Has HP printers always been this bad?

Steamymoomilk@sh.itjust.works to Technology@lemmy.world – 753 points –

So my mother recently bought an ET-2800, By HP we had an HP printer before and we got a new one because the old one would not work with my sister's Windows 11 Laptop. So I had to set it up for my mother, the manual said you can use it without the app. But there was no way to physically do that. Anyway, I downloaded the app on my phone (android) and the app would not connect to the printer. So I used my mother's iPhone and it would connect. The setup process was stupid proof. And after I got it all full of ink, it was very painless. However, this is where the H in HP should stand for HELL. Because a few months go by and my sister and my mother need some papers printed. No problem. I thought to myself, so my sister tried to print it wirelessly. Couldn't find the printer, I said ok maybe it's a dumb driver, USB didn't work either. I asked my sister to send it to me, so I can print it on my w540 running rocky 9. Rocky picked up that I needed drivers and installed them. Wireless didn't work but wired showed up, I thought sweet I can just print the paper and get back to what I was doing. However, when I clicked print, the printer would grab the paper and run it though but not put ink on the paper. My mother asks me to forward the email to her to try to print it on her phone. I send it, and it prints, and the paper come out how it should with ink and the paper is finally printed.

After this experience with this printer, it makes me rather aggravated at this purchase, and no longer want to buy from HP. I have looked at Brother printers and there are no Proprietary ink cartage, and or laser printers. I purely wanted to talk about my experience with HP printers and would like to know what others have for a printer for recommendations, for when eventually HP kills support and makes it a paper weight, I've read many negative experiences with HP printer, specially from Lois Ross man and their anti consumer products.

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HP haven't always been this bad, but they are this bad now, and nobody should be giving them money.

Carly Fiorina destroyed HP. She tanked product quality by using cheap plastic parts instead of metal and she can't manage people. She's a terrible leader and on a personal level she's just not right in the head, as she embraces trumpism, is racist, elitist, etc.

Hp printers were shit well before her.

I beg to differ.

The old LaserJet 4s, 5s, the IIs and IIIs, the 8000 series, all those were great, well built printers with metal frames and heavy duty parts. They were made to last.

We still have a LaserJet 5M that prints reports hooked up to an airgapped Linux server. The printer never breaks down or needs anything more than toner. Yes, it's slow. Amusingly slow. The page count is over 250k. The fuser is starting to ghost but it's easily replaced. We just don't care enough to do it right now. The printer doesn't care.

Try this with any printer built after the Fiorina era and you'd be hard pressed to.

I'm all ears if you have a specific model in mind that was shit before Carly. Because, before her, HP was an industry leader. Now it's cheap plastic junk, and it's squarely on her failure as CEO that led to the company's demise.

I take it back. My recall of that CEO had her more recently (like 2015 or so). Must've confused with a different company and incompetent CEO.

Mark Hurd, another former ceo, sexually harassed anything moved.

HP's ceo hires have been...interesting. They've all been pretty bad.

She's also the only person to lose in the same presidential primary twice!

She lost as a candidate, and then after she conceded, lost again as Ted Cruz's VP candidate.

I can't believe the GOP actually pushed her as having "business experience" in her Senate run. She's often cited as one of the worst CEOs ever. She made HP into another race to the bottom shit company, and it has yet to recover.

HP was the gold standard back in the day. Money says you can still buy kits and toner for IIIs, IVs, and Vs.

Work gave me a tiny HP laser when we did a refresh, and it's a damned beast. Probably 12-yo, thousands and thousands of pages, never a glitch or jam. Toner cartridges are $18 and last forever.

I had to stop using my LaserJet 5si. Not because it broke, but because Windows stopped shipping drivers. Could have hacked around it, but I figured that new toner cartridges would be harder to come by if it doesn't easily work on Windows anymore, so time to move on.

Rule 1: don't buy an HP printer
Rule 2: don't buy an inkjet printer
Rule 3: don't buy a printer unless you absolutely need to.

Rule 4. If you absolutely need to, buy a Brother.

*Brother laser printer.

This. Every brother laser printer I've ever used (both in my own home and at work) has been reliable and never failed aside from the occasional cartridge change/etc. And even those were proceeded by a dismissible software warning or just caused mild artefacts on the print out. You can still print even when they need maintenance.

Im afraid if we keep sharing this, they might take a dive too.

Brother inkjet really aren't better than HP. I have one and the scanner doesn't work if the ink is out. And it reports no ink waaaay too early. I can trick it into printing longer and almost double the life of the cartridges.

Maybe brother laser jet is better? I'm sure hp laser is too though

HP laser is still markedly worse than Brother laser. Much more expensive toner, harder to find and use off-brands, and (in my experience) much higher failure rates.

In general, toner is more robust than inkjet, but also HP is worse than Brother.

Don't bother, buy Brother.

Whyyyy, brain? Why?

There are good reasons to buy an inkjet. Just not any under $150. Photographers don't touch lasers, but their inkjets might have 11 ink cartridges.

Rule 3 should be considered more often, though. For what you're paying for the convenience of printing at home, you can buy a lot of printed pages at FedEx.

Rule #4: if possible, have work pay for your printer and other home office shit.

I 100% agree with this. Sadly, rule #3 applies to me (my job involves dealing with banks and lawyers).

I have had two HP inkjet printers which were unmitigated dogshit. Money-grabbing, thrown together pieces of shit. You get more types of jams than at a craft jam shop.

Five years ago, moved to a Brother laser printer. Little difference in purchase cost. AND IT NEVER FAILS.

I'm now on my second (dropped first one downstairs when moving house) and it is just as reliable.

Each to their own, but for me: Brother Laser Printer every time.

Yeah, HP are terrible now.

