Brother Denies Blocking Third-Party Toner
Louis Rossmann has shared a new video encapsulating his surprise, and disappointment, that Brother has morphed into an “anti-consumer printer company.” More information about Brother’s embrace of the dark side are shared on Rossmann’s wiki, with the major two issues being new firmware disabling third party toner, and preventing (on color devices) color registration functionality.
Rossmann is clearly perturbed by Brother’s quiet volte-face with regard to aftermarket ink. Above he admits that he used to tell long-suffering HP or Canon printing device owners faces with cartridge DRM issues “Buy a brother laser printer for $100 and all of your woes will be solved.”
Sadly, “Brother is among the rest of them now,” mused the famous RepairTuber.
Scharon Harding (via Slashdot):
The video, spotted by Tom’s Hardware, has 163,000 views as of this writing and seems to be based on a Reddit post from 2022. In that post, Reddit user 20Factorial said that firmware update W1.56 caused the automatic color registration feature to stop working on his Brother MFC-3750 when using third-party cartridges.
“With the colors not able to be aligned, the printer is effectively non-functional,” 20Factorial said. The Redditor went on to say that when asked, a Brother customer service agent confirmed that “the printer is non-functional without genuine toner.”
[…]
Brother denied to Ars Technica that it intentionally bricks printer functionality when users install third-party toner or ink.
[…]
20Factorial isn’t the only one who has claimed to see printer capabilities decline when trying to use a third-party cartridge.
The general consensus seems to be that official Brother cartridges work a little better, but that Brother doesn’t block you from using alternatives.
Previously:
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Brother is the only printer worth considering unless you know you need something they don't make, but a $100 Brother is still not a great printer.
I've seen firsthand issues with third party toner cartridges. The first party ones last forever and do indeed work more reliably. Worth just getting it from them. They're far from an evil printer company. Can't blame them for just trying to make a profit the regular way.
Still I don't think they block third party cartridges generally, but it would be understandable in higher-end color models as it is important that the cartridges match up. Better that than allow it to be used and just not work properly, or wind up staining the entire inside with toner as I have seen happen with third party cartridges.
Hopefully Brother are not going down the route ploughed by other printer makers. I'm so happy with their compact Laser printer bought 3 years ago.
I still have ptsd from owning an HP Inkjet 8 years ago. Never worked whenever I needed it. 'Reload paper' it would declare just after I filled the feeder. As well as refusing to stop searching for wifi when plugged in. Having to use a whole cartridge to try and unblock nozzles! Attempts to stop 3rd party ink working.
It stopped working reliably and I brought it to a recycling plant and was overjoyed to see the receptacle for electronics was a skip with stairs leading to a platform alongside. My god I threw that HP POS into the skip with such gusto that, if applied in another arena, may have won me a place in the finals of the Olympic discus.
I will never by anything made by HP again.
Please stay strong Brother. Goodwill is a hard thing to recover.
