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Lexmark X340 review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £156
inc VAT

Specifications

mono laser, 25ppm print speed, USB, 521x530x394mm

http://www.printware.co.uk

Lexmark’s laser MFPs can look old-fashioned, but its well-built devices are often a reliable budget choice.

Although the X340’s bundled driver disc doesn’t support Vista and its squat styling looks dated, the low price and built-in fax make it a tempting choice. It has a modest 600x600dpi scanner, no automatic duplexer and only a USB connection, but its 15,000-page maximum monthly duty cycle is higher than that of most personal laser printers.

Installation under Windows XP was simple, but the installation disc won’t autorun under Vista. Instead, we first had to connect the printer to our PC via USB and allow Vista to search for the drivers on the disc. Fortunately, they were correctly installed through this process, although the printer consistently failed to wake up correctly in our mono-page-from- sleep test sent from a Vista PC, instead printing a garbled stream of ASCII characters.

The scanner’s software interface is basic, with limited auto-cropping capabilities. It helpfully stays open between scans, but there are few image optimisation settings. If you switch to ADF mode after scanning from the platen, scan settings aren’t reset automatically, so you’ll have to do this yourself. A4 images scanned from the platen at the maximum 600dpi resolution were pale and grainy.

In our print tests, photos looked streaked and grainy next to those from Brother’s DCP-7030. Copy quality was also poor, with spidery text and dark images. Our first mono page took just nine seconds to emerge, and once the X340 was up to speed, it produced text at a fast 23.1ppm. However, it managed only 4.8ppm in our image-rich greyscale test. This wouldn’t be a problem if print quality was better, but smooth curves appeared jagged.

The X340 is a serviceable mono printer, but we were disappointed by mediocre scans and poor reproduction of graphs and images. At 2.2p per mono page, not counting the cost of the imaging drum, it’s also fairly expensive to run. Unless you really need the fax, we recommend Brother’s DCP-7030 instead.

Basic Specifications

Rating ***
Maximum native print resolution 600x600dpi
Max optical resolution 600x600dpi
Output bit depth 24-bit

Quoted Speeds

Quoted speed, mono A4 25ppm

Tested Print Speeds

Time for two greyscale 10x8in photos 1.1 34s
Time for six greyscale 6x4in photos 1.0 44s

Physical and Environmental

Standard printer interfaces USB
Optional printer interfaces Lexmark MarkNet 7000e USB to Ethernet adapter 0014T0230, £132, Gigabit Ethernet adaptor 0014T0220 £191, 802.11b/g wireless adaptor. £104
Size 521x530x394mm
Weight 16.3kg
Noise (in normal use) 27dB(A)
Duty cycle 15,000 pages
Power consumption standby 11W
Power consumption idle 15W
Power consumption active 698W

Paper Handling

Maximum paper size A4
Standard paper inputs 1
Standard paper input capacity 250
Maximum paper inputs 2
Maximum paper input capacity 800
Duplex (code, cost if option) No

General

Printer technology mono laser
Language(s) PCL 5e emulation, PCL6 emulation
Supported operating systems Windows 2000/XP/XP-64/Server 2003/Vista/Vista-64, Citrix Metaframe
Maximum printer memory 64MB
Other laser features and options three year onsite warranty extension 002348715, £69

Buying Information

Price £156
Consumable parts and prices 2,500 page black return program toner cartridge 0X340A11G, £55
Price per mono A4 page 2.19p
Price of 2nd paper cassette 550-sheet 0028S0803, £81
Warranty one year onsite
Supplier http://www.printware.co.uk
Details www.lexmark.co.uk

Tested Scan Speeds

Full scan area preview 18s
A4 document at 150dpi 18s
A4 document at 300dpi 25s
6x4in photo at 600dpi 22s
6x4in photo at 1200dpi N/A

Tested Copy Speeds

Time for single A4 mono copy 1.0 13s
Time for 10 A4 copies using feeder 2.0 57s

Copy Features

Maximum number of copies 99
Max mono copy resolution 600x600dpi