They weren't always this bad, I had a laserjet 4000 that was made around the turn of the century and it "just worked".

HP pretty much pioneered enshittification

weren’t a

Average Cory Doctorow enjoy-er
Very Based

--edit i accidentally quoted "weren't a" i enjoy his books, i now realize it looked like i was mocking him. that was not my intent :P

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I still have a LaserJet 2200 and it will be pried from my cold dead hands. The plastic has gone brittle on some spots of it, and the front manual feed cover has long broken but it still dutifully works.

When I worked in IT, there was a LaserJet 4 at one office. That thing was almost 2 decades old when i changed careers. I wouldn't be surprised if it's still there.

Their inkjets were always trash fire.

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15 years ago HP was among the best in the business. They made workhorse products that did millions of pages (and those old models continue to)

Today HP is a malware and telemetry company who won't let the average consumer use their printer without a logged-in HP account slurping telemetry about every aspect of their lives. Any consumer who buys a printer with the letter "e" in the model number is paying money to be spied on. Anyone who buys a non-"e" model is still doing so, but in a less VISUALLY obvious, and obnoxious way.

This is not random assumption. I'm a tech. Anyone who buys an HP Printer today and asks me to install them gets a fast education on why they shouldn't cut the packing tape on that box.

Buy Brother.

15 years ago is almost 2009 now. I remember HP being shit back then already so maybe add another 10 years to that 15.

Maybe I'm misremembering when the old 4100 series dropped, but it was the last of the really great monsters they built.

What do you think of the Epson Ecotank?

I was looking to buy an ET. Then I learned about the sponge. While you're free to refill the ink at little cost there's also a sponge that cleans the heads or soaks up excess ink. I have forgotten the purpose, but it's a 2 dollars sponge, you can easily get something like it and replace it. But the printer won't reset the counter for the sponge. Unless you want to download sketchy stuff off of a Belarusian website, your only option is to ship the printer to Epson and pay them for the trouble.

That maneuver is about the same price as a new ecotank.

Since writing the above I did some late-night googling, and it seems that Epson US has caught enough flack for this, and now offers a one time key for a reset utility https://epson.com/support/epson-ink-pads-reset-utility-faqs.

If I buy a printer it'll be a brother laser, or a professional inkjet... And I don't see the latter happening.

I have an ecotank and I like it a lot. It setup quick and works wired and wireless. The only thing I don't like is the print quality feels desaturated. Although I don't print for any art purposes so it doesn't matter too much.

They look like good machines if you are printing a lot and need an inkjet (like for photo printing)

If you are only using a printer occasionally for letters or shipping labels, laser printers are probably a better option. Sure, they need more space, but they cant dry out and dont require cleaning programs.

Have no experience with Epson outside of 1 complete trash-teir $50 inket, which was hot garbage which of course it was- sorry.

We have one A3 format in the office for 8 months and its been amazing

Yeah, I have a network attached brother black and white printer. It's pretty great. It handles 98 percent of my printing workload, no fuss, I honestly don't remember the last time I changed any toner. Has a scanner on top that works if I need it.

If I want something big/nice and in full color I can always go down to the print shop. But for your common printing it's great.

I'm pretty sure brother does the same shit

They do not, at least at this moment in time. Not even close. Not even in the same solar system.

You shut your whore mouth about brother printers!!!

There’s always a post where someone’s asking if HP printers are really as bad as they seem.

Yes. Yes they are. Spread the word. Friends don’t let friends buy an HP printer.

Brother has always been my go-to. I've owned exactly two. One I bought in 2009 and one I bought 3-4y ago. They're basically zero hassle.

How’s the Linux and Mac support?

When you ask a Linux head what kind of printer to use, they answer "get a Brother laser printer". Linux YouTube is what sold me on Brother.

Linux ppl tend to be the biggest shills when it comes to products that respect the consumer.

Should be fine, ours supports standard IPP over wireless. My old 2008 printer needed CUPS on a Pi with QEMU and binfmt-misc to support the old brother i386 unix driver but worked flawlessly with that setup in a docker container.

For well over 20 years, yes.

HP practically invented the concept of "destroy the brand name of your high end professional equipment with the worst consumer garbage ever." Their inkjets are infamous

They were early pioneers in the art of enshittification.

In the 80s and 90s HP printers were great. They just worked, even in rough dirty manufacturing environments. You could just about drop kick one, and it would still print out a page for you. Now they're crap. The investment firm that owns the brand is past beating the dead horse, now trying to squeeze every last dollar out of the carcas.

This is so true. In fact I’m still using a 90’s HP laser jet printer and it’s a beast.

The company also prohibits users from trying to use third party inks, right? Also, I am surprised at the app fication of everything. One shouldn't need an app just to print something. Almost like tech is taking one step forward but HP is taking two step backwards.

HP doesn't stand for "Huge Pain". It stands for:

  • H - Fuck
  • P - You

That's the unofficial moto of the HP company - "Fuck you!".

Seriously, anyone who still buys HP products, they disrespect themselves.

HP laptops were nice ... somewhere in 2011.

And I have two HP mice and an HP keyboard (that one is PS/2, so not very relevant, I guess), which work fine.

Yeah. HP products were used to be great. Still have some decade old printers at some place by HP and they simply work.

However, HP printer purchased ~5 years ago simply suck ass. And I will never get back hours that I've spent fixing it. Or attempting to fix it. Go to hell HP.. ☹️☹️☹️

Big printer companies need to be regulated better by the FTC. The whole cartridge issue is a waste of resources and costs a lot more than it costs to produce.

Printer cartridges create almost as much waste as Keurig K-Cups cartridges. Both should be banned

I hope GDPR covers the HP's practice in coming days in Europe. Others might follow.

