A little off topic from your DRM/open source query, but since so many people are praising brother, in my opinion they are ruining their printers due to the jacked up toner cost. It’s not even just brother. Basically all the greedy printer manufacturers have all but ruined affordable laser printing. Years ago you could buy a brother printer for a reasonable cost that used toner that cost about a penny per page to print. They shrank the toner cartridges but didn’t reduce the cost so it’s not uncommon to speed a few cents a page on toner these days. Compare that with the current ink tank options and you’ll find the cost is way lower at around $.002 per page. The biggest trade off in my opinion is that you have to print to them regularly or they clog up and they are slower, but they are definitely a better value.
TL DR: greedy printer manufacturers ruined laser printers. Buy an ink tank printer instead until they ruin inkjets again.
A little off topic from your DRM/open source query, but since so many people are praising brother, in my opinion they are ruining their printers due to the jacked up toner cost. It’s not even just brother. Basically all the greedy printer manufacturers have all but ruined affordable laser printing. Years ago you could buy a brother printer for a reasonable cost that used toner that cost about a penny per page to print. They shrank the toner cartridges but didn’t reduce the cost so it’s not uncommon to speed a few cents a page on toner these days. Compare that with the current ink tank options and you’ll find the cost is way lower at around $.002 per page. The biggest trade off in my opinion is that you have to print to them regularly or they clog up and they are slower, but they are definitely a better value.
TL DR: greedy printer manufacturers ruined laser printers. Buy an ink tank printer instead until they ruin inkjets again.
You can buy third party toners for brother (if it comes without a chip, you just need to move it from the original toner.