I have had a Brother laser printer for 11 years. I am legitimately on my second toner cartridge. I try to tell family and friends not to bother with inkjet printers but they don’t listen.
My dad’s big fancy Cannon photo printer has caused him nothing but grief. He swears up and down he needs to be able to print large-format full color photographs, but I have never seen him do so. What I have seen is his black cartridge dry out between uses and fail when he needs to print a form.
My wife is occasionally frustrated by our inability to print color, but I am more than happy to drive to Walgreens or my companies office to print a color item once every couple months. An inkjets ink would’ve dried between prints.
We have 2 brothers for our small business, one as the main and the other as a backup (which we have also brought with us when traveling). We are heavy users, probably >10k pages every year, but we have only replaced the drum once and have successfully ignored the "optical photoconductor life over" message for nearly 2 years.
Once a new cartridge failed ("not recognized" error even though it was purchased through Staples) and the brother support person walked me through some secret squirrel reset code which I of course saved for future use. The fact I could get someone from the company on the line to help me was a rare experience for tech companies.
My only gripe with the toner cartridges is the requirement to enter a serial number to get a recycling mailing label. The serial numbers are miniscule.
Our 7 year old brother laser printer finally got its first cartridge replacement last year :) We don't print much, but that's the point, we just leave it sitting there, and when we want to print, it prints. Never had a problem with it in 7 years!
The most use my Brother printer got was three years ago when my seventh grader needed to print school worksheets and then we scanned them to be turned in. This was during the COVID lockdown school year, and yet it's STILL on the OEM cartridge it came with
One of the best purchases I have ever made is my Brother laser jet. I’m still on my first toner cartridge after three years. It works every time and never complains or updates.
(not OP, but another Brother fan) I've bought two Brother multifunction monochrome lasers, both are still running fine.
I have the Brother MFC-L5800DW and it's predecessor (~$450). Both are amazing.
I stepped up to this price range because models at this price point have a USB slot in front so you can directly scan to a thumb drive, or print from a thumb drive.
Both have an extremely powerful scanning function e.g., scan to an SMTP server, local FTP server etc etc.
These are the Dewalt of printers e.g., full native Postscript, native LPR daemon the device etc.
I've got a Samsung laser printer that was gifted to me when I started post-secondary 13 years ago. Still chugging right along. Never had a hiccup with it. Windows finds the drivers without issue on a new OS install (I have drivers backed up just in case).
No colour printing, but who cares. We do the same thing as you. When we want some photos printed (usually for distribution to family), it's no major hassle to get them printed at the local office supply.
I'm at 15 years with my £50 brother laser. I think it's had 3 or 4 toner cartridges in that time. It just sits quietly and prints when requested. Brilliant!
My dad’s big fancy Cannon photo printer has caused him nothing but grief. He swears up and down he needs to be able to print large-format full color photographs, but I have never seen him do so. What I have seen is his black cartridge dry out between uses and fail when he needs to print a form.
My wife is occasionally frustrated by our inability to print color, but I am more than happy to drive to Walgreens or my companies office to print a color item once every couple months. An inkjets ink would’ve dried between prints.