My Brother colour laser is an absolute tank (by weight, if nothing else) and happily uses the cheapest eBay toner going. It can sit idle for months then get plugged in and hammer out 400 pages, double sided. I'll never use an inkjet again, they're always nightmares.
We'll see how long it goes before the fuser carks it, but so far it's been pretty cost effective, considering the thing itself was £200.
If it is an older one it will most likely outlive you. We used these in production for daily runs of 1000's of pages and the mechanism would eventually wear out but that's not something that any ordinary mortal will ever see. Fun bit: they even offered to replace the ones that eventually did fail under warranty so that they could strip them to see what failed so they could improve them. Very high standards there.
I have a Brother HL-L2370DW, which only can print black-and-white, single/double-sided. It does those two things like a champ. It feels like a solid, unobtrusive, reliable appliance -- a compliment in the age of smart devices and more than I can say about HP & co.
I upgraded from my B/W laser to a color laser, both Brother, but I'm keeping the old one in a closet. Someday when if for some reason the new one has problems (or I legit run out of color toner), I know it'll be ready to step in.
We'll see how long it goes before the fuser carks it, but so far it's been pretty cost effective, considering the thing itself was £200.