> For those of you who haven't already, I highly recommend just biting the bullet and switching from HP to Brother for your home printing needs.

I was under the impression that newer Brother firmware versions had restrictions:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131

I have an HL-L2360D, but my firmware is from 2015 (with no plans to upgrade), so have no idea if anything has changed recently.

Hmm, I got a color laser printer over 10 years ago. I think I replaced the toner once in that time.

Printer firmware going full circle.

I think that was the initial push RMS needed to start his open source movement, printer drivers. Firmware sould be next :)

I have been using brother laser printers for years. You can get them on sale for $100 and they last a decade. Recommended.

According to this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131, Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia ?

If so, that's unfortunate.

brother both inkjets and laser ones started doing exactly the same as the OP is talking about. I don’t know why people cut them so much slack.

Until manufacturers sell the printers at thick profit it won't work out.

I recently bought a Brother laser (the linked commenter bought an inkjet, not sure if it matters) & have replaced the toner with non-OEMs from a local shop: when I was buying, the (very helpful & generous) shop-owner warned me there was a reasonable chance it might not work & offered a full refund if it didn't.

I queried him further & according to him its random because he's heard both positive & negative stories with the exact same model numbers (which makes me think it must be firmware updates).

Thankfully my (very new) laser didn't have this issue: print quality is perfect. Afraid to do any fw updates now though.

Ugh too bad. I guess I'll be happy with my old one and hope it lives very long life.

I also like my brother, but it will attempt to detect and reject non-authentic ink. I don't update mine anymore because the last time I did, it rejected my cartridges.

I have an old 3170cdw that I got 2nd hand. At least all the consumables and parts that eventually need replacing are easy to get and seem readily available.

I have a brother HL-2360DW circa 2017, with a new brother large-size authentic toner cartridge. I never hooked it to the internet, never updated the firmware. And it started saying low toner even though I've put (far?) less than 250 sheets through it.

There was a way to turn off the low toner warnings, I did it, and seem to be ok, but it makes me wonder.

EDIT: wow, it sells for $449 on amazon. I paid $115 in 2017.

The Amazon price is high because you’re buying a discontinued product from a niche seller.

Or in other words, the price is high because there is consumer demand for printers that work, without advertising, without drm, without screwing you around to squeeze you for cash.

Surely DRM here, and allowing closed firmware, and such, are anti-Capitalist? Don't they prevent the market from optimising?

Unlikely. I see this frequently, where niche vendors charge a lot for discontinued products.

Perhaps demand for discontinued products is not uncommon.

It can have other reasons than the old products being bad (e.g. I recently bought two copies of a discontinued mosue at higher-than-MSRP prices because switching to a different model costs me in time to get used to it) but I wouldn't discount it as a major factor. A lot of products really have gotten shittier replacements.

> A lot of products really have gotten shittier replacements.

A perpetual pattern in humanity is this refrain coming from old people. :-) You can find examples of it from centuries ago.

A lazy response in online discussions is this idea that "old man yells at clouds" is somehow an argument for how things have not gotten worse. We are in a thread discussing an instance where a company is making their product worse FFS.

It is reducing the value of something merely to one attribute.

That's hilarious. I have exactly the same printer. It's recently survived moving between countries not particularly carefully packed, twice. Working like a champ. I've had months where it's printed thousands of pages (radio drama rehearsal scripts for multiple cast members). Absolutely fantastic printer. Unsurprised to see its become a beloved classic.

OT: Quick question - does this model (HL-2360...) have a physical on/off switch? I run two Brother HL-2130 series which I turn on and off with a relais to save energy for standby.

It does not have a switch like I think you like - a switch near the power cord that cuts all power to the printer.

It does have a power button (near the wifi button) but I expect that is a soft switch of some sort.

That said, I plug peripherals like this into a power strip with individual switches for each outlet.

OT: Thank you so much for the reply. One more question: Does the Printer remember its Power state - like if the relais cuts it off and then it turns on again once it regains power? That would be super awesome to know and something I could not research on the net :-(. I'm happy with my HL-2130 (dirt cheap repleacement for drum (15€) and toner (10€)) for now, but some day in the future ...

If I turn on power to the printer from the power strip, it immediately powers up and will print. I think it has some sort of power-saver mode after it is done printing, but when I'm done I usually cut power to the printer at the power strip anyway.

What about your sister, thought?

Yes; a lame pun, but my first thought reading that was 'Well yeah, I like my brother too, but what does that have to with — oh right'.

The printer manufacturer is 'Brother', your brother is just 'brother', except if he's also part of a fraternal order.

