Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia

[b112]

I recently bought a Brother colour laser printer, with the understanding that OEM toner was not chip-locked.

Wanting to update the firmware, and being on Linux, I started to look at ways to do it manually.

After finding a few guides to do so manually:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/CUPS/Printer-specific_probl... https://www.earth.li/~noodles/blog/2015/11/updating-hl3040cn...

I decided to poll my printer. I then noticed an OSS/python project to just handle it via a package. However, I noticed this issue:

https://github.com/sedrubal/brother_printer_fwupd/issues/9

Startled, I Googled... and the printer listed is an inkjet. For a second I was relieved, but then started to search for other issues, and found this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/printers/comments/s9b2eg/brother_mf...

Not only is the above, post-sale firwmware update a change of what I understood to be Brother's historical policy, the method is beyond evil.

Brother seems to be apparently accepting the ink, but then purposefully making the print quality poorer.

I literally cannot think of something, product wise, more evil. It's one thing to say "We refuse to use 3rd party toner", and another to accept the toner, and then just purposefully print like garbage.

I was a happy HP customer for years, and only switched to Brother (which, by all accounts, is a much smaller / less renowned company) for the sole reason to not be vendor locked.

I will likely return this printer, but thought HN should know what Brother seems to be up to.

[carpenecopinum]

I can't wrap my head around how the printer market has turned into this absolutely dispicable, foul state that it is in right now.

Decades of innovation that have been invested, not to make a better product, but mostly on how to extract more and more money from their victims, I mean "customers".

I would like to own a printer again, but for printing something like once a month, I just can't financially justify spending several hundred bucks on a device that might, at the whim of the manufacturer, decide that the way I'm using it is not okay anymore, is probably designed to break after two years, requires me to sign up for a subscription service for ink, or whatever BS else the decision makers in this space come up with.

[danpalmer]

> I can't wrap my head around how the printer market has turned into this absolutely dispicable, foul state that it is in right now.

This is the dying gasps of an industry that is mostly irrelevant in the modern age.

When I was growing up we always had a printer, and while ink wasn't cheap, it wasn't too bad, so we used it a lot and printed everything we needed. The industry grew to expect this, most households with a computer also owning a printer and regularly buying ink for it.

This isn't the case anymore. So much of our lives happens "digital-only" that printers aren't needed by most people, and those who do need them don't need as much ink. I have never owned a printer myself, and my parents still own one but buy ink on a yearly basis now.

The market should be shrinking naturally, and so every printer company is trying everything they possibly can to grow or at least keep from shrinking as much. In the panic they are in, it's understandable that this will lead to crappy business practices.

[qwerty456127]

> I would like to own a printer again, but for printing something like once a month, I just can't financially justify spending several hundred bucks on a device

For printing something like once a month, it is even harder to justify wasting space by putting a printer. Printers should be put around in form of vending machines which would let you you insert a USB stick, drop some pennies and print the PDFs.

[matt_s]

> I can't wrap my head around how the printer market has turned into this absolutely dispicable, foul state that it is in right now.

There's no room left for innovation or competitive advantage. Its a commoditized market where they only make money when you buy their supplies so naturally they will engineer the product to work well with their supplies only.

This might be an opportunity for open source printer components. Maybe someone can create replacement parts to take out the "brain" of a small printer and replace that with a connected Raspberry Pi that doesn't change the print quality or reject 3rd party cartridges. I know there's likely a lot of settings in the software for head movement, ink usage, etc. so that might take some (possibly illegal?) reverse engineering. I'm a web software person so that idea may sound stupid to someone more knowledgeable.

[colechristensen]

> I can't wrap my head around how the printer market has turned into this absolutely dispicable, foul state that it is in right now.

Rent. You are effectively renting your printer, supplies are the payments. The hardware is expensive, sold cheaply, and supplies have high margins to make up for it.

It is often investors forcing this model.

[mc_woods]

Public buy printers. Good printers last a long time. Printer company offers online services (drivers / patches / APIs - see original post) which have on gong cost. But revenue stops after printer is sold. Printer company's remaining income is ink, ink sales undercut. Printer company goes bust. Printer company, who make printer, force you to use their ink. Printer company does not go bust.

Alternative (game console model) printer company license right to make ink for printer. Printer company does not go bust.

Cost of printer is printer + driver + server over life time of printer... what the public pay; a single one time purchase price.... model doesn't work.

