Brother

Parts availability

50/100

Schematics

45/100

Repair friendliness

48/100

OEM pricing

50/100

Software locks

52/100

Brother long had the most third-party-friendly reputation and still does not hard-block non-OEM ink — Brother publicly stated its firmware updates 'do not block the use of third-party ink.' However, a 2025 controversy (raised by repair advocate Louis Rossmann and reported by Tom's Hardware, TechSpot and The Register) accused Brother of firmware updates that degrade print quality with non-Brother toner and disable features such as automatic color registration when third-party toner is used, and of removing older firmware versions from support portals — eliminating rollback. Brother denies blocking ink but has not fully rebutted the quality-degradation and firmware-removal claims. Laser hardware is reasonably serviceable, service manuals circulate (some hosted on iFixit), and Brother offers higher-yield toner and INKvestment Tank refillable lines. Net: relatively permissive but trending worse, and the contested nature of the claims keeps confidence medium.