No, clicking through this thread and the big threads [1] [2] in the past 5 days, commenters mentioning "Brother laser" have much more than 100,000 combined karma and most of the accounts are 3+ years old.

With a history like Brother's, and awful competitors like HP and Canon inkjets, you too can get free, genuine endorsements in the form of raving comments for your brand on HN.

I'd also happily endorse my Fluke multimeter, or my Mitutoyo digital calipers, or my Wiha screwdriver set. If you make great products that people like to use, people will leave positive feedback for you. This kind of endorsement is exactly what shills are trying to copy, so it does look similar.

Disclaimer: I'm yet another happy Brother owner. I love my 2380DW, which I recently bought to replace my first Brother laser (I forget the model number) that had served me well for more than a decade. That's in sharp contrast to the crappy HP inkjet I bought my first year of college, which lasted less than one semester, and my wife's several inkjets through her college days (now, obviously, she uses the Brother laser) and my parent's various inkjet struggles. Some 5 years ago, I set them up with a 2730DW, and the first service I've had to do for them was to change the wifi password a few months ago when they changed ISPs.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25008894

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24977699

Fluke and Wiha FTW!

Hah, I get that; it's spookily consistent; but I happen to have exactly the same experience.

I've gone through 3 (Epson) inkjets last decade (as I do need to print Photos - but only occasionally), and SO much consistent hassle with cleaning heads and refilling and bad prints. Meanwhile I have a Brother 2270DW for at least the last decade for regular printing and it just works. I've gone through the original small and one big toner in that period. Happy to discuss how to prove I'm not a shill :)

I regret my tone. I let cynicism get the better of me there, sorry!

To be fair I start to have the same doubts as you, I noticed a lot of recommendations for Brothers printers, seemingly out of nowhere recently.

Might be due to a couple of bad HP printers hitting the frontpage of HN recently, and people genuinely being happy with their Brothers, but it pulled my suspicion trigger as well

The truly sad part is your reaction is perfectly normal critical thinking for the age we live in. We are bombarded with lies constantly and as such I've decided I'd rather be a cynic than a perpetual victim.

Age of information, indeed. I guess I just naively assumed it'd be correct information.

I'm not shilling.

Most of the other printer manufacturers have followed the HP model to create much worse products. It's a cesspool.

Brother is one of the few left standing that hasn't taken that road and I think they should be rewarded for it.

FWIW they also sell color laser printers and I'm using one right now. It connects over the network, supports AirPrint, and just sits there quietly doing a good job. It doesn't get gummed up if it sits idle for weeks or months. The model I have even does duplex printing (printing on both sides of the page) which is quite handy. It was less than $500 when I purchased it. The official toner isn't terribly expensive and you can use cheap refills if you want to save money.

I loved Samsung laser printers mostly because they can reliably print on heavier stock than any other printer I have tried. They also were able to print peel-and-stick forms without melting the adhesive.

And then, about a year ago, their OEM toner cartridges suddenly became almost impossible to find and more expensive than the printer itself and the cheaper, third-party cartridges just don't work well at all. So, I had to reluctantly abandon Samsung. I am still looking for a good replacement.

They are modern, consumer-level, reasonably priced printers that just print, rather than pollute your computer with crapware and hassle you to be a continuous revenue stream. These days this is quite a remarkable thing.

I think printers bring out a strong reaction in many of us that paying so much for inkjet refills is an affront. Even if the absolute amount of $ isn't that much HN is generally of a demographic that doesn't want to feel trapped into overpaying for anything related to tech.

I can only speak for myself, but as someone who needed a printer for the first time in a while due to the pandemic, I bought a used brother laser printer (HL-2170W) for $20 from someone local. It's not perfect, especially with network printing from a linux client over wifi, but I was able to get it all set up and refilled the toner with a very cheap generic from Amazon. It feels like a device I "own" rather than some black box I'm renting from HP.

I don't know where the excitement around buying the new ones comes from. When I looked it was hard to find them in stock and they didn't seem particularly inexpensive.

I’m gonna get myself one and see. I’m leaning towards the comments are just authentic users excited about a quality product. I never got an uncanny valley feeling from them.

I’m just so sick of the inkjet racket and this latest HP move is the last straw.

I've written before about my laser Brother. It's not an excelent quality product, just a regular printer that doesn't extort you. And sadly this is all it takes to put a printer brand as a top value for your money, and to make a buyer happy.

This is exactly what I thought, so I have a brand new £55 Brother laser printer sitting at home, ready to be opened and tested!

I did have a cheapo Samsung laser printer many years ago, and it was great. Not sure why I reverted to bloody inkjets after that (I have two once quite expensive inkjets sitting in the corner here, sworn off).

I've had a Brother 5150D for over 10 years without problems. Some issues with Windows drivers over the years, but pretending to be a recent Brother model has always worked.

I don't have a Brother laser printer, but I do enthuse about things I like; I believe them.

(Actually I realised my label (thermal) printer is a Brother. It's ok. Works on Linux except not continuous/arbitrary length - I have to use a preset label size even though it's loaded with a continuous roll, or else it weirdly distorts flips and scales the image.)

Maybe? But their experiences do match mine. I bought a cheap Brother printer laserjet a few years ago. I needed the occasional B&W print job and plugged in the ethernet port. It worked out of the box for Debian and Windows, no special drivers needed. (I used to have to have some strange binary, but that hasn't been necessary anymore).

I don't remember the last time I exchanged out the toner cartridge (Maybe it's the first one? But I think I did have to exchange it at some point.), and it works reliably everytime I need to print. For $100, that isn't bad.

For another reference, I also bought one for my old college lab in ~2008-2009. I went back for a visit in 2019, and it was still there and it was working fine.

I get what you mean though, it seems in every printer thread the Brother recommendations have popped up.

I also have a Brother All-in-one laser printer/scanner/document feeder/duplex printer.

Everything works out of the box. Even wireless scanning, which I did not know was a thing until I got this device.

My favorite thing about Brother is they sell the same models for a few years, and then iterate on that model. It massively cuts down on manufacturing issues, number of spare parts, and being unable to web search for a problem.

Brother are the Toyota of printers. The MFC-27XX series are the Camrys.

I hope to never buy another printer brand again.

They are! We had a basic laser printer at work and even with 20 people printing everyday it rarely had issues.

Even the (5+ year old) HP laser printers are still solid. I've had a little one for 12 years and maybe change the $50 toner cartridge once a year. It would probably be less if i wasn't printing research docs to read for school.

Basically fuck ink jets. I email files to the local printer if I need a color document.

Honestly, I feel like a shill because I was not a believer.

They are expensive if you're used to cheap inkjets and have to spend $80 on a black-white laser.

if you have never dealt with a line of inkjet printers all of which try to gouge you on ink and fail just when you need them most you cannot appreciate just how big a difference a cheap laser printer from an honest and user-friendly company can make :)

I don't think they are shill accounts. I have a brother thermal printer that I have been using for years. Never needs ink, just special paper. I love the integrations it has like AirPrint and the lack of need for special drivers. After dealing with HP printers back in the day, its a breath of fresh air.