Which Brother USB Laser Printer is best for iMac?

Whatever printer you buy, you absolutely want one with AirPrint support. Why AirPrint? AirPrint avoids needing vendor drivers for the common printing operations. And it works from Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

Which Brother model? Pretty much either whichever one is on sale, or whichever has the selection of features you want.

• Which Printer Should I Buy? - Apple Community

• https://www.theverge.com/tech/641940/best-printer-2025-just-buy-a-brother-laser-printer-middle-finger-in-the-air

Old Toad wrote:

... However, HP hd gone to chips in their cartridges which limit cartridges to those from HP.

Or per recent reports, HP bricked HP printers with HP cartridges:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/03/firmware-update-bricks-hp-printers-makes-them-unable-to-use-hp-cartridges/

There are 14 Brother B/W Laser printers shown on this Brother webpage. However, if you need 2 sided printing, mobile printing or optional paper trays there will be fewer. Do your due diligence and then choose which suits your needs best.

Since OEM toner cartridges are quite expensive check to see if there are 3rd party cartridges available. I had HP laser printer for years and it took 3rd party cartridges at about ¼ the price of the OEMs. However, HP hd gone to chips in their cartridges which limit cartridges to those from HP.

👍🏻 on Brother lasers.

We've used Brother B/W lasers for years and are very satisfied. Brother have always maintained excellent macOS support. Cost per page is low, and all seemed to give long reliable service.

Our current one is an older model—HL-L2370DW—and has no issues with our four Macs (running macOS 10.13 through 15.4) three iPads, and two iPhones.

We have an Epson EcoTank 3850 for color and scanning but the b/w Brother does most of the heavy lifting here.

Oldest Brother printer I’m dealing with is a ~fourteen year old MFC9970CDW laser.

It predates ubiquitous AirPrint support.

It just keeps printing.

Once in a while, it wants new toner cartridges.

If asked for something negative about it, it’s somewhere between decidedly not flimsy, and heavy.

... which entry level USB model should I look at?

The implication is that you want a USB-only model. Is there a reason for that? I would consider that a limitation, not an advantage, unless of course you are biased against AirPrint for some reason.

The only USB-only Brother printer I can find is not compatible with macOS. Needless to say I do not recommend anything that does not incorporate AirPrint, for a variety of reasons.

you also need to ask yourself, do I want a scanner built into the printer?

and do I want Laser printer or Ink printer?