Hey lemmy. I’ve been paying out of pocket to get stickers printed from online printing companies. But its getting expensive and I think I’d like to get a printer to do the job.
HOWEVER, I’ve been avoided getting a printer, because, well, the whole thing is just a shit show. Our household went through like a printer a year for almost four years. Between ink prices, and the printers just failing, we threw our hands up and said fuck it. Not playing this game, so we shifted to printing services or the local library.
So I’m looking for a very basic (I think?) printer. Honestly, a black only printer might even be fine. I’ve heard I think that maybe Canons or Brothers are the ones you want and HP’s are to be avoided. The purpose of the printer will be to print stickers on sticker paper. What printer should I buy?
Brother is the only real choice. Their MFC are very versatile and handy and quite reasonable.
You are correct that Canon and Brother tend to be the best straight forward printers. Brother is better for laser printing and Canon is better for ink jet printing. If you go ink jet go with individual cartridges instead of the combined cartridges it’s way less fuss.
If you can do laser the basic Brothers just work. We had one in our woodshop for almost a decade. Sawdust spray paint etc. and it just did not care. It didn’t end up dying even, we just swapped it for a color version, and we’re on year 4 with that one.
I have been thinking about replacing my brother laser with a color laser. Not sure how much I would use it outside of printing commie things for Pathfinder games though.
Maybe just go with a B&W printer and go to the local copy shop or library for the occasional color print? That’s what I do.
I went Canon for color laser, no complaints so far.
Now THIS is a recommendation! My next printer (fuck HP) will be a Brother laser printer!
I’ve got a small Canon MFC laser printer/copier. No complaints at all. It only prints black and white but I tend to scan more than print so that was a big focus for me when I bought it.
Only advice I can give is if you are just printing on paper, pay the extra $ and get a laser printer. Avoid inkjets - they are a complete scam and a waste of money. The toner will last 10x longer, never goes bad or clogs up the print heads, and the quality is better.
I don’t know how laser printers handle sticker sheets, but for all practical printing purposes I wholeheartedly recommend a laser printer.
Brother is also a solid brand. I have had mine for almost 10 years now and it’s still running like the day I got it.
For sticker sheets you want a straight through paper path - this often means feed sheets one at a time, and catch them out the back instead of letting them to to the paper tray.
Stickers meant for printing in printers generally will work with a normal feed though, so if you don’t mind opening your printer you can take a chance and normally be okay.
My sticker sheets say they are suitable for printers. They work fine even in automatic tray feed. But I rarely print more that 1 sheet at a time.
Echoing others, Brother laser printers. Cheap, reliable, and toner lasts forever. Initial one with purchase is like…40% of standard, and will still get you a few hundred pages. The regular ones are like 1200+, and the large ones are I think pushing 2k for like $70.
You can do stickers on sticker paper with lasers, but idk the quality. Is it like…address labels? If so, lasers are perfect tly fine for that. Fine details? Idk.
What’s your budget, here’s 2 options and they should work with the sheets.
Brother HL2405 $139: https://a.co/d/0bHDQ885
Brother HL2460DW $179: https://a.co/d/0ccXVUgP
Brother laser printer. Mine’s going on 9 years now, a cartridge lasts so long I have to look up how to change it when it finally needs it.
I’ve had mine for about that long and changed the toner cartridge once. It’s super easy. I think I paid like $80 for two cartridges. Guess I’m good for another 20 years.
My wife has a brother black/white laser printer. I got it about 5yrs ago and still going with no issues. She does sell things and makes labels and also uses a small thermal printer that pumps out label packages. Not sure if that can double for stickers for you, but could be an option.
My Brother printer can legally vote in the next election and it’s still kickin
Mine is about old enough to buy alcohol, although the NIC died and the Linux drivers for a print server are garbage, so I replaced it with another Brother (found nearly brand new in the Goodwill bins for $10)
It definitely still works as a wired printer, though.
