Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Just received this today, so it is possible over time I may change my mind, and if I do, I'll update this review. But it is awesome so far! I'm replacing a 20-year-old high-end Brother printer, so I'll compare it to that. The Brother cost $600 20 years ago, so I was not expecting much at all from a $117 printer. Most of the negative reviews mentioned trouble connecting via WiFi. My first thought was I didn't care about that. I've never had a WiFi printer in the past and didn't see any reason it would be necessary now. However, I have gotten married since 20 years ago and we have kids and more computers in the house, so I figured if it worked that would be great and if not, well, it was only $117 and we didn't have a networked printer in the past so it would be okay. Of course, once it arrived, connecting it to WiFi became my first obsession! I guess I just wanted to try it that cool new feature! I've never connected a printer to WiFi and wasn't sure how it worked. The printed materials that came with the printer were totally useless. It's all pictures, no words and nothing about connecting via Wifi. But, all the info you need, really, is on the printer screen. Even though it's tiny, I was able to get the information I needed from it to connect it up. Basically, I turned the printer on, read the directions as they scrolled across on the tiny screen and followed the directions. It mentioned a Lexmark printer app, which I downloaded. I was able to quickly and easily connect the app on my phone to the printer and from there it was a breeze. It went through the steps and I was able to print from my phone. Which again, was not something I had ever imagined doing, much less anything I needed or wanted to do. But it worked and that was cool! Then it was off to connect two computers to it. First I plugged it in by wire to my wife's computer - which I think might have been a mistake. But at the time I thought that's how you had to do it. For some reason I wasn't able to get it to connect via WiFi on her computer because while the computer "saw" the printer, it kept asking me for a WPS PIN which it said was either printed on the printer or was on the printed materials that came with the printer. It was on neither. I gave up on that and went to install it via WiFi only on my computer. Actually I didn't really have to do anything. I opened the Printer Settings on my computer and clicked Add Printer, then find WiFi connected printer and it was right there. So it was already broadcasting the signal to all devices in our house and all I had to do was click Connect - and it worked like a charm. The weird thing though is it didn't ask me for any WPS PIN for my computer. And I'm guessing that's because I never connected it via wire - so it didn't halfway install itself by wire only to get confused by WiFi? I don't know. But I did not ever attach it to my computer with a wire and the WiFi connected up absolutely flawlessly. Then I went back to my wife's computer and using the disk that came with the printer I installed the drivers from that. And once that was done, suddenly it worked fine as a WiFi printer. Although it shows up in Printer Settings as (copy1) of the first attempted installation by wire, which still works if it's plugged in with the wire. Then for the big test. I moved the printer to another room! Would we both be able to print on it from our respective offices? My wife's office is closest and mine is further away... about 50 feet away and several drywall walls. From my wife's office, everything went off without a hitch. From my office - same result. Print Perfect both times. My old $600 Brother printer did excellent color prints, and this one does as well - for 1/6th the price. I printed a few photos from the Lexmark, as a test, and was absolutely amazed at their quality. They're almost photo-printer quality. In fact, if I printed them on laser photo paper, I think they'd look good enough to frame and hang. The other nifty feature is the double-sided print feature. Maybe this is something that's been common among printers for the last few years, I'm not sure. But if you're not used to it, it's very cool. It will print on both sides of the paper - automatically. In other words, you don't have to print on one side and then stick the page in upside down and print the other side manually anymore. It will print the first side, then suck the page back into the printer and print the other side! It's really amazing to watch if you've never seen a printer do this before. And it's so fast. One other plus factor is that it's much smaller and lighter than our old printer. The old one, I literally can't lift by myself it's so darn heavy. Something around 100 pounds I think. But this one is much easier to lift, it's like a heavy suitcase. We also appreciate that it takes up much less space than the old behemoth did. One con so far... they include about 7 or 8 sheets of paper (printed on both sides - that's 16 pages of printing) with nothing other than safety warnings - in every imaginable language. The length of the English text wouldn't take up more than about 2 paragraphs, not even a full page. So it's a colossal waste of paper they include and completely unnecessary. Not to mention the hassle they cause all their customers with so much extra paper they have to throw out. BIG WASTE. I have to think that the United States is their largest market and as such might warrant it's own version of this in English and perhaps Spanish. But no... they literally had to print it in almost every major language on earth - and send it in every major language to every customer! Totally ridiculous, wasteful and annoying. The only instructions are what looks like a hand-drawn diagram with little arrows drawn here and there. Not a single word printed on these two pages - where words would be extremely helpful. Apparently the folks at Lexmark don't want to *offend* anyone by writing in the language/languages spoken in the United States only, so they opt not to print any words at all. As if instructions in English might offend people! Like the United States is such a small market it's not worth their time and effort to print in English and Spanish. Other than that big annoyance though, we're both very pleased with this purchase. I'm still amazed at all the complaints - and really surprised it has only a 3.7-star review score. That's way below where it should be in my humble opinion. I have seen some reviewers say it worked well at first but after a few weeks it went bad. So, if that happens here, I'll come back and definitely adjust my score accordingly, and revise my review to let you know.