The Lexmark X502n ($699 direct) color laser all-in-one (AIO) does so many things so well that it could have been a strong Editors' Choice contender. Unfortunately, it trips over the little things, most notably clear instructions for how to use some of the key functions. That said, it still offers more than enough to qualify as an attractive choice overall.

Aimed at a small office, a small workgroup in a larger office, or even a busy home office, the X502n delivers high-quality text, graphics, and photos at fast speeds; prints and scans over a network; works as a standalone copier, fax machine, and e-mail sender; and includes a 35-page automatic document feeder (ADF) for easy scanning of multipage documents.

Two words I associate with color laser all-in-ones are big and heavy. True to form, the X502n weighs a hefty 77 pounds (don't move this around your home office by yourself, kids), and it measures 21.0 by 19.0 by 17.2 inches (HWD). Given the size, you probably won't want this beast sitting on your desk. More important, if you're in a home office or a (literally) small office where you're tight on space, you'll want to make sure you have room for it before you buy it.

Once you move the X502n into place, setup is straightforward, although it involves opening more panels and removing more restraints than is needed with some competing models. As with many lasers, the toner cartridges ship in place, but you have to remove them to prepare them and then reinstall them, as well as install the photo-developer unit. None of this is hard, but it's important to follow the quick-start drawings step-by-step, or you may overlook something you need to remove.

The instructions—including the steps for loading paper, connecting the cables, and inserting the installation disc—are strictly in pictures, with essentially no words until you start the automated installation routine. I find most drawn instructions confusing, but Lexmark has done a good job of making the drawings hard to misinterpret.

After the initial setup, the X502n is ready to use as a printer, as a scanner if you give the command from your computer, and as a standalone copier and fax machine. Setting it up for e-mailing and for giving scan commands from the front panel takes additional, manual steps, however. This is where the X502n stubs its toe badly.

Scanning from the front panel instead of giving a command from your computer is usually preferable for an AIO that's not right next to your desk. This lets you walk over to the AIO with the document, scan it, and then bring the document back with you in one trip. To set the feature up, you have to use a browser to log on to the X502n's built-in Web server, then work your way through some reasonably self-explanatory screens to define things such as what folder to save to on each computer. Once everything's set up, you can scan from the front panel by choosing the PC to scan to.

Ideally, this initial setup should be taken care of by the installation program. Failing that, it should at least be mentioned in the quick-start guide, with a reference to where the detailed instructions can be found in the user guide. Unfortunately, it isn't in the quick-start guide. If you don't know enough to look for the instructions, you may never even learn there's an option to scan from the front panel.

Worse, it turns out the user-guide instructions are pretty lame. They don't even tell you that the default password for changing settings is blank, which means you may wind up wasting time, and building up your level of frustration, trying common defaults such as "admin" or "password." Nor does the guide tell you that scanning from the front panel won't work if you include the drive letter as part of the path for the folder to scan to. The instructions for setting up the e-mail feature, so you can scan and e-mail directly from the X502n, are similarly lacking in important details.

Not so incidentally, not being able to include a drive letter for the scan folder means that you're locked into saving to a folder on your C: drive, which might not be what you want. For example, I prefer partitioning my disks, and putting data on its own disk. Having to save scans to drive C means having to go though a second step in which I move the scanned files to my data drive.

The good news is that the X502n does very well on the core task of printing. I timed it on our business applications suite at a total of 13 minutes 52 seconds (using QualityLogic's hardware and software, www.qualitylogic.com). The only sub-$1,000 color laser AIO that has handed in a faster time is the more expensive Dell Multifunction Color Laser Printer 3115cn, at 11:27. Photo speed also counts as fast, averaging 23 seconds for a 4-by-6 and 33 seconds for an 8-by-10.

Text quality is among the best available, which means the X502n can handle any text you need to print. More than half the fonts in our test suite qualified as easily readable and well formed at 4 points, and only one heavily stylized font with thick strokes needed as much as 12 points to pass that threshold.

Graphics are a match for most color laser printers, making them more than good enough for any internal business need, including things such as printing PowerPoint handouts. I saw some dithering in the form of graininess and mild posterization, with shading changing suddenly where it should change gradually, but even so, the output is good enough for things like trifold brochures. I wouldn't hesitate to hand it to an important client or customer I wanted to impress with my professionalism. Photo quality is better than what most laser printers can manage, and also good enough for things such as brochures for mailings and handouts.

I ran into one other problem in testing that demands mention. With the AIO installed to print over a network, the driver lost communication with it when I switched to high-quality mode, and the only way to reestablish communication was to reinstall the driver. This was not a problem when I connected by a USB port, or, oddly enough, when I installed for a USB connection first, and then changed to a network connection. Lexmark has since found the bug and fixed it, as I confirmed with a beta version of the fix. According to Lexmark, the new version of the driver is already shipping with the X502n. If you wind up with the older version, you can download the new one from the Lexmark Web site.

Given the issues I ran into, I can't give the X502n an unqualified recommendation, particularly for people who don't have the time, patience, or background to work their way past the poor instructions. But for a sophisticated user who's willing to invest the time in learning how to take advantage of all the features, the X502n may well be the sub-$1,000 color laser AIO of choice.

Benchmark Test Results
Check out the Lexmark X502n's test scores.

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