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.

Color Ink: Epson Ecotank (no cartridge bullshit)
B/W: Brother HL-L Series Laser (bulletproof, long-lasting, cheap)

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.

Would there be any advantage to going just black and white?

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.

Cost is like 100 times less per page.

The advantage is that you can get a cheap laser printer.
They'll happily print every day for years and cost next to nothing to run.
They'll also happily print after you didn't use them for a long time.
Ink printers are generally less durable, cost much more to run and their heads dry out if you don't use them regularly.
Color laser printers are expensive, big, and the color isn't good enough for photos, only colored documents.

My brother color laser is decent, but the toner is expensive. So expensive that i buy knockoff toner. Which 95% of the time is solid. Until every once in a while a kid needs something printed that's a photo. Not sure why, but it is absolute garbage at photos. Like not even close. Streaks and bands of color everywhere. I'm not even trying fancy photo paper, just trying to get details. A caffeinated adhd toddler with fistful of crayons could do better.

But if you want to print a worksheet in color? Does fantastic.

Advantage being you only have to buy one toner cartridge and drum.

Toner is cheaper if you have a laser black only, lots of pages per refill.

At work I've installed 10 color inkjet epson L6460 printers 2-3 years ago and most of them I still haven't refilled.

They come with 2 bottles of black ink and one of everything else, last forever, will print after 4 months unused if you do a print head cleaning (a few times in a row) and the Epson brand bottles are 8 - 12 bucks each.

For home use a cheaper Ecotank would probably serve you just as well.

Color laser printers are expensive, big, and the color isn’t good enough for photos, only colored documents.

I own two (identical) color laser printers, can confirm two out of three. They're gigantic and the color isn't very vibrant.

However, they weren't all that expensive because I got them used. Still not quite dirt-cheap like a black & white laser is, but affordable.

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.

It's not inkjet but you can get passible color on laser. You need to go into settings and tell it it's a photo and you want max quality. I have a Brother color laser.

Laser printers are usually lower resolution than ink printers and half toning is usually more difficult for laser printers. However, the results shouldn't be THAT bad.

Depending on the age, you may need a new drum unit, but I think that may also just be a deficit of laser.

Some laser printers can do color (the Brother HL-L series can't), they're just not great at hi-res color images.

Laser printers are faster, more reliable, and are generally cheaper to operate in the long run, espesially if you are only printing once in a blue moon. Inkjet printers like the Epson Pommes_fur_dein_Balg recommended are better at hi-res images and are often cheaper up front, but are more expensive in the long run.

Simple brother laser. While useful, the mfc range has more to break on it. E: And they're physically big.

Yep, tried that. Made no difference. Tried linux and windows in case it was a drivers thing. No difference. Though on linux if I use a generic driver instead of the model specific one it's marginally better and will win against the aforementioned toddler. If it took another similar jump in quality it would be in the realm of what I'd expect to come out of a laser printer for a photo. My google results only showed people complaining on brother's forum and they responded with "use genuine brother toner". And someone replied saying that fixed it for them.

Agreed, i'm not expecting good. But I've had pictures come out that look like an inkjet with the worst case of dirty print head you've ever seen.

Black and white is more common in laser printers, less complex, cheaper and it takes up less room.

Laser printers don't just shoot color particles on the paper like ink jet / piezo printers.

They "magnetize" a photo conductor so the toner particles stick to it and then usually transfer it to the paper using pressure and then fix it using heat. You can't really do the first part for multiple colors at the same time so color lasers can get pretty complex to repeat this process for each color (CMKY, sometimes more).

So why not an ink printer instead?

• If you use them often they will cost you a lot. Printer manufacturers love ink printers because they can basically sell water (with a tiny bit of color) for the price of gold. That's also the reason why they put you much effort into detection of original ink cartridges.
• If you don't use them often, the print heads tend to clog and guess what the printers use to flush them? Copious amounts of liquid gold (ink).

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.

EcoTanks are so cool, you can buy their colors for cheap, you can get all colors refills for 15-20€ but they will last forever, bought last year, used them a lot for documents a few photos and a DnD sheet (with image included) and the tank is still full

I'm not sure which technology Brother uses but it kind of sounds like a damaged OPC to me. The printer might have multiple of them for the different colors. I think in consumer printers the OPC is often replaced together with the toner as a single unit but again, I'm not sure what brother uses.

Yea, someone else mentioned my drum might be dying, which could explain it.

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.

We recently retired our color laser printer of ten years for an epson ecotank. I'm happy with it two months in, and only the black has depleted some 10% with the Mrs doing a couple of color copies daily.

Eco tank uses ink that fades and is sub par. Laser toner printers are crisper and last longer.

