Lexmark MC3224dwe All-in-One Color Printer

We were looking for a good color laser printer that had scan/copy capabilities because, well, COVID means that working and schooling from home result in not being able to use the work copier for the occasional paper-related tasks that seem to come up a handful of times a year.So how did it go? Here is what we found:- Stupid simple to set up. Plugged it to Ethernet and turned it on, and our two Windows 10 computers just saw it and configured it for use. No drivers, no programs, no installation.- AirPrint functionality worked without doing anything. We can now print right from our iPhones and iPads; the printer just magically shows up in the printer list.- Scanning to computers also works without any programs, drivers, or anything. The touchscreen on the printer gives you the option to "Scan to COMPUTERNAME" for each computer on your network. Doing so does a scan and sends it to your default scanning app on your computer, such as Windows Fax and Scan which just popped up and worked. Did I mention no configuration required?- Scan to email works great as well, although we did have to configure the outbound email settings to get them to come through. So like five minutes of effort here, but you can set up shortcut profiles for each person receiving a scan which include image settings, subject line, etc. Now, it is stupid simple to quickly scan to email for myself, my wife, or both of us at the same time.- Copying works reasonably well. The ID card mode helps add more detail when necessary, but my standard for what I need with a copier is pretty low.- WiFi Direct works nicely if you have guests and don't want to have them join your WiFi, but they still want to bum some print jobs off of you. While this is a nice addition, hard to see where this would be used if you are using the other connectivity options.- The web interface for configuring the device is intuitive and very full featured. You could easily use this in a true office environment and have it scan to a network drive if you wanted.- The device is silent when not in use, and it is a bit louder than say a tiny LaserJet. That being said, it spits out your print job and quiets down again VERY fast. Not like other printers that would be loud and do an extended clean cycle after every other print.- Print jobs get sent over very fast. Device spools up immediately on sending print, and the job is complete and you have your print after about 7 seconds. Paper comes out pretty fast!- Duplex works very well. Paper sheet will come mostly out of the printer before it gets sucked back in again to print on the reverse side. We are expecting very light use so this is not an issue. Again, the printer is really haulin' as it is moving the paper around like it knows it has a purpose.We were comparing this to similar HP and Brother models with similar featuresets of laser printing, color, duplex printing, and scanning. Although an auto document feeder (ADF) would be nice, we will never have the kind of volume or usage where having it is any kind of necessity. This AIO device meets all of those needs at a price point $150 to $250 less than the HP and Brother units. And I am staying the heck away from Canon printers given their recent quality issues, so that is out of the question.Overall, insanely impressed with this device! Go Lexmark!

I was a bit nervous about this purchase because I saw quite a few negative reviews. This is still very early as I just received it today, and I will update this review if anything changes. So far though, I'm extremely and happily surprised. The touch screen is small, but very easy to use. I didn't bother with the mobile app, but just stepped through setup on the printer itself. within 5 minutes I was connected to the network and able to print from my computer, iPad and phone! After an additional 10 minutes, I had the email capabilities setup and can scan to email. There are a ton of advanced features that I don't need (networking, FTP, etc), but it is nice to know they are there. Print quality looks great. the only negatives I can come up with are that It's a bit loud and clunky sounding, and I do wish that it had an email address book or use a default so I wouldn't have to type it in each time. That said, for a wireless color laser printer and scanner for under $200, I don't even think those deserve a loss of a star.

I hate writing bad reviews like this one because it takes a lot of work to be as fair as you can to a product you’ve come to hate. We bought this printer to replace a much older HP SOHO laser printer. We don’t do a large amount of printing, hundreds of pages a year, not thousands, but do have diverse printing needs – lots of full color, lots of duplex, a little heavier stock such as booklet covers, and various paper sizes. The old HP handled it all easily and we expected that after more than 10 years any new home or small office laser printer would too. We’ve used this Lexmark for just over 2 years now and I can say it definitely does not. First issue was that even though the printer has a heavyweight paper setting, any paper much thicker than plain copier paper causes a paper jam on every page if you’re trying to duplex print, and often even with simplex printing, requiring you to hand feed individual sheets through the manual feed slot. If you duplex print heavier paper, you must print in two steps and feed every page through by hand twice (keeping up with the proper orientation!). If you need a hundred copies, something that would take almost no time at all on the old HP – because you could load the tray, start the job and go do something else – can be an hour of standing at the Lexmark hand-feeding it and clearing (sometimes nonexistent) paper jams. Then there’s the “sleep” problem. The printer will sleep after an idle time, and that’s fine. But whatever it did when it slept caused Windows (more than one version of Windows on more than one make of computer owned by more than one person) to think the printer and scanner were offline, and refuse to even try to scan or print with it. Sometimes rebooting the printer and restarting the Windows print spooler service would solve the problem, sometimes not. After a recent update to the printer the problem has changed – Windows does not report the printer as offline, but frequently issues a message saying there was an error and the printer could not print your file, after which – in a few minutes – the file does in fact print. It is still often hard to get the Windows Scan application to see the scanner as online, but we’ve finally worked out a (tedious) circumvention. After slightly more than one year the wireless network adapter went out – totally dead. Fortunately we’re tech people and already had a wireless bridge in the same room and could just cable it up, but a lot of people might not be that lucky, and we did pay for that adapter. It seems to go through ink a lot faster than the HP did, though I admit I that’s an impression – I haven’t tried to quantify it. A set of cartridges is within a few dollars of the same price as the HP cartridges, but all of our local office supply stores carry the HP cartridges, and NONE carry the Lexmark, so don’t ever need one unexpectedly! The software is very “naggy”. There’s really not much I can say I like about this printer. Now to try to be fair: if all you need to do is print on plain paper, either simplex or duplex, and scan and copy things, and you don’t have a high print volume, this printer will probably work just fine for you. But if those are your needs, I think you could easily find a cheaper more reliable printer than would also.