this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2024

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Best printer 2024: a humorous critique of the Google search engine, LLMs and printer enshittification (www.theverge.com)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by Sibbo@sopuli.xyz to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 136 points 7 months ago (8 children)

Google's LLM got one critical fact wrong, of course. If you only need occasional color printing, an inkjet is still the wrong answer. The right answer is probably just to have Staples or your local print shop print for you, honestly. The ink dries out in disused inkjet machines and that'll cause you no end of headaches. Or force you to buy a set of expensive cartridges just to print one damn page, because the last thing you printed was three months ago.

Color laser printers aren't even that expensive anymore. Sure, a set of color toner cartridges may cost well north of what a set of inkjet cartridges would run you, but the difference is that the laser toner will probably last many home users a lifetime.

[–] DrCake@lemmy.world 46 points 7 months ago (2 children)

It’s also worth checking your local library which might offer some basic printing services. Could work out cheaper

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 12 points 7 months ago

Yup, ours is $0.10 for B&W, and $0.25 for color. Computers are free (if you have a library card, which is free), and the staff is available to help you with whatever you need. I'm guessing they'd let you print for free if you really couldn't afford it.

So your typical school essay would be $1 or so.

[–] ItsMeSpez@lemmy.world 8 points 7 months ago

Definitely look at the library. Mine allows me 20 free pages of B&W, or 10 pages of colour per month. After that it's $0.10 for B&W and $0.20 for colour. Pretty hard to justify actually buying a printer to myself at this point. Definitely not as convenient as having a unit at home, though.

[–] restingboredface@sh.itjust.works 14 points 7 months ago

Also, nothing the Google llm said was in any way specific to brother. I'm wondering if that's by design and they made it brand-agnostic to appease advertisers.

[–] dojan@lemmy.world 8 points 7 months ago

I've never needed photos urgently, so I'm glad to just have a professional printing company print the photos for me using high quality photo paper and printing equipment. It's going to beat the quality of a regular consumer inkjet any day of the week.

[–] frezik@midwest.social 7 points 7 months ago

I'll take it one step further: if you don't print much at all, you should use a print service.

Yes, I bought a Brother because of convenience. Just realize that you're going to spend a lot more money for that convenience.

[–] Zehzin@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

They came up with a "solution" for the drying problem. You need to keep the printer on forever so it doesn't let it dry.

[–] InfiniteFlow@lemmy.world 5 points 7 months ago

I wish that would work. My Epson was always on and the ink kept drying. After it clogged the print head once too many times and I could not fix that in less than 10min, I just gave up on the piece of crap. I now go to a print shop to print what I need which, admittedly, nowadays is just a couple of times a year.

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[–] BombOmOm@lemmy.world 81 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (28 children)

Hey, I own that printer! It's a good printer.

Remember kids, always buy laser, never inkjet.

[–] pearsaltchocolatebar@discuss.online 18 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Yup, I've had a previous model (HL-2170W) since like 2006. The nic is dying now, but the printer works fine.

Brother printers are the only brand anyone should buy.

[–] Assman@sh.itjust.works 9 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Same, and the only maintenance I've ever needed for mine is putting paper in it

[–] orclev@lemmy.world 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Hey, I had to change the toner in mine!... once... after like a decade.

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[–] Pohl@lemmy.world 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The wired Nic on mine is dead, WiFi only now. one time modeled and 3d printed a part to fix the feeder. I will keep this fucker running forever.

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[–] impudentmortal@lemmy.world 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I'd agree with the exception of artists who sell their printed work (ex: photographers, graphic designers). They're not only making money from their prints but also printing in color frequently enough that the cartridge doesn't dry out.

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[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 7 points 7 months ago

We have three of them at my office. I am certain we exceed the duty cycle they were designed for by several times. The one at the front desk has been bitching about needing an imaging drum replacement for I think three years at this point, and it still prints just fine. I'll put a new drum in it when the existing one stops working.

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[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 75 points 7 months ago (2 children)

All printers are bad and the Brother Printers are consistently the least bad.

