[MostlyStable]

Brother is enshittifying. They locked out non-OEM cartridges a year and change ago. Their hardware is good (for now), but their software practices are already to the point where I would instantly buy a Framework option and sell my current brother printer.

[MostlyStable]

Even though it is now more than a year since Brother did this, the vast majority of the comments about them are overwhelmingly positive, despite cartridge antics being the majority of the reason why people hate HP printers and others. I wonder how long it will take for their current status to fully penetrate the good will they built up from years of being the not-shitty option.

[resoluteteeth]

I think it will take a while for people to notice because Brother printers last so long, so most of the people praising them are using still printers they bought many years ago.

[happymellon]

My Brother laser must be approaching 10 years, and so from my experience I would completely recommend them.

However if they are really turning HP I could never recommend with a good conscious.

This is conflicting.

[kibibu]

I bought a brother laser printer last year, and it bricked itself when using third party ink. I have a printer shaped paperweight.

Solutions offered online are to use a knife to extract the chip from a genuine cartridge to stick on the new one.

[MostlyStable]

I did this. It was actually pretty easy as long as you still have the starter cartridge that came with the printer (to be the chip donor).

Here's a youtube video showing the process:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdj-yxfHh4I

[MostlyStable]

Yeah, I have an extremely sour taste in my mouth about them because their firmware update (which I didn't approve), disabled my non-OEM cartidge when it was only partway through.

Unfortunately, from an objective standpoint, I'm not sure there is anyone better to recommend. At least we can say that Brothers hardware is good and that, for the most part, it just works when trying to print. I've vertainly never had any issues with it _other_ than them forcing me to swap the DRM chip from my empty starter cartridge into my replacement non-OEM one (and, the fact that this is possible is a sort of half-mark in their favor? I guess?)

It's a shitty situation where I'd rather buy from a company that didn't do this but the entire product segment is so bad that I don't think it exists.

[emchammer]

Does this only apply to inkjet printers? I have noticed a number of firmware updates to my Brother black & white laser printer in the past year. I figured that those had to do with the integrated Internet services.

I recently bought a genuine Brother replacement toner cartridge, but that was locked out from my printer because the model number was off by one character or something. $65 lost, oops. There appears to be just a plastic tab on the cartridge keying it to the other model. I am not sure that I want to attempt pouring the toner into a compatible cartridge that I already have.

[resoluteteeth]

I don't think Brother has added drm in firmware updates like some other companies have (as far as I know) but all of their new laser printers have drm chips in the toner cartridges, so it's not just their inkjet printers.

[miah_]

I have a Brother Laser printer from ~2011 (HL-2280DW)that gets mad when I use non-oem toner. It still works, but it complains.

[JohnFen]

This is why Brother is on my do-not-buy list. Unless I can get an older one, anyway.