The Lexmark X342n ($399 direct) makes a great first impression. With a metallic front panel that’s set off by the dark-gray case surrounding it, it looks good enough to fit into the kind of office where décor matters. It also has the right price for an AIO for a small office, a busy home office, or a small workgroup in a larger office. And it can work as a standalone fax machine and copier, as it comes complete with both a flatbed scanner mounted on a monochrome laser printer and a 50-page automatic document feeder in the scanner lid. Unfortunately, what’s inside the case isn’t as well designed as the outside. Even though the X342n does a reasonably good job as a printer, fax machine, and copier, it delivers less than I’d expect for the price.

An AIO should let you take advantage of all of its capabilities. The X342n doesn’t. In particular, you should be able to use it to fax from any PC on the network. But with the X342n, you have to print a document and fax the hard copy instead. This wastes paper, wastes time, and ensures that the faxed version won’t be as readable as it would if you had faxed it directly from your hard drive. On an equally sour note, even though the Lexmark X342n lets you scan to a PC over your network, you have to jump though some unnecessary hoops to do that.

The X342n also drops the ball just a bit on paper-handling. It comes with a 250-sheet input tray, which should be enough for most small offices, and it offers a 550-sheet option ($199 direct) for a total 800-sheet capacity. But unlike the similarly priced Dell MFP Laser Printer 1815dn or the Editors’ Choice Brother MFC-8860DN, it doesn’t include a duplexer for printing on both sides of the page, even as an option.

The X342n’s speed and output quality are acceptable, but nowhere near good enough to make up for its shortcomings. I clocked it on our business applications suite at a total of 12 minutes 9 seconds (timed with QualityLogic’s hardware and software, www.qualitylogic.com). I’d call that tolerable but sluggish. The Dell 1815dn took about two-thirds the time, and the MFC-8860 took only a little over half as much.

Text quality is on the low side for a monochrome laser, but that’s still good enough for almost anything short of desktop publishing. More than half of our test fonts were easily readable, with well-formed characters, at 5 points, and some were easily readable at 4 points. Only one heavily stylized font with thick strokes needed 10 points.

Graphics show obvious dithering, in the form of patterns in some levels of gray. I wouldn’t hand them out to an important client or customer, but they are easily good enough for any internal business use. Photos also show dithering but are good enough for things such as client newsletters and printing Web pages.

Ultimately, the Lexmark X342n can do the job it’s meant for: taking the place of a printer, fax machine, copier, and scanner. But it doesn’t shine at any of these tasks, and it’s easy to find other choices in its price range that do more, cost less, or both, making it hard to recommend the X342n at this price.

Read full review on pcmag.