Brother denies firmware blocks third-party toner and ink use

Brother genuine toner
(Image credit: Brother)

Earlier this week, we highlighted RepairTuber Louis Rossmann’s video and wiki, which collected and presented evidence that Brother printers had turned to the dark side. Today, Ars Technica has published a lengthy statement from Brother, which asserts that it hasn’t been leveraging firmware updates to prevent printers from using third party toner or ink supplies. In brief, Brother thinks that negative social media and forum posts stem from misunderstandings or the (low) quality of non-genuine supplies.

Rossmann’s video is a heartfelt lament about the demise of the last decent printer company. But might he and the collection of Brother grievances that form the related wiki be in error? Brother is resolute in its denials of restricting third-party toner and ink cartridges, and its explanations seem pretty reasonable. Moreover, Rossmann’s sources were not numerous or high-quality. For example, we didn’t see any tech reviewers highlight Brother’s move to the dark side of the printer supplies and service markets.

Let’s look a little closer at Brother’s statement. The printer maker starts with a strong denial, insisting claims that Brother firmware updates may restrict the use of third-party ink cartridges as “false.” To address the accusations of intentionally degrading print quality when non-genuine supplies are used, Brother’s statement that it “cannot verify the quality of printing” when using third-party toners or inks is understandable.

Brother Genuine check confusion

Ars wisely asked what Brother thought was the source of the consumer confusion about third-party supplies, if it wasn't blocking their use. The printer firm’s interesting reply was that its devices may sometimes “perform a Brother [G]enuine check when troubleshooting.” It admits that such troubleshooting processes may request Brother Genuine supplies. Nevertheless, it ends its statement by insisting “the firmware update would not be responsible for the degradation of quality or removal of printer features.”

Reading between the lines, there may indeed have been some user confusion, but Brother’s admitted preference for using genuine toner/ink for troubleshooting sounds somewhat pushy for a device many consider(ed) to be open to equipping third-party supplies. Genuine toners and ink cartridges can be costly, especially if a complete set is required, and users might find it hard to justify such a purchase for a malfunctioning device, not knowing what a troubleshooter might recommend.

Mark Tyson
News Editor

Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.

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  • helper800
    I have been working as an IT in education and I have a lot of experience with Brother printers. About half of our old inventory of color printer are Brother printers. Brother's prompts about using Genuine Brother Ink Cartridges are real and what likely caused such confusion. At most school sites in my district, the teachers each have a printer in the room for color printing exclusively. The teachers are responsible for using their yearly stipend for supplies on ink or their own personal money. Color printing is a privilege because of its cost. Most of the teachers choose to purchase 3rd party ink cartridges for their brother printers because they are about half the cost. The main issues I have seen with these 3rd party cartridges is that they are not recognized by the printer when slotted in, they are rather leaky, or that the ink itself does not play nice with the printer itself. I cannot say this is anything more than the pin to pad chip at the top of the cartridge not working properly. I actually rather like the brother printers that we have even though most of them are around 10 years old at this point. We started replacing the ones that stopped working consistently with the HP OfficeJet Pro 8025e/8015e printers and they seem okay, but there are very few options for ink other than HP themselves by design. We shall see if they last like most of the brother printers have.
    Reply
  • Giroro
    Brother's new medium-term business strategy (from their new CEO) states pretty clearly they intend to exploit their home printer users for more profit.

    PDF here
    Page 5, next to Printers & Solutions: "maximize businesses with continuous ties to customers to enhance customer LTV"

    That's business speak for making their locked in customers pay the company more money for consumables. Forcing customers to buy their consumables seems like the only way they could even try to meet that goal.

    Otherwise, Brother's statements are using some extremely specific lawyer-written language that should not be trusted. Their statement may be written with the intention to lead people to infer they are denying the claims, but they're not actually denying the claims. I don't think anybody said Brother is literally bricking their entire printer - the concerning claim is that the firmware update(s) deliberately degrade print quality over time on 3rd party cartridges, which were known working and printed perfectly before the update. Brother never actually denied that they've started doing that. They just said they're not directly bricking printers and locking out features. So if Brother wanted to make a strong denial, they should have denied the actual claims against them. But they didn't.

