I've owned 4 Brother printers since the 90s. The first one lasted more than a decade, and I put it through the wringer. The next one lasted about the same, including a stint as EIC of a magazine which meant I printed a ton of proofs on that poor thing. They all worked easily with Linux, to boot.
I currently own two, one color and one multi-function B&W. They don't actually get a ton of usage but <knocks wood> they work when I need them to and I'm not constantly buying toner for the things.
(I'm sure other folks have horror stories because somebody always does no matter what product, but they've served me well enough - and certainly Brother doesn't seem to be as customer hostile as HP.)
This dried out the non-replaceable inkjet heads, bricking the entire thing. I think I might have gotten 10 decent non-test-page pages out of it before I recycled it.
My current printer is a samsung wifi-enabled laser that cost about $100. It's great, but HP bought the division, and the first-party toner, drums, etc, are now garbage. Fortunately, the cheap supplies work as well as the OEM supplies used to. If you see one used on craigslist, etc, it might be worth picking up.
There have been some intermittent bugs with the MacOS / iOS / Linux CUPS drivers (I think they're all the same open source stuff), but it's been trouble-free otherwise.
I agree though. For new consumer printers, I think Brother laser jets seem to be the only remaining choice worth considering.
[0](Because the printer is on the UPS that has a USB connection to my desktop.)
Only minor gripe is the process for getting a return label for recycling toner which requires reading a minuscule serial number to enter into a web form.
I have had the worst luck with samsung devices, everything but their ram and ssds have failed on me in an incredibly short time (appliances failing in less than 3 years) or had issues making them nearly unusable for me, such as their TV backlights are set to like 6500k or something, far too blue and hurts to look at for me.
This would be extremely disappointing to me if Brother has gone the way of the dodo because I specifically bought a Brother printer for this reason and continued to buy their OEM cartridges and toners as a means of support. I've been voting with my dollars and would like some evidence that this is the case and possibly that this is intentional before I bring out the pitchfork on this one.
Some issues:
Mine must be connected to the network via Ethernet; if I use Wi-Fi it disappears from the network after about 5-10 minutes (goes to sleep?) and you cannot print without pressing a few buttons on the printer.
It is unable to update its own firmware (maybe this is a plus?).
There is a fair amount of thin plastic and a general feeling that it will break if I’m not gentle. But I have had it for almost 3 years with no breakage.
PS oh, and if you want super high print quality, probably you should get an LBP236dw, which adds PostScript support.
I'd throw all our worthless Xerox in the trash if I could still get Oki.
1. I'd love to be able to tell my HL-4150 to not clean itself at midnight. Or really any time anyone might be asleep. You have an NTP server connection; use it! OTOH, my dad's Lexmark had that same stupidity. (I love buying professionalish products, but they seem to do everything they can to ensure office products are unusable at home.)
2. I've never experienced toner cartridges that leaked so much as the Brother one (yes, all four.) I ended up buying cheap 3P cartridges, and haven't had the same issue. They royally screwed up the seals/spreader somehow.
That said, it does print and is fast, so as long as I don't let it sit turned on for too long, it works.
It was definitely more costly than HP or Epson, but damn it’s worth it
Now they don't dry out and the printer can't sneakily squirt all the very very expensive ink into a sponge when you least expect it.