So, you could have liked your brother Brother Brother's brother Brother, brother?

But what about the buffalo?

Br'er Buffalo is probably involved in some mischief with br'er Rabbit and br'er Fox.

I bought a Brother HL-L5100DN last week, after seeing several people like you recommending Brother printers on HN.

I agree on the Brother printers, I’ve only had two Brothers in the past 13 years, and the only reason I upgraded was to go from Black and White Laser, to Color Laser, it was still going strong. The best part about it was you would buy a toner cartridge and when it would tell you it’s getting low, put some electrical tape over the clear hole in the side and it would continue to print for another 1.5k. On top of that I just press the reset button for the toner life and it resets it just like I put in a brand new one. Then I print till it starts getting light. This last round of color toners I bought an off brand from Amazon that came with all the colors plus two black for half the price of the name brand set. I typically don’t buy off brand, but figured I would give it a shot. Still going good since last year.

I still have an LCD screen Brother color laser printer that works great. The LCD is one or two lines. Works with any toner and paper and linux and wifi and I think AirDrop too (untried). It definitely is a beast but I think all color laser printers are big because they need 5 toner cartridges.

My Brothers work with Airdrop and I don’t get any weird pages that are zoomed in or some crazy alignment like I have with other printers.

> the best part

Is that you can easily circumevent the way this particular brand tries to cheat you.

It's less of cheating and more of toner is not heavy enough to maintain the desired darkness (it's a passive toner system, the toner uses its own weight to print). It's honestly wasteful but unfortunately active toner systems costs more and is much heavier than the already-heavy passive toner systems.

Sounds like you could remove the leftover toner from the first canister and add it to a second one after some use, reducing waste and not having the darkness issues.

But they're not refillable, you might say. Usually they're thinwalled plastic, nothing a little knife and some duct tape can't solve.

> Sounds like you could remove the leftover toner from the first canister

I am big on antiwaste, but if you have ever accidentally released toner, you realize that it's a very fine powder that aerosolizes easily and stains everything it touches.

I have a 15 year old Brother black and white laser all-in-one and a 6 year old black and white laser with Wi-Fi still on the starter toner in my office.

They work on Linux, Mac, and Windows. I can print to the Wi-Fi one from my iPhone.

In over 20 combined years I’ve never had a paper jam, magically been out of toner, or found myself in a pinch. The new(er) one has a very low power deep sleep so I don’t even have to fully turn it off.

I’ll probably never buy another printer, but as long as Brother doesn’t turn heel, my next printer will 100% be from them.

Even if your old one does start to go bad, I discovered it can be more effective to repair than replace for a multifunction printer/scanner. My old Brother was on the fritz a year ago. After being shocked by prices for new ones, I found a printer repair shop across the Bay from me. They fixed it for much less than the price of a new one. And they told me to keep it as long as I can because it’s such a good piece of hardware.

I bought a basic B&W brother toner printer back in college and it's still kicking on the original toner. I love the thing because it just freaking works, always worked out of the box on Windows/Mac and Linux with no additional drivers (there is one but it worked fine without them).

I've got the HL-L2300D and I recommend it to anyone that just 'needs a damn printer'.

> ...I highly recommend just biting the bullet and switching ... to Brother...

No bullets to bite. My brother laser is over 12 years old and works just like it did when I bought it. I like it so much I bought another for another part of the house. Did I mention it also groks postscript for those that might want to print from a BSD machine right OOTB?

15 years and counting here!

Does this open up the space for a "framework laptop" like company to open up? For "open" printers?

If yes, what other product categories is this applicable?

Printers are pretty difficult to manufacture compared to a laptop. They have specialized high precision parts and a lot of mechanical parts that have to work together for a particular design. A laptop can be pretty much made from off the shelf parts aside from the chassis and PCB, which you can easily have made by any number of contractors.

And I’m sure printers are probably a minefield of patents.

HP LaserJets that were considered tanks were sourced from Canon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_LaserJet

So it makes it not impossible for a new manufacturer to incorporate interface electronics with a core from an experienced manufacturer. The most difficult part might not be the engineering, but getting one of the old line print companies to do business at some reasonable cost with a smaller startup company.

I suspect Canon licensed that technology to HP rather than letting it be used openly. You might be able to do the same but you’ll just be another proprietary printer company.

There are dirt cheap printer heads on aliexpress for inkjets, isn't the rest just stepper motors and belts?

