The E320 is an affordable laser printer that works equally well as a personal printer or a shared office printer. Print speed is fast, but quality lags slightly behind competing products. The Lexmark E320 is a monochrome laser printer designed for office networks. Unlike many network printers, the E320 is quite affordable. In fact, the price is more in line with a typical personal laser printer.
Its monthly duty cycle of 10,000 pages gives an idea of its true nature, however, and with a 3000 page toner cartridge capacity, this printer is obviously meant for bigger things. The size of the printer is quite compact, allowing it to fit in tight spaces, and since paper input and output is mainly on top of the unit, it can squeeze in between other equipment when necessary.
While the printer doesn’t come with an ethernet port by default, it can be upgraded to include one. It is also easy to set up the printer for network sharing with the included software, though it will need to be connected to a router or a computer that will have to remain on when printing.
Print speed is very good for its price range, at 12 pages per minute. Text quality is generally sharp, but suffers a bit on smaller fonts, where text can become somewhat light and fuzzy. Printing costs are average when using the included toner cartridge, around 4 cents per page. Using the high-yield cartridge with a 6,000 sheet capacity, printing costs go down to about 2.5 cents per page. Combined with toner saving features, users can get even more mileage out of non-critical printing.
Overall, the E320 has the speed and capacity to keep up with larger offices, despite its lower price and compact size. If small font text quality is an issue, buyers may want to look elsewhere.