Once upon a time there was a company called Hewllet-Packard that made the best programmable calculators, vendors made the best demonstration: hitting the calc against the floor, picked up the pieces, assembled it and it worked again! (almost beat Texas Instrument). The same for printers, pcs, laptops, good mainframes (i learned fortran in a hp3000), almost any Hewlet-Packard electronic product was among the best. In 90s became HP, since then everything they made is a shame.

Those original HP lasers were absolute beasts. You could put it outside in the snow and if you even hovered over the print icon it'd start to get ready to serve. I bet there are still many in use today.

Regrettably that era of producing quality is mostly finished.

In recent years I've had a lot of good experiences with small Brother and Xerox branded MFP devices. There's still issues here and there if you rely on wireless printing or huge duplexed jobs, but they mostly just crank away for years if you keep feeding them toner cartridges and occasionally a new drum kit.

I will never buy a home printer at this point, especially not from HP. It's significantly cheaper and more convenient for me to go to a printing center next-door and get everything done for pennies.

If somehow I had to start printing things in mass quantities, the only option I would consider is something like the Epson EcoTank. You can clearly see how much ink is left, and you can refill it yourself too. They can't randomly just tell you that your cartridges are faulty, brick your device, or ship you a cartridge that has less than 5ml of liquid inside, but one that costs upwards of 50$ a piece

EcoTank printers don't seem to give a shit what ink you put in them as long as its liquid and preferably the right colour

Epson uses piezoelectric printer heads, which can print whatever flows. They're popular for direct-to-garment conversion for that reason.

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

less than 5ml

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

HP sucks donkey balls. Printer, computer, laptop, all-in-one, doesn't matter. Friends don't let friends by an HP.

That said, ET-2800 is an Epson brand printer, specifically the base-model "Eco-Tank" printer that uses bottles of ink instead of cartridges. HP makes a few under the "Super Tank" line. If that's the right model number, that might help explain driver issues if you have an Epson printer being controlled by HP drivers.

If you plan on keeping it, make sure to set a calendar reminder or set up a task to print at least one color page every month to keep the ink from drying out in the print head. If you decide to replace it, consider a brother laser, especially the black-and-white only models. They are tanks

The Epson Eco-Tank printers are probably one of the most infuriatingly mislabeled products ever, though. They come with self-destruct timers.

If their software counter device that their excess ink sponge pad is full (which can happen rather quickly depending on printing behavior and the amount of cleaning cycles), they turn themselves into e-waste. Epson considers the sponge non-serviceable and the only official solution is to buy an entirely new printer with a clean sponge. Absolutely nothing Eco about that.

There are (paid!) counter reset hacks available now, though.

So, yeah, fuck Epson, but for very different reasons than op is listing.

OK, I know this post is pretty anti-HP which is totally fair, but honestly just stop buying the cheap inkjet printers. I discovered ink tank printers and they are a game changer.

In all seriousness, you might want to try out the HP Smart Tank printers. Almost exactly 2 years ago I bought a HP Smart Tank 7000. It is awesome, and not at all like you describe.

I wanted to be done with junk printers for good, so I set out to buy a laser jet. I can't remember how I found out about these ink tank printers, but they have pretty much the same benefits of laser printers. They print reliably and quickly, the ink lasts forever, and is not only cheap to replace, but you can use 3rd party ink (sold by the bottle. No cartridge means no chip!). My wife is a teacher and prints stuff all the time, including in color. 3 kids use it for homework assignments. I literally refilled the tanks 4 days ago for the very first time. (And only 2 of the 4 tanks at that--black and yellow were down to about a quarter tank.)

I use Linux exclusively and the printer works in Ubuntu and Pop OS out of the box, and without having to install additional drivers or some proprietary app that runs in the tray all the time.

Only downside for me is that sometimes it will go to sleep and my computers don't see it and I have to go over and turn it on/off again. It's pretty rare, and I don't know if it's actually a printer issue as much as a Linux issue.

I liked the printer so much, I bought one for my Mom this year in May. She's got Windows, and I told her I'd come over and help her set it up some time because she is not at all good with computers. Turns out I didn't need to because she set it up herself! (I did help her with the Android app though later on).

I can't help but gush about this thing. Kind of dumb, I know, since in 2023 you'd think all printers should be able to work like this at a minimum.

OK, I know this post is pretty anti-HP which is totally fair, but honestly just stop buying the cheap inkjet printers.

^ THIS!! SOOOO MUCH THIS ^

Inktank or Laser is the way to go!

If you want something that will last forever get an inexpensive laser printer off of ebay.

Even if it's only USB most routers/NAS offer some way of sharing it.

Hell, if you're running a Linux NAS you can give it AirPrint via CUPS and then everything else will "just work" with it.

A Laser printer isn't an automatic fix. My mom got an HP laserjet from her work and it requires the full suite of HP spyware to run. My girlfriend bought a different HP laserjet and it just randomly decided it doesn't want to print anymore, and we suspect it's software related.

I have a Ricoh laser printer and it's amazing though. The driver from Windows Update just works.

I have a very similar story, but I'm 6 months or so into having mine. I went to buy a laser printer, and the salesperson redirected me to the ecotank for upfront savings and similar performance. I hope mine continues to work as well as yours does for you.

A big issue is that we all learned that ink is super expensive. So rather than buy overpriced ink cartridges, you buy the super cheap printer on sale.

But ink is nowhere near as expensive as it used to be (I think? It could just as easily be a "batteries are really expensive so we have to remove them from your loud toy" scenario) and third party solutions work with the vast majority of printers. So you are stuck with a cheap printer with no protection to keep the cartridges from drying out and hate everything.

