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Well before it started making inkjet printers and all-in-ones, Lexmark was known for its high-quality laser printers, having originally been the printer division of IBM. It has gone on producing good laser printers, from personal, through small workgroup, to departmental models and the E352dn is marketed as a small workgroup machine.

Decked out in light and dark grey, the E352dn is a squat machine with an economical footprint for its class. At the bottom is a 250-sheet input tray and you can buy a second, optional, 550-sheet tray to sit under it. Above the paper tray is a multi-purpose feeder, though this can only take a single sheet at a time. Print jobs finish up in a recess in the printer's top cover.

At the top of the front panel is a backlit, two-line by 16-character LCD display and a simple set of control buttons. These include menu navigation controls and Stop and Go buttons. Stop can be used to cancel a running print job from the printer.

The ‘d’ and ‘n’ in the printer's model number stand for duplex and network. It has an Ethernet port at the rear, along with its USB 2.0 port and can be set up as a standalone network device.

When switched to duplex mode, to print on both sides of the paper in a single job, the paper briefly ejects from the output slot, before being rolled back in to have its second side printed. The whole process is handled very smoothly and makes less impact on print speed than with some rival models.

The drum and toner cartridge is a two-piece consumable, where the toner cartridge clips into the drum tray. The combined unit then slides into the printer from the front, once you’ve pulled down the front cover. You have to align arrows on the inside of the printer with others on the drum tray, before sliding it into the machine. This is a bit awkward and you can’t change the toner without removing the complete tray assembly.

There’s very little software to install, as all you get is a driver, but this is comprehensive, offering control of multi-page, booklet and poster printing, and of watermarks. There are standard ‘draft’ and ‘confidential’ style watermarks, but you can also add your own.