Lexmark C530 Toner Cartridges

Lexmark C530 Printer Review

The Lexmark C530 is a color laser printer designed for the small or medium office environment. It has good print quality and fast speeds, but it is bulkier than competing products.

The design of the Lexmark C530 is rather bulky, especially for a small office printer. The unit measures 19.1 inches by 17.3 inches by 20.2 inches (HWD) and weighs 57.1 pounds with the toner cartridges. Needless to say, it will not fit into tight spaces. Users with very limited space may need to look elsewhere, but considering its other great attributes, it is worth the tradeoff of its larger size as long as you have room for it.

Paper capacity is decent, with 250 sheets in its standard tray, and 100 sheets in its multipurpose tray. Unfortunately, the C530 has no expansion options when it comes to paper, so what you see is what you get. The printer has a solid processor at 375 MHz and 128 MB of ram, so it can handle a fair number of users before slowing down. Ethernet is included in the "N" models of the printer, and duplexing in the "D" models.

Lexmark is making a green initiative with some of its printers, and the C530 is included in this. Energy-consumption and consumables waste is reduced, resulting in quite a bit of savings for the user. Lexmark C530 toner cartridges come in capacities of 4,000 pages for black and 3,000 pages for each color. High-yield Lexmark C530 printer toner cartridges are available in capacities of 8,000 pages for black and 5,000 pages for each color, lowering the per-page printing costs. Using third-party toner cartridges can lower per-page costs to less than 1 cent per page.

Print speeds are quite good, at around 15 pages per minute for both monochrome and color prints. Print quality in monochrome is excellent. Text quality is very sharp and defined, and readable at very small font sizes. Color quality is only average, with a few color inaccuracies and blotchy colors.

Overall, the Lexmark C530 is a well-designed, affordable printer with the speed and capacity to keep up with a small or medium office.