[bayindirh]

> Requires the HP Smart app download.

To be able to scan your documents to your phone directly.

> Subscription may be required; subscription may not be available in all countries

For some advanced, Prizmo-like scan features and OCR which are probably cloud based.

> Get up to 5,000 pages or up to 2 years of pre-filled toner

Considering printers at same size provides ~3000 pages, that's good. 2 years is probably printing n 5% filled office documents every day or so.

> HP account required for full functionality.

For HP smart app and web-based functionality (like mail2print) to work, not the printer.

HP is still the best manufacturer which provides a complete driver stack which provides same quality printing in Linux. CUPS supports them in "driverless" fashion now, too.

I use an old HP 4515 web printer, which is the first generation of these devices. Many embedded web features are deprecated (like printables), but it still works great as a wireless, mobile enabled MFP.

[jonathantf2]

The last 3 HP LaserJets we've bought at work have had to go back because they require an HP account to print. You can't use port 9100 unless you've got an account, it just sits at an error state. No matter what we did you couldn't sign in, their cloud service seems to be down all the time and support wouldn't help.

[bayindirh]

Strange. mine has an option called "Remove embedded web services", and it transforms to a dumb printer.

Then you can re-enable it if you prefer later.

[l8rlump]

Embedded Web Services / EWS is their name for their web configuration interface. I don't think it has anything to do with GP's concerns.

https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/ish_2029438-1929621-16

[bayindirh]

After my first comment (telling that mail2print is deprecated), I wondered and removed web services from mine.

The printer disassociated from my HP account, its e-mail address is removed, all on-device "printables" functions (which is dropbox, google drive, Scan2Mail, QuickForms at this point) removed too. It completely became a dumb, networked printer with an LCD screen (which you can setup your printer and whatnot).

I'm almost sure that it addresses concerns of the GP, because the device became completely unaware that there's something called an HP account, yet stayed fully functional as a networked inkjet MFP, incl. HP's smart app.

BTW, if your printer is in working order, and discoverable over local network, you can use the smart app without any account. Scanning and printing works, at least.

I re-enabled the services and the functions I mentioned as deprecated started to work again. I think something broke configuration-wise while HP was migrating services.

[KevinGlass]

I've installed a few dozen HP LaserJets recently and haven't needed any kind of account.

[osrec]

In my experience, the best Linux support has been from brother. Also, their printers seem more light weight (in a good way), and their compatible ink is cheaper. Good for basic documents etc, but probably not for printing photos.

[dublin]

OKI has absolutely the best color laser (really micro LED strip) printers, and they work flawlessly with PCs, Macs, or Linux, PCL, PS, or native, and wired or wireless (depending on model). I swore off all inkjet printing after buying my first color OKI over 20 years ago, and that decision has saved me thousands in ink and uncounted hours of frustration as I watched that ink being spewed out to clean clogged printheads. Life is too short to use inkjet printers.

OKI's toner is polymer, so in addition to looking great on paper, you can print on "weatherproof laser labels" and they will last for years outdoors. (Outdoors, colors eventually fade, especially red and blue, but the blacks are still very readable on some devices I've deployed after over a decade outside. Not bad for what were intended to be temporary prototype labels...)

[fsflyer]

Looks like OKI has pulled out of the America's market as of 2021.

https://www.oki.com/us/printing/

[CamperBob2]

What's a good model number for OKI? I'm in this market and have already had to send back a couple of printers for (among other things) dropped network connections.

[porbelm]

I miss my 1993 OKI OL-400ex, such an elegant printer for its day. Like current Brothers.

[sf_rob]

I love my Brother, but their Mac support is (was?) laughable. Their main support path is to download the Brother app to load a PDF you output to your filesystem and send it to your printer. I'm clueless about the subtleties of printer drivers on Mac's but their solution was so clunky. Works flawlessly on Windows and with some minor tweaks on Linux Mint.

[CharlesW]

In my experience, for at least the last decade Brother laser printers (B&W and color) don't need anything special to work with Macs. Our household is currently on a 4+ year old color laser printer that "just worked" with our Macs, Windows machines, iOS devices, etc.

[j16sdiz]

Apple literally owns CUPS and use it on mac. If your printer works on linux without special filters, it should work on mac

[porbelm]

My Brother experience on the Mac half a year ago was "install printer > pick out in list of visible printers > wait 2 seconds > it works"

On the phone it was just discovered by AirPrint and Just Worked™

[kevin_thibedeau]

> Considering printers at same size provides ~3000 pages, that's good.

They used to sell a 6000 page cartridge as their low end offering in this class of printers. This is what's its like to be a boiled frog.

[bayindirh]

I have used a Lexmark desktop printer with 6000 page demo toner installed. That thing's toner container (which is just a canister) is almost thrice as big than my Samsung's dispenser-integrated 3000 page toner cartridge.

IIRC, that thing is somewhere around office, and we still use its demo toner. It's a low duty device too, but well.

In other words, these devices are still there, but it's the next bigger class with respect to the Samsung printer I have. Also, Samsung has a very nice econoprint mode which injects tiny dots inside the letters which saves 20%-50% depending on the font and content you print, and there's no day and night difference in terms of the print quality between two modes.

[zeropoint46]

I have an HP deskjet f4210 and it doesn't work with windows 11 at all. Gave my wife a new laptop with windows 11 and there are exactly 0 drives anywhere to be found for it. Can't even re-use windows 10 drivers. However, they will run you through about 5 different tools and HP accounts and personal information gathering while trying to "find" drivers for it. Sure, I get it, super old printer, but it works just fine for what we need it for, why upgrade just cause we are using a new OS?

[bayindirh]

Just from top of my head:

Why not connect to a Raspberry pi or an Orange Pi zero and share it via CUPS? CUPS will make it a mDNS enabled, "driverless" printer, which can be used from any device (Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android and your toaster)?

If you want wireless, don't use OrangePi Zero (1) though. Its wireless is not supported well under Linux.

[zeropoint46]

yeah, I had an older rpi and I did that for a bit, but I couldn't get scanning work on it well or the way I wanted, plus the older PI was super slow. I'll probably revisit this in the future. However this whole thread had me track down some drivers for the printer and now it works. Seems like what HP now does on their site when you select windows 10 or 11 or even 7, is just say, windows update has the driver, you're good. However, if it's not "officially" approved by MSFT then its not in the windows update as is the case with this printer. So I found some raw bundle of drivers, extracted them and windows was able to manually locate the driver file. I just want HP to host that file so that I know it's trustworthy, and honestly, why shouldn't they host their own driver files?

[CamperBob2]

How do they keep Windows 10 drivers from working? I've never heard of any Windows 10-compatible devices that don't work in 11.