Brother laser is indeed the way to go for black and white printing. Else have a look at Epson.
p.s. HP = evil avoid HP if you can.
I have an Epson ET-3830, took a bit of digging to find the right drivers and get them working on Bazzite, but since then it's been great!
Did I read that right? What are you printing from your steam deck?
I'm running Bazzite on my desktop lol, but there's no reason why you couldn't print stuff from your Steam Deck!
I have a Brother color laser printer and it’s great. Just as reliable as my B&W Brother laser printer. I don’t use it to print photographs, though - I assume your recommendation is more for people who need photo quality color?
This is the way. My Brother laserjet is 15 years old and still kicking!
The one time a year you need to print photos, go to a FedEx Office or CVS.
HP = Has Problems
😂
ill have a look at the epson offerings, since its mostly just color printing they need. For black and white they still have an inkjet 2000 hooked up to a XP machine in the basement. that thing will probably outlive me. thanks a bunch mate!
B4L
The Brother laser meme is real. They also make color ones, I have one myself.
i cant take the name seriously lol. i always imagine some warhammer 40k shit with like "Brother get the laser. No, not the printer, the weapon, brother"
I have the Brother HL-L3270CDW, which prints in color. Ran me about $300 (it’s $270 directly from Brother now) plus the cost of the high yield toner cartridges I bought with it, but you can probably get away with the included toner for a while - with my B&W Brother the included toner lasted me over a year. It says the starters are supposed to last 1000 pages and the high yield 2300, but I’m pretty sure those numbers are very low based on my own usage estimates. I definitely went through more than two 500 page packs of paper in that first year.
It doesn’t have a built-in scanner but it does have:
It says it doesn’t support printing card stock but I’ve printed small amounts (30 or so sheets) at a time, largely without issues. That said, the only times I’ve had the printer jam, I was printing card stock, so maybe there’s some truth to that recommendation.
I haven’t used third party toner but my understanding is that as long as it’s good quality the printer will work fine. It doesn’t force you to only use first party toner.
The color quality has been good enough for my purposes - substantially better than the consumer inkjet printers I used like 20 years ago, but worse than current inkjets. That said, if photo quality color is the main thing your parents print and they print regularly, my recommendation - based on research, not personal experience - is an Epson EcoTank. From their site the entry-level model (the ET-2800) is $200 and comes with about 3k pages worth of ink (and replacement ink bottles have even more capacity). Other commenters have covered it in depth.
I have an HL-2270DW and the toner low light comes on well before prints start washing out. Fortunately the toner life is tracked by a plastic gear on the cartridge, and it takes just a minute to roll it back. When it does run out, good third party replacements are under $20.
Ah, in that case I probably could have gotten even more life out of the starter toner - I ordered a replacement as soon as I got the warning about it being low but my prints weren’t washed out at all by the time I replaced it.
It feels really silly to say, but they mostly just want to print their tax and insurance documents in color, since it "looks more official" and "the ones in the letters do it too!" . i primarily just want to replace the HP bastard to reuse its guts for a 3d printer. the scanning might be an issue though since thats its primary use. know if brother also has a color one with scanner? In the worst case scenario i could hook up an old a3 scanner we have laying around.
Brother laser.
Brother laser.
brother laser!
The low end of Brother color laser printers is $300. If they must have color, I would buy that. If color is not necessary, buy a B&W duplex Brother.
thanks mate, ill look into those, 300 bucks is about what i expected to pay for a new one. also i love the picture with the 2 ladies on the borther HL-L3280CDW listing. they are like "aw yeah look at us workin our work so efficiently, all because our god on the desk, printing out our work documents for us to work on"
Brother does sell laser printers but they cost a good bit more. What media do they actually print? That would help a lot in trying to give advice.
not a lot really, just some tax and insurance documents, and i use it of course once in the blue moon that i visit. its more just a scanner turned with a printer attached to it. hp's software is just terrible
Another vote being cast here for a both Brother and laser. The nice thing about laser is that you can go without printing for weeks, or even, months, and just pick up right where you left off. My old ink jets, if you left them that long, would have completely dried out and need to be replaced.
man the new inkjets must really suck ass then. But im not really surprised since HP normalised paying 10 bucks for 10 ml of ink, bastards. can laser printers also do color? if they can id get one in a heartbeat.
Approaching this from a different angle: if your mother still thinks the printer they have was a good purchase, will they appreciate you giving them a different one and insisting it's better? Sure, an HP printer is a big waste, but an even bigger waste is giving them a better printer only for them to continue using the HP. IMO you should make sure they are on board before getting them another one, even if their current one is a cancer on society.
if they don't need a new printer, and if mom is happy with what she has.. don't fix what ain't broken (in mom's eyes). or just look for 3rd party ink for it. many and good reviews, reputable seller. it may take a couple tries to find some that work. hopefully mom hasn't allowed an hp firmware update that nixes that option and doesn't let you roll it back.
if you do replace the printer:
if they're low volume, can live without color, or are sporadic printer users, get a laser. a b/w brother with the features you want, that has 3rd party toners and drum kits available.
if they're higher volume and regular printer users (they don't not print for weeks or months at a time) and 'need' color, you could consider one of those 'tank-based' color inkjets. do not let it run out of ink and always leave it plugged in to the power (let it go into power-save on its own). they also usually have 3rd party ink available. you may want to see if and how the printheads themselves get replaced when needed and whether or not you can actually buy them (we're binning one here because the printer says it needs a new printhead---but you can't buy them!).
for photos, stick 'em on a flash drive and go to walmart or a drug store that has the self-service photo printing stations or use an online service that ships. it's much cheaper than printing photos at home.
read the box, and all its fine print. some printers (mostly, but not exclusively hp) are shipping with strict blocks on 3rd party consumables. hp had previously reserved the hardcore blocking to the first firmware update you'd get after setting it up (let that update come in, you were screwed. disabled firmware updates and you were 'ok')... but not anymore.
duplex printing (both sides, automatically) is something we use a lot. a sheet feeder (adf) on top for copies and scans is another feature we couldn't live without at the office. even though it might only be used occasionally--when it is needed, it saves so much time.
two other features that are often overlooked is a second input feed (even if it's 'manual'/one sheet at a time) for envelopes, letterhead or a sheet of labels.. and a main input tray with a decent capacity.. the one i'm using now only holds 50 sheets (about 30 in practice, because if you dare to fill it, it will misfeed frequently), and that's just not enough.
for printing from phones and tablets. look for that feature in the printer specs, then when you set it up at home, set it up as a wifi printer.
