Hacker News Reader

Comment by ftio | Hacker News Reader

God I hope there's enough engagement on this tweet that they actually do it.

I don’t really understand why or how it’s happening, but my HP LaserJet printer connects to Wi-Fi less and less reliably every year. I want to upgrade to a color laser, but: (1) Wirecutter's current rec is for another HP, and (2) it's $750.

The HP inkjet I got in 1997 was far more reliable, even before we switched from parallel to USB. And it could print banners!

View on HN

I fully endorse this:

https://www.theverge.com/tech/641940/best-printer-2025-just-...

The comparing 2025 with the 2023 and 2024 versions of the article is also an interesting snapshot in the state of tech journalism.

(Also yes my Brother printer is just fine and turning 7 years old)

https://www.theverge.com/23642073/best-printer-2023-brother-...

https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/2/24117976/best-printer-2024...

These are really interesting to read in order. The LLM output at the end of each shows how they've gotten better and stayed the same. Output is all formulaic just following slightly different formulas. I shall excitedly wait another year to see what is possible in 2026 and if everyone is right by 2027 the LLM will be the author of the piece including human written content for padding at the end.

(Also yes my Brother printer has worked great over the past 10 years. I even had to buy new toner and have replaced it with a third party toner twice so far.)

The jury is still out on whether Brother has also jumped the shark. Their PR made a lot of hot noise about the accusations being "false" but if you read carefully they never say that they didn't make some color calibration things work only with their own cartridges.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43261933

Can vouch. I have a Brother B/W double-sided laser printer from 2011 that just keeps on going. The maintenance manuals are detailed down to each gear and lever, which let me fix a paper feed issue (gear slid out of place) and keep it going for probably many more decades. No DRM chips in sight - third party toner works just fine, and the Ethernet connectivity is rock solid.

I bought on of those five years ago for the handful of stuff we print annually. It has never let me down, this thing is solid.

> I want to upgrade to a color laser, but:

If you think the $750 price tag is bad wait until you have to buy replacement toner cartridges. I have an older HP CP1518ni which produces decent looking prints but man, each of the four replacement cartridges are like $75 each. A full set is slightly cheaper at $275 last time I bought them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com