[clint]

Its because American consumers value cheapness over everything else and American corporations value profit over anything else.

Setting aside the general decline of the printer industry, and simplifying slightly, those two interests compliment each other into:

1. Producing the cheapest possible product, and then selling it for a loss while concocting subscription schemes to make-up for the lost profits at the point of sale of the product.

2. Paying employees in general less and less money proportional to inflation to "reduce costs", thus forcing the average person to demand cheaper and cheaper products. Completing the cycle.

[yreg]

If you want to print something once a month you can buy a cheap printer for like €40 – which is probably subsidized because the manufacturer thinks they will earn it back on selling you overpriced ink. But they won't since you will buy a single toner and cover all of your printing needs.

Anyway, I don't have a printer. I always just take my pdf and take a walk to a local printing service.

[hotpotamus]

If you print something once a month, then shouldn't the starter cartridge last for about the life of the printer (maybe a decade or so)? That's been my experience with the B&W Brother laser printer I bought about 2010. I've never changed anything on it. And really I don't find much need to print anything these days anyway.

[xadhominemx]

Low end printers are sold at a loss. Manufacturers must sell OEM ink/toner to make a profit. If you do not what to purchase expensive OEM ink/toner, there are many ink tank type printers available. Those printers are sold at a profit because replacement ink is sold at essentially no profit.

[grogenaut]

If you're using it for documents just get a laser printer. I have a brother laser sitting next to me. I bought a replacement toner when I got it 7 years ago. I'm 10% into the first toner cartridge. It doesn't really go bad either and the toner is reasonable. It also prints super fast and reliably.

For real world prints I just go to walgreens or now more likely to use a digital frame. My mom with memory issues LOVES her digital frame even more than photo albums as she can sit there watching it rotate through her memories. She has boxes of albums in her room but forgets they're there.

[0xcde4c3db]

I think it boils down to companies finding legal ways of artificially lowering the baseline price signal that they send into highly price-sensitive markets. Similar phenomena in this sense include phone/DSL/cable plans that don't include various fees in the advertised price, the "sticker price" of a new car, smart TVs not mentioning that they're going to show you ads, and so on.

[masswerk]

> I would like to own a printer again

Just as a thought experiment, what about the other way round, where you could only rent a printer, fully serviced, as an appliance? Surely, this kind of business wouldn't be sustainable with this kind of tech with consumables running out every now and then, things breaking at any possible instance, non-replaceable consumables, etc. Follows, in addition to all this vendors are off-loading considerable hassles onto the "customer" (or rather, those who have no way around these offerings) to enable this scheme.

Suggested title for a fictitious article on the matter, "If the IBM 1401 had been built like a modern printer".

[hyperdimension]

I agree. It's so hard to recommend printers to family and friends now. It seems they all suck in their own very special way.

The only reason I even have a printer is that I happened to find an old LaserJet for 10$ at my local thrift store. It was "broken" but all i had to do was oil the laser scanner motor. Right era of printer, toner cartridges are only around 20$, and I put in a JetDirect card. Only thing is the memory is a bit lacking, even being fully upgraded, so for complex documents it sometimes will pause between pages.

I definitely wouldn't have bought a printer new today.

[balabaster]

I haven't had a printer for the past 3 years and I refuse to buy one because of the disgusting economic and environmental practices of the ink mafia. Their behaviour has been beyond despicable for decades but somehow the world has just shrugged their shoulders and accepted it.

I have an iPad and downloaded PDF Expert and got an Apple Pencil to sign digital documents and I've only occasionally had issues I can't get around - Amazon return labels are the biggest pain in the ass.

If you're from Amazon, sort out a way we can ship returns without needing a printer!

[antihero]

I just bought the cheapest HP laser printer so I can print tickets, shipping labels, etc. Toner lasts about a year with my usage? Never had to install any crappy software because it's AirPlay. Pretty happy with it.

I purchased it in August 2021 and the demo toner it came with ran out this week.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B079Z44VZ7

Toner is like £40 which works out at like £3.30 a month

[cmsonger]

IMO, this is a byproduct of capitalism. Do you own Brother stock? (Don't even know if Brother is public.) If you own Brother stock, then you care about the stock price. I'm guessing Brother executives compensation is related to Brother stock price. Markets price in profit growth. Printing has long ago progressed to the point that further improvements are not needed for the human eye -- so Brother can hardly make more money by making a better printer.