[–] Pretzilla@lemmy.world 20 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (11 children)

My Brother was giving a toner end of life message and refusing to print.

I took the toner end cap off via two screws and reset the gear toggle, and now it prints again.

Cool story.

[–] n3m37h@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I've got 2 brother printers, never had a problem. I've used Epson, HP and both were an absolute shitshow to setup

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[–] SkyNTP@lemmy.ml 17 points 7 months ago (1 children)

What makes you say Brother printers are bad? I've had no complaints with them at all.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 26 points 7 months ago (7 children)

Maybe "bad" is the wrong term. But every printer - Brother included - has its own little set of firmware to maintain and special connection protocols to support. The interface between OS and printers, generally speaking, sucks. Wifi connections are unreliable. Its very easy to get into contention with multiple devices. And that's for a simple little household printer.

Talk to my IT staff about how much of a pain in the ass commercial printers are. More machines, each machine has to connect to multiple printers, and the software to handle these cases generally sucks. Brother's are the least-bad, but they're still annoying to configure and periodically unreliable to access.

[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 9 points 7 months ago

I can add that we have two Bother multifunction laser machines at work (in addition to three of the venerable HL-2360's) and the fucking things will lose scanner association with the PC's in our office at the drop of a hat, all the time, for no identifiable reason. And there is no way to reassociate a printer with a computer short of uninstalling and reinstalling the driver package, after which point it'll inevitably cack itself in a week or two anyway.

The things print just fine but getting them to scan is like pulling teeth. Everyone in our office but me is afraid of the scanners on top of the things now, they can never figure out how to make them work, and even when they do it right we invariably found that their computer has magically and silently lost connection with the scanner component -- and only the scanner component. The software side of these things is garbage.

The software side of all printers is probably garbage, as you say. For instance, my Canon ImageClass at home scans just fine, but there's no way to make it do double sided scanning through the sheet feeder by default, or from any preset or option the screen on the printer itself. You have to set up a custom preset via the driver tool on a PC, it can only remember two presets, and you can't rename them. So you just have to know that "Custom 1" is double-sided-scan-from-sheet-feeder-and-make-it-into-a-pdf. You can set it up to do a different thing in "Custom 2," and then just fuck you I guess if you ever need to do a third thing.

Etc., etc.

[–] Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 7 months ago (3 children)

I've got a Brother laser printer myself last year, and I like the printer, but I'll agree their software is bit of a hot mess. I used to have an old Canon multi-function laser printer that wasn't locked to 1st party toner, and their software was much easier to install and use. But it finally broke down after >10 years of moderate use and the new models are reportedly DRMed, so Brother was the only decent option.

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[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 4 points 7 months ago

I have a consumer grade Brother and it's pretty good, but it has stuff I just can't fix:

wireless G only - it has Ethernet, so it's fixable
scan to PC doesn't seem to work - I just use a USB drive, so it works
copies and scans use the built-in display, so if that breaks, I'll probably be SOL

It's about as good as a consumer printer gets. I paid $150 or so for it, and it has lasted 8-ish years so far without any issue (I only remember one jam, which took 5s to fix).

But I'd like it so much more if it had open firmware and open schematics. If it did, I could probably fix each of the above issues, as well as implement a ton of cool features. I'd start by making the web page a lot better, making scan to my Linux desktop work, and override the stupid low toner check.

So I'm satisfied, but things could be better.

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[–] IllNess@infosec.pub 36 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I bought two printers in the last 2 decades. One looked like the model in the article, which I gave to a family member. The other one is a Brother Laser printer with a scanner.

I'd rather get a 50 pack of markers and start coloring in my printouts than buy a crappy inkjet printer. Plus it's bonding time with my nieces and nephews. I pay them in cookies.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Or you can just go to your local library or office supply store and print in color. My library is $0.25 for color prints, $0.10 for B&W. B&W is almost always good enough (we mostly print coloring pages, word searches, and stuff like that), and the quality of the prints are way better than any inkjet I've seen.

