Lexmark C530dn user reviews
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User reviews3
Liam R E Quin 29 May 2011
Good: quiet; reasonable print quality
Bad: uses toner constantly; slow to print first page
Comment: This printer uses toner every day, even when you're not printing; it "calibrates" itself, moving toner from the cartridges to a toner receptacle that you have to pay to replace in addition to those empty toner cartridges.
If you leave the printer turned off, it will calibrate when you turn it on, and/or sometimes when you first print; it takes a minute or two, so you can't rely on this printer if you are in a hurry.
The blacks are very smooth and solid (on the right paper at least) and the colours are good, so the only real problem I have with it is the toner usage. A minor (for me) secondary problem is that the paper path is not straight through, so printing on card or envelopes is difficult.
I don't think I'd buy another one.
Barrie Bain 6 May 2008
Good: Price, print qaulity
Bad: Colour toners "time out"
Comment: No complaints on quality, purchase price etc, but the key problem is colour toner apparent use. We use the printer primarily for mono printing, but we have had to replace the colour toners 6 times for a total of just over 800 colour copies. All the colour toners show empty at exactly the same time, presumably because they have a chip that tells them its time to extract more money from the owner. They are not physically empty. Lexmark say that when printing mono you use a bit of colour toner, but this does not explain why the toners say they are empty when, physically it is clear they are not. If like us, you want a printer for mostly mono with the occassional colour, you will end up spending a fortune on toner you don't actually use. Now the colour photoconductors and showing low.
If you are printing mostly colour, running cost will probably not be too bad, but the fact that all toners shoe empty at the same time will mean you are still wasting toner - on no other printer we have had have all the toners run out at exactly the same time. Black toner use has been acceptable and matches indicated life.
Reviews should pay closer attention to running costs - in just one year we've spent almost three times more on toners (that we haven't actually used up ) than we paid for the printer.
mlbarnes 18 November 2007
Good: Duplex, Monochrome
Bad: Total Print Failures, Toner Yield Lies, Hopeless Support.
Comment: Specifications and value cannot be faulted, BUT.
1. Mine just doesn't work any more! (See specifics below)
2. Lexmark support ignore their emails, and on the costly phone support promise to call you back and never do.
3. The box says LexOnSite support - Good luck getting it!
4. Three of my 1.5k toners are "nearly empty" after 0.5k of 4% black coverage and 80 pages of <20% colour. Toners I understand are 'chipped' so only Lexmark can rip you off for replacements.
5. As with other printers, the 21ppm (if I remember right) is once it gets going, but I have to wait anything up to 5 minutes for the first page. B&W is faster though.
6. When I have had small photos printed ok, the colour matching has been terrible, and 'darkness' settings seems to make no odds. Lexmark do not seem to understand what a colorsync or ICC profile is either.
A few specifics ....
Initially, I succeeded getting this printer to churn out a few pages of colour (probably when I was using small low res. prints). Complex colour pages however print out as a single line error "PDF Error 11 : PostScript Error: LIMITCHECK, or more recently still "PDF Error 10 : PostScript Error: IOERROR". Sometimes nothing will print at all. Invariably, the printer claims to be busy for 5 minutes until it just stops or prints the text line.
I have reset the printer, and completely reset my own MacOS X "Print System" and nothing has got any better. Lexmark have given up answering their email after making a couple of suggestions 'for idiots' not far short of "is it turned on at the wall?". I got a lot more help working with a Mac Forum on further trials, but nothing has worked, and the printer is basically £300 worth of garbage to me now, and I shall have to contend with Lexmark/their reseller for a refund.