Lexmark E321 Printer Review
The Lexmark E321 laser printer is designed for the home or small office user. Its compact size and affordable price, combined with fast print speeds, make it a great choice for small spaces.
The design of the Lexmark E321 laser printer is focused on compactness, measuring only 8.7 inches by 15.4 inches by 14.2 inches, and weighing only 19.7 pounds. This allows it to fit into some tight spaces in a small office, but doesn't sacrifice speed or quality to obtain its small size. The unit can connect via USB or parallel, and there is an optional network upgrade available for connecting it directly to an ethernet network for sharing. It is nice for small office users who don't require network support to not have to pay for it, and other users can add it later.
Paper capacity is a bit small, at 150 sheets, but is probably enough for most home and small office users. An additional 250-sheet drawer can be added as an upgrade if needed. The initial 8 MB of memory is also expandable to 72 MB for users who do a lot of graphics-intensive printing, or large documents.
Lexmark E321 toner cartridges have a standard capacity of 3,000 pages. A high-yield laser toner cartridge is available, which has a capacity of 6,000 pages, resulting in a lower cost per page. The printer toner cartridge is easily accessed and replaced from a front panel.
Print speed is quite fast for the price, at up to 20 pages per minute. Print quality is quite good for the price as well. Text is especially sharp and detailed, and very readable at small font sizes. Graphics quality could be better, but for a black-and-white printer they are average. However, if high quality color prints are needed, buyers are looking in the wrong place with the E321.
Overall, the Lexmark E321 is an impressive machine with the compact size, affordable price, and fast printing speeds to appeal to any small office user. Upgrade options are a nice bonus.