Looking for a new printer. My new HP Inkjet is a piece of fucking garbage and I’m going to smash it to pieces in my driveway.
Looking for something with good Linux support, and as little proprietary online HP-type bullshit as possible. Also, should I get a laser printer?
Look at non-multi-function “Enterprise” laser printers. They are completely different than the consumer grade garbage.
I recommend an HP LaserJet Enterprise Mxxx printer, color or not, that is listed on the HPLIP All Supported Printer Models page.
You can find lightly used, older model ones on Ebay, sometimes even with a full toner cartridge(s), for much less than new price.
HP is still releasing firmware updates even for many older models, and the firmware is loaded with features (for example, if it is connected to your network, network printing works from Android and Apple phones without requiring any special apps). The firmware does not depend on any remote service.
If you even need them, the Linux drivers are free and open source and packaged in Debian main (for example); your don’t have to install some weird closed source garbage that won’t work in a few years.
People here are recommending Brother, but I don’t think they have free and open source drivers (think “nouveau vs. Nvidia”). Am I incorrect about that? In my experience, this can become a significant problem as software moves forward but the company does not continue to support their Linux binary driver.
I bought a brother laser printer 20 (??) years ago and it’s still working beautifully. Was the budget model at that time. So definitely under 150. Maybe even 100.
Do yourself a favor and don’t buy another inkjet printer, let alone a shitty HP product. Definitely get yourself a Brother laser printer. Brothers are bulletproof.
@ablackcatstail @MashingBundle
I had some issues with predatory pricing of “genuine Brother” cartridges and quality alternatives, in which Brother changed the codes or something, it seems, locking my device. Brother’s monochrome lasers are fine (reasonable printer and supply costs), but I have a sore spot with their color printers.I’ve never had a color laser printer so I would be none the wiser on that front. I hate the whole “genuine product” movement. I thought a federal court ruled that companies cannot force their customers to use only company-branded cartridges. I don’t know. Maybe I am not remembering correctly.
This is the advice I heard on the Vergecast. The best printer for anyone is whatever Brother laserjet is currently on sale.
Wish i knew that before i opened fire at my inkjet
Well, now you can replace it with a laser.
LOL! I actually did that to a printer that pissed me off. Cool thing is it was in the middle of the Arizona desert and we basically vaporized it.
We’ve got some Brother laser printers at work and they’ve been great. We get third-party toner from a local company for peanuts too, as well as sending them the old cartridges to reuse/recycle. If I ever need a printer at home, this is the route I’ll go!
EDIT: Also, checkout company closing auctions (there’s a few around again!) and you can pick-up some decent office stuff including printers for cheap!
Smart! I have a very well used brother laser that I picked up for 50 bucks and it still take a licking and keeps on ticking.
Yes Brother are fine or Lexmark 😺
Lexmark is just as bad as hp and is made by a Chinese company. Brother is the wave.
@ablackcatstail @MashingBundle Absolutely
Brother laser printers. Never buy a consumer inkjet. especially from HP.
I upgraded my 10 year old brother bw laser to color a few years ago and gave the old one to a friend
My Canon laser printer works fine on Linux. I have had trouble setting up custom paper size, but I have made it work. Unfortunately, I distro hop a lot, and feel too lazy to try setting it up again.
I agree with nearly everything I’m seeing. Maybe to summarize:
Laser of any kind is shelf stable. Liquid ink dries out and different printers compensate for this in different ways. Even dumb ink tank printers - where you add liquid and there’s no chip to be read anywhere - can have internal ink sponges that fill up and cause failures. Just a different kind of chipped consumable.
Color laser means four smaller cartridges and an extra wear part to replace after a few years: ITB or intermediate transfer belt. Instead of going from toner drum to paper, toner goes onto this belt first and then to the paper.
Different printer manufacturers have different behaviors to lock you into only buying their consumables. HP tends to be the worst offender, but it varies.
I got lucky, bought a used HP Color Laserjet Pro MFP M477fdw. Basically two generations old, and the top of their desktop / tabletop printer line without being tabloid / large-format or being a huge copy machine / document station.
Toner chip validation is an option you can turn off. For now. But individual components have firmware versions and can be incompatible with each other, so I’m fully confident I’m one part replacement away from needing to update firmware on everything else and losing this tolerant behavior. A full refill of all four cartridges (5000 pages) totals like $65 right now, so that will suck.
HL-L2320D brother laser printer, had it for years with no fuss. It doesn’t have wifi but who needs it when you can just plug it into a raspberry pi and share it on the network.
As with everyone else, Brother laser printers are the way. I have owned multiple. I think one which my family uses is about 10 years old now, another which is about 5-6, and one which I got at the start of the pandemic, so around 3.5 years. Zero problems with any of them.
All the ones I have tried work fine on both Linux and Windows, work over wifi for both scanning and printing, and the toner drums last ages without needing to be replaced unlike inkjet cartridges which constantly need replacing or dry out if you don’t use them often enough.
Brothers are good, but we were having problems with ours, especially the wireless network features so we replaced it with a Canon TS6420a ink jet all in one that prints double sided, and it’s been working flawlessly
I recently got a Canon Pixma G3060 series printer. It’s one of those ink tank ones, so getting refills is no problem. It cost $300 CAD and came with ink bottles for ~7000 pages of printing; a pretty good deal if you’re printing often. I couldn’t find a good laser printer at this price point, certainly not a color one.
Linux works great with it once it’s set up, no proprietary drivers or extra junk. CUPS does wireless printing just fine, and I can use Xsane to scan documents too.
My Brother HL2170W has been reliable for over a decade. Whatever has replaced it is the one I’d buy if I needed to replace it.
I’ve had a Brother HL2130 B/W laser for as long as I can remember, perfect ! 😊
I bought the hl 5240 around ten years ago and still use the same drum. I buy ink powder every couple of years on eBay to refill it.
It will refuse to print every couple of thousand pages to force you to replace the drum, but that is just a kind of planned obsolescence in form of an internal timer. I think some sort of this shit will happen on every printer nowadays. Its only purpose is to create a hole in your pocket and produces a lot of plastic waste.
I found a kind of konami code you can enter for this model to reset the drum counter on the interweb, though, so its not an issue for this model.
So before you buy check if such a code exists for the model you have chosen, before buying one that will waste your time and money.
Power off; open front cover; hold go button while powering on until only 3 lights are lit (it should take around 15 sec.); press go 2 times; wait 20-30 seconds then press go five times; close front cover.
Me too! What a tank that machine is.
Here’s a little secret, they are all garbage.
That said, definitely opt for a laser printer next go around and avoid HP anything imo. I have heard good things about Brother tho.
HP
You fucking what? 😂😂😂😂😂
Seriously, there might be a debate of what printer company is better, but there is no debate which one is worst. It’s HP. 😅 They are so bad that they have no competitors of the worst fucking printer company. xD
Myself I got Brother printer. Works like a charm, no bullshits. People on Reddit also highly recommend this brand too. Totally agree.
HP
Inkjet
I had a Brother printer, the costs were prohibitive. For over a decade now buy discarded office laserjet printers, chunky as hell, but for 100€ you get tens of thousands of pages out of them. And for those 100€, often a duplex unit is included. Am currently on my 2nd printer over 15 years.
I think the whole point of this is Brother being least annoying. You might save some buck with old HP printers, but i would prefer saving my sanity over bucks. 😅
Not at all, the old, chunky office printers you get for cheap work even without any special driver or so, just postscript. (You might get better quality for pictures with the original driver, but for simple letters it just works.)
Edit: Where HP really sucks is the consumer market.
