Customer Reviews

Lexmark C543DN Color Laser Printer

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

A paper sensor issue with my ancient HP LJ4L gave me an excuse to look for a new printer. It is used intermittanly so I wanted a laser, it is normally in my basement so I wanted networking and duplex, and color would be a plus if not too expensive. After looking at all the possiblities, my head was spinning and I was ready to settle for a mono-laser with network and duplex.

But then I stumbled on the new Lexmark C543dn color laser on sale that had everything I wanted, a high resolution color laser with networking and duplex. The only review I could find of the C543dn was from [..] which thought the colors were too vivid. PC Magazine gave the similar faster C544dn an Editors Choice and only criticised text smaller than 4 or 5 points. It may not be small, but it is not as tall as some color lasers and I was able to carry and place it myself without any help.

Open Office Writer doesn't even list fonts smaller than 6 points and Word 2007 does not list fonts smaller than 8 points (unless you shrink fonts). French Script may start to lose detail at 4 points, but Arial is fully formed at 3 points and Times New Roman is easy to read (with a magnifiying glass) at 3 points, with only a slight defect in small "e". As far as I can tell, text at any normal size is sharp and well formed.

When I first started printing images, colors did seem too vivid. But the default if you select "Image" from print properties is "sRGB Vivid". If you select "Text" it also uses sRGB Vivid, to make sure that you get solid text. The default "Text/Graphics" uses sRGB Display to approximate your computer display. Those and other color settings can be adjusted from the printer's web interface (or print properties menu while printing).

I still found red and blue a little heavy for my taste (orange too red and green too blue), or maybe just not enough yellow. So I settled on these printer color changes for now:

RGB Brightness = 1 (default 0)
Cyan = -1 (default 0)
Magenta = -2 (default 0)

That works for me using default "Text/Graphics" to print natural looking photos or pdf's. I do select Text if just printing text. The Image setting may be better for colorful brochures or if you expect colors to fade.

The only other criticism from [..] was cost of supplies. But Lexmark implemented a rewards program that gives you any 10th black or color free, and free imager when you need it. So that brings the cost in line typical for this printer class at 3 cents/page for black and 15 cents for color.

The C543dn is rated for 35,000 prints per month, but high yield color cartridges are good for 2000 pages and black for 2500 pages and imagers are rated for 30,000 pages. So high high volume corporate users would need something bigger with larger toner capacity.

But for a casual user, with a few adjustments, I am very pleased with the Lexmark C543dn and cannot imagine what could be better for my needs (other than wireless, which is an option).

Notes: Even if you are one of the rare people who reads and follows instructions, the printer will say check for packing materials when you first power it up. The similar C540 comes with 1000 page starter toner, the C544 is faster and has a USB port to print pictures from memory stick or camera without a computer.

BLUF: I'm really happy with this printer, although it has some warts.

PRO: Excellent, excellent black print quality. Very good color print quality. Completely acceptable color photo quality, although inkjet on premium paper is better. Excellent print speed once it gets going. Duplexer is really handy. Reasonably quiet. Physical footprint is smaller than many other color lasers I have seen. Includes both USB and network (Ethernet 10/100) ports.

All in all, this printer seems like the best overall bargain for print quality, up-front cost and long-term cost.

CON: Needs a nearby nuclear reactor to power it. No joke: the lights in the room get noticeably dimmer while this thing is printing. Long warm-up time; once it goes on power-saver standby, it takes a couple of minutes before it's ready to print again. Paper handling options are a bit short. No straight-through printing path for stiffer papers. Duplexer works but it seems like printing multiple copies of the same 2-sided document does not - the first copy comes out fine but subsequent copies are not duplexed.

Minor ding: this printer will not accept Lexmark's ultra-high capacity toner cartridges, which would lower the overall cost of using it significantly.

OTHER: Somewhat finicky to set up. There are tons of shipping spacers that have to be removed before use. Fortunately they're all bright red, so it's hard to miss one. You'll need a table or empty desk to use when removing the shipping spacers -- you need access to three different sides of the thing simultaneously. The network setup is somewhat of a pain since it does not default to DHCP. You have to turn on the DHCP using the front panel; afterwards the built-in web setup interface is complete & easy to use.

Update Nov 2010 -- I changed my rating from 4 stars to 1. I had printed about 40-60 color pages last year when I got the printer. I had some confidential printouts that I didn't want to do at Kinko's. A few months ago I turned the printer on to do some more color prints and found it had a 'service printhead' error. The printer was dead! Searching the web, I found hundreds of others complaining about this error. Stay away!

