All time low, 52% off RRP$219. Very cheap price for a mono laser printer with a scanner.
Link to comment that says it can last a decade and works with generic toner.
CamelCamelCamel.
Less problems.
But less options when it comes to location. A Raspberry Pi printer server would solve this but involves more cost and more tinkering.
My trick is I have my USB printer not plugged into anything and haven't printed in years. But one day I may need to print something important.
Cheap wifi printers for home use is a good option. Used my Canon PIXMA TS-3160 bought new for $30 for almost three years without any issues until I dropped it during my recent move. Now using Canon PIXMA TR4600, will see how this one goes.
no duplex printing, does it scan duplex ?
Doubt it. The specs sheet doesn’t specifically mention it and that’s something Brother likes to advertise as a feature.
Check router. Some of them have inbuilt print server. I agree wifi printing is not reliable. Sometimes even direct usb connection fails. In general I hate printers.
“In general I hate printers”
Love it
is there a work around for this like a wifi dongle?
if you work in a quarry you know how dusty it is, we bought one for the lab almost 10 years ago, still working like brand new
Been using the cut-down version, DCP-1510, for 7 years now. Hasn't missed a beat and works completely fine with generic toner.
Class drivers get loaded automatically by Windows, though it isn't a newer Mopria driver. Microsoft has end of servicing plans for older, non-Mopria printers in 2027 but no current plans to remove to functionality, read into that however you wish.
Some time last year Big W was clearing all their stock of the genuine toner and was selling it for less than they do the generics. All the stock is probably gone by now but it could be worth checking if your local is less busy.
Where do you buy toner from? I had a bad experience buying a very highly reviewed one from amazon where it did not print properly (blurry on half of the page)
Inkstation is a well-regarded seller. If you want to have a stab at refilling then I’ve bought from Toner Stop before for my old HL-2132 printer and found their mono printer toner to be good. Both also supply drums, but you’ll be going through lots & lots of toner before needing one of those.
Old Brother laser printers are pretty reliable and affordable to run. Mine ran perfectly for years, up until a cog involved in multi-page feeding wore out.
For those in the market, could be worth checking out secondhand. Or is the s-word banned on ozbargain?
People post used and refurbished deals all the time. I've found a lot of used stuff to be crap prices though, can you really find one for significantly less than this?
Just checking eBay, people want $100+ for 9 year old basic inkjet printers with terrible model reviews, just buy this lol.
Love it when purple answer their own questions :)
USB only. No wifi or ethernet.
Get a USB print server. They’re start from about $50 from a retailer or $20-$30 on eBay for a yum-cha model or used quality brand. Fairly simple to set up and will share almost any USB-only printer on your network.
Could you link us up with some good ones please?
TP-Link are a well-regarded brand, they have the TL-PS110U which appears to sell between $70-$100 at various places. I don't have personal experience with this model but I've always found TP-Link to be solid gear. A quick Static Ice search has a lot of hits for StarTech-branded device, which are a bit cheaper. No idea what this is like, either.
If you have a look on eBay you'll get the usual assortment of unknown devices that all look like they came from the same factory, and which are hovering around the $40 mark. However, there's a fair number of used D-Link which I know are rock-solid as we used to have these all over the company for sharing label printers on the network. We had primarily the DPR-1020 the DP-301U models. I highly recommend them.
I've never had any luck whatsoever with wireless models so I'd be tempted to suggest steering clear of them.
i have a brother printer, not MFC, and a 5M usb cable in the home office, though my printer is wireless and duplex, i can send stuff to main PC for occasional print from phone or ipad. bigger issue with this MFC is it’s not duplex, doesn’t print duplex as per amazon feature page. not sure if it scans duplex if you need a lot of scanning. for scanning i have a canon flatbed that runs off usb C does even have power cord, it’s not duplex though. if you don’t have an MFC and want one, see what features you need, if you already have an MFC and want a newer one does this one have the features you need. love my brother mono duplex laser printer. cheap to run and reliable.
Manual duplex printing is often baked right into Brother drivers with instructions on-the-fly, but if it’s not with this model then it’s easy to do if you’re willing to practice a few times. Or, watch a YouTube video.
