Customer Reviews

Lexmark X9350 Wireless Office All-in-One

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

This is possibly the most complex hardware/software combo you will ever own. It's not like a car or a refrigerator where you turn it on and it does what it's supposed to. From the control panel and the computer there are hundreds of options for you to choose from. This will be an excellent purchase once all those options work.

You have read about all the good features already, and there are many. Let me mention the problems I had.

Wireless: it just plain didn't work with either the Mac or the PC, which have been networked and on the internet wirelessly for years.

The manual is useless except to tell you to use the 'wizard' to set up your wireless system. There is no additional information at the web site. I discovered that there are several undocumented diagnostic functions available through the printer control panel. I wish they would just publish a proper manual that explains everything.

At times I was able to use some printer functions connected by an ethernet cable and I was able to use the scanner connected via USB--but neither connection system was reliable and much of the time I couldn't use either computer with the printer by any method. Over 2.5 months I spent around 100 hours trying to make this work.

Tech support exchanged 18 emails and three hours of 2nd level phone support which were no help at all. Support seems to come from India. You can't call the 2nd level people. You must wait for them to call you and hope that you are there to receive the call- it may be many days before they call again. They try to help but as I said- this is a complex system.

My suggestion on the wireless option- if it works the first time it's probably OK, otherwise return the unit before you waste 100 hours trying to fix it. I happen to know that many people had no problems with this wireless unit.

I usually choose duplex printing, but this unit jammed about 27% of the sheets, requiring the entire print job to be restarted. Repairing the jam requires turning the printer around, removing the duplex unit, and yanking the paper out firmly. Additionally, duplex printing caused ink to smear on the back of sheets passing through, making the paper look dirty. This could be the result of pulling out jammed paper.

One-sided printing was acceptable although dull on plain paper. Once I set up a template for Word and another program, I was able to print envelopes reliably. I was able to print on legal-sized paper and I seem to recall that I scanned a legal sized sheet once.

Copying and scanning worked much better than the leading competitor but colors were not reproduced correctly. The few sheets I put through the automatic feeder went well, but small items like photographs must be individually placed on the scanner.

Optical character recognition worked surprisingly well, considering that the software was a free extra with my purchase and doesn't seem to be mentioned at Amazon. This OCR software was on the Lexmark install disk and there are versions for PC and Mac, so I guess you will get it too. There were many other programs included in my purchase (not from this site) which weren't interesting to me. I didn't test the fax.

I plugged my camera into one of the ports and the printer allowed me to view them on the color window and I could print one or many. Nice, but I would never print a photo without cleaning it up in the computer first.

I love this printer. It is exactly what I have been looking for. It breaks my heart that I had to return it. The main competitor has a seriously flawed unit with poor customer support and currently no wireless option. If Lexmark can fix the software (I'm sure my duplex unit was a rare defect) and the documentation/support, it will be nearly perfect and I will buy it again!

I have never taken the time to write a review for anything, but I hate this all in one printer so much, I want Lexmark to feel just a tinge of the pain their product gives me. When we first installed the lexmark printer software it created such havoc, I should have taken it back right then. This printer was made to go through ink like water, these guys have made this thing to sell ink and that's it. I am going though a cartridge a week minimum. The warnings come up when the cartirdge is still half full. The cartridges get gummed up with ink and only print every other line of what you are needing, then when you clean it it wants to run an allignment page which just about uses half a cartridge to print.
The wi-fi is intermittent at best, and paper jams are continuous. I read PC Mags review and searched the net when deciding to make this purchase and obviously found reviews to be favorable. Now upon owning this the reviews simply were misleading and missed their very purpose, to warn consumers of poor products in the market!

Setup of the product is really, really easy... but my printer has a problem recognizing the ink cartridges. I have *twice* replaced the cartridges (correctly, of course), and the printer still insists that it has unknown cartridges. I have been trying to contact Lexmark for support, but so far I have been unsuccessful. Calling the 800 number yielded a 1/2 hour wait (so far) and I can't even get their email submission form to load in my browser (times out). I am *very* unimpressed so far, and will be off-loading this product as soon as I can manage. A shame, really. Lexmark was reputed to have good support, but my experience thus far does not support that reputation. Sigh.

I really want to like Lexmark; I live in Lexington, hometown of Lexmark HQ (all printers are made in China and Mexico), but this is the last one I will ever buy. It is just bad all around:

- Feeder jams on just about anything you put in it.
- The software is convoluted and confusing (and I work for a technology company!)

The print quality is decent but the picture quality isn't good enough for printing photos which is one of the primary reasons I purchased the printer.

Finally, the wireless connectivity doesn't work right and required me to physically unplug the printer anytime I wanted to print. FRUSTRATING! I ended up moving it so I could hard wire the machine.

About the only positive I can think of is that it looks nice when it isn't printing. Take my advice, buy something else.

Lexmark X9350 Wireless Office All-in-One

Frequent jams, which are hard to clear, unreliable wifi, expensive ink, long wait to start printing, printing takes far too long, when cartridge is half empty it delays printing and nags incessantly to buy ink, impossible to claim rewards cartridge (password problems yet to be resolved despite three calls to customer service), scanning produces file too big to e-mail, fax hard to coordinate with answering machine. Decent print quality, including photos.

With experience, printer is working much better. The high yield ink lasts much, much better. Jams are less frequent (be sure to have paper tray extended). Would give it three stars now.

I have had this printer for a few months--now that I got a Mac I'm selling it and getting a Canon MX700 instead.

