We may be in the minority here, but I agree with BearPaw. In years past, I've had pretty good luck with buying gently used HP printers on eBay (with carefully researched suppliers). I focused on models that were designed for small work groups with very high monthly duty cycles, so I was sure they could handle high volume. These are workhorse machines that spit out the docs and generally just keep working.
I'm not familiar with the more current model numbers, but I recently posted a link to a list of all HP printers and year of introduction (possibly within the past few weeks). Specs for most printers are easily available online. I recommend, whichever model and brand you choose, to read the specs and know what you're buying, and that its capabilities match your needs, e.g. print speed, size and number of paper trays, etc.
Supplies are one other thing to keep in mind when comparing costs of HP & Brother. With HP, every toner cartridge includes the drum, so they're going to be a bit more expensive. However, that means that you never have to replace the drum inside the machine, which is something required from time to time with a Brother. Some here feel that the cost of a Brother printer is low enough that they'll just buy a new one. Different strokes. (And if I got any of those details wrong, hopefully someone will correct me.)
My bias is that if I can buy what was a $1000+ machine for under $200 (well under, in a couple of cases), that's been refurbished and is still churning out the docs, why not. However, with one exception, those purchases were made back when when I was doing much higher volume than I choose to do these days. The best choice may vary from person to person.
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