Lexmark C530dn review

Colour lasers promise the best of both worlds: colour output, like an inkjet, but at high speed, like a mono laser.

If you're looking for something sturdy enough to handle a heavy workload, the Lexmark C530dn looks and feels the part. Nearly half a metre in all directions, and weighing in at a massive 25.9kg, our first test was whether we could get it out of the box without incurring a hernia.

In part, the Lexmark's bulk is explained by the vertically stacked arrangement of its four toner cartridges. Another culprit is the reasonably capacious 250-sheet input tray that slides into the base of the machine. As well as the usual USB port for connecting the printer directly to a single PC, the C530 comes with Ethernet port, enabling it to be shared over a network. Lexmark also offers an optional WiFi adapter. A basic LCD display lets you adjust print settings such as brightness and saturation as well as selecting functions.

Text output was superb, with the crispest, blackest text of any of the lasers tested this month. It was fast, too: our first page emerged in less than seven seconds, and the tenth was finished in around 33 seconds, slightly surpassing Lexmark's own claim of 17 pages per minute.

Due to the nature of the technologies involved, colour laser printers are rarely a match for inkjets when it comes to reproducing photos. Because images are built up using a relatively coarse halftone screen, they resemble pictures in newspapers more than traditional photo prints. And because the colour toner has to be heat-sealed onto the page, you can only use standard types of copier paper, rather than glossy photo papers. Given these limitations, the Lexmark still makes a very pleasing colour printer, producing well-balanced images that are perfect for everyday business use. They come out quickly, too: our six 6x4 inch prints emerged in one minute and 47 seconds. The first copy alone took almost a minute to emerge, an indication of the processing required for high resolution images. If you want to improve print times, you can expand the printer's standard 128MB of built-in memory, up to a maximum of 640MB.

There are a few good colour lasers in this price bracket, but fast text, decent colour output and low running costs mean the Lexmark C530 deserves a Good Buy award.