The main reasons i wanted a laser printer were faster printing, nicer looking text printouts and the convenience of network printing. The Lexmark M412 delivers on all three. The printing is amazingly fast. I keep the printer in the laundry room (i think laser printers smell bad) and it seems that no matter what I print, by the time I walk to the laundry room, the print is waiting for me. Large photos, complicated illustrator files and simple text documents all seem to take around the same amount of time to print; under a minute. After initial printing the m412 just churns out the pages. I dont know what the official rating is, but it feels much faster than 10ppm.

My primary machines are macs and the Lexmark talks to them with the apple laserwriter driver, either via appletalk or via tcp/ip. This means that anything from the old color classic to my titanium powerbook print just fine. The printer also has a USB port for printing, but with ethernet built in, i've never thought to use it.

Lexmark is fantastic with compatibility. Out of the box the m412 is ready for most any flavor of windows, macos (incl. osx supposedly), and even linux. The web based administration tool means that all you need is any machine with a javascript enabled web browser on the network.

In the 600 dpi mode, the output looks fantastic. Text is extremely crisp... i believe even crisper than our HP 2100tn at work. Line art looks amazing too. On the other hand, "photo" printing looks pretty bad. The fake 1200dpi output has a much larger dither/halftone pattern to it than I'd hoped for and the grays are streaky. If you want to print black and white photos, this isnt the best printer. The HP 2100TN has the most amazing grays and would likely be a better choice if you had the money and needed fine grays.

I'm convinced this is the best network printer for the money. Its infinitely faster than the brother and HP in the same class and supports more platforms than either. (It costs several hundred dollars less than the HP too) Lexmark updates the drivers regularly and is responsive to user suggestions.

The only things keeping this printer from getting 5 stars are 1. streaky grayscale printing and 2. the paper tray sometimes lets papers shift to an angle, making the final printouts slightly crooked. As a warning if this applies to you, this printer drinks a bit of power when firing up. Our house has 60s ungrounded wiring with 3 bedrooms on the same circuit. When the printer kicked on, the lights dimmed. After moving the printer to the laundry room (which doesn't share a circuit with 2 other well-used rooms), the power problems disappeared.

If I had to do it again, I'd buy this printer again in a heartbeat. The only things I need a laser printer to be are fast, cheap and easy to use. I can control everything through a web interface and print up to legal sized paper. Thanks to the networking option I can keep the printer next to the dryer and not worry about the smell. The ultra-crisp printouts finish before I get to the printer so its as fast as I could hope.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 678
Operating System: Macintosh