{"id":46990,"date":"2025-03-07T10:41:28","date_gmt":"2025-03-07T15:41:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=46990"},"modified":"2025-03-07T10:54:02","modified_gmt":"2025-03-07T15:54:02","slug":"brother-denies-blocking-third-party-toner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/07\/brother-denies-blocking-third-party-toner\/","title":{"rendered":"Brother Denies Blocking Third-Party Toner"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Tyson<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, with the major two issues being new firmware disabling third party toner, and preventing (on color devices) color registration functionality.<\/p>

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.”<\/p>

Sadly, “Brother is among the rest of them now,” mused the famous RepairTuber.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Scharon Harding<\/a> (via Slashdot<\/a>):<\/p>\n

The video, spotted by Tom’s Hardware<\/a>, has 163,000 views as of this writing and seems to be based on a Reddit post <\/a>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.<\/p>

“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.”<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

Brother denied to Ars Technica that it intentionally bricks printer functionality when users install third-party toner or ink.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

20Factorial isn’t the only one who has claimed to see printer capabilities decline when trying to use a third-party cartridge.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

The general consensus seems to be that official Brother cartridges work a little better, but that Brother doesn’t block you from using alternatives.<\/p>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n