Lexmark E210 review

Even though inkjet printers are advancing in terms of performance and quality, a laser printer's economical running costs and professional-quality output onto plain paper are still hard to beat. Our recent personal laser printers group test (see Labs, issue 83, p119) highlighted some of the best entry-level devices on offer, with Samsung's ML-6060 retaining its A List position in a tough battle. The E210 from Lexmark is the latest offering in this competitive arena, boasting a fast 12ppm output and a reasonably low cost of ownership that make it a serious contender for the ML-6060's A List crown.

The E210 is an entry-level unit, designed for installation in a home office or as a personal printer that can be used detached from a larger network. This application is particularly useful, as, for example, it allows managers to print sensitive documents without having to use a public workgroup printer.

However, considering the printer's low-end status, its specifications are superb. The E210 is powered by a 66MHz processor and is fitted with 4Mb of fixed RAM, allowing for a maximum print speed of 12ppm. This figure isn't to be sniffed at, considering that most lasers in a class above the E210 were offering roughly the same performance only a year ago and many even now. The E210 also offers a maximum output resolution of 600 x 600dpi, although there's no option for higher enhanced resolutions, such as the 1,200dpi mode offered by Samsung's ML-6060 and Epson's EPL-5800L (see Labs, issue 83, p119).

Unfortunately, one area that does suffer due to the E210's small size is paper handling. While the Samsung ML-6060 is capable of accepting a full ream of paper, the E210's vertical-loading paper tray is limited to just 150 A4 sheets. That said, given that it's only intended for light, single-user application, this should be sufficient.

Out of the box, the E210 is simple to set up, with just a single cartridge to install and a choice of parallel or USB for connection to the PC. The front panel offers manual-feed and job-cancelling buttons, as well as three intuitive status lights that inform what the printer is doing, such as processing a print job or if there's a paper jam.

Using the USB connection, the E210 proved to be remarkably close to its 12ppm quoted output speed. The initial 25-page plain text document was churned out in two minutes, nine seconds for 11.1ppm (pages per minute). We then printed our formatted 25-page letter test, which was completed in exactly the same time. The output quality was also superb, with crisp black text equal to any modern personal or small workgroup laser printer.

Next up was the tough 12-page Excel spreadsheet test, which assesses the E210's ability to reproduce block shaded tables and graphics. Again, we were impressed by the performance, with the E210 completing the test in just over a minute for 10.6ppm. This is slightly slower than the text test, although still perfectly respectable. The E210 also did a fine job of reproducing shaded graphs and charts, although Epson's EPL-5800L managed far smoother greyscales. More importantly, though, the Lexmark correctly printed fine-point text on shaded backgrounds, with each page being clearly readable. This is quite an achievement, and one that many low-cost lasers and even some larger workgroup laser printers falter on.

We also tested the E210's ability to print graphics-heavy documents, such as manuals or newsletters. To this end, we printed five copies of our four-page DTP test taken from our inkjet printer test suite. The Lexmark remained thoroughly unfazed, completing the test in one minute, 37 seconds for a near-perfect 11.8ppm. Images were also handled commendably, although there was a noticeable lack of detail and some banding. However, the E210's performance was still comparable to our A-Listed Samsung ML-6060.