Looking for a new printer. My new HP Inkjet is a piece of fucking garbage and I’m going to smash it to pieces in my driveway.
Looking for something with good Linux support, and as little proprietary online HP-type bullshit as possible. Also, should I get a laser printer?
Buy a laser printer. They’ve come down in price a ton and are so so so so so so so so so so much better than fucking ink jet printers. I’ll never go back, and regret the years of anger and stress they caused me.
Brother printers are the best as well.
I got a Brother HL-3140CW and couldn’t be happier. Also just works with Linux.
Brother MFC-xxxx whichever is available. Plug in the ethernet or connect to wifi and go. No drivers.
We’ve had a decade+ of solid use, the couple of times we’ve had issues we’ve had reasonably priced local service.
It’s because they’re lower-end “business” machines rather than any-level “consumer” grade crap.
We’ve had a bad run with off-brand toner shitting up the machine though. We probably spend about $600/year on genuine toner. But we do a lot of printing. I shudder to think what our inkjet costs would be though.
If you don’t need immediate printing facility, you might find printing ad hoc at Stationery Warehouse or the public library more cost effective!
Second the Brother MFC. We’re really happy with ours. Before that we had a HP LaserJet which actually was that bad either. I guess just avoid the cheap inkjet machines.
HP
You fucking what? 😂😂😂😂😂
Seriously, there might be a debate of what printer company is better, but there is no debate which one is worst. It’s HP. 😅 They are so bad that they have no competitors of the worst fucking printer company. xD
Myself I got Brother printer. Works like a charm, no bullshits. People on Reddit also highly recommend this brand too. Totally agree.
HP
Inkjet
I had a Brother printer, the costs were prohibitive. For over a decade now buy discarded office laserjet printers, chunky as hell, but for 100€ you get tens of thousands of pages out of them. And for those 100€, often a duplex unit is included. Am currently on my 2nd printer over 15 years.
Do yourself a favor and don’t buy another inkjet printer, let alone a shitty HP product. Definitely get yourself a Brother laser printer. Brothers are bulletproof.
This is the advice I heard on the Vergecast. The best printer for anyone is whatever Brother laserjet is currently on sale.
Brother is probably the best company regarding open source and support…
Also the refills are not overpriced…
Brother laster printer. It’s the least evil I’ve found.
Dailly reminder: there are no good printers.
APAB (Yes ALL)
I have found Canon has good support on Linux and the quality matches the price.
I agree with nearly everything I’m seeing. Maybe to summarize:
Laser of any kind is shelf stable. Liquid ink dries out and different printers compensate for this in different ways. Even dumb ink tank printers - where you add liquid and there’s no chip to be read anywhere - can have internal ink sponges that fill up and cause failures. Just a different kind of chipped consumable.
Color laser means four smaller cartridges and an extra wear part to replace after a few years: ITB or intermediate transfer belt. Instead of going from toner drum to paper, toner goes onto this belt first and then to the paper.
Different printer manufacturers have different behaviors to lock you into only buying their consumables. HP tends to be the worst offender, but it varies.
I got lucky, bought a used HP Color Laserjet Pro MFP M477fdw. Basically two generations old, and the top of their desktop / tabletop printer line without being tabloid / large-format or being a huge copy machine / document station.
Toner chip validation is an option you can turn off. For now. But individual components have firmware versions and can be incompatible with each other, so I’m fully confident I’m one part replacement away from needing to update firmware on everything else and losing this tolerant behavior. A full refill of all four cartridges (5000 pages) totals like $65 right now, so that will suck.
Brother is my go to company for printers. Also definitely get laser, printer ink is like the most expensive substance on earth.
Brother laser printer owner. The only printer I’ve ever not hated with a firey passion. I actually quite like it. It’s not a color printer, but it’s fine.
I bought a brother laser printer 20 (??) years ago and it’s still working beautifully. Was the budget model at that time. So definitely under 150. Maybe even 100.
Here’s a little secret, they are all garbage.
That said, definitely opt for a laser printer next go around and avoid HP anything imo. I have heard good things about Brother tho.
I got an Epson ecotank printer. It doesn’t work out of the box with Linux, but there are drivers and it does the job. Otherwise it’s been pretty dependable.
I have the same, but it works out of the box for me. Maybe it defaulted to postscript mode or something. Pretty happy with it actually.
I had an HP mfp but I printed so rarely that I would only get like one print job out of an ink cartridge before all the ink would dry out. The damn thing would also refuse to print in black and white if any of the color cartridges were empty. I will never buy another inkjet. If I ever decide to get another printer it will be a laser, but for now if I need to print something (once every year or two) I just go to the ups store with a thumb drive and pay something like 35 cents a page. At the rate I print I wouldn’t save enough per page to pay for a printer for 30 years.