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

I use fake toner in my brother.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Always get a printer that doesn't require cartridges. They're a locked-down, economically exploitative nightmare. Ink tank ones are best, always avoid HP, they're just a horrible company. In my experience, Canon is good, but I haven't tried every brand. Most ink tank printers support colors alongside black without being much more expensive, and I think it's a good idea to have that option even if you don't currently print with black.

For stickers, a few bits of advice as someone who's made their own stickers for a while:

• If the stickers you're making will ever have ANY contact whatsoever with water, use vinyl sticker paper. Regular sticker paper will let the water soak in and cause it to bleed, and even if it's laminated with an adhesive laminate sheet on top, the water will just seep under. (you may still want to laminate vinyl sticker sheets though, as they can have that very slightly sticky texture of traditional glossy photo paper, which I personally find horrible to the touch)
• Printers will use either pigment, dye, or a combination of both pigment and dye-based inks (e.g. dye-based for color, pigment-based for black. Pigment-based ink produces deeper blacks, so even if the rest of a printer's ink is dye-based, the black will often be pigment-based). Not all vinyl sticker paper supports pigment or dye-based inks, so if you can, get a printer that uses all one kind. (pigment is usually more expensive, dye is usually cheaper. Dye produces more vibrant colors, pigment lasts longer, and is more water and UV resistant)
• Most vinyl sticker paper supports pigment-based inks, some support both dye and pigment, and some only support dye. If the product listing or packaging doesn't say which type it supports, avoid it. The last thing you want is a sheet of sticker paper that at least 1 entire color will always smudge off on. (I had the misfortune of getting sticker paper that supports all the color inks in my printer, but not the color black.)
• If you plan on cutting the stickers yourself rather than with something like a Cricut machine, get both an Exacto knife and a good pair of scissors. Scissors for larger cuts (e.g. splitting a sheet into a grid), Exacto knife for rounded/custom shaped cuts, or if you just find it easier than scissors for some shapes. Fiskars' scissors are great and last an incredibly long time in my experience, at least the titanium-coated ones. (the same pair has been in my house for probably at least 2 decades at this point)
• Always let your sticker paper sit for at least 2-5 minutes after printing before doing anything to it. Even if you're using the right kind of paper for the ink your printer has, there's always a chance it can smudge a bit. You might need to tweak some printer settings if your paper always smudges to reduce the amount of ink being used when you print stickers.

I'm quite partial to the ink tank kind of printer myself. The ink is cheap and doesn't have any sort of third-party lockout.

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.

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.

Brother laser or bust. I use mine once a month Max and it's been years since I even serviced it, they simply last forever with no maintenance.
Color laser is significantly more expensive for the initial buy than inkjet but supplies are infinitely cheaper per-page.
Problem being I don't know how laser behaves with most sticker package paper, so you'll need to research your preferred stickers to make sure they are compatible.

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.

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'm not sure how well Laser printers work with Sticker Paper, so you may have to look more into that. Brother makes great laser printers, so they have a lot of options there.

I own a Epson Ecotank printer and, while I haven't actually gotten around to trying out sticker paper on it. I do like it. I have the ET-8550, which is the big one, but there are smaller, cheaper ones that need just Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black ink, as well as black only. If you're using it often, it should be pretty reliable. The worst thing you can do with an inkjet printer is not use it, because the ink will dry up on the nozzles (and in the lines, in the case of an ink tank printer). I try to run a test print that uses all the inks at least once ever 2 weeks.

Only other thing to look out for, is that for some of the Ecotanks, the Black will be a pigment based ink, and the color will be a dye based ink, so make sure the sticker paper you choose matches the inks in the printer you choose.

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 own the HP LaserJet M15w. I hate it less than any printer I have ever owned and it has lasted almost 5 years. It is still a HP so I hate it but it works most of the time. I used to have to restart it to print when I was on Windows but since I switched to Linux it prints almost always.

How many stickers are we talking?

I was just thinking about something similar myself, and as I've recently got into 3d printing, I'm going to try printing out some custom stamps out of TPU for each color layer. Maybe it's a flop, but it might also be sick as hell.

Unless you're printing just a sheet or two at a time, it's unlikely that you're going to be able to print stickers for less than buying from a commercial printer.

Brother, you need a brother

Instead of buying a new printer, can you print at a local print shop/library/university? That might end up being the cheapest option

I have been for a few years. ITs time to buy my own. Also, some of the contents of the stickers are.. well.. sensitive to say the least.

Could be this.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/03/brother-denies-using-firmware-updates-to-brick-printers-with-third-party-ink/

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/03/brother-denies-using-firmware-updates-to-brick-printers-with-third-party-ink/