Please don't get distracted, Framework. What you're trying to do is challenging enough already.
Notably people will keep saying in every thread about HP that Brother exists, and I don't think Brother is dominating the market. At the end of the day if a ignorant customers keep buying garbage products, it's hard to help.
However if they are really turning HP I could never recommend with a good conscious.
This is conflicting.
Unfortunately, from an objective standpoint, I'm not sure there is anyone better to recommend. At least we can say that Brothers hardware is good and that, for the most part, it just works when trying to print. I've vertainly never had any issues with it _other_ than them forcing me to swap the DRM chip from my empty starter cartridge into my replacement non-OEM one (and, the fact that this is possible is a sort of half-mark in their favor? I guess?)
It's a shitty situation where I'd rather buy from a company that didn't do this but the entire product segment is so bad that I don't think it exists.
Solutions offered online are to use a knife to extract the chip from a genuine cartridge to stick on the new one.
Here's a youtube video showing the process:
I recently bought a genuine Brother replacement toner cartridge, but that was locked out from my printer because the model number was off by one character or something. $65 lost, oops. There appears to be just a plastic tab on the cartridge keying it to the other model. I am not sure that I want to attempt pouring the toner into a compatible cartridge that I already have.