The latest "meta" is that everyone should buy a laser/toner printer. And those can be awesome and the toner brick will outlive you. But there are a LOT of air quality concerns with those and it still ignores the real issue:

How often do you print? A few documents a month? That is pretty much perfect for a mid-tier inkjet printer. You'll keep it going often enough that the rollers don't get dusty and the cartridges don't dry out.

A few times a year? Just get a library card and a flash drive. It comes out a LOT cheaper.

Personally? I probably should go the library route, but I already have a room that is basically designated to cancer and microplastics with my 3d printer and so forth. And I am old enough that I like to have a paper checklist when I am grinding in a video game or whatever. So I love my laser printer and it always "just works". But... I am still an idiot who should have just stuck to heading into town for some chicken nuggies and a dollar worth of printing at the library.

I've also had numerous struggles with expensive HP products, both laptop ( no sound for intermittent months on end) and printers refusing to pair with certain devices. While signing a document requiring a pint of my blood type to proclaim that I will never buy HP again, is generally thought as stupid and a bad idea, it is something I think about.

IT person here. Avoiding HP is a good idea. But a better idea is don't buy shitty cheap consumer level inkjet printers from any brand. Most of them have this sort of bullshit, although not usually as bad as HP does. Instead I suggest buy it for life. Get a nice color laser machine, spend a few hundred bucks, and you will have a printer that lasts until you die. I like the Canon MF743CDw, it's a little on the pricier side but it scans both sides of the paper in one pass. Also does color duplex printing.

If you don't want the extra size or weight of a color laser, get a black and white laser. How often do you really need color? And if you must get something cheaper, get one of the newer inkjet printers that use refillable ink bottles rather than cartridges, like there is an actual ink tank on the printer and you refill it with a squeeze bottle rather than replacing the cartridge.

My problem is I only need a printer maybe once or twice a year so it's a bit difficult to justify spending hundreds of dollars for a device that will probably only pay for itself back in about a decade.

It may honestly just be worth the hassle I'm going to the library when I want to print something. Not they they don't have crap printers as well.

Get a Laser then.. Inkjets dry out if not regularly used, which on the cheaper printer often means 'throw it away and buy a new one' because they don't have replaceable heads. A laser will happily sit for months idle then spring into life.

It'll pay for itself the first time your shitty inkjet has one cartridge dry up from not being used in a while, so then the software won't let you print anything at all until you replace all 4 of them with proprietary OEM replacement cartridges.

That's one of the main reasons I decided to bite the bullet and spend a few hundred bucks on a color laser. I print so rarely that I wanted a system that wouldn't dry out from infrequent use.

Then get yourself a basic black & white laser printer. Brother is usually pretty good for that. The cartridges don't expire and it'll be ready instantly when you need it, whether that's tomorrow or next year.

Here's one for $120

Honestly, pretty much, yes. Their home printers have basically always been this bad. But then inkjets are universally bad anyway.

HP's Business class printers for offices and schools are actually pretty good, they make a decent laser printer and they make a decent copier. But their $50 home models have always been garbage.

As someone who ran a computer lab for years, my advice is this: Always always always buy a laser printer. And personally I've had only mixed success with all the major manufacturers HP/Lexmark/Canon. I always recommend Brother because they mostly market to offices and corporations, and nobody wants to upset corporate partners, so they're incentivized to actually make a good product.

Just wait till you run into one of the HP printers that will not work until you sign up for the HP subscription service, and only use HP subscription ink cartridges, and only if it’s allowed to access the internet to report back that it’s printing. The subscription actually set the number of pages per month you are allowed to print, on the hardware you have them money for.

And it only works for a device with the HP app installed. Total garbage.

I have one of those and it works perfectly from Linux using standard software. You can also go over the subscription, you just pay (still comparable to buying ink cartridges though, perhaps even a little cheaper if you're printing photos). It also worked for 2 weeks with no internet connection, although it did complain about that lack of an internet connection after a week.

It has also proved to me that HP are conning everyone with non InstantInk cartridges. After 3 years we are still on the same cartridges, which I am sure it would have claimed were empty if it were not InstantInk.

Disclaimer: I got the printer for (effectively) free and use the free tier subscription which allows me 10(?) pages a month with no rollover. It has cost me about €2.50 in 3 years. I would never have paid for a modern HP printer.

Edit: I am not defending HP's abhorrent business practices. However, in this case I found a loophole and was able to exploit it. It was also free because I had a awesome employer who gave out Fnac vouchers every year. I am also only able to exploit that loophole because I also have that little Brother laser that just works.

I didn’t have the chance to try on Linux. Good to hear it worked for you Since it was for my in-laws it had to work on Windows 10 laptop and a Chromebook. I learned a few years ago I cannot guide them onto a Linux install as much as I want to.

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I used to have an older HP LaserJet, which was really good. Their more recent printers just keep getting worse, and I feel like they're coasting on their reputation. Brother laser printers are what I've found to be the best modern printers.

Seconding the Brother laser printers. I have a Brother HL-L2350DW, a monochrome laser printer, and it's just awesome. Works with Linux and Android on Wi-Fi without any issues and the print quality is amazing (those writing documents in LaTeX will love it as they look just great when you print them). Also, 3rd-party toner works fine with it if you want to save some money (obviously the quality will vary, the official ones have the best quality so far).

+1 for Brother laser printers. I've owned exactly two, the first saw me through maybe 10-12y, then I bought a color model. Zero problems with either.

ET-2800, By HP

Uhh, you sure that's an HP? Do you have the wrong model?

The ET series are EcoTanks by Epson, (Shaq's Printer) HP almost always uses 4 numbers and sometimes a letter at the end for models. Or Mxxx for Laser

Don't get me wrong, HP = Horse Piss, but the shade should be thrown at who deserves it.

