Until the last few years, my solution was to pay a premium to buy only Enterprise #HP laser printers. HP's "consumer-grade" printers are complete shit, but their enterprise printers are (or at least once were, don't know if this is still true) built by different people on a different, rock-solid platform.
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However, the "buy only #HP enterprise printers" strategy failed when I had to replace my printer recently. HP has made it so hard to tell the difference between their enterprise and non-enterprise printers that I spent what I thought was a ridiculous amount of money and ended up with a non-enterprise HP printer (m479fdw), and soon started discovering the many ways in which it is crap. This, I cannot abide.
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This culminated with me recently attempting to print business cards for my daughter the aspiring photographer and discovering that although my HP printer claims to support cardstock, when I attempt to print grahics-heavy output onto cardstock, the registration accuracy of the m479fdw runs as much as a HALF INCH OFF for an 8.5x11 sheet. This is absurdly shitty printing. You cannot claim to support printing on cardstock when your registration is a half inch off. You just can't.
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So I resolved to kick HP to the curb, find a different brand of color laser or LED printer that has proper registration accuracy when printing graphics-heavy output onto cardstock, buy it, and sell the used m479fdw at a significant loss, all for the sake of exorcising the terrible HP printer from my life and knowing that there is no longer a shitty printer living under my roof taunting me.
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At this point you may be wondering why I have not chosen to follow the standard advice for avoiding printer woes: "buy whatever Brother printer is currently on sale." That advice is fine if you want a semi-decent printer at a good price-point that doesn't play shitty vendor lock-in games. That won't work for me because I want waterproof printouts (i.e., not inkjet) and because, as I said, I am consciously irrational about this. It just viscerally pleases me to own a great printer.
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It is a huge privilege to have enough money to spend stupidly to buy a printer that's more than we need 90+% of the time. While we're financially stable, we don't actually have a lot of extra money to spend on luxuries. Some people go on fancy vacations; I overspend on printers. It is a weakness I indulge.
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After researching how to print accurate graphics onto cardstock, I learned 2 things:
1/ It requires a straight paper path. Any printer which takes in cardstock at the front and also spits it out the front can't print accurately because the paper feed mechanisms can't move bent cardstock through the printer at a sufficiently consistent speed.
2/ There are no cheap laser or LED printers with a straight paper path. This is a Very Expensive Feature for Very Serious Printers.
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In fact, I could only find one printer manufacturer anywhere close to my price-point which claims to have a straight-paper path and advertises registration accuracy on all print media as one of its key features: #Printronix.
And that is why I will be accepting delivery of a Printronix LP654C printer from FedEx later today.
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The LP654C is only a couple hundred dollars more than the m479fdw, but (a) it's just a printer, not a 3-in-1 like the m479fdw; (b) I had to pay $128 for shipping, which I believe was included in the cost of the m479fdw; and (c) I splurged on an auxiliary paper tray for $259, because something about monster printers that gives me inordinate pleasure is being able to throw a whole ream of paper into them at a time (there's that irrationality rearing its ugly head again).
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I will report back on whether the Printronix printer lives up to my expectations. From past experience, I can tell you that initially as long as the printer is at least OK I will think it's great because the amount of money I spent on it will predispose me to ignoring its minor faults, at least at first. The real test will come when I've had it for a while, when I will be able to more dispassionately judge whether it lives up to its promises.
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The printer has arrived. (This box is just the printer, not the auxiliary paper try, which came in another box about half the height of this one.)

OK, my #Printronix LP654C #Printer is set up. First impressions:
1/ It prints fine so far.
2/ It seems like a very solid printer.
3/ The toner cartridges are relatively small. Unlike my old HP printer which attached a separate little drum to every toner cartridge, the Printronix cartridges only have… toner in them. The drum is a separate consumable. I believe this also means lower per-page cost for this printer.
4/ The admin UIs for this printer are terrible.
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5/ It's advertised at 35 pages per minute, but graphics-heavy pages print much slower. This is typical, but subjectively, the difference seems "more so" for this printer.
6/ Linux is a second-class citizen for this printer, e.g., there's no way to check for firmware updates without using a Windows/MacOS program. Again, this is (unfortunately) typical.
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I also want to mention, totally independent of this particular printer, that because I had to configure this new printer onto three Linux desktops this evening, I was reminded once again of how abjectly terrible and buggy the #GNOME Printers control panel is.

Unlike most printers, which have "media type" and "media weight" as a single setting (i.e., when you specify the media type that indicates the weight as well), the #Printronix #LP654C #printer has separate settings for media type and weight. If you don't set the weight properly, the printer doesn't adhere to the page properly and you get big blotches and/or toner scattered all over the page. Separating the two settings is IMO a terrible design.

#Printronix provides fast, full-featured PCL6 drivers for Windows and macOS for their #LP654C printer, but for Linux they provide a much slower PostScript driver instead. I was able to speed up printing on Linux dramatically by switching to the generic pxlcolor PCL6 driver in #foomatic, but since it's a generic driver it doesn't know about all of the printer's features. It's just laziness preventing them from releasing a full-featured PCL driver for Linux.

#Printronix provides a "Monitoring Tool" for macOS and Windows which, among other things, can be used to monitor their web site for firmware updates for their #LP654C #printer and install them when they are available. There appears to be no documented, supported way to check for or install firmware updates from Linux.

I emailed #Printronix support today to ask 5 questions about my new #LP654C #printer. I received a response which literally did not answer a single question. The response was clearly indicative of the Dunning-Kruger Effect: the responding tech clearly did not understand my questions but didn't know that, so he just sent me bullshit, nonresponsive answers.
I wrote back and asked him to escalate my questions to someone else. "I paid $1,400 for this printer, I expect better support than this."

I've encountered another issue with my new #Printronix #LP654C #printer, so severe that if they can't fix it I'm going to demand that they take back the printer and refund my money…
Twice in the short time I've had it, it has spontaneously disconnected from the WiFi network, failed to reconnect automatically, and failed to reconnect when I told it to do so from the control panel.
This is ridiculous. A printer which can't handle the simple task of staying on the network is grossly defective.

Weeks after I sent to support several questions about my new #Printronix printer, I still haven't gotten back a substantive answer to any of them, except, "Nope, we're not going to distribute a Linux PCL PPD for this printer." *sigh*
I just emailed them again and told them the lack of a firmware update process and the printer's inability to stay connected to the network are both material defects, and if they can't solve them then I want my money back.
We'll see what they say. I'm not hopeful. 🤷

#Printronix tells me:
* they can't do anything about the fact that their printer keeps disconnecting from my WiFi and failing to reconnect until I reboot;
* there's no way to find out about firmware updates or install them, so security holes in the printer can't be patched; and
* the stuff about mobile printing and firmware updates in the user guide is all lies, that stuff doesn't actually exist.
I'm all done. I told them to take back the printer for a refund.
Why are all #printers shit?