Lexmark C540n review

A glance at the C540n reveals an interesting feature for a sub-£200 colour laser - the 'n' denotes network capability. Along with the Oki C130n, it's the only printer in this group to offer this enticing feature.

The C540n also features a quirk in that the current driver doesn't allow you to set it to print in black-and-white mode. This is a rather a strange omission for a printer that's otherwise an excellent choice for a small workgroup. The paper tray, for instance, is the highest capacity here, at 250 pages.

Luckily, the C540n is the only printer in this test with a single-pass printing engine. That means all the colours in a document get laid onto the page at the same time, so where some printers such as the Epson AcuLaser C1100 take around four times as long to produce a colour page as a monochrome one, the Lexmark hovered at a steady 20ppm in all our tests. The only drawback to its current inability to print in monochrome is that your printing costs will be higher: the C540n prints the second most expensive colour pages in the group at 9p each. It's also the most expensive printer to run for black-and-white documents, although only by a slim margin.

The C540n delivers excellent results. It produced the most elegant text in our tests by a slim margin, and was superb when printing business documents. Colours appeared as they should and text on a coloured background - always tricky for laser printers at the cheaper end of the market - looked great.

The Lexmark C540n is nearly the best printer for workgroups here. The network capability could prove invaluable, and the large paper trays mean you can crack through plenty of jobs between refills. However, you'll currently need to discipline anyone printing to convert their documents to black and white to avoid high printing charges, and it's mainly for that reason that we can't recommend it for use in a busy office.