Hacker News Reader

Comment by g42gregory | Hacker News Reader

Great… We can’t even buy printers from HP anymore. What is the best other brand to switch to?

Brother.

I got a Laser Brother multifunction center recently and whilst it wasn't the absolute cheapest option, it seems you get what you pay for. I could connect it to wifi on first attempt, and everything just worked on first attempt. It's incredible to have printing & scanning that "just works."

Brother printers are low-cost, no-nonsense, and last forever. I've got one that's 18 years old and has printed tens of thousands of pages. I got a new one a few years ago only to get wifi printing. But the older one continues to work on my desktop PC just fine.

I use an Epson ECOTank printer. Refills come in a bottle. No DRM. Very low price ink compared to the alternatives. I previously used Brother printers which are also pretty good, they didn't use cart DRM either last time I used them.

They both have their flaws, but nothing approaching the BS that HP pulls.

Any issues with ink getting clogged? I was hearing such cases for ecotank variants. My use-case is infrequent printing

I have an EcoTank and print infrequently, clogging has never been an issue. I once didn't print in half a year and it didn't clog.

Printing quality goes down after not printing for a long time, but the automated "cleaning" (or whatever it's called) program solves that in a minute

Thank you for the reply

I've never had a clog with my color one. The shop my wife works at (which I get occasionally called on to do tech support for) chose the B&W model for their invoice printing and they've been using it heavily for about three years now with no problems.

Thanks, will consider it then.

I have an ECOTank and haven't had troubles with clogs. The Windows driver has been a bit buggy, but Mac has been solid.

Thanks

If we ever end up needing large format color print capability in-house again, it'll be an Epson ink tank printer. Currently we just take stuff to the local print shop if it's bigger than legal size.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com