Canon ImageClass LBP246dw

The Canon ImageClass LBP246dw ($299.99) is similar enough to the Canon LBP236dw—our current Editor's Choice winner for a workhorse mono laser printer for a busy small or midsize office or workgroup—that it takes a careful look to spot any notable differences. It's marginally faster, at 42 pages per minute instead of 40ppm, but neither that nor its extra dollar in list price is enough to matter. The key difference is a higher maximum resolution. What keeps the LBP246dw from replacing the LBP236dw as our top pick for its category is that it also has a slightly higher running cost. But if you need the higher resolution for more readable small fonts or fine detail in line drawings, the LBP246dw is the obvious choice.

Design: Lightweight and Easy to Set Up

At 19.2 pounds and 9.8 by 15.7 by 14.7 inches (HWD), the LBP246dw is light enough for one person to move into place and small enough to find room for easily, even on your desk. However, note that depth increases by several inches after opening up the front-mounted 100-sheet multi-purpose tray and loading paper. Once you've found a spot, physical setup requires no more than removing a few strips of packing tape and connecting the power cord. The toner cartridge comes already installed and ready to work.

Software installation using the setup program on the supplied disc is also simple. The program lets you choose between a network connection or a USB connection, and it gives you a choice of drivers, including Canon's proprietary driver and both PCL6 and PS3 drivers for those who need them. The setup program then handles most of the rest automatically. I chose the proprietary driver and a network connection, having already connected an Ethernet cable to the printer. For mobile printing, you can also download the Canon Print Business app for iOS and Android devices. Canon says the printer supports a Wi-Fi connection as well, but I didn't see any options in the program for establishing the connection. A Canon spokesperson did not answer whether you can find a way to set one up through the installation program, as with some other Canon printers I've tested.

(Credit: Canon)

Paper handling is typical for this class of mono lasers. As with virtually all of its competition, the LBP246dw contains a 250-sheet drawer, a 100-sheet multi-purpose tray, and automatic duplexing in the base unit. For those who need higher capacity, you can also get an optional 550-sheet drawer ($199). Canon's recommended duty cycle is a realistic 750 to 4,000 pages. Assuming you add the optional drawer for the maximum 900-sheet capacity, the high end of the range translates to needing to refill the printer a little more often than once per week on average.

As with the LBP236dw, the LBP246dw features private printing—Canon calls it Secure Print—which lets you send a file to the printer, but not print it until you enter a PIN at the front panel. This can come in handy if the printer is more than a few steps from your desk. If you need to print sensitive documents, it lets you avoid the risk of leaving them sitting in the output tray, where others might see them before you remove them.

(Credit: Canon)

As always, the more you expect to print, the more attention you should pay to running costs. The cost per page for the LBP246dw works out to 2.44 cents, which is 0.19 cents higher than for the LBP236dw, or $19 for 10,000 pages. If you expect to print 750 pages per month on average, that's about $17 more per year in running costs. If you expect to print 4,000 pages per month, that's about $90 per year. When comparing with printers that have a significantly different initial price, be sure to look at the total cost of ownership, not just running cost, as discussed in our guide to how to save money on your next printer. Keep in mind also that with some lasers, you need to add in the cost per page for a separate imaging unit. The toner cartridges for both Canon models include the imaging unit as part of the cartridge.

Testing the ImageClass LBP246dw: Duplexing for the Win

For our performance tests, we compared the LBP246dw with the LBP236dw; the Lexmark MS431dw, our previous top choice for the category; and the Canon LBP247dw, which provides essentially identical print capabilities as the LBP246dw, but adds some features and drops others.

For simplex (one-sided) printing, we saw virtually no differences from one printer to the next. For our 12-page Word text file, all were tied both for first page out (FPO) time, at 7 seconds, and for total time for the test, hitting 41ppm for pages 2 through 12.

For the full business applications suite, the difference between fastest and the slowest was 1 second, which is within the error range for the test.

That doesn't mean the printers all deliver matching performance, however. For duplex (two-sided) printing of the Word file, we saw significant differences. All three Canon printers tied for the first sheet (pages 1 and 2) out time, beating the MS431dw by several seconds. For the rest of the file, the LBP246dw and LBP247dw tied for first place, at 38ppm, with the LBP236dw close behind. The MS431dw came in convincingly last, at 19ppm.

For text documents up to about 12 pages, the nearly two-to-one speed difference between fastest and slowest for duplex printing in this group probably won't be enough to notice if you have to walk to the printer. But the longer the file, the more significant it will be. In contrast, the LBP236dw was only 3 seconds slower than the other two Canon models for pages 2 through 12, which means you probably won't notice a difference between the three of them for anything shorter than about 30 pages (which would work out to about a 9-second lag).

Output quality was top tier for a mono laser, or close to it, across the board. Using the default 600-by-600dpi resolution, all but one of the fonts in our test suite that you'd likely use in a business document were easily readable at 4 points. The exception was an italic font, which was easily readable at 5 points. One of two heavily stylized fonts with thick strokes was easily readable at 8 points, while the one that's harder to render well was easily readable at 10 points.

When printing using the High Definition Text setting (presumably 1,200 by 1,200dpi, though I couldn't get Canon to confirm that), most of the fonts were easily readable down to the same point sizes, and a little easier to read at those sizes. The exception was that the italic font was also easily readable at 4 points. A quick look using a loupe confirmed that the individual characters for all the 4-point fonts were better formed, with crisper, cleaner edges.

(Credit: Canon)

For graphics, one hard-to-render gradient looked more like a minor smudge than a gradient, but I saw little else to quibble with. Solid fills were filled in neatly, even a one-pixel-wide line on a black background was clearly visible, and I had to look closely to see any dithering patterns (the arrangement of dots that reproduce grayscale). Photos retained enough detail and subtle shading to serve well for a trifold brochure or the like.

Verdict: An Obvious Choice for High-Resolution Printing

Any of the four printers mentioned here can serve competently as a workhorse mono laser for nearly any small office or workgroup, but each has its own advantages. The MS431dw presents the lowest running cost in the group, for example, but it's also notably slower for duplex printing. The LBP236dw remains our top choice not because it does any one thing better than the others, but because it does everything well enough. Its output quality is top tier for 600-by-600dpi resolution, which is all that most offices need. It wasn't as fast in our tests as the other two Canon models for duplexing, but it wasn't far behind. And although its cost per page is only the second lowest in this group, it costs less to buy at this writing than the MS431dw with its lower running cost, and costs less to run than either of the other two Canon printers.

If you need the step up in output quality to 1,200-by-1,200dpi resolution, both the LBP246dw and LBP247dw are fine choices. The key difference between them is that the LBP247dw replaces the LBP246dw's five-line mono LCD control panel with a 5-inch diagonal color touch screen. It also lets you define your own touch panel commands for printing a form you've stored in the printer; printing from DropBox, Google Drive, or OneDrive; and more.

If you don't need those extras, however, the LBP246dw is the less expensive choice. It's also the only one of the two that has a PostScript driver, which is a critical difference if you use any programs that require PostScript.