Canon ImageClass LBP236dw Review - Shaoxing Pump Control Co.,Ltd

The Canon ImageClass LBP236dw is one of a number of desktop mono laser printers that are designed for a busy small-to-midsize office or workgroup, with closely matching specs for size, paper handling, and speed. Most of these models—among them the Lexmark MS431dw and B3342dw, as well as Canon's own ImageClass X LBP1238 II—also delivered similar performance for simplex (one-sided) printing on our tests. The LBP236dw, however, has the advantage of significantly faster speed for two-sided (duplex) printing than its most-direct competition. Also in the plus column? It has a lower list price than most ($299) and an acceptably low running cost. This combination makes it our new Editors' Choice pick in the category, replacing the MS431dw.

The 19.4-pound LBP236dw is light enough for one person to easily move into place, and at 9.8 by 15.8 by 14.7 inches (HWD), it's easy to find room for, even though the depth increases by several inches when the 100-sheet front multi-purpose tray is open and paper is loaded. Physical setup is as simple as it gets: Remove the packing materials, and connect the power cord. The toner cartridge ships in place inside the printer, ready to work as is.

Canon ships a driver disc with the printer, but for my tests I went to Canon's website to ensure I had the latest version of the software. The site automatically recognized that I was running the 64-bit version of Windows 10, and recommended downloading Canon's proprietary driver, which I chose for testing. (You can also choose a PCL6 or PostScript 3 driver, if you need either.) The installation is mostly automated, giving you the choice of using an Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or USB connection, and telling you when to connect a cable. For mobile printing, you can also download the Canon Print Business app for iOS and Android devices.

Paper capacity and paper handling is the same for the LBP236dw as for all of the printers already mentioned above. Each of these models offers a 250-sheet drawer, a 100-sheet multipurpose tray, and automatic duplexing in the base unit. And in each case, if you need higher capacity, you can add an optional 550-sheet drawer ($199 for the LBP236dw). Canon recommends a monthly duty cycle of 750 to 4,000 pages. That's a lower maximum than Lexmark recommends for its two printers mentioned here, but it's also more realistic. Assuming you add the optional drawer to any of these printers, the high end of the range translates to needing to refill the printer a little more often than once a week, on average.

The one issue I had with setup was that the user guide, which is for both the LBP236dw and a similar model, doesn't make clear when it's talking about a feature that only the other printer offers. In particular, there's a USB Type-A port on the back panel, with instructions in the manual explaining how to set the printer to allow printing from a USB key. But the menu options that the manual refers to don't exist on the control panel's five-line LCD. It took a long call to Canon tech support, and lots of time on hold, to find out that the feature is supported only by the other printer.

One important extra is secure printing, which can be useful if the LBP236dw is more than a few steps from your desk. It lets you send a file to the printer, but not print it until you enter a PIN at the front panel. For sensitive documents, this avoids the risk of having them sitting in the output tray, where others might see them before you reach the printer.

As always, the more you expect to print, the more attention you should pay to running costs. For the LBP236dw, the cost per page works out to 2.25 cents when using the high-capacity cartridge. It's not the lowest running cost of all the printers mentioned here, but it's only 0.45 cent per page more than the lowest at this writing. Be sure to consider the total cost of ownership, not just running cost, when making comparisons, as discussed in How to Save Money on Your Next Printer. Although the example in the article uses inkjets, the same logic works for mono lasers.

For our performance tests, we connected both the LBP236dw and our standard testbed to our test network by Ethernet. For simplex printing, which are the results we report for every printer, the times were consistent with the LBP236dw's 40ppm rating, and essentially tied with the three other printers mentioned here. For our 12-page Word text file, not including the first page, it came in at 41.3ppm (16 seconds). First page out (FPO) time was 7 seconds, giving a speed for the entire file of 31.3ppm (23 seconds). The only difference for the other printers was for FPO time, which varied from 7 to 9 seconds, a spread that's within the error range of the tests. (See more about how we test printers.)

Performance was also essentially tied for all the printers for the full business-applications suite, which adds files that include graphics as well as color images. The LBP236dw came in at a total of 1 minute and 7 seconds (22.4ppm). The other three managed 1:06 to 1:08 (22.4ppm to 22.7ppm), also well within the error range for the test. On our photo suite, the LBP236dw averaged 13 seconds for a 4-by-6-inch photo.

We don't usually report speeds for duplex printing, because they typically don't tell you anything you can't learn from the simplex results. In this case, however, they do. For the 12-page Word file, not including the first sheet, the LBP236dw lost barely any speed, coming in at 37.9ppm (19 seconds). Only the much more expensive LBP1238 II tied it. Both Lexmark models dropped to about half their simplex speed, printing in duplex at 21.2 and 22ppm, or 31 and 30 seconds. The two Canon models also had faster FPO times, at 12 seconds, versus 17 and 18 seconds for the Lexmark models. Speeds for the full 12-page file were 23.2ppm (31 seconds) for the Canon models, against about 15ppm (47 to 49 seconds) for the two Lexmark printers.

What all this adds up to: You won't see much difference in print times among these four printers for simplex printing, but you will for duplex, particularly for text or other files that don't need much processing time. And the longer the file, the more noticeable the difference will be. If you will print many long text files double-sided, that gives either of the Canon printers a big edge.

Output quality was top-tier for a mono laser, or close to it across the board. All the fonts in our test suite that you'd likely use in a business document were easily readable at 4 points, and all but one of those delivered properly spaced, well-formed characters even at 4 points. One of two heavily stylized fonts with thick strokes was easily readable at 6 points. The other, which is harder to render well, was easily readable at 8 points.

Some hard-to-render gradients in graphics were on the edge of looking more like smudges than gradients, but even single-pixel-wide lines on a black background held nicely. Dithering patterns (the arrangement of dots that reproduce grayscale) in graphics and photos were subtle enough that they didn't show at all in many images, and were hard to make out when they did show. Photos retained enough detail and subtle shading to serve for a trifold brochure or the like.

Although any of the printers mentioned here can do a more-than-credible job as a workhorse mono laser for a small office or workgroup, the Canon ImageClass LBP236dw is our top pick in the group. If you rarely or never print in duplex, either of the two Lexmark models will give you essentially the same performance and capability, but both are currently showing on Lexmark's website at a higher price than the LBP236dw. Between the two, the B3342dw has a higher running cost than the LBP236dw, while the MS431dw's is lower for toner, but not by much. The savings for the MS431dw is even less if you print enough to need a replacement imaging unit—something that you don't have to worry about with Canon printers, since they incorporate the imaging unit in the toner cartridges.

Compared with the LBP236dw, the LBP1238 II offers a few extra features, such as a 5-inch touch screen that lets you give commands to print from the cloud. But it's also a much more expensive printer, and there's no reason to pay for the extra features unless you need them. The LBP236dw offers the same fast speed for duplex printing, the same paper handling, and a lower price, making it our newest Editors' Choice pick for a workhorse mono laser for a small-to-midsize office or workgroup.

Canon's ImageClass LBP236dw, a workhorse mono laser printer, fills that role well, delivering speed, paper capacity, and output quality suitable for a busy small-to-midsize office or workgroup.

This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time.

Your subscription has been confirmed. Keep an eye on your inbox!

Lab Report