Get yourself a <$100 Brother(TM) printer. With their all new handy iOS app, you can't go wrong!
Edit: Sorry if I'm jumping the gun. Maybe they really are just great?
With a history like Brother's, and awful competitors like HP and Canon inkjets, you too can get free, genuine endorsements in the form of raving comments for your brand on HN.
I'd also happily endorse my Fluke multimeter, or my Mitutoyo digital calipers, or my Wiha screwdriver set. If you make great products that people like to use, people will leave positive feedback for you. This kind of endorsement is exactly what shills are trying to copy, so it does look similar.
Disclaimer: I'm yet another happy Brother owner. I love my 2380DW, which I recently bought to replace my first Brother laser (I forget the model number) that had served me well for more than a decade. That's in sharp contrast to the crappy HP inkjet I bought my first year of college, which lasted less than one semester, and my wife's several inkjets through her college days (now, obviously, she uses the Brother laser) and my parent's various inkjet struggles. Some 5 years ago, I set them up with a 2730DW, and the first service I've had to do for them was to change the wifi password a few months ago when they changed ISPs.
I've gone through 3 (Epson) inkjets last decade (as I do need to print Photos - but only occasionally), and SO much consistent hassle with cleaning heads and refilling and bad prints. Meanwhile I have a Brother 2270DW for at least the last decade for regular printing and it just works. I've gone through the original small and one big toner in that period. Happy to discuss how to prove I'm not a shill :)
Might be due to a couple of bad HP printers hitting the frontpage of HN recently, and people genuinely being happy with their Brothers, but it pulled my suspicion trigger as well
Age of information, indeed. I guess I just naively assumed it'd be correct information.
Most of the other printer manufacturers have followed the HP model to create much worse products. It's a cesspool.
Brother is one of the few left standing that hasn't taken that road and I think they should be rewarded for it.
FWIW they also sell color laser printers and I'm using one right now. It connects over the network, supports AirPrint, and just sits there quietly doing a good job. It doesn't get gummed up if it sits idle for weeks or months. The model I have even does duplex printing (printing on both sides of the page) which is quite handy. It was less than $500 when I purchased it. The official toner isn't terribly expensive and you can use cheap refills if you want to save money.
And then, about a year ago, their OEM toner cartridges suddenly became almost impossible to find and more expensive than the printer itself and the cheaper, third-party cartridges just don't work well at all. So, I had to reluctantly abandon Samsung. I am still looking for a good replacement.
I can only speak for myself, but as someone who needed a printer for the first time in a while due to the pandemic, I bought a used brother laser printer (HL-2170W) for $20 from someone local. It's not perfect, especially with network printing from a linux client over wifi, but I was able to get it all set up and refilled the toner with a very cheap generic from Amazon. It feels like a device I "own" rather than some black box I'm renting from HP.
I don't know where the excitement around buying the new ones comes from. When I looked it was hard to find them in stock and they didn't seem particularly inexpensive.
I’m just so sick of the inkjet racket and this latest HP move is the last straw.
I did have a cheapo Samsung laser printer many years ago, and it was great. Not sure why I reverted to bloody inkjets after that (I have two once quite expensive inkjets sitting in the corner here, sworn off).
(Actually I realised my label (thermal) printer is a Brother. It's ok. Works on Linux except not continuous/arbitrary length - I have to use a preset label size even though it's loaded with a continuous roll, or else it weirdly distorts flips and scales the image.)
I don't remember the last time I exchanged out the toner cartridge (Maybe it's the first one? But I think I did have to exchange it at some point.), and it works reliably everytime I need to print. For $100, that isn't bad.
For another reference, I also bought one for my old college lab in ~2008-2009. I went back for a visit in 2019, and it was still there and it was working fine.
I get what you mean though, it seems in every printer thread the Brother recommendations have popped up.
Everything works out of the box. Even wireless scanning, which I did not know was a thing until I got this device.
My favorite thing about Brother is they sell the same models for a few years, and then iterate on that model. It massively cuts down on manufacturing issues, number of spare parts, and being unable to web search for a problem.
Brother are the Toyota of printers. The MFC-27XX series are the Camrys.
I hope to never buy another printer brand again.
Even the (5+ year old) HP laser printers are still solid. I've had a little one for 12 years and maybe change the $50 toner cartridge once a year. It would probably be less if i wasn't printing research docs to read for school.
Basically fuck ink jets. I email files to the local printer if I need a color document.
They are expensive if you're used to cheap inkjets and have to spend $80 on a black-white laser.