Image quality
Often, great speeds come at the expense of quality, but happily, this isn't the case with the Lexmark X502n. Its black text prints were basically perfect, which we would expect of a printer in this price range. Black graphics were also very good, marred only by faint horizontal lines. Colour text was nearly perfect, though very close inspection revealed some inconsistencies in character formation. Colour blending was very smooth, though.
The colour graphics print was a bit more problematic, but very good nevertheless. Colour blocks were nicely saturated, gradients were smooth (though we saw banding in the greyscale gradient), and the photo elements were sharp and detailed. Our only big problems with this print were that the colours were a bit too ruddy and it had some problems handling barcode-style patterns.
The X502n's Achilles' heel is greyscale scanning. It did a pretty good job handling various patterns, but the scan was very overblown, with a faded look to it. None of the blacks were remotely black, and details were shot in the highlighted areas of photo elements. But the X502n did a better job with the colour scan. Colours were smoothly rendered and pleasing and details were sharp. The only problem was, again, its inability to handle the closely set lines of barcode graphics.
Conclusion
Overall, we were very impressed by the X502n's quality. Only the HP Color LaserJet CM1017 did better, but that particular model sacrifices speed to quality and is better suited for workgroups that need very high quality graphics.
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
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Edited by Matthew Elliott
Additional editing by Kate Macefield
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User reviews2
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George123 5 April 2009
Good: OK for straightforward printing & routine scanning
Bad: automatic document feeder unreliable, and rather faint copies
Comment: What I wanted was a multifunction printer for a small home/office. I have now had this one for about a year
This works fine for straightforward printing of documents etc that are sent to it from the computer. My one quibble here is that it is difficult to set with the default on mono printing, however you try to set this it tends to jump back to colour. Then when printing mono, it still uses the colour cartridges as well as the black, making it unnecessarily expensive to run.
The scanner is not as good as it could be when scanning, particularly with the automatic document feeder. This often distorts the original so that the middle section of each page bulges slightly and does not scan and copy properly, with just the 2 edge sections of the sheet being clear. I also have difficulties scanning or copying pages fainter than normal print -- pencil drawings and notes for instance. However much I adjust the intensity, these come out very faintly. To get a reasonable quality I almost always have to use a separate scanner.
As far as the fax functions are concerned they are fine for me, but I now have very few faxes either sending or receiving.
This is the first multifunction machine I have had, so I have nothing to compare it with, but it does seem significantly more expensive to run than a mono laser printer, even when printing mono. Colour printing is quite good, particularly for text and line drawings. For photographs I always use the inkjet printer, and if scanning photo's etc I use the dedicated scanner
Richard Belan 21 December 2007
Good: The printout quality, speed, price
Bad: Irritating fan noise in power saving mode
Comment: I have been using this printer for two weeks.
I was looking for a good quality multifunction laser printer for replacing of my old HP inkjet multifunction printer and the OKI LED b&w laser printer. When looking at the prices, I found the HP printers far too expensive and I went for this printer instead. Until now, I think I have made the right decision.
The quality of the B&W and colour print outs are quite good. The speed of the printer is fine. I have to admit, that the speed was not taken into the considerations for buying this printer and I was used to the speed of the OKI laser printer, which is fast too.
The printer unit is heavy and looks quite solid, no plastic sounds. It is heavy, I managed to move it my self without problems.
The setup of the printer is done by following the graphical guide only in pictures. The basic unpacking went without any problems. The first problem occured, when I wanted to install the drivers. What the graphical guide does not tell you is, that if you want to use it as network printer (X502n), you have to set up the network on the printer prior installation of the software drivers and how to do it. If you fail to do so, the software drivers will not be able to find the printer and you have to restart the whole installation procedure. For some reason, the IP address of the printer was set to something like 192.0.0.? and normally set up local network is usually not able to route to this destination. After this was done, the rest of the installation completed without problems. With one exception. One PC was set up with the OKI and HP printer drivers on VISTA and the installation failed with strange error message. It seems to be problem in Windows VISTA printer support, simple uninstallation fixed the problem and everything was working perfectly after that.
Scanning requires some setup to be done before you can do anything, so please read the manual. You can do it by accessing the printer’s web interface.
Copying works fine, I needed to alter the default setup, because the color copy was too light.
Fax worked fine first time I tried it. I do not have any special requirements for faxing, other then; it should send the fax to the specified number. And it did.
The manufacturer/reviews claims that the machine is targeted for small offices/workgroups, i.e. in many cases places, where the printer is placed inside the same room as your own desk. I do not think, that the printer fits into this environment, because of its power saving feature. After a specified time period, the printer goes to power safe mode as expected. However for some reason one of the internal fans cooling the device continues to run making quiet, but remarkable hi pitch noise. The only way to get rid of the noise is to switch the device off, or move it to another place. So don't expect it to have the printer close to your own desk. It is a bit pity, because this printer is ideal for small and large offices and even for home users.
See all 2 user reviews