What! They were supposed to be the good ones and not join the others.

I can recommend Kyocera - my current one has been going strong for 15 years now. I had problems with paper transport about two years ago - but that's expected after that many prints, and was solved with a reasonably priced field maintenance kit.

As far as I know they're still not doing any nonsense to force you to use their toner - but even if they did I probably wouldn't care as the original toner is cheap enough that I just can't be arsed to figure out good compatible ones.

Brother has clearly denied these claims:

"Brother printers do not intentionally degrade print quality based on whether a Brother Genuine or third-party ink/ toner cartridge is used."

https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/06/brother_firmware_upda...

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/03/brother-denies-using...