I bought a B&W half duplex Brother printer circa 2011 and have no problems with it. Besides the fact that it was half duplex. I've bought a generic brand toner cartridge twice since then; neither have had problems.
Earlier this month I upgraded to a full duplex color laser printer. (HL-3270CDW) Not because my existing printer is broken or has stopped working, but I was printing sections from a book and it annoyed me that I had to do all the flipping manually and gosh it would be nice if it were in color. Kind of an impulse buy.
It's the same. Everything is the same. It's got new tech in it; it's got newfangled stuff like wifi, bluetooth, and NFC. (my old one had nothing but a USB port; they had versions with ethernet and wifi but I got the cheapest one) But it looks the same, it feels the same, it sounds the same, the drivers are in one of my distro's package manager's overlays and just work. (Gentoo/brother-overlay)
I haven't owned it long enough to need to replace the toner. Amazon has generic versions of the toner for 30% of what Brother is charging. I don't know whether it will last forever with no issues, but my magic 8-ball says "all signs point to yes."
My old printer is the HL-2240. It's discontinued. It looks like the new model in that line is the HL-L2320D. Besides the fact that they've discontinued the half-duplex printers, (D is for full duplex, W is for wireless, C is for color) it looks like it's basically the same exact thing; they're putting precisely zero effort into "updating" the styling which I like. The toner cartridges for the 2240 and 2320 are not compatible, but Brother is still selling toner in the 2240 cartridges, despite the fact that they're not selling any printers that use them.
I have the HL-L3270CDW, too. No complaints so far. Linux, Mac, and Windows support, and the color is not too bad. It's not as beautiful as a good inkjet on quality, glossy paper, but it does the job for basic PDFs and web sites that have colored text.
Earlier this month I upgraded to a full duplex color laser printer. (HL-3270CDW) Not because my existing printer is broken or has stopped working, but I was printing sections from a book and it annoyed me that I had to do all the flipping manually and gosh it would be nice if it were in color. Kind of an impulse buy.
It's the same. Everything is the same. It's got new tech in it; it's got newfangled stuff like wifi, bluetooth, and NFC. (my old one had nothing but a USB port; they had versions with ethernet and wifi but I got the cheapest one) But it looks the same, it feels the same, it sounds the same, the drivers are in one of my distro's package manager's overlays and just work. (Gentoo/brother-overlay)
I haven't owned it long enough to need to replace the toner. Amazon has generic versions of the toner for 30% of what Brother is charging. I don't know whether it will last forever with no issues, but my magic 8-ball says "all signs point to yes."
My old printer is the HL-2240. It's discontinued. It looks like the new model in that line is the HL-L2320D. Besides the fact that they've discontinued the half-duplex printers, (D is for full duplex, W is for wireless, C is for color) it looks like it's basically the same exact thing; they're putting precisely zero effort into "updating" the styling which I like. The toner cartridges for the 2240 and 2320 are not compatible, but Brother is still selling toner in the 2240 cartridges, despite the fact that they're not selling any printers that use them.
https://www.brother-usa.com/products/hl2240
https://www.brother-usa.com/products/HLL2320D
https://www.brother-usa.com/products/HLL3270CDW