[freedomben]

Has anyone bought one recently that can vouch for Brother (especially on Linux)?

I love the "10 years ago" testimonials and those are helpful, but I'm worried that quality/philosophy of Brother might have dropped in the intermittent time. Or are the same models still available new? That would be neat.

[greycol]

We've been using previous equivalents of DCPL3551CDW and MFCL3770CDW in work site container offices for basic printing/scanning not much seems to have changed from the previous models in that use case and the latest (installed last month) seems as solid as previous iterations.

The more abused ones (plenty of dust from gravel lots and probably takes a meter tumble every 6-12 months (not that we'd be told about it)) last 2-3ish years before something get finicky enough on them that replacing them makes sense. The ones in the more cared for areas haven't had an issue and have only been replaced because site managerials want a newer printer when the mistreated printers are 5-6 years newer than theirs (but no actual issue with the printer).

I can say that quality hasn't changed noticeably from what I have seen in this narrow band of their products and that these machnies have done well and lasted longer than other ocassional cheap printer we've put in for whatever reason. I'd extrapolate from that to say ten years in a home office printing a few pages a week should be easy for them (Though maybe there's a part that gives up the ghost after 7 years that I don't see pop up in our use case).

Can't comment on linux support.

[nwallin]

I bought a B&W half duplex Brother printer circa 2011 and have no problems with it. Besides the fact that it was half duplex. I've bought a generic brand toner cartridge twice since then; neither have had problems.

Earlier this month I upgraded to a full duplex color laser printer. (HL-3270CDW) Not because my existing printer is broken or has stopped working, but I was printing sections from a book and it annoyed me that I had to do all the flipping manually and gosh it would be nice if it were in color. Kind of an impulse buy.

It's the same. Everything is the same. It's got new tech in it; it's got newfangled stuff like wifi, bluetooth, and NFC. (my old one had nothing but a USB port; they had versions with ethernet and wifi but I got the cheapest one) But it looks the same, it feels the same, it sounds the same, the drivers are in one of my distro's package manager's overlays and just work. (Gentoo/brother-overlay)

I haven't owned it long enough to need to replace the toner. Amazon has generic versions of the toner for 30% of what Brother is charging. I don't know whether it will last forever with no issues, but my magic 8-ball says "all signs point to yes."

My old printer is the HL-2240. It's discontinued. It looks like the new model in that line is the HL-L2320D. Besides the fact that they've discontinued the half-duplex printers, (D is for full duplex, W is for wireless, C is for color) it looks like it's basically the same exact thing; they're putting precisely zero effort into "updating" the styling which I like. The toner cartridges for the 2240 and 2320 are not compatible, but Brother is still selling toner in the 2240 cartridges, despite the fact that they're not selling any printers that use them.

https://www.brother-usa.com/products/hl2240

https://www.brother-usa.com/products/HLL2320D

https://www.brother-usa.com/products/HLL3270CDW

[ryandrake]

I have the HL-L3270CDW, too. No complaints so far. Linux, Mac, and Windows support, and the color is not too bad. It's not as beautiful as a good inkjet on quality, glossy paper, but it does the job for basic PDFs and web sites that have colored text.