Lexmark C530dn review

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Verdict:

The C530dn combines brisk printing with high-quality results. Although you can't upgrade its paper inputs, it has some excellent features such as duplex printing. It's an excellent printer, but the Dell 3110cnfs very cheap running costs mean it just steals the Best Buy award.

Review Date: 15 Mar 2007

Price when reviewed: inc. VAT

Reviewed By: Simon Handby

Our Rating 5 stars out of 5

Lexmark's C530dn costs just £25 more than the Epson AcuLaser C1100, but it has a far higher specification.

It has a network port, two paper inputs and an LCD control panel. It's also the only printer in this test with an automatic duplexer, and one of only three to support the PCL and PostScript print languages.

The C530dn is easier than most printers to unpack, as long as you understand the cryptic instruction icons on the lid. Setting up involves removing plenty of packing material from around the consumables, which are already inserted. Lexmark's install program detected and installed the printer, but it added only the PostScript driver. We had to run it again to install the PCL driver and assign it manually to the correct Windows network print port.

When we first tried to print our 50-page draft document, the printer encountered a problem and continued beyond 50 pages, printing junk characters. We reset it and downloaded and installed the latest PCL driver, which cured the problem. The times in our table on page 100 were recorded using this new driver. PostScript printing was slower, but the difference was surprisingly small. Using PostScript our mixed-colour speed test took three minutes and 50 seconds, and two 10x8in photos took 58 seconds.

Print quality was good, particularly from the PCL driver, which produced more accurate colours in graphics. Solid colour fills looked consistent, with crisp outlines, and there was little obvious dithering. Photos were good, but their colours were a little under-saturated. Using the PostScript driver, colours appeared too dark, and highlights suffered from a yellow tint. The printer was unable to complete one particular very high-resolution photo test using the PostScript driver.

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