BTW, I’ve had my Brother laser MFP for 11 years and still on the original toner.
Brother printers are great. Probably the only decent printer brand for home usage. My university has free printing, and those are Canon printers. They seem to work fine, so I guess the commercial market is a little different.
Weirdly, my parents have this Samsung M2020W printer, and I gotta say, it’s pretty neat. Takes any off-brand toner cartridge. They only need a cartridge every year or so. It’s been 3+ years, but no problem so far. That might be an exceptional case, though.
I used to have a Samsung laser for quite a few years. Went through maybe three toner cartridges. Eventually it started slipping and I didn’t bother finding out if there’s a repair available and bought a brother laser instead. Worked pretty great otherwise.
Haven’t tried toner transfer on this, but regular printouts are fine and it’s much faster.
Eventually it started slipping
If you still have the printer (you may not but I’m going to put this out there for others too) that sounds like a simple roller replacement, and rollers/pickup pads are usually considered “consumables” instead of “parts” because they all wear out over time. This is true for most if not all consumer printers, ink and laser alike.
Replacements should be pretty easy to find for even old printers, and the installation is usually pretty straightforward. Last year I was still able to buy a roller replacement set for a 19 year old HP, and it took me ten minutes and one Phillips head screwdriver to replace them all.
You can also just take out and clean the hell out of anything rubber with isopropyl alcohol, letting it dry thoroughly and then putting it back in, or if possible rotate the rubber on it to present an unused side, I’ve done all that a few times too.
For pretty much any model printer, search on the printer model number and “maintenance kit” to find available roller/pickup pad replacements for sale, and printer model number plus “service manual” to get replacement instructions if you need them.
Sharp also make great commerical-grade printers that are 100% Linux compatible, we’re using these at work: http://global.sharp/products/copier/products/bp_70c65/index.html
They don’t really make anything small enough to be a “home” model, this looks like their smallest printer: https://global.sharp/products/copier/products/mx_c358f/index.html (and that’s around $1000, if you could even find someone to sell you one).