    But on the other hand, Rossman is a professional troll, the title of his video was childishly written to take advantage of a professional wrestling marketing stunt, and these claims would have been extremely easy for a man of his wealth and influence to test. But then he would have had to get out of his chair and actually do something, as opposed to just complaining and exploiting outrage, for profit.
    Were the people complaining just experiencing coincidental hardware failures? There's no clickbait money in proving that everything is fine, so we'll never find out.
    Reply
  • helper800
    Giroro said:
    Brother's new medium-term business strategy (from their new CEO) states pretty clearly they intend to exploit their home printer users for more profit.

    PDF here
    Page 5, next to Printers & Solutions: "maximize businesses with continuous ties to customers to enhance customer LTV"

    That's business speak for making their locked in customers pay the company more money for consumables. Forcing customers to buy their consumables seems like the only way they could even try to meet that goal.

    Otherwise, Brother's statements are using some extremely specific lawyer-written language that should not be trusted. Their statement may be written with the intention to lead people to infer they are denying the claims, but they're not actually denying the claims. I don't think anybody said Brother is literally bricking their entire printer - the concerning claim is that the firmware update(s) deliberately degrade print quality over time on 3rd party cartridges, which were known working and printed perfectly before the update. Brother never actually denied that they've started doing that. They just said they're not directly bricking printers and locking out features. So if Brother wanted to make a strong denial, they should have denied the actual claims against them. But they didn't.

    But on the other hand, Rossman is a professional troll, the title of his video was childishly written to take advantage of a professional wrestling marketing stunt, and these claims would have been extremely easy for a man of his wealth and influence to test. But then he would have had to get out of his chair and actually do something, as opposed to just complaining and exploiting outrage, for profit.
    Were the people complaining just experiencing coincidental hardware failures? There's no clickbait money in proving that everything is fine, so we'll never find out.
    While my experience is anecdotal so take what I say with a fat grain of salt, but we have over a hundred Brother printers of all sorts of models ranging from 4-10 years old. I have not had any complaints recently out of the norm about print quality, or 3rd party carts not working en mass.
    Reply
  • King_V
    Nitpick: Yesterday. Ars posted the article March 5th.
    Reply
  • mrdoc22
    They are just doing the same that HP did with laserprinteres:
    new printeres from today date, who receives firmwareupdate (which is set to default on), can only use original toner

    (Glad I have a old Brother laserprinter which don't revice firmwareupdates anymore)
    Reply
  • tamalero
    helper800 said:
    While my experience is anecdotal so take what I say with a fat grain of salt, but we have over a hundred Brother printers of all sorts of models ranging from 4-10 years old. I have not had any complaints recently out of the norm about print quality, or 3rd party carts not working en mass.
    isnt the point relatd to NEW FIRMWARES and updates?
    If you have an older printer with no updates of course I do not think you will ever have problems.
    Reply
  • Alvar "Miles" Udell
    It's completely reasonable for troubleshooting to point out non genuine supplies, since I've had third part ink cartridges in my circa 2014 Brother printer just not work at all because the chip was faulty (one out of 5 in one pack didn't work), it wouldn't detect it, and it's easy to.see where someone with a novice level of knowledge may assume it's the printer being bad when something brand new doesn't work.
    Reply
  • helper800
    tamalero said:
    isnt the point relatd to NEW FIRMWARES and updates?
    If you have an older printer with no updates of course I do not think you will ever have problems.
    The newer ones do get such updates...
    Reply
  • hotaru251
    Giroro said:
    Rossman is a professional troll
    idk about that but past yr or so he has been parroting whats gotten talked about w/o digging up or looking into it deeply like he use to do over issues.
    Reply
  • Mr Majestyk
    EPSON also microchips ink cartridges. They are all egregious scumbags, and the practice should just be outright illegal.
    Reply