It's why industries need to be regulated. A company run for shareholder value is going to maximize profits and externalize costs. This class of behavior is not at all unique to this product segment or this industry. You think this is annoying? Gonna be somewhere between interesting to horrifying to see what big tech does if the profit growth flags.

[pndy]

> at the whim of the manufacturer

I've seen a clip on the Internet where printer rolls a customer satisfaction survey during printing on a little screen panel locking its features away.

I'm afraid that once my Samsung laser printer will be broken beyond any repair I won't have any other choice than to get the one of the newest anti-customer devices that will maneuver me into "supplies as a service" scenario.

[cm2187]

And the question is why competition isn’t working

[zbuf]

They just don't get it... It's never been easier to _not_ print things.

[akagusu]

Almost 40 years ago RMS, the guy people love to hate, created the Free/Libre software movement and a proprietary printer firmware was one of his motivations.

For 40 years this guy has been talking about the perils of proprietary software and people gave a shit to him.

Today people not only strongly defend proprietary software, but they think he is a moron, and even free/libre software activists think proprietary firmwares are okay as long their hardware works as expected.

Of course this is okay until their hardware stops to work as intended and you are locked out because the proprietary firmware, which usually is what happens.

[smsm42]

I think current proper title for RMS - at least among Properly Thinking People - is "misogynist, ableist, and transphobic" [1]. I haven't heard many people calling him a "moron" though. Extreme idealist with some weird ideas - maybe, but a "moron" - I don't think so, especially as his predictions keep coming true. I'm not sure whether his recipes are the solution, but at least it can be obvious he can see the problem.

[1] https://rms-open-letter.github.io/

[GiorgioG]

I have an epson eco-tank printer. I buy 3rd party bottles of ink once every 2-3 years. The upfront cost of the printer (multifunction model ET-4550) was high in 2015 ($500) but I've spent maybe $60-70 in ink to print (as of this morning) 19,536 pages (13,954 in color, 5,582 in B/W).

I can't see a good reason to keep buying printers that are locked into proprietary cartridges or toners.

[pfortuny]

Well, Brother had never done this to date. That is the real shocker.

[PaulHoule]

I have an ET-4550 which I use for photo prints and art reproductions, mainly in small sizes like 4″x6″ and 8″x8″.

I am happy with the quality of the output with two caveats: (1) the ink is by no means lightfast. In the room I am sitting in now (bright sun, high humidity) I can perceive fading in prints after just six months. (2) it lacks a rear tray that feeds straight-through so I am at the mercy of the pick roller when it comes to printing on particularly thick, thin or slick papers. Since I always print both sides of the paper, paper that is slick on on the "good" side is often a problem.

Epson has two higher lines in the Ecotank range, one aimed at "creatives" that has 6 inks (still dye-based) and another "pro" line that uses pigment based inks (which typically last 70 years or so.)

Even though my material costs are super-low and I can afford to replace faded prints, I don't like spending my time to make ephemeral objects so I've had ET Pro printers on order from two different vendors for six months. It seems they've all been eaten by the supply chain monster.

I'm not a big believer that I need six inks to get good quality output, but I am thinking seriously about getting an ET Photo if I can since the ink used for that should be more lightfast, although these things are unfortunately terribly documented.

[johnatwork]

Don't they get you by making you change the proprietary sponge/ink pad though?

Oh and it's not user serviceable.

https://epson.ca/Support/wa00369

[rambojazz]

Ecotanks have another problem though. After a certain amount of time they lock themselves into "service mode" because the waste ink pad (or other internal parts) are considered EOL by the printer. The printer has locked itself, and you cannot repair it (unless you send it back and are ready to pay hundreds for it). I firmly believe that they are better than the cartridge scam, but let's not fool ourselves by thinking that they actually made a printer for the users.

[Spooky23]

You’re a different category of consumer. One of my teams responsibilities is end user print for a sprawling global enterprise. The market is segmented in various ways to meet the needs of different consumers.

We have tiny facilities where a prosumer HP 9000 series MFP is appropriate. Other places with have big $10k copy machines that print for like $0.02-0.04/page

[rustyf]

Me too. Credit to Epson for taking this track. I wouldn't consider a cartridge printer again.