🌎👨‍🚀🔫👨‍🚀

It's pretty much always been this way with the HP ones. Years ago when wireless printers were not the standard, we used to connect a printer to the family Windows PC and then share it on the network. We got a new one set it up, and the printer refused to be shared. Turns out HP had explicitly blocked network sharing in their Windows software driver for that printer. Never purchased another one since. Brother isn't perfect, but I have multiple 8+ year old Brother laser printers still in service right now and they "Just Work."

I have been flipping back and forth between Brother and Epson over the years. My wife does high volume printing at times (teacher). I figure 2-3 boxes of paper per year.

The Epson ecotank has worked well for the past 3 years we've had it. Probably 9-10 boxes of paper through it already.

I have never had any software issues with it, even use it with Linux.

Laserjets up until generation 5 were amazing. There are laserjet 4s still trucking away churning out pages. I personally had a LaserJet 4MP that I sold when I got married due to its extremely low wife acceptance factor (it was huge, loud and ugly. We both regret that decision because 20 years later it would probably still be working.

Basically, what Brother lasers are now is what HP laserjets used to be up until ~2004. We can debate the exact switchover year ad nauseum, but you get the idea.

When you said 20 years later I genuinely thought you meant like early 90s

On a related note my Brother 2270DW has been working flawlessly since 2012. It survived two moves just fine. Toners are cheap and widely available

I have it hooked up to my wifi and any new pc or mac connected to the wifi can print effortlessly

HP printers have been anti-consumer garbage for at least 10 years. Anyone who's buying one these days just isn't doing any research into the brand. They are THE example that gets brought up when people talk about this kind of shit.

Inkjet has been garbage since day one. Get a brother laser, use Noname toner from your local ink shop, be happy and never tinker with a paper printer again.

Eventually 2d printing with a 3d printer will be better than inkjets. Except not really. I'm kinda surprised I haven't heard of any open source paper printers.

Brother is my current second favorite major brand. They are breaking a lot more than they used to and the parts that break aren't worth replacing. Canon is putting out alright printers that seem a bit more robust to me. But honestly if you just put in the money up front even hp isn't total trash. To get a not trash hp will cost $400, and there's no guarantee that it won't get a firmware update that makes it impossible to use third party ink, but it won't require hpsmart and make you want to kill yourself. So yeah, spend more on your printer, don't get an hp, and if you're not gonna spend more on your printer get a black and white laser Canon imo.

I'm still with Brother. Dropped my last 6 year old Brother (printer not sibling) down the stairs, and replaced it with the updated model. No fuss, no jams, respectable use of toner. Easy WiFi setup (even easier if you know how to allocate it a static IP in router DHCP settings).

Would still recommend, still a Brand Loyal customer.

They were actually taken to court over their machines breaking down and disabling functions that were ok. For example, your cartridge head is broken, but you can't use the scanner either because the software shuts down all functions.

It was fine before Carly Fiorina took over and brought in the 1980s MBA style of management (the same that killed or nearly killed quit a lot of household names).

Think of it as the first wave of enshittification, back in the 00s.

Ever since then, HP consumer-grade products have generally been pretty bad, especially (but not only) their printers.

Interestingly, the business-grade stuff was still pretty decent, but I'm not up to date on whether that is still the case.

The HP LaserJet 4MP was pretty decent, but that came out in 1993.

Yeah it's bad .... Now many hp printers require Internet connectivity and an active subscription for you to be allowed to use the ink you purchased.

if you choose to enroll your printer in their monthly ink thingy.... (good luck as the ink that comes ootb is paired eith that program and requires a subscription)

It’s unlimited ink but you pay per page

Not sure why I have a bad arrow: even if you have ink it’s not going to print if you used up your monthly pages

Yes. Ever since we left behind parallel ports and drivers that could fit on a single floppy.

Endless paper and needle printers? Using a floppy? Well I'm glad not to have to use those anymore.

If you can get away with it, just don't buy printers.

Simple answer, ages ago there was a time when HP made okay printers. In the past decade or more, they have not. Stay away.

The bloatware and software stack is just abysmally bad.

Well yeah, I mean not always but for probably 20 years their laser printers have been terrible, and their inkjets have been not consumer friendly for even longer than that.

For instance, I once had an HP color laser printer that was designed in a way that toner dust would build up on the prism and mirror, causing streaks and splotches to be printed on the page. The official recommendation was to buy a new printer, and the local repair shop said is it even though it’s a known issue and they’re capable of fixing it, getting it apart and putting all the pieces back together is such a time consuming hassle that it would be just as cheap to buy a new one. A $300 color laser printer. If I did it successfully, I would need to do it again in a year or two anyway. I now have a Brother; it’s black and white only but has been rock solid.

I did see on The Other Site a discussion from a year or two ago that Brother isn’t so great anymore, but the consensus seemed to be that they’re still better than anything other than maybe those Epson printers with the ink reservoirs.

I remember that my high school, college, and first couple of jobs had amazing HP laser printers, but sadly those days are gone and the company is a shell of what it used to be. I would not buy an HP printer at this point.

Sorry for your suffering but welcome to the club.

Their old dumb monochrome laser printers were great. I still have one

I've had one of their fairly new, colour laser printers for years and I haven't experienced any of these outrageous things people have with their ink jets. But I have to add that I'm still using the original toners. I have a slight worry that the story will begin once one of them is out.

HP's inkjets have always been cantankerous, but the business printers they made in the late 90s were tanks.

Once upon a time, Hewlet Packard (HP) made great kit. Unfortunately that hasn't been true for at least the last 15 years. Nowadays everything they make, that I've looked at, seems to be utter trash. Brother is currently a good brand for printers if your in the market for one though.

2 more...

