Greentings As youve seen from the the title, i want to get a new printer as a present for my parents. Sadly they are still windows peasants and my mom somehow thinks that the HP printer on her desk has been a good financial investment, even though it has costed us more than 300 bucks in ink over the past 2 years.
I was hoping that you fine folks would have some good recommendations to replace this money leach on their home. Ive heard about the entire brother lazer meme going around, but the ones ive seen from them only do monochrome. And frankly speaking i dont think that my birth specimens can comprehend the greatness of 18 century film on their paper. Anyways have a nice day or night, internet strangers!
We have the Brother HL-L3230CDW and are happy with it. Works fine with inexpensive toner cartridges from Amazon.
The low end of Brother color laser printers is $300. If they must have color, I would buy that. If color is not necessary, buy a B&W duplex Brother.
thanks mate, ill look into those, 300 bucks is about what i expected to pay for a new one. also i love the picture with the 2 ladies on the borther HL-L3280CDW listing. they are like “aw yeah look at us workin our work so efficiently, all because our god on the desk, printing out our work documents for us to work on”
I second the Epson Ecotank, but the problem it has is that unless you use it regularly, it dries up and needs 1 to 3 cleaning cycles before it will print again.
So unless you want phone calls like “It’s printing blank pages again…”
I have an Epson eco-tank ET-2850
Running it on archlinux, over wifi.
It took a couple of hours to set it up by trying out different packages, but ultimately both printing and scanning work.
And I like the fact that it doesn’t use cartridges, you can fill it up with some cheap chinese liter bottles of printer ink.
If you get a laser printer, put it in a well ventilated area. They emit particles that are considered harmfull with frequent exposure, but are probably completely harmless in a home setting with a properly ventilated room.
I use an Epson EcoTank, and I love it. The ink is incredibly cheap.
I have the Brother HL-L3270CDW, which prints in color. Ran me about $300 (it’s $270 directly from Brother now) plus the cost of the high yield toner cartridges I bought with it, but you can probably get away with the included toner for a while - with my B&W Brother the included toner lasted me over a year. It says the starters are supposed to last 1000 pages and the high yield 2300, but I’m pretty sure those numbers are very low based on my own usage estimates. I definitely went through more than two 500 page packs of paper in that first year.
It doesn’t have a built-in scanner but it does have:
- wireless and ethernet connectivity, plus support for AirPrint, cloud printing, etc
- direct USB connectivity (though I’ve never used it)
- duplex printing (not for A4 apparently)
- a 150 or so sheet capacity tray (advertised 250) that can handle letter, legal, A4, and anything smaller all the way down to 3” x 4.57”
It says it doesn’t support printing card stock but I’ve printed small amounts (30 or so sheets) at a time, largely without issues. That said, the only times I’ve had the printer jam, I was printing card stock, so maybe there’s some truth to that recommendation.
I haven’t used third party toner but my understanding is that as long as it’s good quality the printer will work fine. It doesn’t force you to only use first party toner.
The color quality has been good enough for my purposes - substantially better than the consumer inkjet printers I used like 20 years ago, but worse than current inkjets. That said, if photo quality color is the main thing your parents print and they print regularly, my recommendation - based on research, not personal experience - is an Epson EcoTank. From their site the entry-level model (the ET-2800) is $200 and comes with about 3k pages worth of ink (and replacement ink bottles have even more capacity). Other commenters have covered it in depth.
I have an HL-2270DW and the toner low light comes on well before prints start washing out. Fortunately the toner life is tracked by a plastic gear on the cartridge, and it takes just a minute to roll it back. When it does run out, good third party replacements are under $20.
Ah, in that case I probably could have gotten even more life out of the starter toner - I ordered a replacement as soon as I got the warning about it being low but my prints weren’t washed out at all by the time I replaced it.
It feels really silly to say, but they mostly just want to print their tax and insurance documents in color, since it “looks more official” and “the ones in the letters do it too!” . i primarily just want to replace the HP bastard to reuse its guts for a 3d printer. the scanning might be an issue though since thats its primary use. know if brother also has a color one with scanner? In the worst case scenario i could hook up an old a3 scanner we have laying around.
They do, but they’re a bit more expensive. They have a list at https://www.brother-usa.com/color-laser-all-in-ones (that includes printers without scanners but you can add a filter).
The best printer to have in your house is not having a printer in your house.
If she has to have one, try and talk her into getting a Brother.
