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Brother Printer Genuine Toner Fix - Use Any Toner

Chris Asipyan · 229.5K views · 2020-07-21 · 8:07

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Overview

A short walkthrough of a hack that tricks a Brother laser printer into accepting third-party toner by working around its genuine-toner check. It notes this may void the warranty.

On Hacker News

Linked in printer DRM threads as proof that workarounds exist for Brother's cartridge restrictions.

Discussed on HN; no positive recommendation is recorded in this export · HN mentions 2023–2025

Topics

Repair, teardowns & right to repairConsumer devices & gadgets
Search by tags
brother printertonerdrmright to repairhack

What people said

otherme123 · 2025-10 · Reference

> I’m about to add a Brother Laser Printer too. Be careful. Brother is doing shaddy things this days, like lowering printing quality, or not printing, if a non-Brother toner is detected. E.g. [VIDEO] for a toner hack that shouln't be needed.

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justinclift · 2023-10 · Reference

Brother have started going down the cartridge DRM route now too, so they're no longer a good brand. :( [LINK] There are ways around their particular DRM - for now - but who knows how long it'll be until they're as bad as HP and friends: [VIDEO]

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MostlyStable · 2023-08 · Reference

I have a new brother printer (<2 years old). It works just fine. The quality of the printer, as a device itself, I have no complaints about. It's the DRM Toner bullshit that is the problem. Unfortunately, in the past, that kind of behavior has often presaged other things like degrading hardware quality in the future. Will Brother do the same? I have no idea. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of a different company that both supplies a quality product and also doesn't do the DRM bullshit. So, in my opinion, Brother is not longer better than other companies, but it doesn't appear to be worse either. Which is more an indictment of the printer industry than anything good about Brother. -edit- You can still (for now) get around the Toner DRM. The drm chip is pretty easy to remove and it just slots into a little spot on the toner. It's about a ~5 minute operation. So make sure to keep your OEM cartridge for now: [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by Chris Asipyan, played through YouTube.

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