I have a Canon laserjet that absolutely sucks and a Brother inkjet that works great. Both were about the same price (the Brother can do 11x17) and were top recommendations from a bunch of sources. Unfortunately I think buying a printer at this point is just a crapshoot of whether it’ll actually be good.
This Canon decided the cartridges it shipped with were expired and would pop up a “warning” on the printer that you had to acknowledge every print. After a while, it didn’t even let you get past that.