I think people underestimate how good those self-service photo booths are or that they print more than photos. It'll print whatever you tell them so as long as it can open the file.
oh totally, they make my terrible passport photos look slightly less terrible
We have the Brother HL-L3230CDW and are happy with it. Works fine with inexpensive toner cartridges from Amazon.
The best printer to have in your house is not having a printer in your house.
If she has to have one, try and talk her into getting a Brother.
If she insists on getting an HP, try to avoid the subscription ones. If she's only printing, use the HP Universal Print driver and just use the base driver. (Device manager > find the printer > update driver > browse for the driver > Have disk > Find the INF > yada yada)
If she likes shitty bloated software, I guess let her install the normal drivers but it's going to suuuuuuck. Wifi printing from them also sucks, unless you enjoy constant tech support. Then being on the phone trying to resolve a wifi issue.
Anyway, fuck a printer.
those drivers do suck ass, it is really just astonishing how much the hp software just stops working suddenly, im starting to think its intentional. know if there is any way to reverse that first firmware update that locks out all third party ink?
I don't know what they sell these days but I've had a couple of Samsung mono lasers that were cheap ($150ish) and lasted decades of infrequent use.
I bought a Samsung mono laser and printed approximately 400 pages on it before the fusor broke and would cost more than the entire printer did to replace.
I was past the 6-month warranty as well so I chucked it and bought a $10 Brother MFC-7860dw monoprinter from the thrift store that printed in the store.
It turned out that it would jam like the grateful Dead if it printed more than one page though.
Apparently that is a common issue with them and inside of the printer there is a small cork pad that gets twisted down and hits every time it picks up a new sheet of paper and the cork had gotten sticky somehow.
The fix for this incredibly complicated and delicate procedure is to open one side of the printer and take a piece of Scotch tape and cover over that tiny cork pad.
I did that 7 years ago and it still prints perfectly today.
I recommend bottle printers. Except if they don't print every few weeks, tubes could dry up then.
I luckily remembered this link from a resource i stumbled across. There is a website called
It has several periferals and devices supported by linux that they sell.
Everyone here is suggesting laser and it's great for sure, but personally I'm still using inkjet (Brother MFC-J491DW), and it works fine for my needs. The main reason being it's a cheap way to get color, plus it doesn't occupy much space, in spite of offering scanning as well as an ADF. If you want to get an equivalent laser printer, you're looking at expensive and bulky options. I haven't so far come across any reasonably priced, compact AIO laser color MFPs (if there is one - let me know!).
I've been using this inkjet for ~4 years and never had any issues. The ink has never once dried out, in spite of printing only like 2-3 times an year. So I'm happy to recommed that, or maybe a newer model in that series.
Ink is also supposedly more environmentally friendly than toner.
is it? i thought toner would be better since it holds a hella lot more ink. i might just be biased since the only toner cartridge ive seen in my life is just massive while the only ink cartridges ive seen are from HP... yeah i might be biased.
i'll add a kyocera ecosys m5526cdw (laser color with scanner,...) to the list. i don't know what the currently version of this model is but it didn't let me down once in the last 5? years. works on Linux, Windows, Android without a problem, the Image quality is ok and the toner costs are really low.
oh i think they had one of these set up our library, but that is one hell of a price lol. what are the chances of me finding one on ebay you recon?
I'll cast a vote for checking the local Facebook marketplace or craigslist for a deal on a good laser printer.
I've got a Canon TS642A that's serving us well here. My Brother was giving me problems, mostly in wireless connectivity so we replaced it with this, which was I think the second cheapest Canon we could find, and we've only replaced the cartridges I think once in the last year, though we don't use it all that much. On Linux, I don't think it even needs drivers, its... Postscript I think? Setting up the wireless was a bit tricky, but once up and running, it's been rock solid.
itll mostly just be hooked up to one desktop tower, so connectivity wont be too much of an issue, altough 66 bucks for it is quite the attractive price. but it does make me a bit suspicious if they are doing the same trick as HP. selling printers for almost really low and ink stupidly high. the no drivers thing is incredibly nice tough.
I second the Epson Ecotank, but the problem it has is that unless you use it regularly, it dries up and needs 1 to 3 cleaning cycles before it will print again.
So unless you want phone calls like "It's printing blank pages again..."
I have a Lexmark black and white laser printer which I've used lightly for years (went through one and a half paper packs so far) and it's still going strong with the original toner cassette. And when I'll need to replace it I know there are third party cassettes available on the market for it which are substantially cheaper than OEM. I bought it to replace a Brother inkjet printer which was just an ink/money pit despite being a Brother. Inkjet is absolute crap no matter the brand. HP makes it even worse with a ton of assholeish DRM layered on top.
Ultimately there are two big things to avoid: inkjet and HP. Look up a laser printer and make sure that there is third party cassette support for it before you buy. Brother is apparently good in laser but don't necessarily limit yourself to that brand.
I use an Epson EcoTank, and I love it. The ink is incredibly cheap.
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Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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