We have bought a HP printer about maybe 7-8 years ago(don't know the model) and it just works. No annoying drivers, no "can't do shit because of low ink" and you can even use non HP ink cartridges. The only problem is, that sometimes the scanner doesn't work properly so that the document is literally unreadable. After cleaning the scanner glass 7 times it may work. Luckyly this doesn't happens very often.

Old printers are great with a raspberry pi running CUPS stuck to them. Unfortunately that means administering an RPi, finding a battery to see it through power outages, maybe sticking an SSD in a USB port so it doesn't eat SD cards every couple of years, etc. But the WiFi printing part is flawless.

Yes.

Back when they were Hewlett-Packard, maybe not, but HP have basically always been shit.

The HP LaserJet 4 series was their last good printers. They were discontinued in 1995, and everything from them has been utter shit since. You mentioned you were looking at Brother printers - go for it, they make good printers.

Made good printers. They were one of the last bastions of sanity, but last year that one fell, too:

As far as I know, they finally pushed firmware updates to block 3rd party toner to most of their printers - which is pretty evil, given that most people purchased Brother devices exactly to avoid that kind of bullshit and nobody expected it from them.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131

That said, I love my Brother DCP-9022CDW. It has been an indestructible workhorse, eats any toner I want and lets me reset the counter and keep printing another 2000 pages on an "empty" toner. Heck, I've had third party toner that I could reset three times before actually running out. That latest firmware update will stay far away from it, though.

Anyone have printer brand recommendations?

I have a Brother and like it but, is that he only decent option?

Brother Laser here. Never fucking going back.

Also in brother laser club. It won't quit

I just love how my printer has become an appliance. Like, shit, I need to print something. I just press print. No print head cleaning, no alignment, no driver download and crapware games, no color cartridge wack-a-mole to print black and white. It just... Prints. Every time.

It's become as exciting as using my toaster, and I love it for that.

Same with mine. I only use it a few times a year, but when I need it I can just use it. If it ever actually runs out of toner I can just fill the cartridge.

I have an Epson ecotank.. you pay upfront for the printer and on the flipside the ink is about $15AUD per bottle..but that will get you 5000 sheets.

I have also one of those... But since it's standing for couple weeks or a month between each printing session, I always got to start with cleaning nozzle and flushing the ink or the print quality goes shit. Kinda annoying since wife has a habit of "just gonna print this important paper 5min before leaving house"

Also I haven't managed to get it working on Linux

I have an Epson EcoTank printer. It's a colour inkjet printer but it came with these ginormous bottles of ink that you pour into a tank. I've printed thousands of pages for three years and I still have around a quarter of the included ink left.

I didn't need to install any drivers on Linux or Windows, just adding the printer was enough. It connects to your WiFi network and works as expected. My only complaint is that after not using it for a few weeks, you'll need to run the "clean print head" utility on the printer and might need to realign the print heads. But other than that, it's great. Photo quality is pretty meh though.

I have two EcoTank printers, one is set up with normal ink and the other one gets used by my partner for sublimation printing for her crafting projects, they're absolutely the next best thing to a laser printer.

Samsung's line of laser printers are great. They just work and don't impose any bizarre restrictions. I've had mine for at least 5 years now, but it obviously doesn't do colored pages if those are important to you.

HP bouth Samsung's printer division some years ago.

Oh. I wasn't aware... Buy an older model then I guess.

That makes sense. My Samsung laser gets less supported every os update and it’s fucking ridiculous. I thought less of Samsung until I read that and then it was like, “Ooooohhhhhhh . . . !”

Samsungs printer biz got bought by HP IIRC. I have a 3405w and drivers are only from HP now

Same, have 3 Samsung b/w printers between me and family and they have all been extremely reliable for years whether they are used regularly or not. Plus the ink isn't expensive.

Just got my second Brother, the only way I'd switch to a different brand is if they also turn to shit.

I only bought a second Brother printer because after a decade+ I decided I wanted color printing and a scanner. Zero problems since 2009.

I have an rosin that's not the worst, but I can't recommend it. Ink isn't as locked down, you can buy generic I think.

I hear good things about Brother from these other people

I've only bought Brother laser printers for 15 years now, and have no intention of doing anything else. Never again, HP.

Yup all HP printers are like this now. But so are all the others. I bought a Canon because it said it had support for Linux but about a month later they retracted support for Linux and it wouldn't print properly anymore. Only black and white.

So I've had to install windows 10 in a VM just so I can print in colour 😡

I think ALL the printers are now a scam. Like shaver cartridges.

In future I'd rather buy a dedicated scanner and use an external service for printing.

I just bought a brother laser color printer. I've had a really good experience with it. It's works in Linux Mac OS windows Android and iOS without any drivers

Apparently the Brother Laser Printers are still ok but the Brother Ink Jets are the same scam as the rest.

Problem is I most people can't afford laser jets.

I use to love my old Canon multifunctions in the office until they didn't support the new then windows 7 with drivers. I noped out of owning more Canons then. I dealt with various POSs from HP as their old 4200 series were tanks. Their consumer inkjet I bought over the years were nothing but headaches especially in a office environment. I'll never buy another HP again. I used a couple of Epson printers but their drivers kept needing to be re-installed.

Brother printers aren't flashy or full of options on the lower levels but they just seem to work without a fuss. Even when I started using Linux again they were picked up on the network without an issue and I didn't even need to install a driver at all.

I've gone with a smaller brother ink-vestment multifunction at home now and it's been great for a ink jet.

Yes the 4200 were tanks. Sad to see what they've done on the consumer side..

"Ink-vestment" - 😂 good one!

I'd never buy anything HP anymore. When I was still working in Enterprise IT I used to order HP desktops, laptops and monitors because I considered their hardware to be the best for the price. The desktops especially used to run forever. In the production facility we still had several 10+ year old HP desktops doing duty.

