Sorta. My old MFP Brother apparently has a firmware update available that makes it aware of the toner brand and I just ignore it. It’s not as bad as HP where a low level of ink turns the machine into a brick.
I have a brother color laser from 2013 that’s still printing awesome. toner cartridges are $200 for all 4 colors, but I only replaced them in 2015, 2019, and at the beginning of this summer - getting a few thousand pages out of each, conservatively. it’s not a glossy photoprinter, but if you just need high res document prints, I cannot recommend it enough. wifi, cat5, driver is built in to windows 10/11, works fine with android and linux too.
I run a multifunction colour Brother as well. I’ve used it with Brother and various other brands of toner without issues. It will keep printing even if a cartridge is empty. Finding consumables is easy. It runs great from Linux (duplex scans and prints), Windows and mobiles through the LAN. It’s a great machine. You can even override the “low toner” alarm and basically double the life of your cartridges (maybe shake them a bit beforehand). You just swap them out when the quality visibly degrades.
I think I bought it for about 400€, it was well worth it.
Are brother printer still good? I thought they started doing the ink DRM thing and other bullshit too.
Sorta. My old MFP Brother apparently has a firmware update available that makes it aware of the toner brand and I just ignore it. It’s not as bad as HP where a low level of ink turns the machine into a brick.
I have a brother color laser from 2013 that’s still printing awesome. toner cartridges are $200 for all 4 colors, but I only replaced them in 2015, 2019, and at the beginning of this summer - getting a few thousand pages out of each, conservatively. it’s not a glossy photoprinter, but if you just need high res document prints, I cannot recommend it enough. wifi, cat5, driver is built in to windows 10/11, works fine with android and linux too.
I run a multifunction colour Brother as well. I’ve used it with Brother and various other brands of toner without issues. It will keep printing even if a cartridge is empty. Finding consumables is easy. It runs great from Linux (duplex scans and prints), Windows and mobiles through the LAN. It’s a great machine. You can even override the “low toner” alarm and basically double the life of your cartridges (maybe shake them a bit beforehand). You just swap them out when the quality visibly degrades. I think I bought it for about 400€, it was well worth it.