This printer is a great concept, but there are problems with the execution:
1) I am hooked up via wired ethernet. The problem here is that about every 2 to 3 days, the printer "forgets" that it can receive print jobs over the network (you can still ping it, so the network is running, just the part that accepts print jobs crashed or something). To solve, you have to wake it up, power it off, and power it back up, wait almost 1 minute, now you can print. Now that I think about it, maybe I should've tried keeping it from going to sleep.

2) Auto-document feeder only works decently with letter-size paper.

3) Card slots can only be used by PC when hooked up via USB, not when hooked up via network. This was disappointing.

4) Paper output tray is flimsy and a poor design, IMO.

5) Had spotty support for Mac OS X Tiger (10.4) although it *does* run bonjour and is easily seen. Upgrading to Leopard (10.5), the printer drivers just crash the applications and Mac OS says the printer drivers are causing the problem. Lexmark shows on their website they will not have Leopard-compatible drivers until MARCH of 2008. This is what is prompting me to sell mine...I just got a Mac and plan to use a printer/scanner from both Mac and PC.

6) S/W that comes with it is OK, but kind of annoying.

7) Ink is expensive and only obtainable from Lexmark sellers. It also seems to guzzle the ink pretty quickly.

If Lexmark would fix these issues, they'd have a heck of a machine. But I don't expect they will do a thing about most of the issues...they don't seem that willing to help the customer.

FYI, there is supposed to be a 2nd tray accessory for this machine, but I'm not sure they ever released it.

The wireless feature is the main reason I bought this printer and that doesn't work anymore. It worked fine for the first two weeks or so then for some reason the wireless connection started only working sporadically. It connected to my network less and less and now not at all. So I moved the printer closer to my router and plugged it into the router. Worked again just fine for about two weeks. Now, once again, nothing. I guess I'll be moving some furniture around so there will be room for this printer close to one of my desktops so I can plug it in via usb now. When that stops working it's junk.

Oh one other complaint, (though this may be a lexmark issue, not just this printer I've heard) the inkjets run out wether you use them or not. If they just sit in the printer and you don't print anything they'll be empty in about 1.5 - 2 months time. And they are expensive. $30 per cartridge at Office Depot. Not sure where the ink goes, I dont see any drip spots inside the printer.

Anyway bottom line is this was an entirely regrettable purchase. Plain and simple this is a poorly made product and lexmark is not supporting it with software/firmware updates.

This is a good printer if you can get it to function properly. I had to reinstall several times, update firmware (to disable wifi power saving), and have found that you can not turn it off. If you keep it on all the time, most of the wireless connection issues go away. I have to say that Lexmark support was helpful, although I spent at least 4 to 8 hours of troubleshooting before I got it to work as it should. I would probably reconsider spending a little more upfront on a different brand if I had to purchase again. I do like the sheet feeder, which feeds a little crooked though, and the scan to pdf function. I have not found any generic cartridge replacements, so be prepared to pay $30-$40 for black ink cartridges.

I must agree with other people who have posted reviews on this printer - we initially purchased it for the WiFi capability - it goes down constantly. The paper jams are so frequent I am ready to unplug it and leave it on the street for someone to take. I have tried everything - downloading updates, troubleshooting, etc. Nothing seems to help. I am so frustrated I am ready to get a new printer. Don't bother with this one - it's not worth it.

We have 3 laptops in the house, two running XP (a Dell computer that belongs to my company and an IBM/Lenovo, belonging to my husband's company), one running Vista (an HP that we use at Home), and NONE OF THEM WORK with this device. Too many problems to list all of them, but I'll start with a few:

- SCANNING: Wireless scanning DOES NOT WORK. I've spent at least 5 hours on 8 different tech support calls and even had the entire unit replaced, but in the end, I've just come to accept that wireless scans are not a feature of this device, despite the advertising. I have to connect the cable and then it often works, although requires a fresh reboot each time.The "low resolution" scan setting produces files that are WAY too large. Just now I tried to scan a copy of a 2-page invoice. It's B&W, has no pictures, very simple. Final file size: 48MB!!! It's always been this way. The only way around it is to then take that document and "print to PDF" and then that shrinks it. But it takes too much time to do all this.

- PRINTING: Wireless printing only works on one of the 3 computers. I've just come to accept that wireless printing is also not a feature of this device. Have to reboot, have to use the cord. Also, printing takes longer and longer each time. Every few months or so I have to uninstall and reinstall the driver to reset this odd behavior. When I say slow, I mean: go to file->print, wait 7 seconds. Then Choose the printer from the drop-down, 8 more seconds. Then change the default from color to B&W, it takes 10 seconds just for the bubble selection to appear. Another annoyance is that after it finally works, your computer "speaks" to you. Yes, it says "Printing Started" and "Printing Complete" real loud. Who on earth thought that this features was worth the time to implement!? Also, paper gets jammed all the time. And not easy to fix. Have to turn the whole thing around.

SUPPORT: Outsourced to India. They're nice support technicians and they take control of your computer so you can sit there and just watch, but it takes WAY too much time. Also, maybe it's a cultural thing, but they never acknowledge that there's a problem. Everything's very matter of fact. I'd prefer something like Dell's support, where they really know their product, including its weaknesses, and will come out and tell you it's a known problem and what the recommended workaround is.

COPYING: as there's no connection to the computer required, it's ok, although I don't use this feature much.

INSTALLATION: It's not so bad. I've become a pro after having done it about 15 times by now. I'm not exaggerating.

CARTRIDGES: Annoying that you constantly get reminders that you're low before printing. I hate always having to say "continue printing anyway." And the lifespan on these cartridges isn't very good. Seems I'm always replacing them.