I have them alot of money over the years but now I'd do for something else instead like Lenovo or Dell (not the XPS. Those things were a headache)

I have an HP Printer and it sucks. It deliberately decided not to print anymore if I don't pay them 3,99€ a month

LaserJet 4 was a tank. Everything since has been various flavours of mediocre. Buy Brother.

I remember a needle printer from my work in the early 90s that worked endlessly. I think it was from the early 70s.

Never bought a good printer since 2003. In 2003 I remember you could get a good printer for a reasonable price with reasonably priced cartridges. Ever since then printer technology doesn't seem to have improved but they all seem to have become much worse quality and incredibly scammy.

Literally threw my 2 year old HP in the trash today. Got a Brother printer based off reviews. Cost a bit more but it’s worth it to me to finally have a printer that just works and the toner lasts infinitely longer than that HP bullshit.

If it's significantly better than what I could've bought in the 90s I'd go with it, but if it's not I'd still consider it scammy since a lot of time has passed since then. Thankfully I don't really need a printer now.

They went to shit when they switched to a massive, bloated shitty software and driver package instead of just drivers. Wish I could remember what year that was, but it was like a 500MB download. I think remember I saw the package was over 1GB at one point. To run a f’n printer. And of course it was shitty. Connection problems, wouldn’t print when you sent the job, shitloads of useless tools that constantly wanted you to buy or subscribe to printer ink sales, etc. They made the driver harder and harder to find and pushed their bloatware.

Now you can find just the driver, 81MB or so, but they’re fucking with you over printer ink by trying to prevent you from refilling with 3rd party ink, using 3rd party cartridges, making it so you can’t print just black if you’re out of other colors, etc.

Even 81MB sounds obscene for what it is.

Printer technology is crazy old and basically no one is updating the actual low level protocols.

Often, the updated driver is just a translation layer for talking to the old one, and the stacking has been going on for decades.

It's why so many printer makers wanted to make the jump to wireless. The wireless printer protocol didn't need to be backwards compatible with wired, so they could just do what was easy.

They're still to cheap to do it right, so now it's wireless garbage, but it's less complicated garbage at least.

You can download their Universal Print Driver instead of using the software packages. It's one single driver that works with all of their printers, and even works for other brands printers.

I worked for HP for a while in college. HP Rep. It paid like 14 an hour when minimum wage was 6 and I just got to stand around in best buy or office max, etc, selling printers and training staff on features. It was retail but without all the bullshit like cleaning the bathrooms or running the register or needing to hit sales targets, etc. It was a real kushy job.

About halfway through my time there HP started pushing ePrint, or other cloud features, and ink subscriptions, etc. That was about the time I think their quality really started to nosedive. Printers have always been printers (brother notwithstanding, but now it's starting to slip with inclusion of more invasive drm and ink subscriptions) but before the onset of cloud based stuff, it seemed, I dunno, better? Not great, but better

HP – Hell-Powered

HP printers are just bad. Their Linux drivers (HPLIP) are flimsy and sometimes break on updates. They come with GUI tools still stuck on Qt 4. Their hardware's quality is also pitiful and the marketing approarch is outirght evil. I got an Envy printer recently (not my choice). It came with instructions to set it up via cloud with an HP account. Why shouldn't I be able to use a damn printer without creating yet another useless account and giving out personal information is beyond me. At last I discovered the USB port (covered by a sticker which had the word USB crossed out) and managed to set up the printer after the fifth attempt or so, because CUPS didn't recognize it and so didn't the HPLIP setup tool. And then the next time I tried to use the printer it just refused... Then I gave it away because my patience had finally run out. Don't mess with HP if you value your time and nerves.

My Windows machine treats their drivers and software like an allergic reaction, so it's not just Linux. I had to write a script to force it to connect and keep checking mine every thirty seconds.

HP = "Have Problems" Stay away from that company's products, that includes everything, not just the printers.

I'm not even going toreadd your post. Not to be rude, but becuase: 1) yes, HP is that bad. And 2) buy a Brother laser printer.

HP inkjets are horrendous. I absolutely refuse to buy them because they are absolute junk. They have always worked, and I could connect to them with no problems with Android atleast. Windows finally could connect once I had assigned it a permanent local IP through the router. Though Linux had problems...

But the build quality of HP inkjets are absolute horrendous and I probably can only get 6 months out of them and probably spent more on ink cartridges in a year before the stupid printers suffer a complete hardware failure and need to be replaced.

The HP mfp 183fw colour LaserJet printer however... It is my second forray into HP laserjets since my dad's original black and white Hewlett Packard LaserJet beast from the early 90's.

But I feel like I got incredibly lucky after doing some research into it (plus only thing I could get locally at the time since I needed a new printer immediately.) It cost more than any of the inkjets I have owned in the past. The toner carts definitely cost more... But it is still going strong a year and a half after purchasing it and I have only had to replace the black toner cart only a week or two ago. Have not had to replace the colour toner carts yet. It also just works on Linux which I am happy about.

Like I said, I may have just gotten incredibly lucky though, I mean getting a year and a half out of it is still more than I expected and the money I saved because toner lasts much longer than ink.

When and if this printer gives up, I will probably get an Epson laserjet.

I have the same problem with mine. It literally never recognizes the printer wirelessly unless I turn it off and on, unplug, push the wifi button, and cancel and restart the print at least a few times.

I also found out that I'm being charged by the number of pages I print. When I signed up, I was under the impression that I would be charged for the printer ink. Apparently it's $4/month for 20 pages or some shit like that and then $1 per every ten pages after that? How the fuck can they charge per page? Aren't the ink cartridges what run out and need to be repurchased? But even though I get charged every month automatically, whether I use the pages or not, I don't get sent new ink until I request it. Or buy it? And I magically lost some discount I was supposed to get after purchasing through Amazon.