[hoistbypetard]

Ugh. This is bad news. I've used Brother B&W lasers at home for the past 20 years, and they've been great. (I'm 5 years into my second one, because when the rollers wore out on my first one, 15 years in, I decided I'd rather have the iOS printing features they offered on their newer models instead of sourcing new rollers and taking it apart to change them.)

Between their BrScript and their no-BS networking, they were the last I know of to work with no fuss with all the machines I own. On everything other than the iDevices, it's nothing more than a PPD install.

I hope this isn't accurate.

[birktj]

I would recommend people who are looking for not only printers, but most kinds of equipment (except for cases where new stuff is unambiguously better than old stuff, but this is rare) to buy used professional/industrial hardware instead of new consumer equipment. And if this is difficult try to look for old consumer hardware still in good shape. These are often of much better quality and also it is much less wasteful to something used than new.

Professional equipment is usually in another league than consumer stuff when it comes to quality and reliability and also usually has very low resale value so you can get it for quite cheap. Personally I just picked up an old Sharp color laser printer for about 90$. This is a great machine that prints 2 sided A3 (very hard to find for laser printers) and with toners that should last about 10000 pages which is way better than anything you can buy as a consumer. The only backside is that it is quite big and heavy.

Old consumer equipment that is in good shape is often a good deal with the main reasoning being that something that has lasted for a long time has a higher probability of continuing to last a long time compared to something new where it is hard to say how long it will last.

[myself248]

Oh, this is bad. Brother has always, like for DECADES, been the non-shitty option.

Had ipv6 before anyone else.

Good Linux support, even for the scanners on their MFCs.

Agnostic about third-party toner.

This new firmware demolishes twenty years of goodwill.

I was just looking at a new printer, and likely to replace my old Brother B&W MFC and Samsung color laser, with a new Brother color laser MFC, but it looks like I'll see how long I can string the old ones along.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

> I was just looking at a new printer

There's a discussion upthread about some epson models being mostly alright (with caveats; read the whole thread): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860555

[jlturner]

Bummer, I’ve been a fan of Brother in the past. Owned two monochrome laser printers that have been great over 10 years of service with not a single paper jam.

[ninjin]

Indeed, I had seen so many good things said about Brother on Hacker News that I recently got an MFC-L2750DW for my home office that I am looking to swap for a MFC-L3770CDW as for some blasted reason Brother decided to get rid of printing and scanning from/to USB storage devices for the MFC-L2750DW. Having read this now on Hacker News, I am at a loss and tempted to dump Brother altogether.

Is there any reasonable alternative out there if you want:

* Laser printing

* Duplex printing

* Do not necessarily need colour

* Printing from USB storage devices

* Scanning to USB storage devices

[otherme123]

That's also for me. I've advocated for Brother before here in HN, as they just seem to sell printers that works, and avoid toner shenanigans.

[anjc]

I agree and recommend them to everyone. That said, their monochrome lasers also prevent non-OEM toners from working without an opaque sequence of key presses. Maybe this is normal for printers but it was non-obvious for me.

[Lio]

This is very disappointing to hear. Brother were the one bright spot in the printer industry and I'm so much happier since I switched my business to using a Brother colour laser.

They've probably recruited one of the bright spark MBA execs that "revolutionised"[1] the other manufactures with this kind of rent seeking crap.

You know that deal, trade a firm's reputation for quality for a short term boost in profits, bank the bonus and move to another job before the chickens come home to roost. :(

1. By revolutionised I of course mean ruined.

[userbinator]

Wanting to update the firmware

If you weren't ever wary of updates, this should be a strong lesson. The updates are not for your benefit anymore; the companies just want to have you on a leash where they hold the other end.

"Don't fix it if it ain't broke."

and then just purposefully print like garbage

In other words, they're maliciously spreading FUD that 3rd-party consumables will result in lower print quality, and then making that a self-fulfilling prophecy. That should be illegal if it isn't already.

[pdimitar]

Gods I hope this is just a fluke but reading OP and some comments it seems that it is not. :(

In any case, first thing I always do when I install a printer is to give it one exact static local IP because I made a firewall rule that blocks all outgoing WAN traffic from that IP. I lost faith in all my periphery to not sing behind my back and took things in my own hands.

My Brother MFC works amazingly well and I will not think as a programmer in this case; I'll be a normal human who says "no need to update it if it works" and leave it at that.

So far zero complains and I am happy with my device. And with these news I am even happier that I am paranoid and make sure my device doesn't get a firmware update.

