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.

Summary