Lexmark E360dn review

£309
Price when reviewed

Lexmark has left no stone unturned with its submission to this business mono printer Labs. Its E360dn boasts every feature you could ask for in a laser, from an automatic duplex module to networking, and it marries its broad feature set with the fastest print speeds of all the printers here.

Lexmark E360dn review

This E360dn is rated at a stonking 38ppm and, although it doesn’t quite deliver on those claims with our measured maximum of 36ppm and a slower 31ppm in our Excel spreadsheet test, it’s still the fastest in this month’s group. And it backs that up with a decent maximum monthly duty cycle of 80,000 pages.

It isn’t just a speed demon, either. The quality of the output it manages to lay down on standard paper at that speed is second to none. Photographs and graphics, which most lasers still struggle with, were delivered with an accomplished swagger no other laser printer in the group can match. They were clean, benefiting from smooth dithering, good contrast and, vitally, no evidence of banding at all.

In the text and black assessment, it couldn’t quite match the excellence of the Oki B440dn, but it’s far from poor. There were hardly any of the satellite splatters that afflict so many laser printers’ output and which lend text a slightly soft, fuzzy look. And you have to reduce font sizes to minuscule sizes before this printer’s ability to render characters in their entirety begins to suffer.

But much of the good work is undermined by its running costs. Even if you replace the rather mean 2,300-page starter cartridge with the high-yield 9,000-page unit, the cost of £128 exc VAT means the E360dn ends up being almost as expensive to run as the Epson M2000DN. That translates to a cost of £803 exc VAT after 30,000 pages, and more than a grand after 50,000 pages. A sobering thought.

This means that, despite a stellar performance in our quality and speed tests, we can’t recommend the E360dn this month. Unless you can find the Lexmark’s consumables at a more attractive price, we’d recommend the slightly inferior quality and speed of the Kyocera over the E360dn – purely because it’s so much cheaper to own.

Printer language & OS Support

PCL level6
PostScript level3

Basic Specifications

Colour?no
Resolution printer final1200 x 1200dpi
Rated/quoted print speed38PPM
Maximum paper sizeA4
Duplex functionyes

Running costs

Cost per A4 mono page1.5p
Cost per A4 colour pageN/A

Consumables

Monthly duty cycle80,000 pages
Drum life30,000 pages
Fuser lifeN/A
Transfer-belt lifeN/A
Standard mono toner life3,500 pages
High-yield mono toner life9,000 pages
Standard colour toner lifeN/A
High-yield colour toner lifeN/A
Supplied mono toner life2,300 pages
Supplied colour toner lifeN/A

Power and noise

Peak noise level53.0dB(A)
Dimensions260 x 406 x 370mm (WDH)

Performance tests

Mono print speed (measured)36ppm
Colour print speedN/A

Media Handling

Input tray capacity250 sheets
Output tray capacity150 sheets

Connectivity

USB connection?yes
Ethernet connection?yes
Bluetooth connection?no
WiFi connection?no
PictBridge port?no
Other connectionsParallel

OS Support

Operating system Windows 7 supported?no
Operating system Windows Vista supported?yes
Operating system Windows XP supported?yes
Operating system Windows 2000 supported?no
Operating system Windows 98SE supported?no
Other operating system supportUbuntu, SUSE, openSUSE, Linpus, Red Gat, Debian GNU, Linspire, Red Flag

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