Unlike many of its competitors who offer a wide range of appliances, Lexmark is a company dedicated and focused on the business of printing. For their small office customers, Lexmark has released the Lexmark X502n, a multi-function colour laser printer offering printing, copying, scanning and faxing capability. It is a full-featured device, yet at an affordable price.
Design
The Lexmark X502n measures 53.3 cm tall by 48.2 cm wide by 43.7 cm deep and weighs 35 kg. It is quite a large and bulky printer and will dominate a good portion of your office space. It has a top printing speed of 31 pages per minute in monochrome and 8 pages per minute in colour and its duty cycle is a substantial 35,000 pages per month. The top portion of printer holds the colour scanner and 35 sheet automatic document feeder (ADF). The flatbed area of the scanner can scan or copy A4 size documents. The maximum resolution of the Lexmark X502n is 1,200 x 600 dpi and it claims to support both Windows and Apple Mac OS X. However, a word of warning: some Mac users have reported problems with compatibility. Lexmark X502n toner cartridges come in the standard black, cyan, magenta and yellow colours, each offered in regular and high capacity versions. Paper storage uses a 250 sheet input tray, and an optional 530-page drawer is also available. Connectivity to the printer is via either USB or Ethernet connection.
Advantages
The Lexmark X502n toner printer produces fast, high quality prints at a very affordable price. It has all the standard functions that a small office would need, including printing, scanning, copying, and faxing. The control panel is simple and easy to use, with push buttons for the scan, fax and copy functions. This machine also has a 366MHz processor and 128MB, allowing it to queue up large jobs. Networking capability, a necessity in a small office, is built in.
Disadvantages
One of the Lexmark X502n's major disadvantages is that there is no separate manual feed slot so cards, envelopes and transparencies all must be loaded via the built-in paper tray. In an environment with multiple users, this could easily lead to people printing that crucial document on the wrong media. This printer is also very large and imposing, and you'll likely need a very sturdy table to support this unit. Finally, based on some user's experience, this may not be the best choice for offices needed Mac compatibility.
