Ask HN: What printer do you recommend for rare printing?

And they're often faster, which is useful even if it's used rarely. We bought our laser printer because of the shelf life thing, and then we needed to do a ton of immigration stuff and the fast printing was nice. I wouldn't buy a printer just because of speed, but it was a nice value add.

We got ours at Costco for <$200 IIRC (base model monochrome Brother with WiFi), and it has worked well and we're still on the toner it came with. That's about the cost of an ink printer with one or two cartridge refills, so I feel like it's already paid for itself.

Seconding this. I have an HP 4250, with three trays and a duplexer. Cost me $40 on craigslist from a bank closing. I've been running it for ~7 yrs, and only replaced the toner cart once. If all you need is black text/graphics, these things are workhorses.

By decade you mean 1000pages (OP mentions 100/yr)?

I'll second this. I had a Brother for years. I ran out of toner once (I did a lot of printing) and I think the second time I donated it or gave it to a friend.

I think the only pain point was the toner was almost as expensive as the original printer + toner. Go figure.

But they're good, reliable machines for sure. And affordable.

Same, but I'm on my first toner cartridge after 3 years or so. My biggest complaint is that it only supports Wireless-G, so I have to keep a separate network for it so it doesn't slow everything else down. I'm running cable to solve that problem instead of buying another printer just to fix a stupid WiFi issue.

I'm just going to throw another recommendation for a brother printer. We've got a few at my work, we do a lot of printing and copying. In the 5 years i've been there, i've changed the toner in the one in our office once.

Yep, I think mine was maybe $70 when I bought it six years ago. It works without fail when I boot it up once or twice a month, well worth the money for the lack of hassle.

Yes they’re great for low volume printing and the Linux support is great too.

Newer models track the number of printed pages and nag to replace the toner. You can instead reset the page counter and continue printing. Exact steps vary by model but easily found online.

I’ve had the same brother printer since my first day in undergrad which was in 2008. Only changed the toner twice. It’s been super reliable.

I followed "any Brother" advice years ago and had the bad luck of picking a Brother model (HL-3170CDW) plagued with a roller failure problem. Brother refused to fix it under warranty which turned me off the brand. This is not my review, but I had an identical experience, except this reviewer eventually got his replaced, whereas Brother refused to do so for me.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RKX2S5U90HT01?ref...

edit: then again, it was only a $200 color laser printer.

My roommate and I have had a Brother printer for years. It was damaged while moving and a bunch of parts fell out and it still worked great.

After that, we damaged it again when moving it around the house and even more parts fell out. Quality fell after that but its still kicking.

I bought another Brother this week to finally replace it. Like others in this thread, we never ran out of toner.

Exactly the same here, I had my for many years and I forced my dad to buy one instead of a inkjet and some other friends, everyone is after many years still extremely happy with their choices. Some got one with a scanner, others color, I only have a plain black and white one and it always works from phone from Linux, etc. No problems at all. I connected it by network cable.

Re: wifi: Maybe network accessible printers are super cheap and good these days, but I have always gone the lpd + samba route to get the same functionality from cheap/old/crappy printers.

Another general vote for a Brother laser printer, though I differ on some details here.

In 2014 (if I'm remembering right...) I bought a DCP-7065DN (B/W all-in-one with wired Ethernet).

I don't print much (sometimes go months without). By volume, the lion's share of my printing is documents I need to copyedit/proof, followed by random receipts, tickets, shipping labels, etc--so I was hoping to optimize for cost and reliability. I make the same tradeoff wrt to using a local or online print service for anything that needs to be high-quality or color.

I didn't have to replace the undersized starter toner cartridge included until earlier this year. I haven't had any trouble with it so far (aside from having to occasionally prod it to keep printing until quality actually fell off a cliff at the end of the first toner cartridge.)

Many Brother printers are poorly-supported or simply not supported on Linux.

For example, I have an MFC-L2710DW (not what you would get for rare printing I suppose), and the official driver is always acting up: Delays of minutes (!) before starting to print, or simply not printing at all for some odd reason, but then obliging me if I power-cycle the printer. Maybe.

So, these printers may be fine, but check driver availability and user feedback about it first, if you're not on Windows.