If the market weren’t in decline, maybe. But to pipedream a little:

A standardized control board (imagine if it were something like an RPi), with modular carriage (available in several sizes, including capable of 11x17” or A3), with changeable print heads (CMYK, or just a massive black, or hell, pen plotter).

they money in the printer is the ink. this is why HP try to block you off of third party ink.

The big money. One could still wonder if there is room for a company only interested in a tidy small profit for selling the printers (perhaps at a more expensive price, but along with a "no locked inks", "no BS", "just works" guarantees).

This shouldn't make sense. It's like buying a car, and then you cannot refill unbranded gas at 1.5€/L, but at 5€/L at the official dealership. Same gas, car works exactly the same, but the car refuses to start it you put unbranded gas. No wonder the money is in the gas, tagging it at 500% the price it would get in a competitive market.

The mistery is why the printers market get away with it.

> It's like buying a car

Printers are basically sold at a loss.

A more apt analogy would be selling you a laundry washer/dryer for $100 but only accepting name brand detergent pods.

Or, what Keurig tried to do to coffee, though even they sell the machines above the printers margins.

Printers get away with it because unlike your car, laundry, or coffee maker, most people don't actually use the printer very often and can't be bothered to raise a public outcry over it.

I get what you say, but never bought the cheapest-product part. Brother printers compete in price with any HP equivalent, is not like HP is selling laser printers for $20. Maybe a 15% less than a equivalent Brother, if that.

From memory, printers are a patent minefield. :(

HP Laserjets are 30+ yo. I don't think patents would be the issue.

Absolutely not because printer patents will kill you.

There are a handful of companies that hold all the patents necessary to build a printer. If you try to build one from scratch "taking inspiration" from consumer ones you will be sued into oblivion

Patent terms for printers would be at most 20 years. Perfectly good laser printers existed >20 years ago. You can tear down an old printer and make a clone of all functional and non-artistic aspects without infringing IP. In theory, patent specifications should provide a manual to help make any once-patented aspects of the device.

Indeed, that's the goal, in part, of the patent system to make technologies available in return for a time-limited monopoly.

Literally, what happened to 3D printers: a zombie/niche sector until the FDM patents expired in 2009.

I have fought so much with Brother (multi purpose machines) back in the early 2000s that I can still get reminded about it by ex-colleagues or users I helped back then, so this is certainly a huge change, but I have seen the recommendations for Brother so many times now I am seriously considering it.

Been with a laser Brothers for 10 years. Switched to a newer one 5 years ago but it’s only because I needed the wifi feature. Works great, no bullshit update software, stays connected to my wifi, never had to fight drivers or anything to get a new Mac connected to it.

It just works.

My HL-2140 still runs, but I can’t use it from my work laptop. Their macOS 13 drivers dropped some models.

I run a small Linux print server to expose a generic network printer that ends up printing to an older laser via CUPS. I use Proxmox now to host the print VM, but you can do this on a Raspberry Pi as well.

Ditto!

They tend to be repairable as well. I had to recap the power supply last year in my Brother HL-5250DN which is probably nearing the age where it's able to legally drive in the US, and after the output voltages were right again it fired right up and has been working great since.

>legally drive in the US

I'm sure it's got enough stepper motors.

Not sure about the 'legally' part though.

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Just want to make another suggestion. Ink tank printers are also good, can print coloured prints for cheap. We have one and just need to buy the inks and pour the ink into the tanks of printer.

I'm a fan of Canon lasers, as they put the drums on the cartridge. Mine accepts anything that fits, unsure if newer ones are the same.

I also like Canon. Bought one several years ago, ready to take it back if it did not play nice with Linux. I was pleasantly surprised that the drivers worked. I had to fiddle with them initially to get the needed dependencies (not all were configured as dependencies in the package), but they've since fixed it. It's such a breeze. And off-brand toner works just fine, too!

I recently bought an old Brother laserjet for 100 bucks off Craigslist.

The guy thought he was scamming me, because the autofeed tray didn't work. I'll get that fixed in due time. But the manual feed tray which still takes a stack of 15-20 pages works fine.

The bigger issue is my wife tells me I can't drill another hole for an Ethernet jack for it and have to make it wireless...

Do you need it to be available over wireless for direct printing, or just on the network without making holes? If it's the latter, are you aware of Ethernet over power (aka powerline networking)?

Yep. Tried that long before we bought the printer; won't work here. And yes, it's the latter - no holes.

I settled on trying one of these things or similar:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014SK2H6W

You can make it wireless by adding some router and link two wifi if you want :)

Have you looked at things like power line adapters? I’ve got one and it works brilliantly.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-line_communication

Also MoCA (coax)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_over_Coax_Allianc...

