Lexmark E260dn

Lexmark's inkjet printers have failed to impress in recent PC Pro Labs, but its lasers are a different proposition. In our last laser printer group test the E250dn wowed us with its low cost, speed and impressive specification, and although the price has gone up, the follow-up - the E260dn - is just as impressive.

It can't match the Samsung ML-1630W for quality, but it comes a close second. Its 1,200 x 1,200dpi resolution produces balanced graphical output that's smoothly dithered, sharp and clean. Text reproduction is first-class, and blacks are intense.

It comes near the top of the table for speed too. It's rated at 33ppm, and in our 50-page text test it hit that square on, finishing the test in 1min 38secs with a processing time of eight seconds. That speed dropped by 10ppm to 23ppm for the complex Excel spreadsheet, but jumped back up to just over 30ppm on average for our Word and PDF DTP document tests.

The printer's duplex unit offers double-sided printing and there's networking capability too - impressive in a printer this cheap, and it isn't averse to use in even a busy office environment. A maximum monthly duty cycle of 50,000 pages sees to that.

But all its good work is undermined by higher than average running costs. Our analysis shows that, in the long run, this Lexmark is the second most costly printer to own. After 10,000 pages it will have cost a total of £389 exc VAT without the paper; the most expensive at this point of any printer on test.

As a result, it misses out on the overall award this month. Although it costs more and quality isn't as good, we'd choose the Kyocera FS-1350DN for its lower running costs.

Author: Jonathan Bray