Lexmark X9350 Wireless Office All-in-One Review

Feature-wise, the Lexmark X9350 is impressive, especially for the price. Not only does it cover the basics, including having PictBridge and Bluetooth interfaces for picture printing, it also has wireless 802.11g (802.11b compatible) networking and duplex printing. The scan and fax features are networkable which is also nice. It works well with Windows, including Vista, and Macs. But, do all these features perform well?

Unfortunately, the printing quality of the Lexmark X9350 isn’t all that great. Sure, it does fine on quick black-and-white copies but the 4 ink system it uses produces poor photographic prints as compared to better, dedicated, photo printers with more inks. The duplex printing seems to streak occasionally as if the ink wasn’t drying quickly enough or the unit was putting out too much ink. The duplex printing and copying also seemed to jam a lot. That was kind of disappointing but I guess that being used to $1000+ duplex copiers at work kind of spoiled me in that regard. I suppose one shouldn’t expect that level of performance out of an inexpensive home printer/copier/fax/scan unit.

One problem I’ve encountered with some inkjets in the past is ink clogs. It seems like the Lexmark X9350 Wireless Office All-in-One suffers from that as well. One way I get devices to test is working with a local electronics store computer repair tech and he has told me that he’s gotten several of these units back with gummed up jets plus he’s gotten complaints about the level of ink usage being high. Another common complaint by purchasers has been that the wireless networking fails. Of course, wireless can be kind of tricky sometimes due to router placement but this seems more like an out and out failure since even an on-site service call couldn’t correct the problem.

Another common complaint about Lexmark printers in general is that they have poor customer service and durability. Sadly, you get what you pay for in a lower end unit. If we were still paying $1000 or more for an all-in-one we might expect good tech support but when we pay $100-200 for one we’re probably lucky to get someone to read a page from the manual to us over the phone. That said, Lexmark, in my experience, is one of the worse when it comes to supporting customers.

The bottom line is that the Lexmark X9350 Wireless Office All-in-One has some impressive features for its price point but that you’re likely to be buying a more or less disposable printer that may not work as well as you might wish. It also isn’t a good choice if you want to do photo printing. For small office/home office (SOHO) work or college and other educational work I think that there are better, more reliable, options out on the market.

Sources: OpTempo