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Comment by shiftpgdn | Hacker News Reader

Everyone seems to repeat that brother lasers are the way to go, but I’ve found that for home use (photos and documents) that the canon eco tank is superior to the brother is basically every way.

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Brother laser printers are boring.

Mine just sits there until the rare occasions when I need to print something.

It's still on the original toner cart that came with it.

I've not needed to install a printer driver for any of the 4 platforms we've printed from on it.

No photo storage, no ink drying out, ink subscription service and no multi-gig downloads before you can use it.

A totally, wonderfully boring product. I wish I could buy more stuff like that.

My brother is so old I changed toners twice. Still no paper jams. Saw too many customers with HP printers with problems so stayed away from those.

My wife is a teacher and prints a lot of stuff at home. I have an MFC-2710 that I just had to replace the drum on. First time I've had to do anything except toner. It just plugs along, sometimes going weeks-months without use. For the price (and lack of subscription hijinks), it's unbeatable.

I have a totally featureless Brother laser printer (its most advanced feature is dual-sided printing) and it does its job perfectly fine. I've replaced the toner with a refilled cartridge and have not had any problems with it.

I'm fine with only B&W and no scanner. When I need to scan something, I grab the insanely good camera I have in my pocket all the time and use the Microsoft Lens app. Works great for scanning a few pages.

So you can not use the eco tank for 6 months and it will just work when you need to print again? That is why I like laser printers, I don't have to worry about head cleaning or clogged nozzles.

The clogged print head is overestimated. I recently revived a Brother inkjet printer that was in storage for 4 years and after 3 or 4 head cleanings it was back in business.

Get back to us when the absorbent cleaning sponge in the printer fills up :-)

You can always use some isopropyl alcohol and cotton swabs and clean them yourself.

I’ve been using inexpensive laser (monochrome) since 2010 and haven’t had to do any of this nonsense.

Sometimes I don’t even replace the toner when it complains; I just take toner out shake it and it keeps working (a bit lighter than usual)

Laser is great but it doesn’t solve the visiting grandma wanting to print photo album pictures.

That’s not remotely worth the hassle of a colour inkjet. Just decide on the photos together and upload them to a proper photo print service for delivery to her home.

It sure is a hassle, but the grandma loves it so much it feels worth it. I gave up on HP in the past but I’m giving it another go now with an Epson eco tank. So far so good.

I just use an online printing service to mail the prints. At like 50¢/ea mailed if I send a collection it'll take almost a thousand prints just to match the price of a decent photo printer. And even then most 4x6s printed at home still cost like 20¢-40¢/ea each anyways, so even after a thousand prints I'll still probably be ahead in the end. And then I also don't have to store a photo printer and it's supplies in my house.

So yeah, black and white laser multi-function and online printing services for me.

My color LaserJet photos are magazine quality. If I need better, I get them at CVS for something like eight cents

A monochrome home printer isn't worth the space it takes up IMO. I don't print very often, but when I do it's colour as often as not.

Can someone calculate the price of ink consumed for those for cleanings?

But I have to clean the print heads every time I print (about once a month). I use up vast amounts of ink just keeping this thing working.

I wish I'd bought a laser

I love my brother black and white laser printer. But I print infrequently. The problem I had with inkjets for years and years was dealing with clogging if I used them infrequently. Does anyone know if the color canon eco tanks work if you only print infrequently? Or do they clog? Some cursory searching sounds like clogging is still a problem for infrequent users.

https://www.reddit.com/r/printers/comments/kjxd45/do_these_n...

You'd think you could flush with water or some such after orint, as long as it was pure h2o (no minerals, etc) One flush after each print, but sadly, no manufacturer cares I guess.

I expect the Venn diagram of people who own a printer but may not print for a few months at a time is fairly small.

Every now and then I'd like to print out a map or whatever in color but it's just not often enough to maintain an inkjet printer.

Yeah, I only print every few months so I just use staples. Not sure why you would want a printer with such infrequent usage, you're not really saving money doing it yourself

Driving to a Staples to print a recipe or some travel information every week or two sounds incredibly painful and inefficient (admittedly we're not talking months). (But I admit I don't like to be dependent on information on my phone for everything.) A laser printer connected to my computer at home is essentially free.

No I think it’s actually the majority of printer users who go months without printing. The reason inkjets still exist is because these folks keep buying new ones when their old one clogs up (or the ink dries up completely) in between prints. They don’t buy lasers because inkjets hit the very lowest price point.

If everyone who did that just bought a brother B&W laser just once instead of re-upping their inkjet I bet anything the consumer market for cheap inkjet printers would disappear forever. Inkjets would only survive as a high end commercial colour technology.

I suspect that there are a lot of people with kids in school and various other use cases where color printing isn't really optional. (Though color laser isn't all that unreasonable these days.)

I think that assumption is wrong. For me I have had my printer since 2011 and have printed less than 4,000 pages. I often go months between print jobs. Sometimes I print, sometimes I scan, and sometimes I photocopy.

Basically a ream of paper a year sounds like not a lot by office printer standards but not a trivial amount either. With travel, I probably can go months without printing, but I'd still say I print "regularly."

Water = moisture = mold. Not exactly ideal, either.

I bought a brother color laser 4 years and haven’t had to change the toner yet. The toner was included with the printer. We have probably printed around 150 pages in that time span including a 6 page document today.

No complaints. It just works. 3rd party toner also works should i need it.

Also, the toner cart it comes with is only half-full*, so when you do eventually have to replace it.. you can expect the new one to last twice as long.

* they're transparent about this, was just pointing out how efficient they are.

It really depends on if you or family needs a color printer more than rarely. I have a Brother laser. I pretty gave up on my inkjet ink drying out.

For (rarely) printing photos I just send them out.

I had a $200-ish Brother laser printer which worked great for a few years, but at some point semi-bricked itself. It no longer accepts print jobs from any source (USB, ethernet, wifi) and nothing seems to fix it, not even factory resets.

There were some posts online that pointed to reflashing firmware fixing the problem but it wasn't clear how to do that and the required utility is apparently only distributed to licensed technicians.

Brother printers are great but not like they used to be. The prices have 2-3x in the last decade.

The issue with any inkjet is that you need to use them. The eco tank makes sense if you print a lot.

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