Lexmark C500n review

Lexmark's C500n has been around for a few years now. It's larger, noisier and takes longer to warm up than the other printers here, but it also has a larger duty cycle, faster mono print speed and higher yield consumables.

Its installation disc doesn't work under Windows Vista, so you must download the driver from Lexmark's website. The file failed to download from Lexmark's UK site, but we eventually obtained it from the US website at http://support.lexmark.com. Installation was then straightforward.

The driver lets you control a range of settings, including print quality, paper type and watermarking. It has a wide range of colour settings, including the ability to print colour documents in monochrome and, unusually, to force the printer to use composite black, pure black toner or a combination of the two, so you can manage your toner levels manually.

Some settings, such as sleep time and the language displayed on the printer's mono LCD screen, can be altered only via the printer's menu system or its comprehensive web interface. This interface also allows you to monitor the use of consumables and set email alerts in case of printer error.

The top and bottom corners of A4 pages were noticeably curled, but print quality was generally good. Sharp mono text prints were the fastest here at 25.4ppm, despite a rather slow time to first page of 16 seconds. Colour speeds of 6.6ppm weren't that impressive but quality was acceptable, despite slight graininess and vertical lines being visible on some prints.

The C500n was power-hungry, maintaining a peak power consumption of over 1,000W during most of our mono print run. It won't switch into its most power-efficient standby mode if it detects even a simple problem such as an empty paper tray. It's cheap to buy and run, though. A mono page costs 1.4p with high-yield cartridges, while colour pages are just 6.1p. Total costs of ownership for medium and heavy use were among the cheapest here. This is a solid choice for a budget office printer.