Brother laser printers are my current go to
Old Brother laser printers are great. They’re easy to find used, but it’s unclear if they’re still being made. For stickers there are thermal printers for just that purpose if you want to go that route.
I had a brother printer (mfc) that i bought and gave to my friend after a couple years. bought another and the colors are off but it works. the ink dries out tho so i was thinking my next printer might use toner/lasers. i just buy ink cartriges, i don’t refill.
Don’t even think about getting an inkjet printer unless you really, really need color, and need it often. Even if you aren’t dealing with DRM and price-gouging BS, the ink dries and gums up the print heads unless you’re using them regularly.
For me, color is a want, not a need (meaning I’m not relying on the quality of the output or making money from it), and only an occasional one. But I did want it, along with other bells and whistles like automatic duplex printing, for my “buy it for life” printer. So I decided to go with a Brother color laser.
I ended up buying two used ones from some office getting rid of them on Craigslist for maybe $50? each. The one I actually print with – the other is basically for spare parts – has almost 60K pages on it and is complaining that it’s due for some expensive “fuser” and “PF Kit” replacements, but it keeps working, so I haven’t actually bothered yet.
If your use case is very much about stickers on sticker paper, and you’re doing it regularly and often (not necessarily tons of pages at a time, but not going weeks at a time without printing anything), you may actually want an inkjet rather than a laser. Aside from the images not being as pretty as with an inkjet, the other disadvantage of a laser for you is that because it heats the paper, you might have to worry about paper compatibility to avoid gumming up the machine with melted adhesive.
I have a brother laser printer. It is very basic, but it can print stickers with the right paper.
And the finished product won’t run, because it is laser vs ink.
I just put the third toner in, and works fine.
The only thing if you get a basic one, make sure it can use the right wifi network in your home.I can’t say much about brands, I bought a Samsung color laser years ago and still use it.
What I will say is being able to network print is amazing and well worth having. I can print from my tablet, phone, or desktop.
My samsung printer had terribly unreliable network access. I could never figure out what its problem was.
In the end I connected a raspberry pi zero with a cups server to the usb port and let that one handle all the printer requests. It works so much better now.The only issue I’ve had was when I switched to Linux. I set a static IP address in the printer when I first got it and always connect it via Ethernet. I’ve had it for a while but since Samsung sold off their printer brand a couple years later to HP I’m obviously not recommending them.
i think samsung doesn’t manufacturer printers anymore since a very long time ago. iirc it’s a rebranded hp printer (at least in samsung’s homeland korea) and quite notorious for breaking often
No they don’t, Samsung sold their business to HP a few years ago. Mine was one of the last models that was actually Samsung made iirc.
I have been lucky enough that I can refill the toner cartridges and just replace the chips. Only major issue I have had is pulling through cardstock on a long run but that is something I rarely do and have learned to deal with.
Simple brother laser. While useful, the mfc range has more to break on it. E: And they’re physically big.
See if you can find a used Brother laser printer. The older Brother printers are fantastic. I thought I heard somewhere Brother had started to enshitify their newer products (last coulple of years). But I might be wrong there.
It was a mountain out of a molehill situation. Basically, brother toner cartridges can do an internal calibration to fix minor alignment issues. For off brand toner, it needs to be done manually. It had been that way for a while. The original author just got some particularly misaligned cartridges and “discovered” this.
Other than that, I’ve seen no signs of enshitifcation from Brother. I ended up buying a brother colour laser not long afterwards, and have been quite happy so far.
I just got a new brother laser DCP-L6600DW after my old brother laser started malfunctioning after nearly 15 years of duty. They both work fine, even with 3rd party toners. I’m using Debian BTW, but my phone also worjs fine with it. I did have to install the brother driver package, as the Debian included one didn’t work quite right.
I hear that once in a while, but so far it seems to be mostly haters have to take everything to the extreme vs a real problem. Still things could change.