This is the third Lexmark laser printer I have owned in the last 10 years. I really like Lexmark for a good print quality, decent construction, and good network and Mac/Linux support. This printer seems to be on closeout, and for me the price was right to take the plunge.

This printer is smaller than the usual workgroup laser because the fuser/imager is separate from the toner cartridges. Physically, this means the toner cartridges are very small--more like ink jet-sized than the usual 9" wide toner cartridges. The printer is only about 14" tall and weighs only 40 lbs. For comparison, similar Brother or even the Lexmark C53x series weigh 70 lbs and are quite a bit taller. So you should have few physical issues putting this into a normal office environment. The footprint with sufficient area flow room is a minimum of 24" x 24".

The price of consumables isn't horrible if you buy from the recycle program, but it's not great either--and at 30,000 pages, you'll need a new imager for $250. For my b&w laser printer, I buy generic cartridges for 1/3rd the price at Monoprice, but they don't have consumables for this printer.

The printer comes with a 10 ft power cord a good setup guide that clearly shows how to remove all the shipping plastic inside of the case.

Print quality is excellent. I bought this for printing marketing documents, diagrams, and PowerPoint slides--this printer does a great job out of the box with no calibration. Gradients are smooth and color borders are crisp. Text is very nice as well; font edges are smooth even on a colored background. Small white text on a colored background shows up very clearly as well. I also have a Canon multi-function b&w laser which prints only so-so text--this printer does a far better job of it. Large color areas look fantastic with no banding or uneven fill. For purposes of this review, I am just printing on 20 lb HP multi-purpose paper.

Setup was easy on Mac OS 10.5. There is a simple Web UI provided, and networking can be configured there or using the physical printer buttons and LCD screen. When the printer first powered on, a test page was printed with the Ethernet hardware and IP addresses once DHCP was configured.

All in all, it's a great printer. The construction feels pretty decent, it's relatively small, and for just a few hundred bucks with the included 2,000 page toner cartridges, there's a lot to like here. I took off a star, however, for the consumables cost: The regular toner refills for all 4 cartridges is $225 from Lexmark's site or $320 for the high-yield versions--which is more than I paid for the printer.

At the end of the day, I had color documents to print that are too sensitive to trust to Kinko's and this gets the job done without a big impact on the wallet. If you're printing large volumes of color on a frequent basis, you might want a printer with cheaper consumables and cheaper imager kits, at the expensive of a compact design.

I bought this printer several months ago at a great price. When I first brought it home and hooked it up it did not work. I bought it back and got another which to my surprise did not work either. It was giving me a strange error message. I thought perhaps it was my fault, a user error. So to avoid the embarrassment of walking in the store again I called tech support.

The tech support rep walked me through the problem. There was a batch of these printers that when shipped resulted in a loose cable on the internal board itself. He walked me through unscrewing the printer, opening the back, removing a cable and securing it more tightly.

The printer worked GREAT after this. I have been using it to print mostly addresses on envelopes. The included cartridge ran out rather quickly. I assumed this was because it was just a starter cartridge. I purchased a new one which also ran out quickly. After all, I am only printing addresses on envelopes. I wondered why the ink was running out so quickly.

I decided to investigate and take apart the cartridge to see how much toner was actually left. To my surprise the cartridge was nearly 1/4 full!!!! The printer must be programmed to report "empty" when a certain amount of pages have been printed despite how much ink was used. Most printers have an option to circumvent this "quality control" feature. But not this one.

I would warn potential buyers against this printer. It prints wonderfully. But it is designed to have you purchasing toner on a regular basis. This is how printer companies make $$ now. They sell you a cheap printer and get you on toner. The cartridges are also design so that they can not be refilled. The printer knows when a particular cartridges serial number has already been used.

She has beautiful color and is always quick to perform. Handles any kind of volume as well as special requests without a hitch. Alas, she is always wanting gifts. It doesn't matter how much is left in the toner; she wants a new one on schedule. She won't let you use the remaining toner and forces you to buy her new gift from only her family. She can't be swayed with new chips or told to keep printing. And, if she is out of yellow; she won't give you black no matter how much you beg. You have to replace the yellow before she'll reopen the black to use. Don't make a pretty printer your own 'cause she'll make you cry. After a year of supporting her rigid ways, I switched to a marvelous lady from HP who costs one-third less to maintain.,

I'm having a different experience than other posters. The color I'm getting from the machine is mediocre. I'm printing PowerPoint presentations and any solid lines come out spotty. A solid blue line starts out blue, turns to light blue, then sometimes turns back to dark. If I print the same page over the line looks different. Often times I see little horizontal lines through solid colors and frequently I see large vertical white lines that go though the whole page. This is on a 1 week old printer with toner that the web interface says is half full.

