[freedomben]

When these recommendations come up on HN, It's always people who have had their printer for 10+ years. I always wonder if Brother is still the same way.

I bought a recent Brother and have been pleased with it, though I haven't yet tried to replace toner. I'm a bit worried because I've heard they do some firmware tricks with non-standard toner. I sure hope that's not true.

[MostlyStable]

I have a new brother printer (<2 years old). It works just fine. The quality of the printer, as a device itself, I have no complaints about. It's the DRM Toner bullshit that is the problem. Unfortunately, in the past, that kind of behavior has often presaged other things like degrading hardware quality in the future. Will Brother do the same? I have no idea. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of a different company that both supplies a quality product and also doesn't do the DRM bullshit. So, in my opinion, Brother is not longer better than other companies, but it doesn't appear to be worse either. Which is more an indictment of the printer industry than anything good about Brother.

-edit- You can still (for now) get around the Toner DRM. The drm chip is pretty easy to remove and it just slots into a little spot on the toner. It's about a ~5 minute operation. So make sure to keep your OEM cartridge for now:

https://youtu.be/NzaRVEzYuz8

[loloquwowndueo]

Even if it’s true, Brother toner is cheaper than HP :)

My 7-year-old Brother printer works well with third-party toner, I paid $29 for two refills and each lasts for 3 years or so. The printer itself was like $50 back then :) I bought it because it was cheaper than buying ink for my previous HP inkjet.

[coffeebeqn]

As long as it’s laser and doesn’t have obnoxious features it should be good. Mine is 4 years old and doesn’t have a scanner - I gotta say with mobile phone cameras and post processing I haven’t actually needed a scanner