The $399 Lexmark C3426dw is a single-function color laser printer that’s right on the border between entry level and midrange. It stands up well against both our 2017 Editors’ Choice pick, the Brother HL-L8260CDW, and the 2019 Editors’ Choice winner and Best of the Year selection for inkjet alternatives to color lasers, the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-C5290 Network Color Printer. The C3426dw produces sharp prints at a reasonable pace (though its two-sided printing is slow), it can accommodate two optional paper trays, and it works with older operating systems as well as modern Android and iOS. It also has an array of security features usually found on much more robust high-volume printers. The only snag: Its per-page toner cost is too high for printing more than a few hundred pages a month.
Small and Capable
The C3426dw measures 9.6 by 16.2 by 15.5 inches (HDW) and weighs 35.5 pounds, which is petite for a color laser printer. Canon’s imageClass LBP622Cdw is slightly taller, wider, and longer. Epson’s WF-C5920 takes up significantly more space but weighs a couple of pounds less. Notably larger and heftier are the HP Color LaserJet M454dw and the Brother HL-L8260CDW.
The connectivity options include Ethernet 10/100/1000 BaseTX (RJ-45), Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n, connecting to a single PC via USB 2.0, and Wi-Fi Direct for talking directly to a smartphone or tablet.
Mobile devices can also connect via Apple AirPrint, Google Cloud Print, Mopria, and Lexmark’s Mobile Print app. To simplify connecting wirelessly, you also get the Lexmark Mobile Assistant app.
In addition to the standard printer drivers, the C3426dw’s software bundle includes drivers that emulate HP’s PCL 5 and PCL 6 page description languages (PDLs) and emulation of Adobe’s PostScript 3. These provide better integration with layout and graphic design applications such as Adobe InDesign and Adobe Illustrator. Illustrator’s native file format is PostScript, making the C3426dw a good choice for printing prepress composites and even short runs of marketing brochures and flyers.
You can set various options, monitor toner levels, generate usage reports, and more on a 2.8-inch color touch screen control panel.
Or you can make configuration changes, monitor consumables, set security options, generate user reports, configure user profiles to restrict privileges, and more from the C3426dw’s built-in web portal. The portal is accessible from just about any web browser, including the one on your smartphone.
Paper handling consists of one 250-sheet cassette and a 1-sheet override tray for printing one-off checks, labels, and envelopes. If that’s not enough to meet your needs, you can add one or two 250-sheet cassettes. The printer’s full monthly duty cycle is a healthy 50,000 pages, with a suggested maximum monthly volume of 5,000—but given the cost of toner, as I’ll get into more below, this printer isn’t a great choice if you want to pump out even a tenth of that.
Of the other printers mentioned here, Canon’s LBP622Cdw is the only one that doesn’t support input capacity expansion. It comes with one 250-sheet cassette and a 1-sheet override tray. The Canon’s duty cycle is a meager 4,000 prints, and its suggested monthly volume is 2,500 pages. The LaserJet M454dw and the HL-L8260CDW are very similar to the C3426dw in paper capacities, expansion options, duty cycles, and monthly maximums.
Emphasis on Compatibility and Security
Lexmark printers—even the lower-end models—come with more connectivity and compatibility options than you can shake a stick at. For example, built-in cloud connectors let you securely access files from several popular cloud services. Lexmark also provides drivers for several different operating systems and platforms, including Windows back to version 7, macOS, several flavors of Linux, Citrix, multiple Novel OS iterations, and Unix.
Security features abound. If your business needs to comply with HIPAA, GDPR, or other stringent data security protocols, the C3426dw is a good choice for meeting those requirements.
Confidential Print Setup lets you set up 10 PINs to secure documents in the C3426dw’s memory, so only people who know a document’s PIN can print it. You can also keep duplicate copies of all documents on the printer, set expiration options, restrict access to both the printer and the embedded web server after a number of failed login attempts, and much more.
How Fast Is Fast Enough?
I tested the C3426dw over Ethernet from our standard Intel Core i5-equipped testbed PC running Windows 10 Professional. Lexmark rates the C3426dw at 26 pages per minute in simplex, or one-sided mode. However, since the C3426dw defaults to duplex, we also test how quickly it prints two-sided pages. (Its duplex rating is 13 images per minute, or ipm. Each page side constitutes an image.) Of the other printers mentioned here, only the Canon LBP622Cdw and HP M454dw default to duplex; we don’t test and record duplex print speeds on machines that don’t default to that mode.