Jams are another problem. Duplex printing jams every single time, on every other page. Forget about it. At least they're real jams though, non-duplex printing often stalls telling me that there's a jam when there is not one. I open all the doors and covers and there is nothign there. I hti the little check button and it fires right back up.

I'm using this in an office with 7 people and the thing is a real pain in the neck. People have started walking down to kinko's rather than use this thing.

+ I have never had a problem with this computer. I have not ever put it under a great load. I leave it turned off most of the time but I turn it on, and by the time I am ready to print a document, so is it. I don't even see much of need to keep it in even power save mode (besides the Wake On Lan feature of course). It is so close to me so I am not bothered with that though.
+ I keep it plugged into my Wireless Draft 2.0 Router and have never had any connection problems. It is really easy to set up on Linux and Windows 7. The drivers were automatically installed on Windows and even updated when new ones were available. Linux (Ubuntu 9.04) didn't even have to download drivers, it just worked the moment I confirmed with Linux that it was a Lexmark printer of a certain model. Adding a network printer on Windows 7 is as easy I could imagine it to be and Linux was not far behind.
+ It certainly is not a speed demon at printing either black or white but It prints out a very steady flow no matter if a page is color, black, or however complex (3-D Graphics and such do not print out slower than text. I love the duplex feature and it is adjustable for "Econo Mode" so you use up a little less toner on each.
+ It was pretty easy to set up physically. All the spacers and everything are all bright orange and pretty hard to miss. It took a little bit of figuring to see how to open and close areas of the printer but nothing too complicated for anyone to handle. Anyone would be able to figure it out eventually with just a little patience.

I love it, but don't expect it to have the best pages per minute ever. Although, the cold-start and calibration I think is faster than average.

I've probably only printed 2000 pages so far, so I can't speak about the long-term durability but so far this has been a really good printer for its price - with caveats.

I've printed a number of half-page color photos and full-page color Google maps and can't complain about the color printing, as low-end laser printers go. Color printing speed has been about right.

The duplex has worked fine, but as with many printers, you need to fan the paper and curl it to loosen it up before putting fresh paper in the tray - the instructions tell you so. If you skip this step, you may be asking for jambs. I always use good quality paper and fluff the paper and haven't had any jambs.

The envelope printing is a plus. There's slot for sizing and feeding in single envelopes and the printer waits until you press the button and it prints the envelope. My partner figured it out quickly and showed me how to do it.

Another good thing is that each color has its own roller and toner cartridge in a row so the paper path is pretty straight when going through the printer and it's super-easy to replace empty toner cartridges - from the side, even easier than most ink-jets I've used.

Lexmark has been somewhat known for locking down their cartridges and they prevent refills and other companies can't make cartridges for it - they won't work in the printer - so you have to buy from Lexmark and can't pursue cheaper printing costs. Since I bought my printer in late September 2010, it seems the price of a high-yield black cartridge is creeping upwards. First around $55.00, then around $60.00, and now around $63.00 (all the lowest prices I could find).
At $63.00 for a high-yield cartridge of 2500 pages it calculates to about 2.5 cents a page. Not terrible, and better than some other laser printers.

However, the cartridge rewards program they offer helps reduce overall costs and by adjusting the menu settings you can lighten up on the toner usage to save money. By using "draft" quality settings, I figure I'm spending less than 2 cents a page on black toner which is pretty good.

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Update:
Also be sure to turn off the default full-color printing on the "Print Quality" tab in in the Printing Preferences menu by checking the "print in black and white" option. Otherwise it WILL use up expensive color cartridges even when printing black and white text. You'll have to bother with unchecking it each time you want color. Practically all color printers have this option buried in their menus somewhere. My per-page cost calculations are based on this setup for black and white, which is the primary use of MOST printers whether they be color printers or black and white only. I don't use color regularly enough to be able to figure costs for color-only.
End Update.
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The other caveat is: Never, ever lay this printer on its side, much less turn it over. It is fine when kept in an upright position, and most shipping companies appear to ship and deliver it upright. Some people unpack a heavy box like this by turning it over and sliding the box off the contents from the top. Don't do that with this printer

Lexmark made a packing error, in my opinion. It appears that they ship this printer already "charged" or "primed" with toner. I think I understand why they did this - to facilitate the easy side loading cartridges - but if the printer is ever laid on it's side during shipping, or worse, upside down, then toner may leak into the mechanics of the printer. This condition makes it possible for toner to get on the inside of the lens where it cannot be cleaned off. An obstruction on the lens means streaky printouts, depending on which of the 4 lenses gets dusted with toner. All other brands of lasers I've handled ship their cartridges sealed and you have to remove sealer strips to get them working.

