Honestly, seing printers like this over the years and everything getting worse and worse makes me feel good about having an old Brother laser printer.

It's monochrome, it's now 20 years old, but it's good enough for me.

It keeps running and running, and the toner is dirt-cheap on the market. No internet, no spyware and no IoT-secured (tm) app required.

Manufacturers like Epson and HP kind of force me into keeping this old thing alive when it eventually breaks down.

I'm so glad we got CUPS and SANE as libraries. Without them, I would have to buy a newer model with current Windows support.

The only thing that was missing in daily use is smartphone support, but an mDNS-SD service running on a little raspberry pi that shares the printer can fix that.

This is mostly still valid for current brother printers. I bought one last year, and the web interface looks exactly the same on the one I bought 15 years earlier. The only difference: it can do wifi now.

When my boss needed a printer (to print out my contract for signing lol) a year and a half ago, he asked me what to get. The answer was, like always, a cheap b/w Brother -- since the LaserJet IIp is not in production any more.

It's just like the workhorse in the old pub cellar that chugged out ream after ream of paper through the dust and moisture for years without breaking down.

But with AirPrint too!

AirPrint is also great.

Funnily my old printer can already do air print. I think it came with an early firmware update.

I already stockpile particular old models of ThinkPad laptops, and now I should pick up 1-2 backup no-nonsense laser printers.

As for MS Windows, that's already giving people problems from software like we're talking about avoiding from hardware.

Mine is about 4 years old but same experience. Cheap to refill and works every time, even with Linux.

Epson EcoTank printers work well.

> 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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...)

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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™

> 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.

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

I think that's only for the Wi-Fi printing. The HP smart app is terrible and makes you sign up for features that work on a local network. I just visit my printer's internal web server with a desktop user agent to show the "remote scan" features. Printing over local Wi-Fi doesn't need the HP Smart app, just the HP print service plugin that doesn't require login (and also conveniently enables USB printing, if you want to use an OTG dongle with your phone).

My brand new HP laser printer literally won’t do anything until you use the app to set it up and agree to never disconnect it from the internet or use an unapproved cartridge. This is what the printer’s internal web server shows: https://pasteboard.co/L4AbwCTw7G3s.jpg

In other news one toner of a generic HP laser printer prints about 3500 pages, without apps or subscription. And then you can send them to HP and they’ll recycle it for free, if you care about the environmental impact. I don’t quite understand what is the market for this product.

The biggest problem with higher end printers are on the long tail. I have a very nice Samsung laser printer. Networked, has duplex printing, fast, 3000 page toner and 9000 page imager with all replaceable rollers and everything.

The thing is, it was built jointly with Xerox, and Samsung sold the division to HP. It's almost 10 years old, and can easily live for a decade more, but finding toners and imaging units become harder and harder.

If these kind pf printers take off with much longer lives (and HP claims 50K pages with a single drum), the companies can support all their fleets with a single sack, indefinitely (in theory). Since there is less electronics, precious metals and plastics to produce and ship, it'll be also cheaper.

I don't want to change devices because they are old. I want to use them as long as they run, and with global warming and pollution, everybody is moving to less-waste methods.

I also run a HP 4515 "Web printer". All web services are deprecated, but it has mDNS, and everything can print wirelessly with no drivers. HP app enables me to print my photos after cropping them or scan directly to my phone. Otherwise it behaves like an old USB MFP which works with all desktop apps pat.

Addenda: The unit is not used frequently, so I change toners really rarely now. Because of that, I want to stick with OEM refills as far as I can go. Knowing a little about inks and toners, their quality shows them on the long run. So, I don't trust an aftermarket toner to print archival documents. Same for the inkjet.

I, too, am fond of the Samsung laser printers of yore. They are one of the very few laser printers that have a simple paper path and the built-in provisions to print on heavy stock. At the time, perhaps 4–5 years ago, the toner cartridges were about $35–$40 and lasted a good long time. About two years ago, I went to buy toner and the price was $135 and they were out of stock.

I ended up replacing it with a Brother.

I think the idea is to reduce (its reduce, reuse, recycle in order of preference) as a bag of toner needs less resources than a cartridge.

The internet indicates a 5k page cartridge costs ~5kg of CO2 to make, and each trip to the recycling center costs ~1kg of CO2 (rough average cost of shipping a package).

A 5k page pouch in a box weighs 0.2kg, assuming a 4x weight->CO2 cost (high end of plastic production), it comes out to 0.8kg of CO2 per pouch. This is less than the CO2 cost of shipping back the cartridge for recycling.

If you assume the cost of return shipping and recycling is free, the cartridge will need to last >6 times to be worth it from a initial cost perspective. The figures I can find on cartridge lifetimes is 3-4 recycles before they are too worn to recycle again.

Even though its single use, its still a net win from a lifecycle perspective.

If you’re the kind of party that prints so much a 5000 page toner bag is worth the effort, you’re not going to be returning single toners to HP. You get a big box and send 50 at once.

Also you should be aware a lot of those toners include some other roll that has a limited life, which means you can’t recycle (or refill) them forever. But if you get toner from a bag you’d have to replace the roll separately anyway. This might be skewing your figures.

MBAs eating the world.

> ...or up to 2 years...

How does that have to be interpreted? Will the printer request the toner to be changed after 2 years of ~inactivity or are they referring to the subscription?

I bought a Kyocera about 10-15 years ago and one of its toner cartriges (CMYK) is still the original one... :P

HP already asks for a login for using their app to pront or scan, wtf HP? Anyway using NAPS2 for scanning on windows, on linux works out of the box, even better than on windows (how come?).

more like, the anti-consumer subscription based feature section. Two things are a sure thing post 2020, Covid and subscriptions.