like the EnerGuide labels that reveal the long-term cost. Then customers would be able to tell that this cheap printer sold at a loss will have crazy expensive ink.

rascul 3y ago
Some years back I could usually find a cheap HP printer on sale for around $30. For the amount of printing I did, the starter ink would usually dry up before it was empty, and new ink cartridges would run over $40. It was more cost effective for me to throw away the printer and buy a new one instead of replacing the ink.

VTimofeenko 3y ago

At the risk of going against the grain here: I deliberately bought an HP laser printer and scanner combo(m148dw) a couple of years ago. Granted, the thing immediately got vlaned off from the Internet -- but that would apply to any device I don't fully control. So far the performance has been rock-solid across several Linux and macOS machines and I almost forgot the saying "printers sense your fear and will break at the worst possible moment".

macNchz 3y ago
The newest consumer oriented HP printers (with model numbers ending in 'e') will not tolerate being disconnected from the internet. Even if you only ever print over USB, the printer has to maintain a wifi connection with internet access, or it will stop letting you print.
VTimofeenko 3y ago
Out of idle curiosity I googled the current price for m148dw. I definitely don't think it justifies the current 400$+ price tag. Two years ago the prices were much more reasonable.

lawn 3y ago

I bought one because I was ignorant and I just wanted a cheap printer. I mean, printing a paper, how problematic could it be? I finally got fed up with it a few weeks ago and bought a Brother printer.

Frenchgeek 3y ago
They're the reason why I sort my potential new printers by refill price before buying.

kylehotchkiss 3y ago

Because Wirecutter said a specific model was “less worse” than the rest of them and that’s all a lot of people really care to research.