Customer Reviews

Lexmark E312L Laser Printer

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I purchased this product without the benefit of user reviews and must say I am happy with it. Print quality is very clean and crisp - the same quality I have come to expect from a laser printer. Speed is as advertised.

This is a home version of the more robust E312 (I guess L stands for "lite" in this case). The three main differences, as documented in the user manual, are: 2 mb memory vs. 4 mb, 1,500 (est) page starter toner cartridge vs. 6,000 (est) page standard cartridge, and

lacks PostScript Level 2.

Set-up using USB cable was simple, with one exception. My computer wants to recognize it as new hdwre each time I re-start. With Win 2000 Pro as o/s, the new hdwre wizard wants to run each time. I just click cancel and move on without any problems. I suspect this will become annoying after awhile, though.

If it weren't for a few quirks with paper handling, I would love this printer. It's possible that my printer is defective and others won't share the same experiences. The print quality is outstanding, the small footprint is handy and the cost was low, but here are the paper problems I've had...

1) The paper tray sometimes grabs more than one piece of paper, and the odds of this happening increase as the tray nears empty. I've tried the most expensive brand of Xerox laser paper (20 lbs as the Lexmark manual recommends), I fan the pages before loading the paper tray, yet the problem still occurs. It's not a big problem, just slightly annoying.

2) The printout is sometimes crooked, due to the paper not feeding straight. This problem may be related to #1 above. I notice it most when printing checks. Again, this is just mildly annoying.

3) I can't feed any pages from this printer into my fax machine -- they always jam. Fortunately, I have other printers in the office and I can use them for printing pages to be faxed. To be fair, my fax machine (a Panasonic) shouldn't be so picky, but it appears to be related to the way the top edge is slightly curled as it comes out of the Lexmark. Even when using the straight paper path option, the pages still jam.

I have had this printer for less than a year and it is already dying on me. The paper jams about 75% of the time and it pulls more than one sheet of paper almost all the time. I do not recommend this printer to anyone. I will be replacing mine very soon.

This printer is great - cheap, fast, small and produces great text. The toner cartridges are pricey, but fine.

However, mine is jaming all the time. It feeds two or three pages together alot. Sometimes, it is jaming every page! Very frustrating. Some paper brands seem to work better, but I am not sure which. I use 20lb paper, maybe 24 works better, I don't know. It drives me nuts! Sometimes I have to put in one page at a time just to keep it from jaming. Sure, it is pretty easy to clear a jam, but if I dread printing a 15 page document because it is going to jam like to times. One thing that helps is to keep the paper guides snug to the paper - cuts down own the jams, but they still happen alot. Maybe sticking with laser printer paper helps, but copier paper and multipurpose jam ALOT.

If not for the Jams, I would give this printer a four star rating (five if the toner was cheaper).

Anyone have any advice?

Excellent printer so far. Very good printer resolution. Can become a network printer. I had problem with HP for this type of feeding tray. It fed 2-3 papers at one time when the printer got older. Hopefully, lexmark printer will not have this problem. If anyone have problem with feeding paper, please let me know.

Purchased two of these for my department last fall and have found them to be wonderful desktop workhorses.