Brother DCP-T520W All-in One Ink Tank Printer

Do not go for Epson. I bought Epson inktank printer and it is not reliable at all. Printing is damn slow.
It broke twice, 1st time its mainboard and head went kaput and second time it failed again.

The issue with ink tank printers is the printing head.

wouldn't head be a problem on all ink tanks considering they are not replaced with cartridge? how does it one get it fixed/replaced/repaired? service center?

My parents have a Canon Inktank Printer. The printing head got dried up because of low usage. Cost them 2k to get replaced from a local shop. He said if you print less than 50 pages a month, it might happen again.

That is correct if low usage head becomes an issue. With Epson, they have to activate the new head with the software. So yeah!

Yep I print 2 pages of something every 5-7 days or so . Summer drying up is not much. In winters , you will need to print a lot more as the head jams up and throws all pale colours of everything or does not put a drop of ink on paper

So only consider it when you are going to print something regularly atleast in a interval of 1 week
When I took it to service because of jammed head , the guy was actually shocked because the printer had only done 5xx pages in 5 years

Have HP 115 decent print quality. Only issue i found is that the USB leaks current. Not sure if this is the case with all printers.

so pinged brother on twitter as only a few models are available online. nehru place guy is also not responding well.

kind of amazed that they got their sales person to get in touch with me. he said 420 and 520 are in stock. 820 would take a while.

420 is cheaper than his price on Amazon/flipkart. 520 is not in stock anywhere.

420 and 520 both lack duplex. 820 has duplex AND ADF. but is pricey.

he recommended 520 because it has more physical buttons and a small display which helps. also said that 520 ink bottles are larger so i would get more prints out of the box.

420 also lacks airprint support. might come later as these models were launched just around 6 months ago. he said 520 has airprint. would have to confirm though first.

pricing of the three models as per him:

420 13400
520 14900
820 18500

300 delivery charges.

and of course, he also confirmed that i would have to try to take at least 2 prints in a week to keep the head clean. this is kind of a headache as my usage is pretty low. i am just sick of dealing with inkjets. i am pretty sure my HP 5275 is fucked up because of this reason.

If you have a RPi , you can hook the printer to that via CUPS and do Network Printing. Cloud Printing is also possible on that
That easily makes a USB printer Network-wide

all three printers are wifi enabled. 220 is the base model that lacks wireless support so this is not an issue.

i do have a pi but it is not where i have to place this printer. plus i am not sure if connecting it to pi would make it work on Apple devices especially iPhones in the house. also of course, i am not even sure if these come with ethernet ports. they should though lol.

kind of weird but it seems they do not come with ethernet port.

Source

Usually Home printers dont come with a Ethernet port in general , based on my experience with Samsung, HP and Epson. Not sure about Brother. Apple should recognise it though just like other Android devices as CUPS supports Airprint

right. 420 definitely has issues with Apple iPhones. Amazon listing has many reviews confirming that they can only print pdfs using the brother's app. no direct printing available. putting a pi in between might help. but official airprint support would probably be better.

i would most likely go for 520. because 420 has a very minimal interface with a few buttons.

Ordered... Hopefully this would last for more than a few years 😖 Would try to print the test fucking page every now and then to keep the head unclogged. 😒

Brother DCP-T520W All-in One Ink Tank Refill System Printer with Built-in-Wireless Technology

Using a Brother DCP T 500 close to 3 yeas, all good except for the Ink Tank and periodic usage issue.. I now need to change the head because the color output diappeared due to lack of consistent usage.

How much does head costs 🤕