The whole thing has been a shit show. Plus the printer itself is the flimsiest piece of thin plastic that weighs nothing. I hope the FTC sues the shit out of them.

Why would you give them your bank information? Do they send an attendant to assist for every print?

Buy a printer, buy ink, buy paper. No subscription about it.

I bought a couple of new HP laserjets M110, those are tiny laser printers and usually just do their job so I'm ok with HP.

But those M110... those are pain. After installing them with USB and printing fine for the first day, the second day they stopped working, at all. They still gladly take any print job fine, they communicate with Windows. But they do not print anything... until you connect them to the Wi-Fi and create an HP account so they can push to you their brand new monthly ink plan.

Never got rid of a printer so quickly.

Hi, I'm glad I came across this post! I have a super super old HP printer. They were the best. I have to say mine is at least 20 years old, pre-wireless. It's recently had problems and I'm not sure I can fix it. I need a new printer.

I have heard of Brother printers but not always been one of the top printers - everyone likes Canon, HP, Epson.

I think I'll look more into them because of the non-proprietary ink. The ink of these printers is sometimes more than getting a new printer itself. It does not make sense.

I'm mostly an HP person since the start, so I'll still be looking into these too. Hope you have better luck with yours.

my HP's have been great, however I have a laser, I would never buy an ink jet. And yah They are so much better than brother,

For A4, I always recommend Brother printers.
If you can spend for a laser printer, it is SOO worth it.

I had a fancy inkjet. The problem is I didnt use it often, so when I did use it I got really bad result.
It was also slow, and the ink was expensive.

So, I thought about buying a new one.
Fresh ink and replacement print heads were going to be more than the cost of a new printer anyway.

I looked into it and bought a brother A4 colour laser. A quick Google shows them to be currently ~£250.
I have had that printer for years. I rarely print anything. But when I do, the image is as good as when I bought it.

Checking the printer stats, I've printed 430 pages. Wear and tear is at 98% (IE 2% used of drum/belt/fuser/feeder lifespan).
The black toner is 40%, and the colour toners are 80%.
3rd party toners are £30 per color, and apparently yield 2500 pages. So more expensive than 3rd part ink cartridges, but the yield is significantly more!
Overall more expensive. But the reliability is outstanding!

Edit:
Well, all this printer talk, I thought I should update the firmware.
Brother only provide a dmg for OSX 10.7.
So, that's a pretty huge drawback!
Edit again:
Nope, I'm an idiot. Found the link for W10 update tool.
All updated, and over the network too!

I have an old Laserjet 1020 I bought new many years ago. It still works perfectly on windows, but I haven't been able to make it print with any Linux distro, so it sits in the corner with nothing to do :(

I had a Deskjet 2500 some years ago. It lasted less than 2 years.

Catridges were expensive af and lasted about 20 pages. Maybe less.

In less than 2 years it started to print blank pages or pages with little ink on it. I didn't find a way to fix it, not even with new catridges. So I threw it away and promised to myself to never buy HP again.

All printers are terrible.

I worked in a print store and brother those huge xerox machines are no joke. Tens of thousands of pages with minimal maintenance and downtime. Consumer printers are often terrible, especially inkjets, but this just seems like you've never used a nice one before. The problem is most people would rather pay 50 dollars for a really terrible printer to print with it 20 times rather than just order 20 prints from a shop or cough up a couple hundred for a really well made printer, laser or no.

In my later years it was Lenovo old and new after trying to accommodate a flashy Asus laptop one of the office staff had to have. It didn't work with any of the desktop docks and there was no FN lock. After that I preferred even older off lease Lenovo over anything else. Tried to accommodate a Macbook for the same user later on and then said she was on her own for that. I said I hadn't used a Mac since they were in a lovely solid grey case with a monochrome screen and floppy drive built in and it's wasn't one of the M&M shaped ones from her youth either.

Thankfully I was one of the owners so I could at that stage 😇

To be honest, no, they weren't always this bad. I had an HP Deskjet 500 waaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy back in the day that was pretty much bulletproof. Can't remember what happened to it? Must have lost it in a move or something. :(

https://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=314

"The early DeskJet printers are still very reliable as of 2014. These printers have external power supplies, built in to the power cord. The museum has more than two dozen of these power supplies, and they all work fine. In the last ten years, we have seen over fifteen of these printers. All except one was fully functional."

Every HP printer I owned over the last two decades was a huge pile of crap. I hate printers now and will never buy one ever again. I go to the library to print.

A year after we gave up our LJ4 - and just after its 20th birthday too! - we realized it was a mistake, and we bought a ln m404n.

The m404n is an Ethernet LaserJet monochrome printer.

It seems to work well so far, but I am concerned it'll act up if I find some alt-sourced toner.

I have an HP LaserJet 6L from like 1997. I recently managed to get it working reliably after decades of struggle and frustration that drove me to tears on occasion. So yes, as far as I can tell they've always been this bad.

In my experience, printers in general are terrible, but HP LasetJet Enterprise m series printers are excellent.

I'll never buy HP again. They've made it their profession to get progressively shitter when it was a low bar to begin with. Even their other products are doing the same.

Certainly YMMV. I have an HP 8720 and it works wirelessly perfectly, Windows finds it and installs it automatically. Including the scanner. Even works from my wife's Chromebook. I can print from my Android phone without any issue.

I do pay for the HP ink subscription, but it's only 99p per month, and that's 15 pages with rollover and that suits our need 99% of the time.

Printers are just trash. A Laserjet b&w is the only thing worth getting for home use. There's no color home printers that can compete with a professional commercial printer, home office printers are more expensive and worse quality.

Huge Pain? Here they mean Why Cry translated.

Lois Ross man

Louis Rossmann