Issue #0418/3 - A surprise from Lexmark? As long as the build quality is good, this new colour printer could be good for Lexmark, despite a couple of potential downsides.
Lexmark recently introduced a new colour laser printer that has interesting connotations at the low end of the market.
Lexmark refers to this new printer as ‘game-changing’, which seems to be something of an exaggeration. True, it pushes the ultra low-end envelope a little further up the scale – 8ppm colour and 30ppm mono for £519/€780 is a good entry price but is hardly game-changing. Perhaps the most legitimate claim is derived from the fact that the printer does have a fairly respectable monthly duty cycle of 35,000 pages (but only the same as the Epson AcuLaser C900 and Konica Minolta magicolor 2300) and incorporates print management features, colour monitoring and user restriction capabilities that would not normally be found on a printer at this price.
Costing only £3.44 is not really the issue. The problem is the necessity for very frequent user interventions, which is commonly blamed for low ease-of-use ratings. Most of the other printers in the same class have waste toner bottles four or more times the capacity of the C510 and never requiring more frequent change than the toners.
Pitched at the same price as the recently announced Oki C3100 (£519), here we have 8ppm colour and 30ppm mono in a four-pass machine against Oki’s 12ppm colour and 24ppm mono in a single-pass machine. At 7.35 pence per page, the colour CPP is typically on the high side but not as high as might be expected from Lexmark. It is higher than the 6/24ppm C720, at 6.58 pence, but not as high as Oki’s C3100, at 9.58 pence. This makes it an attractive alternative to the single-pass C3100 despite the fact that it is based on what will soon be considered to be ‘old technology’.
Mono CPP is not yet competitive enough with Lexmark mono printers to push the mono printer out of the office – 30ppm mono with CPP of 1.39 pence against 33ppm Optra T630 at 1.09 pence. It is more in line with the 22ppm Optra T420D at 1.34 pence. However, again, it beats the Oki C3100 by more than 14%.
Comparing it to the very bottom of the ultra low-end models from Konica Minolta and Epson, not only does it have faster print speeds for its higher purchase price but its colour CPP is significantly lower and only the mono CPP is beaten by Epson’s low-cost mono strategy.
All-in-all, this looks to be a surprising product from Lexmark. Perhaps it is game-changing for Lexmark - even if not in the industry as a whole.
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