[jasonjayr]

This is disappointing.

I had been recommending Brother printers exactly because they did not pull shenanigans like this, their windows drivers were pretty light weight, and their Linux support is very good.

Is anyone working on a OSS printer, like 3D printers? Buy an existing printer and then rip out + re-wire it's controller?

[hahamrfunnyguy]

Disappointing. I am on my second Brother HL series laser printer. They've been great for me. Fast cheap printing and readily available 3rd party toner and drums.

The first one I got it in 2010 and I purchased a 2nd in 2018 when the first stopped working. I would have kept using the original if it were possible to repair it. I would have also paid more than the $80 sticker price

[jerome-jh]

I thought that was well known. In EU printers cannot be sold "inked locked". They do lock themselves as soon as they have an opportunity to update their firmware. My Brother never had Internet access. I configured it with the Internet gateway unplugged and assigned it a static address to which I forbid Internet access. It is now running on compatible color cartridges. For black I stay on OEM ink.

It is funny that my venerable HP I had previously stopped working soon after I started using compatible ink. Since it was several years old, I was wanted to spare on ink. A gear broke soon after. Repaired the gear and something else broke. I did not do the second repair. Of course that could be a simple coïncidence, I'll never know.

BTW I would not recommend Brother either. It is very picky about paper. Have to use good quality 90g or more exclusively.

[billpg]

I'm old enough to remember buying a mouse and having to install the driver that came with the mouse on a floppy disk. Once the mouse market agreed to a single interface standard (and again when USB mice appeared) the world got simpler. Any computer you could buy would just work with whatever mouse you happened to plug into it. You only needed a custom driver if your mouse had lots of extra buttons that no-one really needed.

I'm a little surprised that the same thing didn't happen to printers. I could imagine around 2005, Microsoft including a generic printer driver with Windows XP. This way, you could plug in any printer and it would just work, as long as the printer implemented that generic printing protocol, even if it were alongside their own printer interface.

Plug in printer. Windows detects device with generic printer interface. User prints document. Document comes out. User happy.

Oh sure, the printer would come with a CD that includes software that enables the "special features" of the printer. Digital cameras did this too. (Rule #1 of buying a digital camera: Throw away the CD that comes in the box. Break the CD just in case you're tempted that something on CD might fix some trivial issue you're having.)

At the same time, I'm not surprised that never happened. Those "special features", like shouting at you for buying the wrong ink, are just way too important to not have installed on people's computers.

[ztrlp]

Soon they'll have a hidden 5G Internet connection that sends all printed material to the manufacturer, who will then sell the data to advertisers and the state.

Are there still any new printers (postscript, laser) that are reasonable? Black and white printing is sufficient.

[arcade79]

This is why I've never voluntarily owned a printer. Well, never actually owned one at all. My father got a bit frustrated that I didn't have a home printer and gifted one to my wife. It was used a couple of times.

If I have something I need to print, I print it at work or at the library. Happens less than once a year. I don't need my own printer.

[leetrout]

I have nothing but bad things to say about Brother. I will never buy another one.

Last purchase was a $350 multifunction color laser printer that stopped turning on. I was just over the one year warranty and no support from Brother and their authorized service centers want to put me on a commercial support plan. I bought it for my wife, a teacher, because the school copiers were always broken or unavailable.

HP makes shitty printers but they will actually help you get something replaced in my experience.

[kmfrk]

I've got a Brother laser printer that's probably old enough to vote now. It's impressive that it's lasted this long, but the whole business model of printing is so rotten I still wonder how much I want it around when the toners have run completely dry. On top of the installation being a mess.

I've seen that companies like Brother make dedicated shipping label printers, and I guess that's what I realistically would use my printer for the most.

Brother's clearly doing horrible stuff, but printers also seem like a terrible business model when you ship products that live forever without maintenance beyond refilling the paper tray and toner.

If only the e-ink display technology weren't encumbered by so many patents, maybe that's what we'd be reading most things on now instead.

[ProjectArcturis]

Well that's just awful. I own 2 Brother printers because I thought their management wasn't garbage like HP. I don't know what I'll do when one breaks.

[intsunny]

Wow, if this comment is to be believed, the quality of Brother printers has seriously gone downhill:

https://www.reddit.com/r/printers/comments/s9b2eg/brother_mf...

Incredible.