Hell yeah Brother
Ok point taken. Low end printers, especially Brother I see them all the time at ewaste.
If you aren’t printing a lot like you said then The Verge and you have a valid point.
I fall into a different category, and have been through hell with cheap lasers HP and Brother, and they all drove me nuts. It was worse when I was fixing HP for a living.
I have had too much experience with ppl who often are over 60, the likelihood of someone printing every PDF invoice for every bill you get is much higher. Alas I get a lot of calls from ppl in that age group. While I’m not trying to be Ageist here, many people CAN live with a basic model if they AREN’T printing every PDF utility bill and anything else they think is important. That was more my point.
I just relived that six months at HP and the past 12 years of printer support calls when I saw the cheap Brother and got carried away.
I also scan my receipts and tax invoices or copy them if the company doesn’t offer an email tax invoice option.
Even Woolworths will email you your grocery bill by email if you want. I’m sure Coles will follow.
Cheers
Still using a simple mono Brother HL-1110 that cost me about $50, eight years ago. A generic clone toner cartridge is in it now, but I remember the first one went forever.
Does this model work with generic toners from ebay?
$130 for me
Me too. I'd pay $105 but not $130
Wifi only printers are a PITA, at least a USB cable you got some chance. All these cheap printers you say you have problems with. $400 got me a HP LaserJet Pro MFP428fdw. Duplex print and duplex scan. Wifi printing from my iPhone and Google Pixel no problems. Ethernet to other computers in the house.
Having worked as a printer tech I don’t know what Generic toner is but while the cost of HP toner cartridges isn’t cheap, I’ve seen the mess and crappy prints from cheaper “compatible” cartridges. I used to get at least one job a day going to a customer to clean or check print quality - it was always a non genuine printer cartridges.
HP grow their own toner, so the quality is consistent. But sure save yourself $50-80 buying a third party cartridge. Hope like hell the drum hasn’t been used too many times.
Sure the “generic” toner works in a brother, because the drum and fuser roller do the hard work. Brother is the main culprit for people throwing out their printers prematurely due to the cost of the drum or the initial toner is only 25% full.
HP”s inkjet is total BS - I’d never buy a HP inkjet when they have been putting chips on the ink cartridges for years newer ones are even more of a problem but HP aren’t the only manufacturer that locks people into genuine INK but they are infamous for not even allowing you to scan if the ink cartridge is empty and stupid things like that. Others “might” be the same, depending on the initial purchase price.
Brother and their separate drum and toner might seem cheap until you have to replace the drum. Lots of ppl take them to ewaste and start again. Also only putting 25% toner in the initial toner as well means a 100-200 pages in and your toner is empty. I assume that is still happening?
I’ve been to my local waste shop and full of cheap inkjets and end user brother lasers
EPSON is one of tte few with large ink options, like a bottle of ink. But wouldn’t recommend that unless you are a heavy printer in colour. But at least they are trying.
HP have caught the ire of many on their low end ink, and canon have done similar tricks. All in one models but can’t scan if your tri colour ink cartridge is empty on even one colour.
So I might pay $180 for a genuine HP toner cartridge which has a new drum but HP has been recycling their toner cartridges for years. I’ll get 2000-3000 pages from a small drum and cartridge and 8000 pages from a larger capacity cartridge which is more expensive.
Their bloatware on their laser printers drivers, it’s not as bad as it once was, or you can use a genetic PCL6 driver, you can get cheaper units but a low end SME models will last ages and yes there is talk about putting chips on their toner cartridges but that way the people like me were attending jobs (over 12 years ago now) will be able to avoid wasting my time on going to places with poor print quality because HP support will be able to either remotely check the printer or it will report if the toner isn’t genuine. Maybe. Depends if people block their printers but guaranteed it will go out port 80/443 as a fall back.
We used to have a toner vacuum which between 15 of us, we had to book to clean up leaking toner all the time (as toner particles are too small for a regular vacuum) from customers who had put in third party cartridges that leaked - some repeat offenders were charged a service visit when I was there. I suspect the printers in the near future might report their cartridge status that way all you have to give is the serial number and the printer might report back to HP. I don’t know what they have planned yet but I was glad when that six month contract was over. I worked on anything from their cheap low end lasers through to enterprise machines. The smaller they were the longer it took to fix.
