Workhorse of a printer if you need it (Lexmark T620)

Name: Dando83

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Product:	Lexmark T620
Date:	02/06/06 (316 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Quick, solid, toner capacity 10000 pages

Disadvantages: Menu not user friendly, toner and repairs expensive

We used the Lexmark T620 for several years at our factory until a recent failure of the fuser unit warranted replacing the entire machine because of cost-effectiveness.

Lexmark officially claims output rates of 25-30ppm for this printer. In my own experience, after a short warm up cycle of about 10 seconds, A4 printouts with normal amounts of text are spit out at about three seconds per page (20ppm). Bear in mind this is probably much faster than you're used to.

Shades of grey are excellent and the resolution is a respectable 1200x1200 dpi which produces a nice image. Of course, to save toner, resolution and quality can be scaled right back down to 300 dpi.

While you can probably lift it yourself, this printer is BIG. You will need a significant amount of desk space to set it up. Furthermore, the large size means more heat produced than you might be used to from your inkjet printer. The size does of course mean that the paper try holds hundreds of sheets instead of only dozens with smaller models.

If you're interested in the technical specs, I think the engine is 300Mhz and there is 32MB of built in memory. These become important when a printer is used to handle network print jobs. The paper input tray can be upgraded if you want.

There are a few things I didn't like about this printer. For the specs and price in its heyday, I think the menu was a little lacking. There is a one line monocolour LCD display on the front of the printer that requires many button presses to find the appropriate sub menu. This would have been acceptable on a £200 printer...not on one that cost £600 when new.

The toner cartridges are generously filled to a capacity of 10,000 pages (they even make a 30,000 pager). However, these are expensive (£100 new). If you can accept the low cost per page, this shouldn't frighten you, but be prepared to take a hit when it comes to replacing the toner.

Finally, it is important to realise that if you are purchasing of these secondhand the warranty may no longer cover (or never have covered) some high cost parts that Lexmark consider consumable. Two fuser failures are what eventually led to us retiring our T620. At a cost of £200 per repair, you can buy a whole laser as a replacement.

When it's working well, the Lexmark T620 is a beast of a
laser that tears through your printouts. I would recommend picking one of these up at a decent used price if you feel the output from your business warrants it. Otherwise, I would investigate Lexmark's E3XX series which are currently offered with a healthy cashback rebate.

Summary: Workhorse printer that carries some hefty costs

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