Lexmark E230 Printer Review
The Lexmark E230 is a monochrome laser printer designed for the home or small office user. It offers more flexibility and expandability than most printers in its class, making it a good choice for growing offices. A complimentary color printer would be the Lexmark C534 toner printer. A small business with these 2 printers would not need much else.
For the price, most printers can't touch the capacity and flexibility of the E230. It offers 250 sheets of paper capacity in its single drawer, but also supports the addition of a 550-sheet input drawer as an add-on. This is particularly useful for the small office expecting to grow in the future. The E230 also has a higher monthly duty cycle than many competing models, at 10,000 pages per month. This also provides room to grow, and enables it to handle a small or medium office of networked computers. It does not have a built-in ethernet port, but it can be connected to a network with either a print server or a host computer.
Adding to its flexibility is the ability to choose the print resolution, which will affect the balance of print quality vs. print speed. Users who value speed over quality, or vice versa, can change the setting to fit their needs.
Lexmark E230 toner cartridges have a capacity of 2,600 pages, but a high-yield Lexmark E230 toner cartridge is also available, with a capacity of 6,000 pages. Toner prices are very affordable, and users can save even more money with the E230's toner save feature, which reduces the amount of toner needed per page.
Print quality is excellent. Text is particularly impressive, with sharp and detailed characters even at small font sizes. Graphics quality is average, but still quite good. Using the toner save mode only slightly reduces print quality. Print speed is very fast for the price, at up to 22 pages per minute.
Overall, the E230 is a great fit for the office expecting to grow, or one that needs more flexibility than is found in most laser printers. Fast speeds and great quality round out this impressive package.