Powerline does not work in my home for reasons I can only speculate. It would take hundreds of dollars of tooling to figure it out.

To the gent suggesting Moca - an option generally, but no coax in the office.

I think a pi or small wireless bridge will probably be the way to go. Or I will talk my wife into letting me drill another hole in the floor.

A pi with CUPS installed will work fine.

A RaspberryPi sharing the printer over the network would do the trick. Stick it to the back of the printer, the LAN port connected to it, while sharing overthe WiFi.

It works for 3D printing with OctoPi, it should work with 2d printers with Samba.

I have a Ethernet only Epson WP4515 that I plan to keep until it dies since it works perfectly with 3rd party cartridges. In order to add WiFi, years ago I took a TP-Link TL-MR3020 mini router I got for €5 at a flea market, put OpenWRT into it and set it up as a wireless bridge. Worked perfectly for years until I could finally put the printer in a place to connect it through Ethernet. Any piece of hardware with the necessary features (compatible with OpenWRT or any other Linux, Ethernet, WiFi) can be used, therefore many *Pi-like boards will also work, but repurposing an old router/AP will be the cheapest solution since they're often literally thrown away.

about 7 years ago, i bought a brother mfc laser for $200

about a year ago, the drum gave out. it cost me $40 to replace

over those 7 years, i printed about 2000 pages: somewhat less than 1 page a day

take from what that what you will

The InkJet ones are still not perfect though. E.g. mine needs to clean itself all the time, wasting my ink every 4-5 months. I understand that it regularly needs to print so it doesn't clog up, but it's going at it for minutes at a time and is horribly loud...

This is the key answer here, i switched from a HP to a brother everything just works now, and i dont have to download 1gb "driver packages".

Hp is the worst company for any hardware needs, all their laptops/dektops sucked so much, back in the day in my electronics shop they where the ones with the worst return/faults rate, by a big margin.

* * *

Thats nice to hear i was only on the consumer side, and dont know b2b what i was referring to was the laptops/desktops they where pretty poor quality and would break more often than their competitors :)

I bought a Brother inkjet printer last year. It was a bit expensive but it just works flawlessly. I don't even use it that often but it doesn't betray me when I need it, I press print and it works.

Their label printers also don't do DRM like now Dymo does.

The scum even introduced drm-checking printers under same model name and number so the previous good reviews stay

I did exactly this. After one too many bad experiences with HP, I said as soon as this printer dies, I'm getting a Brother. Then I gave up waiting, and switched as soon as the cartridge ran out, and I am so happy I did.

I now recommend friends and family to avoid HP like the plague, including laptops (which I've also had bad experiences with). Such a shame, their stuff used to be great.

For as long as I can remember, HP has hated their customers, and I'm nearly middle-aged. It's been a loooong time since HP has been great (but it was true at one point, just not in the last 25-30 years).

I also love my Brother laser printer, and don't hate my p-touch.

Totally agree! HP back in the day were rock solid. I had one that would print onto virtually anything I stuffed into it (I exaggerate but you get my point). All it wants to do now is download 'updates' or some other crap. Finally I switched to Brother, not perfect but guess what... It just prints!!!!

I have a brother printer/scanner as well (model HL-L2395DW). I've been using at home since 2020 to supplement at-home office and school work once the pandemic started. It takes third-party black toner cartridges that you can buy from amazon/office stores. It's never jammed, I've replaced the starter toner cartridge, and have fed it several reams of paper. Scanning works well with a USB cable to PC and wireless printing works well from Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android. I expect it to last 10-20 years, overall a good product. I would not worry about getting this exact model, I'd expect any brother toner printer to work well.

You are completely ignoring the role of newer firmware being the part that enforces this.

I'm keeping my HP color inkjet for what it's good at: scanning and printing in color.

I'm buying a Brother laser today. I've hated this HP since I bought it, but it was a necessary evil for raising elementary school-aged children.

Been using Brother printers for years, never had any issues. Surprisingly, in our times, they just keep making printers that work. I don't know how long this would last, but I am planning on staying with them while it does.

A year ago I came home to find my wife on the verge of tears. She needed to print something for our child’s school and the printer was out of ink. Again. After having only printed 50 pages since the last time.

I bought a brother color laser (HL-L3290CDW). She was skeptical as it was much more expensive than the HP inkjet we had. A few weeks later, she called me randomly to thank me for getting it telling me how fantastic it was and how much easier it had made her life. First time she’s done that for any tech stuff I’ve gotten her.

I’ll never but another HP product.