Lexmark E234 Printer Review
The Lexmark E234 is a monochrome laser printer designed for the small office environment. It offers fast speeds and excellent quality, but its included memory is a bit lacking. If color printing is desired, consider looking at the LaserJet 2500 toner printer.
The design of the E234 incorporates a slightly glossy black look with curved edges. The result is a printer that stands out from the crowd, but it may not appeal to everyone, as it may not have the professional look that some users might prefer, such as the Brother MFC-7340 toner printer. It has a relatively compact footprint, and it is lightweight, allowing it to fit into fairly tight office spaces and be moved around easily when necessary. Its footprint is 13.9 inches by 15.6 inches, and it weighs 27 pounds. The Lexmark E234 connects via USB or parallel port.
The printer has a 200 mhz processor, but its 16 MB of memory may be limiting for users who tend to do a lot of graphics-heavy printing. Memory can be upgraded to a maximum of 80 MB, but this will come at an extra cost. The Lexmark E234's initial paper capacity is 250 sheets in its single tray, but an additional 550-sheet tray can be added for a total of 800 sheets if necessary.
Print speed is quite fast, at up to 25 pages per minute. Print quality is excellent, due to the 1200 dpi printing engine. Text is clear and sharp, though it loses some readability at the smallest font sizes. Graphics quality is generally good, but shows some banding and blotchiness in some areas.
The E234 is very economical for laser printer toner costs. The Lexmark E234 toner cartridge has a capacity of 2,500 sheets, and the high-yield version has a capacity of 6,000 sheets. Users can get even more out of each Lexmark E234 toner cartridge by enabling the toner save mode, which reduces laser toner consumption.
Overall, the Lexmark E234 is a solid laser printer for the small office. Its speed and print quality are impressive, but users who do graphics-heavy prints may need to upgrade the memory.