If she insists on getting an HP, try to avoid the subscription ones. If she’s only printing, use the HP Universal Print driver and just use the base driver. (Device manager > find the printer > update driver > browse for the driver > Have disk > Find the INF > yada yada)
If she likes shitty bloated software, I guess let her install the normal drivers but it’s going to suuuuuuck. Wifi printing from them also sucks, unless you enjoy constant tech support. Then being on the phone trying to resolve a wifi issue.
Anyway, fuck a printer.
those drivers do suck ass, it is really just astonishing how much the hp software just stops working suddenly, im starting to think its intentional. know if there is any way to reverse that first firmware update that locks out all third party ink?
Another vote being cast here for a both Brother and laser. The nice thing about laser is that you can go without printing for weeks, or even, months, and just pick up right where you left off. My old ink jets, if you left them that long, would have completely dried out and need to be replaced.
man the new inkjets must really suck ass then. But im not really surprised since HP normalised paying 10 bucks for 10 ml of ink, bastards. can laser printers also do color? if they can id get one in a heartbeat.
laser printers can print color but it’s a bit expensive up front.
Brother color laser owner here: I’ve had it for a decade, put 3 toner carts in it (4 colors it’s nearly $200 for all 4 but you get a FUCKTON of printing out of it. Heartily recommend.
I don’t know what they sell these days but I’ve had a couple of Samsung mono lasers that were cheap ($150ish) and lasted decades of infrequent use.
samsung sold their printer business to hp in 2017.
Well that kills that idea then.
I bought a Samsung mono laser and printed approximately 400 pages on it before the fusor broke and would cost more than the entire printer did to replace.
I was past the 6-month warranty as well so I chucked it and bought a $10 Brother MFC-7860dw monoprinter from the thrift store that printed in the store.
It turned out that it would jam like the grateful Dead if it printed more than one page though.
Apparently that is a common issue with them and inside of the printer there is a small cork pad that gets twisted down and hits every time it picks up a new sheet of paper and the cork had gotten sticky somehow.
The fix for this incredibly complicated and delicate procedure is to open one side of the printer and take a piece of Scotch tape and cover over that tiny cork pad.
I did that 7 years ago and it still prints perfectly today.
i’ll add a kyocera ecosys m5526cdw (laser color with scanner,…) to the list. i don’t know what the currently version of this model is but it didn’t let me down once in the last 5? years. works on Linux, Windows, Android without a problem, the Image quality is ok and the toner costs are really low.
oh i think they had one of these set up our library, but that is one hell of a price lol. what are the chances of me finding one on ebay you recon?
i did pay 350€ for mine back then but i have no idea about the current price tag
I’ll cast a vote for checking the local Facebook marketplace or craigslist for a deal on a good laser printer.
I have a Lexmark black and white laser printer which I’ve used lightly for years (went through one and a half paper packs so far) and it’s still going strong with the original toner cassette. And when I’ll need to replace it I know there are third party cassettes available on the market for it which are substantially cheaper than OEM. I bought it to replace a Brother inkjet printer which was just an ink/money pit despite being a Brother. Inkjet is absolute crap no matter the brand. HP makes it even worse with a ton of assholeish DRM layered on top.
Ultimately there are two big things to avoid: inkjet and HP. Look up a laser printer and make sure that there is third party cassette support for it before you buy. Brother is apparently good in laser but don’t necessarily limit yourself to that brand.
Everyone here is suggesting laser and it’s great for sure, but personally I’m still using inkjet (Brother MFC-J491DW), and it works fine for my needs. The main reason being it’s a cheap way to get color, plus it doesn’t occupy much space, in spite of offering scanning as well as an ADF. If you want to get an equivalent laser printer, you’re looking at expensive and bulky options. I haven’t so far come across any reasonably priced, compact AIO laser color MFPs (if there is one - let me know!).
I’ve been using this inkjet for ~4 years and never had any issues. The ink has never once dried out, in spite of printing only like 2-3 times an year. So I’m happy to recommed that, or maybe a newer model in that series.
Ink is also supposedly more environmentally friendly than toner.
is it? i thought toner would be better since it holds a hella lot more ink. i might just be biased since the only toner cartridge ive seen in my life is just massive while the only ink cartridges ive seen are from HP… yeah i might be biased.
Toner is tiny plastic particles, but ink can be made of various biodegradable dies and ink cartridges can be more easily refilled. Toner tends to be more economical than ink, but for the same reason that it is less environmentally friendly: Plastic particles don’t dry up or biodegrade. Additionally, toner cartridges print more pages before needing to be replaced.
I luckily remembered this link from a resource i stumbled across. There is a website called
It has several periferals and devices supported by linux that they sell.