I own a Brother HL-L2350DW and can highly recommend it. It has wireless and does AirPrint. Works great from iOS and macOS.

+1

I have a DCP-L2540DW that is awesome (and has a flatbed scanner with feeder).

I’ve had a Brother HL-1030 since I believe around ~2000, still works great.

A friend of mine had two Envy’s failing less than 6 months after purchase with light usage. They are disposable printers, and the ink scam is ridiculous. We could never get the supposed override to work, and it would never print b&w if any color cartridge was low.

I'll second this. I have one of these. The drum lasts forever, it's built like a tank, it just works with basically every OS you have.

Not what you want if you're printing photos, but if you just need to print a few sheets of black and white every now and then, this is the printer to go for. Zero maintenance, low costs, lasts a long time.

I have that printer and use it to print music sheets about one a week. I'm two years in and still have plenty of toner.

Wirecutter makes their money from affiliate links, so the potential for conflict is high.

They also mostly just meta-analysis rather than doing their own. Their biggest source is Consumer Reports, who don't make their money from advertisers. Much better to go straight to the source: https://www.consumerreports.org/printers/best-laser-printers...

Subscription required, but that's the point -- no conflict of interest.

For those who don't want to subscribe, here are the Consumer Reports recommendations:

Best for work: Brother MFC-L2710DW

Best for price: Brother HL-L5200DW

Best for presentations: Canon imageCLASS MF642Cdw

Thank you for the suggestion! I love wirecutter but I've learned to take their suggestions with a large grain of salt. I have no less than 10 products bought from wirecutter suggestions but there are lots of other examples where I diverged from their suggestions.

In fact I looked at that post on printers and specifically their budget Brother laser printer pick [0] but the 1-star reviews were concerning which actually led me to ask here on HN.

[0] https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B0763WDSYZ/

> You want a laser printer.

I agree. I bought a Epson ET-2750 EcoTank InkJet to replace a really old Brother laser printer and regret it. Text and even graphics (to look at UI designs, etc.) from a laser printer are so much better.

That sure is a compact laser printer! And it only draws 210 watts while printing! Unfortunately, I was disappointed by this part of the description:

> Dynamic security enabled printer. Only intended to be used with cartridges using an HP original chip. Cartridges using a non-HP chip may not work, and those that work today may not work in the future.

DRMed toner cartridges with OTA "security" improvements? That sounds like a major anti-feature.

Actually they don't clog that isn't true. What inkjets do is pull ink and clean their heads on a semi-regular basis. This is actually one of the bigger costs associated with Inkjets that aren't used frequently as it wastes ink. Some models waste dramatically more ink than others and there are economical for long term inkjets available. At some point the laser will end up cheap on low use as the catridge doesn't get wasted but that pay back period is quite long verses a low ink usage inkjet.

With infrequent use, the issue is not refills or refill cost, but clogged printheads.

> If you're printing photos, use a printing service and save yourself the headache/expense of inkjets.

This holds up to a certain point - and that point is when you want large, gallery quality prints on decent paper. I compared the cost of these types of prints from a print shop with the cost of doing it myself and there's very little in it, such that the convenience and control offered by owning your own printer can swing it.

It's worth pointing out that what tipped the balance for me is the quality that it's possible to get from a home inkjet these days. I have an Epson XP-960 (other printers are available!) and the results when printing a good image are truly staggering - colour, detail etc. blow me away. And I'm not even a particularly good photographer! Although it seems surprising, it's not significantly cheaper to get this quality of print from a print shop.

That's a light load for a laser printer. An inkjet would probably work if you print about once a week, but not so well if all pages are at once.

Absolutely. I bought a ream of high quality paper 10+ years ago and am still going through it. I really don't print much.

I have a Samsung ML-3710 or similar that I've had for about 10 years now. Only ever used with USB. It's always been fantastic and I love it, because as a former dot matrix owner the idea of printing out pristine documents in seconds at home is still a bit magical. It's only ever had light use, but for my needs it's perfect. I can switch it on for the first time in months and it's up and printing in seconds.

I bought one probably about 3 years ago that is largely still good, albeit it has started eating paper when you try to print double-sided. It's pretty much solely a sheet-music printer for me so I suspect that aspect has failed due to lack of use. Other than that it has been very solid though, in fairness.