Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Amazon sells this DR-420 cheaper than anyone I can find, but it may be cheaper to buy a new Brother and steal its drum and toner. We have approximately 8 Brother HL-2270DW and similar printers that use this DR420 drum and the TN-420 and 450 cartridges. If you have these too, you have realized that the replacement drums are crazy expensive (like $95on Amazon --$125 if you walk into a big box office supply). I've tried three different knock off drums, but none have proved to be suitable for office use (well, maybe if you are just printing envelopes or drafts of things you do not care about). It leaves a dark shadow of toner all over the page. (If you are an old timer like me, you may remember what the curly thermal fax paper looked like back in the day? It's kind of like that.) As best I can tell, there is no "compatible" drum unit to replace the DR420 that is office quality. You have to buy the OEM version or you are not going to be happy. (I am a cheapskate and I hate saying that, but it is true). It's also kind of true for the "compatible" TN-420 and TN-450 toner cartridges. We have had the best luck with the Polaroid brand knock offs (also available on Amazon), and terrible luck with some of the Chinese manufactured version. I have now begun buying the OEM TN-450's and refilling them with toner kits for $5-7 a piece (you also need to buy a gear set if you are refilling the starter TN-420 cartridge). It's messy, but if you can master this, it almost cuts the price of buying OEM brother toner cartridges in half. But alas, there is no such process to reuse the DR-420 Drum. Amazon has it as cheap as I can find it --though it is still almost the price of the printer! My hot tips for any searching for a DR420 drum as cheaply as possible are these: 1) if you scour on Amazon or other tech websites, often you can find on sale for around $69.99, another HL-2270DW or similar model that uses the DR420 and it will come with a brand new toner and drum (there are about 15 different printers that use this combination of TN-420 or TN-450 and DR420 drum). This is on $30 less than buying a replacement drum). (That is sooooo wrong, but there it is. The disposable printer.) -We have been buying these printers cheaply online when we can find them just to "steal" the Drum and toner cartridge out of them. Either that, or you simply need to toss the printer in the trash when the DRUM goes bad and scour for it's cheap Brother cousin on the internet. --this may actually make the most sense (unless you have wireless printer and the cheap printer you find does not have that capability. Keep one printer, use the drum and toner that came in the new one and toss the printer you like the least. This OEM Brother DR-420 drum on Amazon is as low a price s I can find, but if you can get a similar Brother printer for $5.00 more, it makes sense to buy it because you are also getting a free starter toner cartridge for that $5.00. Brother needs to fix this or we will be filling landfills with the "shell" of their printers. Such a waste. Guess they aren't counting on savvy consumers who won't buy a drum for $30 more than than a new printer would cost them. 2) Second Drum tip: Sometimes you can "reset" the DRUM (pretend it is a new one) and it will continue to work really well for awhile. Do this by opening the door to the printer, pulling out the drum/toner cartridge, sliding it back in. Then, WITH THE DOOR DOOR STILL OPEN, push the "go" button (usually on the left) and HOLD ITHE BUTTON DOWN UNTIL ALL THE LED LIGHTS LIGHT UP, then close the door and you should be set to go. The DRUM is supposed last for 12,000 pages, but if you read up on it, the drum counts "drum revolutions," not pages. For every print job, whether that print job is 1 page or 100 pages, the drum revolves once extra time at the beginning, and one time at the end and those revolutions COUNT for purposes of the 12,000 page counter. So if you have a lot of short print jobs like we do, it is going to signal that your drum is empty when it may have reached just 50% of it s useful life. Try resetting the drum and see if you can get more "goody" out of it.