Brother accused of bricking printers with third-party ink, denies claims
Whenever I'm asked for printer recommendations, my first response is to get a printer from Brother. Unlike other corporations, Brother has been refreshingly fair when it comes to the use of third-party printer ink or laser printer toners.
Allegations about Brother joining the dark force have come forward this week. The origin of the claim is Louis Rossman, a YouTuber who has made a name for himself by highlighting bad business practices in the tech and entertainment world.
The core of Rossman's claim is this: Brother has released firmware updates that cause printing issues with third-party ink or toners in printers of the company.
Here is the video in case you want to watch the whole thing:
Rossman provides several sources for the claims:
- A discussion on Hacker News, where some users were reporting degraded print quality when using third-party printer ink.
- Reports on Reddit, claiming that firmware updates were causing issues when printing with third-party ink.
- A GitHub project's claim that Brother was removing older firmware versions from its servers and that Brother was locking out more and more non-Brother toner cartridges.
You may notice that something is missing. Right, there is no first-hand proof. Rossman does not appear to have verified the claims, as no information is provided regarding local tests.
Brother rejects claims
Brother claims that no such thing is happening. A company representative told Ars Technica that "Brother firmware updates do not block the use of third-party ink" in their printers.
Brother furthermore said that some of the confusion might have come from interactions with support. Brother said that it is standard practice to verify Brother printer issues with genuine -- first-party -- ink cartridges or toners.
Where we stand
The situation is muddy right now. Some users claim that they have issues when printing using third-party ink, others report no such issues. One possible explanation could be the different quality levels of third-party printer ink. There can be huge quality differences in third-party printer ink. Some may provide excellent results similar to when first-party ink is used. Others may have been produced by companies that try to squeeze more money out of the process by reducing the quality of the ink.
I can only say that I never ran into any issues regarding third-party toners in Brother printers. I do not have any Brother ink printers at hand though, as I prefer laser printers.
Now it is your turn. Do you use a printer at home or work? Do you use third-party ink or toners, or prefer original supplies? Feel free to leave a comment down below.
Just been trying to install my ancient Canon MG2555S on Windows 11. Canon created a new setup installer, but it contains all the useless bloatware I never use and ultimately the installation failed because the link between the printer and the laptop kept reporting “link lost, please re-establish link to continue”. But the link was never lost and I suspect that it was trying to print all the bloatware crap. After spending almost an hour trying to install it I pulled the plug on it.
I can still print stuff on my Win 8.1 machine so I’ll just copy whatever is on the Win 11 Pro machine and then print it from there.
As regards third party ink for the MG2555S, there are none available in stores that I can see so no more Canon printers for me. When the wheels fall off the one I have now I’ll go with the flow and buy a Brother (unless more users report problems with that brand here).
I had a brother like that. He bricked car windows.
I have used Brother laser printers exclusively for decades. When Bother notified me that a cartridge needed to be replaced, it would stop printing altogether. Trouble was the cartridge didn’t need replacing and would be good – if you blocked the sensor – for maybe twice more printed pages. And if you didn’t mind some lighter toned ones, even more. Then Brother fixed their printers so the sensor couldn’t be blocked. I found how to reset the count, so I’ve been printing away for months after Brother told me the cartridge was dying. However, now it’s screwing up in other ways. A large print job set to print on both sides of the paper works as expected for a few pages, but then reverts to printing on one side. Don’t know what to do about it. Would happily purchase another brand printer that wouldn’t cheat me.
When HP started bricking their printers when an non-HP ink/toner was detected, a rather large group of people started to post all over the internet that Brother was doing the same thing. There were 27 email addresses linked to all those posts – it was determined it was a disinformation campaign sponsored by a competitor trying to tarnish Brother’s reputation suggesting that “all printer manufacturers were doing it”. The strategy did not work back then as Brother printer owners reported the claims were false. Now it would seem the same strategy is being used to try to fish Brother customers. Most people don’t have the time to research all the misinformation on the internet – most of which comes from state-sponsored sources and criminal companies trying to increase the size of their pie with lies. Now that in the US criminal companies are rewarded with government contracts and protections everyone is rabidly trying to get away with all kids of crimes.
Brought a Brother inkjet MFCJ6930DW years ago but when with a CISS ink system,Blocked Firmware Updates through the router never had any issues
Only thing to be careful is the waste ink absorber tank which can be bypassed with external tank if you are using it alot the setting can be changed through the firmware to reset counter
Been using Brother laser printers with third party toners for many years without a problem. A set of five toner cartridges can be had for $35.00 or so.
However, just within a few months a friend had to replace his for a new laser printer, and he always asks me to find one for him to buy.
What I found was two new Brother laser printers costing the same to purchase, but as is my habit I check for third party/generic consumables before recommending anything to anyone.
One of the laser printers had third party toner available everywhere. The other had none that I could find. A set of toners were priced in the hundreds of dollars instead of the aforementioned $36.00 for third party toners.
This means that the question is not so much if new firmware has/is blocked/blocking using third party toners on existing printers, but will a newly purchased Brother printer be able to accept third party toners new, out of the box. Do all their new printers require proprietary (chipped) toner cartridges?
It’s sad how gHacks, the
name we’ve known, got taken
over by Softonics.
And now it’s inundated by
unwanted AI-gened articles
touching here and there.
Oh, well… I’ve been also
following Chipp from its
start. Sadly, plain interest
in Martin’s awesome,
incredibly useful talent has
dipped slow and needless
to say immeasurably low.
What the heck!
@Fish
If you don’t have it installed yet, install uBlock Origin extension into your browser. Then go to My Filters section and put this line of code there:
ghacks.net##a.home-category-post:not(:has-text(/Martin Brinkmann|Ashwin/))
This way you will only see articles by Martin and Ashwin.
I also use this URL for my bookmark instead of home page:
https://www.ghacks.net/latest-posts/
Brother printers are great printers, too, as printers.
I’ve used third party toner with no problems with the printer.
There might be problems with the 3rd party toner.
Some third party brands are better than others.
I’ve always used Brother laser printers.
Twenty years ago, I bought a competitor major brand printer on sale, which was a big mistake. It was a multi function machine.
Whenever there was a power failure, the machine lost all of its settings. I quickly returned it, and bought a new Brother printer.
I’ve never had a Brother printer break on me.
The reason I might buy new Brother printers is that I keep them so long, so when a new version of Windows comes out, it might not be supported by Windows.
I prefer to use original supplies on my Brother laser printer. That way I don’t have to spend extra time and money fixing problems with third-party supplies.
I can’t speak to inkjet printers because, like Martin, I no longer use them. I do have three identical Brother laser printers in different locations and use third party toner on two of them. When purchasing third party toner, I only buy known brands which have consistently positive reviews from users. The printers all perform very well, and I have noticed no difference at all in performance among them. I’ll continue to buy Brother printers as needed, and will continue to be careful about the quality of the toner I use. Garbage in, garbage out.
If you refill your Brother printer with third party shit-ink, you deserve to have a broken printer.
That’s exactly what HP, Canon and Epsond say.
Do you work for any of them or are just dumb?