HP’s end user printers where a set of new CMYK toner cartridges cost as much or more than the printer were stupid and I hated them. As customers often put third party cartridges in for that reason.
The smaller the laser printer the more time to take it apart. But HP also do stupid things like your ADF isn’t working, not under warranty? The cost of an entire new ADF plus onsite visit is more than buying a new printer. HP replace entire modiules rather than fix a small component so if you buy HP get the 3 year onsite warranty which isn’t expensive as it was.
All I can say is 4 out five days I got a job with poor print quality and it’s always a third party cartridge to blame. At that point all I could do is swap it with another one in their office and if they didn’t have a genuine one but they had another printer of the same model, we’d swap the cartridge over show the customer put it all back and I say, “I can’t help you - we only cover HP cartridges”.
But when I showed them a working cartridge was fine, it was nearly always someone in stationery purchasing who was to blame and that office could only use what their logistics sent them.
At that point HP wash their hands of that and move on to the next job. Or people pay a service call. It was up to HP - lots of corporate clients they would have multiple offices.
I used to see people buying the Cheap Brother lasers and as soon as the toner ran out they would turf it and buy a new one because they got down to $65 at one point. Cheaper than the cost of filling the toner with a full cartridge.
All the printer manufacturers do shonky shit at the low end. Which is why the one and only time I bought brother and needed to replace the drum the cost was stupidly high.
Canon make the engines for HP lasers but Canon and HP ink jets and low end lasers are all rubbish and I’d never recommend one unless they were very low volume printers. People who wanted colour I said unless you need colour every day, email the job to Officeworks and pick it up on the way home.
EPSON is the only one I have some respect for as they don’t go into the super cheap market like Canon and HP. Sure they have cheap models as but I hate these HP and Canon janky no cable Wifi only printers. Most only have a WPS button or it’s all done through software and if you have an existing Wifi Network you need to get to the stage where the printer is using the local Wifi but even that I’ve wasted hours via remote installing and uninstalling the software to try to get the computer to talk to the printer and then get the printer to talk their Wifi.
At lease this Brother has a cable, but check the price on the consumables first.
I hate low end printers with a passion but people buy them so they end paying a fortune for ink cartridges.
Brother, Lexmark, HP and Canon all sell sub $100 printers and they are usually an awful end user experience and the company probably loses money on the amount of support calls from end users who can set them up.
I have a color ink jet which I barely use, but my HP MFP428fdw gets used 2-3 times a week from my iPhone or my laptop or desktop and for three years old, I’m still on my first toner. It just works.
That's all very inciteful and everything, but most people 200 pages will last absolutely ages. I have a cheap printer primarily just in case I need to quickly print a ticket, postage label or sign something with a pen. My problem is we don't print enough for the cartridges to be useful with the time between prints, so when they die again something like a cheap brother printer will last us years between refills. For most people this thing would be perfectly acceptable as their only printer and last them years. The verge article I posted earlier is tongue in cheek but makes this point.
Agree. Low volume use - these are probably OK. But I still stand by my point that Brother contributes more to the ewaste problem from their super cheap laser printers than any other I’ve seen.
I’ve seen heaps of HP gear at auctions and a few Brother. But they are all SME models.
If you print one page in a month or even one a week then sure. However not everyone prints that small.
However I see in high school kids uploading their assignments from their laptops to whatever the school uses. Moodle is at nearly every TAFE I’ve been too so reduce printing.
I’m all for reducing printing. But the stuff I do, I need to print quotes if I know sending a PDF to a client is too hard. Most tradesmen I deal with now have cloud based accounting systems and email their invoice in PDF.
Right now I don’t have enough work to justify the cost of XERO or similar packages which are all subscription but the communications with each tradesperson is so different.
I usually print a copy if it was repairs for the house or a new purchase for a house.
It’s great to keep everything as PDF and in email to f you can remember the name of the company. Often their invoice or quote email is generated by some email which might not be a company domain.
Your printing requirements are different to mine. I’m just pointing out some of the downsides if ppl buy cheaper models. I have a pet hate with all the cheaper models because I get called about them for help
no wifi printing