I also have a B&W Brother printer, and I finally needed to replace the toner after almost 10 years. I bought it when doing a ton of government paperwork, and then random printouts for a weekly community volunteer project. I got something like 3k prints. My new toner cartridge should do 25-30k prints, so I'll probably never need to replace it. It's a multi-function device, and I used the scanner a ton during COVID at-home schooling, and I've never really had an issue with it (I've printed from Windows, macOS, and Linux, all w/o issues).

We also have a small, portable photo printer that my wife can use from her phone, which is really handy for family get-togethers. We can go from "I'd like a print" to "here you go" in like 2 min, and it's small enough to take in the car with us.

[–] Ebby@lemmy.ssba.com 19 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I still recommend Brother printers, but some MFC-* models do support/enforce OEM lock-in after firmware updates according to reports. All the info is 2 years old and I so want to be wrong on this. Have they reversed that decision? Firmware update disables 3rd party toner

I just advised a business on a tech proposal, including printers, and the bid quoted one of the lock-in models. Of course it's a company so toner is a business expense and they arn't pinching pennies, but the owner is with the us in not supporting this decision. Props to them.

[–] perviouslyiner@lemmy.world 18 points 7 months ago

"Also this strikes me as a very lazy reviewer. Which makes him profoundly qualified to review printers"

😂

[–] Gointhefridge@lemm.ee 18 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Maybe I’m in the minority, but I like my EcoTank. I got it cause we print a decent amount of pictures and laser can’t do even passing quality photos. Having no cartridges to worry about is much less of a hassle than it used to be.

That said, laser is fine for most people.

[–] realitista@lemm.ee 7 points 7 months ago

Epson Ecotank is definitely the least bad option of the non laser printers. Mine still clogs more than I like but it's the first inkjet I've been able to live with. And that's including the canon ink tank which clogged weekly.

[–] Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 14 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Just get a 3d printer and put it in 2d print mode as needed so you aren't gunking up your home and network with so many devices.

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[–] Nomecks@lemmy.ca 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Sorry, the printer of the year is still the 2008 HP 4730mfp. Still going strong 16 years later!

[–] Crack0n7uesday@lemmy.world 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Until HP figures out how to brick it remotely when your credit card expires.

[–] RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Literally just a bunch of HP goons throwing bricks through windows.

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[–] lemmyreader@lemmy.ml 13 points 7 months ago

Glad to see the perfect Brother laser printer + Linux combo getting a well deserved press attention, again like in 2023 :)

[–] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 11 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Weird thumbnail. Why is the printer pixelated, but the logo is super crisp?

[–] AlolanYoda@mander.xyz 20 points 7 months ago

Because the article itself says at some point, maybe multiple times: "whichever Brother printer you want"

[–] dirthawker0@lemmy.world 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

For whatever reason, it's intentional (the text says "A blurry photo of a Brother laser printer.") Maybe just saying any Brother is fine as long as it's a Brother?

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[–] ChihuahuaOfDoom@lemmy.world 11 points 7 months ago

I'm buying my 3rd brother printer today, I got rid of my first when consolidating households even though it was working fine and only needed new toner once in 10 years. Recently I convinced my MIL to ditch HP but she insists we need a color printer so I'm picking up a second hand mfc-9340cdw to finally break free of instant ink. I look forward to not thinking about printers for another 10+ years.

[–] simon574@feddit.de 10 points 7 months ago

I can print at my workplace, and there is a library 5 minutes walking distance from my apartment. These huge commercial printing machines are so much better than anything you can buy for your home, and I don't have to maintain them. I'm very grateful I don't have to own a printer.

[–] AtmaJnana@lemmy.world 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

From the title and picture, I thought this was some weird diss on the depicted Brother laser printer and stopped by to defend it. Fortunately it is, instead, tauting the superiority of Brother laser printers.

I own the depicted printer, or one very close to it, and it is a workhorse. Brother laser printers are the way.

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[–] RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world 6 points 7 months ago

I like that the AI generated "cons" of the brother printer are just gripes about laser printers in general.

[–] PrunesMakeYouPoop@kbin.social 5 points 7 months ago

I just use the printer at work.

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