I followed "any Brother" advice years ago and had the bad luck of picking a Brother model (HL-3170CDW) plagued with a roller failure problem. Brother refused to fix it under warranty which turned me off the brand. This is not my review, but I had an identical experience, except this reviewer eventually got his replaced, whereas Brother refused to do so for me.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RKX2S5U90HT01?ref...

edit: then again, it was only a $200 color laser printer.

Many Brother printers are poorly-supported or simply not supported on Linux.

For example, I have an MFC-L2710DW (not what you would get for rare printing I suppose), and the official driver is always acting up: Delays of minutes (!) before starting to print, or simply not printing at all for some odd reason, but then obliging me if I power-cycle the printer. Maybe.

So, these printers may be fine, but check driver availability and user feedback about it first, if you're not on Windows.

I own a Brother HL-L2350DW and can highly recommend it. It has wireless and does AirPrint. Works great from iOS and macOS.

My roommate and I have had a Brother printer for years. It was damaged while moving and a bunch of parts fell out and it still worked great.

After that, we damaged it again when moving it around the house and even more parts fell out. Quality fell after that but its still kicking.

I bought another Brother this week to finally replace it. Like others in this thread, we never ran out of toner.

Another general vote for a Brother laser printer, though I differ on some details here.

In 2014 (if I'm remembering right...) I bought a DCP-7065DN (B/W all-in-one with wired Ethernet).

I don't print much (sometimes go months without). By volume, the lion's share of my printing is documents I need to copyedit/proof, followed by random receipts, tickets, shipping labels, etc--so I was hoping to optimize for cost and reliability. I make the same tradeoff wrt to using a local or online print service for anything that needs to be high-quality or color.

I didn't have to replace the undersized starter toner cartridge included until earlier this year. I haven't had any trouble with it so far (aside from having to occasionally prod it to keep printing until quality actually fell off a cliff at the end of the first toner cartridge.)

I'm just going to throw another recommendation for a brother printer. We've got a few at my work, we do a lot of printing and copying. In the 5 years i've been there, i've changed the toner in the one in our office once.

Exactly the same here, I had my for many years and I forced my dad to buy one instead of a inkjet and some other friends, everyone is after many years still extremely happy with their choices. Some got one with a scanner, others color, I only have a plain black and white one and it always works from phone from Linux, etc. No problems at all. I connected it by network cable.

Same, but I'm on my first toner cartridge after 3 years or so. My biggest complaint is that it only supports Wireless-G, so I have to keep a separate network for it so it doesn't slow everything else down. I'm running cable to solve that problem instead of buying another printer just to fix a stupid WiFi issue.

I'll second this. I had a Brother for years. I ran out of toner once (I did a lot of printing) and I think the second time I donated it or gave it to a friend.

I think the only pain point was the toner was almost as expensive as the original printer + toner. Go figure.

But they're good, reliable machines for sure. And affordable.

Yes they’re great for low volume printing and the Linux support is great too.

Newer models track the number of printed pages and nag to replace the toner. You can instead reset the page counter and continue printing. Exact steps vary by model but easily found online.

Re: wifi: Maybe network accessible printers are super cheap and good these days, but I have always gone the lpd + samba route to get the same functionality from cheap/old/crappy printers.

Yep, I think mine was maybe $70 when I bought it six years ago. It works without fail when I boot it up once or twice a month, well worth the money for the lack of hassle.

I’ve had the same brother printer since my first day in undergrad which was in 2008. Only changed the toner twice. It’s been super reliable.

I’ve had a Brother HL-1030 since I believe around ~2000, still works great.

+1

I have a DCP-L2540DW that is awesome (and has a flatbed scanner with feeder).