The C3426dw churned out our 12-page Microsoft Word text document in duplex at 16.1ipm and the same document in simplex at 26.4ppm. Both scores are pretty typical for printers in this group, neither remarkably fast nor remarkably slow.
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Next, I printed our set of complex color PDF, XLS, and PPT documents laden with embedded charts, graphs, photos, and fonts in varying sizes and colors. I combined those scores with the results from the 12-page monochrome text document to calculate a score for printing our entire set of business documents. Here, the C3426dw turned in scores of 11.3ppm simplex and 9.2ipm duplex. On both counts, the C3426dw was slower than all the other machines mentioned here, sometimes significantly; HP’s M454dw, the fastest of the bunch, had scores of 18.4ppm simplex and 13.8 duplex.
Though the C3426dw is not a photo printer, I also timed it as it printed our test 4-by-6-inch snapshots. It averaged about 37 seconds per image, which is two or three times as long as it takes most color laser printers.
Whether the C3426dw’s sometimes sluggish speeds matter to you really depends on your printing volume. If you only need one or two pages at a time, you probably won’t notice. If you’re printing longer two-sided documents, though, you’ll be tapping your toes waiting for that last page to emerge.
Respectable Print Quality
It’s been 25 years since Apple released the first color laser printer, and the technology has come a long way. Still, not all lasers are created equal when it comes to output quality—especially when printing documents containing color fonts, graphics, and photos. All the Lexmark printers I’ve tested recently have done well in this regard. They print images with accurate, vibrant colors and vivid details, as well as near-typesetter-quality text.
The C3426dw delivered crisp-looking type down to the smallest size we test, 4 points. Even some of the decorative and display fonts came out with better-than-average readability. The characters were attractively shaped and spaced.
This little Lexmark also did justice to our full-page Excel and PowerPoint charts and graphs, with little to no banding in dark solid fills and complex gradients. The embedded and standalone photos I printed looked above average and were more than suitable for marketing materials like product catalogs or real estate circulars. I have no complaints about the C3426dw’s print quality.
Average Running Costs
As I’ve pointed out many times, entry-level and midrange laser printers struggle to compete with inkjets on the cost-per-page front. If you buy Lexmark’s highest-yield black toner cartridge (4,500 pages) and three color ones (4,500 each), the C3426dw will cost you about 2.3 cents for monochrome pages and 13.3 cents for color pages.
(I should point out that to get toner cartridges at prices low enough to achieve these per-page costs, you must buy and return the empties via Lexmark’s recycling program. Otherwise, your running costs will be even higher.)
Compared with similar laser AIOs, these numbers aren’t that bad. The Brother HL-L8260CDW’s costs per page (CPPs) are 2.5 cents for black pages and 12.7 cents for color; the HP M454dw’s running costs are 2.2 cents monochrome and 14.2 cents color; and the Canon LBP622cdw is, at 3 cents black and 15.4 cents color, the most expensive in this group.
Higher-volume laser printers and inkjet alternatives cost significantly less to use. Epson’s WF-C5290, one of that company’s many inkjet laser alternatives, runs about 1.7 cents for black prints and 7.7 cents for color. Several Epson EcoTank and EcoTank Pro, Canon MegaTank, Brother INKvestment Tank, and HP Smart Tank Plus machines print both monochrome and color pages for even less—sometimes a lot less.
If you have your heart set on a laser printer, you can also get lower running costs by purchasing a higher-volume machine. For instance, Brother’s HL-L9310CDW delivers black pages for about 1.2 cents each and color prints for about 7.5 cents each. Every laser printer manufacturer offers at least one high-volume solution, usually several.
The more you print, the more critical the CPP. As noted above, the C3426dw has a recommended maximum monthly print volume of 5,000 pages, or 60,000 pages per year. But for every 60,000 pages you print, a 1-cent CPP difference will cost you $600. If you print 60,000 pages per year for five years, well…that’s a lot of money. Spending a couple of hundred dollars more up front can save you thousands of dollars over the life of the printer, so evaluate your printing needs with an eye to lifetime costs before making a purchase decision.
A Sound Choice, Especially at a Discount
Lexmark’s C3426dw is a lean and compact color laser that prints well and reliably. It isn’t notably fast, but it’s expandable, secure, and more than capable of comfortably serving small offices of up to about five users. It handles all kinds of printing tasks with aplomb. At the time of this review, it’s selling for considerably less than the already low suggested retail price, so it won’t take a big bite out of your budget. If you’re printing a few hundred pages each month and making sure to swap empty cartridges via Lexmark’s recycling program—both easy and environmentally friendly—then the per-page costs are reasonable and the C3426dw is a sound choice.
