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Commercial Printer Brand That Works Best for Mac

Does anyone know if a certain brand of commercial printer works better or best for Mac? I have a Ricoh right now and I like it but it seems like it doesn't work the best with Mac. Does Canon, Konica Minolta, Sharp or some other brand work better or support Mac better? I had switched to Dell for a little over a year which worked great for the printer but when I had an accident with the Dell and it wasn't covered under the extra warranties that was the end of Dell for me.

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 11.6

Posted on Oct 17, 2021 9:40 PM

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Posted on Oct 18, 2021 9:12 AM

Any printer mentioned in this Apple document will work with Macs and the current systems: About AirPrint - Apple Support


13 replies

Oct 18, 2021 6:57 AM in response to Ikleen

I'm not sure this is the source for the answers you seek, but I don't know where to go to get those answers, either.


I don't know that anybody here can tell you which is best short of their own anecdotes. Unless they've painstakingly gathered all of the reports here and created some data table to analyze, it is just their opinion of one or two products. Even armed with that data, you'd have to know the customer base for that product since people that don't have any problems don't post here. The volume of posts may only be indicative of market share.


Based solely on brand, you can have myriad differences in performance, too. HP, over its lifetime, has made products that only worked in certain environments. With a large array of models, you could have different results all across the brand. So, people that report they have had good success with company X may be of little value because the model they bought did work great, but you can't buy that model anymore. And, whatever great support they had may not exist anymore.


Based on what I can remember of things posted here, Brother seems to get a good review, and I don't see a lot of reports of problems with them. I don't own one, though. Might be my next purchase after my Epson Stylus NX530 dies or they stop making ink. It's been running flawlessly since at least OS X 10.6, and you can still download drivers for it. They do have business-class printers, but they are all inkjet, I believe.


I don't think I have seen many reports on Konica or Sharp, here. But, unless it was a generic printer post, I wouldn't have looked at it as I don't own either of those products. Also, the market for those is likely not as big as the other consumer products, so you're not going to see as many reports about them just based on the user base. I've seen lots of posts on Canon, but I don't know if those skewed towards printer issues or scanner issues--most likely scanners.


I can't imagine any company providing a warranty that covered "accidents." You can probably buy a rider from your insurance company to cover such a thing, but the manufacturer is not going to take that risk.



Oct 18, 2021 5:34 PM in response to Ikleen

Our organization used HP LaserJets almost exclusively for many years as they were a really good printer, but once HP started making the printers in China about 10 or 15 years ago their quality dropped drastically. HP is also notorious for releasing printer firmware updates that suddenly prevent the printer from working with third party ink cartridges which is a really dirty trick. Plus HP LaserJets even back in the day tended to have a lot of firmware & driver issues with macOS when printing some PDF files or using some fonts usually resulting in the printer crashing & requiring a hard power cycle. Good luck getting HP to help you if you have an Apple only printing issue (they have at most one guy in the back room supporting Macs).


I've tried a couple Brother B&W Laser printers which have worked well. Plus Brother printers tend to use the same toner cartridge among multiple model printers unlike HP which now tends to have a unique cartridge for each new model.



Oct 18, 2021 9:01 PM in response to HWTech

I agree HP used to be good but I gave up when they started pushing huge on their instant ink and you couldn't even set up without going to the computer and jumping through all kind of hoops to get it going. I found that HP seems to have some type of timing mechanism in their inkjet printers after 2 or 3 full ink sets they never fail to have a printhead failure and that is more costly than the printer.


Brother is okay but I never cared for their print quality.


I got sick of the disposable big box store printers and bought my Ricoh from a dealer but it just seems like I chose the wrong dealer and possibly the wrong brand.

Oct 19, 2021 1:13 PM in response to HWTech




I have a LaserJet P2035Pn that works with 3rd party toner cartridges just fine.

HWTech wrote:

HP is also notorious for releasing printer firmware updates that suddenly prevent the printer from working with third party ink cartridges which is a really dirty trick.

We've had excellent service with the P2035Pn B/W laser printer and all, except for the cartridge that came with it, with 3rd party cartridges.

Oct 19, 2021 5:14 PM in response to Old Toad

Old Toad wrote:

I have a LaserJet P2035Pn that works with 3rd party toner cartridges just fine.
HWTech wrote:

HP is also notorious for releasing printer firmware updates that suddenly prevent the printer from working with third party ink cartridges which is a really dirty trick.
We've had excellent service with the P2035Pn B/W laser printer and all, except for the cartridge that came with it, with 3rd party cartridges.

They haven't done it to all their printers, nor do they do it all the time. Every once in a while I see a news report where another new firmware update has blocked the use of third party cartridges. If you don't update the printer's firmware you would not see the issue.


I was trying to find references to the issue from a tech site, but most of the articles mainly mention inkjets, but I do know that HP has blocked third party toner cartridges after updating printer firmware. I did find this reference to a class action lawsuit for this problem regarding inkjets and laserjets:

https://www.classaction.org/news/class-action-claims-hp-printer-firmware-update-blocked-use-of-third-party-ink-toner-cartridges



Commercial Printer Brand That Works Best for Mac

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