Lexmark C720 Color Laser

The Lexmark C720 is a color laser printer for small to medium-sized workgroups, who need professional quality printouts. The printer has a maximum resolution of 600 dpi, and also offers an additional mode called 2,400 IQ (Image Quality). In this mode the printer uses some image enhancement techniques to make the printouts seem as they have been printed at a higher resolution. It also has a toner save mode for both color and black, which uses lesser toner while printing, so you can maximize the lifetime of your toner cartridges. The printer has drivers for Windows 9x/Me/NT 4.0/2000 and the Mac, and supports PostScript3, PCL5c as well as PCL6 emulations.

The C720 has a parallel as well as an Ethernet port, making it easy to hook it to a network. There’s even space for adding an additional network card, if you want to print from multiple networks. We tested the printer on an isolated network having just the printer and a client running Windows 2000 Pro. We tested text printing at 600 dpi, and graphics quality at 2400 IQ. Text quality was excellent readable right down to 2pt font size. It was good even with toner saving mode turned on. It took 17 sec to print a single page, which was very close to its rated spec of 15 sec. It gave us a text print speed of 23 ppm, which is again very good considering its rated speed of 24 ppm. The printer was also able to give crisp and clear line arts and curves. Its color-graphics print speed matched its rated speed of 6ppm. The color printouts also came out very well, and had a glossy even on normal paper.

The printer has 32 MB RAM, which is expandable to 384 MB using standard SDRAM modules. Additional RAM comes in handy, if you are going to work with large files like those used in graphics-related work. You can also add an extra hard drive to increase the printer’s buffer, useful if you plan to use it over the network, as it will have more space for queuing documents waiting to be printed. The printer takes in four toner cartridges (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black). It also uses several other consumables, which are a Photo developer kit, fuser kit, oil bottle, a fuser cleaner roller and finally a waste toner bottle.

The printer has an input tray, which can handle 250 pages. You can also add an optional 500-page paper tray. An optional duplexer can also be installed, which would let it print on both sides of the paper. A price tag of Rs 153,000 is pretty decent for this type of printer, but you’ll also need to keep in mind the cost of consumables and the toner cartridges.

Sachin Makhija at PCQ Labs