As soon as you get this printer, run the internal printer test (from the printer's control panel) - the "test print " and check page 4 for streaks. If streaks appear, open up the side and pull the rollers out (it's easy, download the cleaning instructions from the support web site). Check for lose toner. You can wipe toner off of the bottom of the laser glass lens with a cloth, but then look at the glass lenses with a flashlight. If there's toner on the other side of the glass, that is the inside of the lens, then you will have the situation I found. There's no sane way to clean out toner that has gone so deep into the printer that it's on the other side of the glass lens - where you can't get to it. Streaks result. I had to take mine back to the store for an exchange and I told the clerk to be sure to keep the new one upright when he delivered it to me. The new one checked out perfect and it has been the quietest, fastest personal laser printer I've had so far.

It's really a shame that such a decent, quiet and easy to operate printer can be damaged by bad shipping and packing.

I would give it five stars if I could use cheaper third-party toner cartridges in it, and the fact it it must always be kept upright would almost make me drop it another star but it prints so well and is so easy to work with that I would recommend it anyway - just be sure to inspect it thoroughly as soon as you receive it.

I've owned this printer for about 1.5 years now and for as little printing as I do it works well. I refuse to purchase another inkjet printer due to the waste and cost of ink as well as the water solubility of the printed pages.
For every day printing the C543dn is a nice printer, it wakes from sleep and spits out pages pretty quickly. It is slow when I send a 10MP photo to it, taking up to 3-5 minutes to print, but it is not a fast processor. I've used color lasers from Konica/Minolta that will print the same image in about 3 seconds, but then those printers cost $3,000 not $300.

Print quality of text and charts is superb, pictures are good but I prefer to print pictures on my Selphy, at least on a small scale.

The printer has an unexpected feature in the driver that I didn't see documented anywhere; its called Poster and it lets you expand anything you can print without any hassle up to 4x4 sheets. So if you send a picture from say iPhoto you can have the printer do all the work and make a 16 page poster of the image. You still need to trim off the white borders and glue up the segments, but it is sure a lot easier than opening a graphics app like Elements and doing all the work to blow up the image.

I use the duplex unit routinely, duplex is my default print setting and it has saved a lot of paper and never jammed.
If cost is an issue then I would purchase this printer again, I think it will be in service for at least another 5 years.

Quiet, quick, efficient, a nice color laser printer for the price and worlds beyond the Samsung printers I'd used in past at work.

This is a fairly good printer if you want to load the tray with plain paper and print from the tray, and nothing more complex than that. It prints reliably and with good results. The duplexing works great on regular paper.

But... if you want to do anything unusual it's not the best. Special papers, manual feed, etc are all very difficult on this printer.

The manual feed is a single-sheet loader, so you have to send print jobs one page at a time or it will take the first sheet from the loader and the next from the tray. Furthermore, it will not accept a second sheet until the first one has fully printed and the printer has gone through the cool off routine about ten seconds later. It takes FOREVER. The loader is also difficult to use, it only has feed tabs at the edges so it's hard to get the paper positioned flat enough for it to feed in properly.

It will handle single-sided jobs on cardstock from the normal tray or manual feed, but not in duplexing mode. When it stashes away the paper to flip sides it gets stuck. You also have to open the back sometimes because it has a hard time making the cornder to come out to the output stacker.

*** That all said... here's the kicker: The toner cartridges cost $80 for regular yield, and more than $100 for high yield, PER COLOR and they're good for 500 sheets of text if you're lucky (FAR less than that if you're printing images, logos, etc). You can not trust the 2500 page per cartridge estimate. The total page count on my printer is still less than 1000 pages, and I have replaced all of the cartridges at least once, some of them twice already. (I have printed mostly text and maybe ~250 pages of full color). It comes with full-duty cartridges instead of baby starters which is a near-miracle nowadays, but as a result it is literally cheaper to run the printer until the ink is gone, throw it away and buy a new printer. Oh, and this is one of those printers that tracks the toner cartridge by the electronic chip inside so once it thinks the cartridge is dead it will never print from it again. With many other printers, if there's still toner left, when it gets low you can rotate the cartridge and put it back in with good results until it's truly empty, but not with this printer).

Yes ink and toner is the biggest ripoff racket in the history of the industrial age, that's nothing new. But toner for this printer is, at minimum, twice as expensive per page as any other printer I've owned. And it's not plentiful on the market, so price competition and alternate sourcing (such as ebay) is limited. With a run-of-the-mill HP printer you're usually assured that cheap toner will be available, but not with this printer, it's too much of a fringe unit to generate that kind of alternate toner market.

In short: Great printer for plain old printing with no special needs, but ridiculously expensive to operate.