Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Decent Printer but Fatal Flaws, September 9, 2007
I recently purchased a Lexmark X502n colour laser multifunction printer, but returned it because of two fatal flaws that are not disclosed in any of the product literature I reviewed before making the purchase.
The first fatal flaw is that the X502n does not support scanning on a Mac network. In the words of Lexmark technical support (who I contacted after encountering difficulty using the scanning function) "scan to network is not supported on Mac." You wouldn't know this from the product literature, which states that a feature is "scanning directly to PC, fax, email, application or network folder" and "Apple Macintosh Operating Systems Supported: Apple Mac OS X." Lexmark sales staff don't even know that the printer won't scan over a Mac network -- before ordering the printer I asked my dealer about the support for Mac networks. She checked with someone at Lexmark, who told her that the X502n works with Mac networks.
The second fatal flaw is that the printer makes noise in "power save" or "sleep" mode. When the printer is in "power save" mode, it is not silent. One or more fans remain on and create a significant amount of noise. The fans never turn off, even hours or days after I last used the printer. In a busy office the noise might not be objectionable, but in my home office it was far too loud. It was louder than anything else, and was a major distraction and annoyance.
Before I ordered the printer, I checked the technical specifications on the Lexmark website and downloaded the user guide. The technical specifications describe the noise levels when the printer is operating and when it is idle, but do not mention the noise level when it is in "power save" mode. The noise level in "power save" mode is clearly different from the noise level at idle, but it is not described in the technical specifications. The user guide describes the "power save" mode as being the same as "sleep" mode. Based on this description, and because there were no specifications provided for the noise level in "power save" mode, I assumed that the printer would be silent when in "power save" or "sleep" mode. In the absence of any information to the contrary, this is a reasonable assumption, as other printers and electronics equipment which I own are silent when in sleep mode.
Apart from these two fatal flaws, the printer worked fine. The colour prints looked as good as any other colour laser prints I've seen. I did have some difficulty setting up the printer, as the user guide omits some basic information (including simple stuff like how to enter a space or the same letter twice using the keypad), which isn't provided on Lexmark's web site, either. Lexmark technical support eventually responded to all three of my e-mails, but the responses took two to four weeks.
Just because the X502n didn't work for me doesn't mean it wouldn't work for you. If you're using a Windows machine and you're planing to put the printer in a location where the fan noise won't be an issue, then the X502n may be worth a closer look.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Replaced after three months, December 4, 2007
After barely three months we've ordered a replacement for the Lexmark X502n.
We've had two service calls about the printer reporting low toner when toner was not low.
It is very noisy - placed between two desks, both users worry that it will be fired up while they are on the telephone. Even in "power save" mode the printer is still making fan noise that can be heard ten feet away.
It takes a long time - more than other workgroup printers we've used - to spit out the first page of a job, after that it's very quick.
The keys/buttons on the printer seem under-responsive. For example, when typing in a fax number, unless the keys are pressed quite slowly and methodically, a digit or two will be missed and the number will have to be re-entered.
The pages we print are very business-standard, but I guess they are over the 5% coverage quoted when toner capacities are touted, because we have averaged barely over 3,000 pages per high-capacity black toner. We know that a lot of that toner was wasted; the waste toner bottle was completely full after 2.5 black toners had run through, with very few color pages printed. Basically the printer wastes the equivalent of one toner for every 2.5 toners put through it!
This is our first color laser, but we've had several other lasers including a good black-and-white workgroup laser. All of our other printers have produced flat pages as output, but this one using the same paper in the same conditions produces curled output pages which have to rest for a while before they flatten out.
The software is flaky... nothing wrong with our network, but about two dozen times in three months the printer just wouldn't print, and had to be re-started. Also, the software for reporting on supplies, usage count, etc., will often freeze up and refuse to work, which seemed most frequent when there was an error message on the screen of the printer. In our case, there was OFTEN an error message, a false indication that a toner was low.
The printer has absolutely NO accommodation for walking up and sticking in envelopes or other paper for quick jobs on non-standard paper. It has one tray - two with the optional tray which we have - and the trays are quite cumbersome to re-adjust for different paper. We decided that for printing legal, envelopes, sheets of coloured paper, etc., it was far easier to keep our old printer going than try to wrestle with this printer's kludgy trays.
Finally, we were told by Lexmark prior to our purchase that, no, it didn't currently support receiving faxes directly to a computer, but that software was almost completed development and would be available "very soon" after we purchased it. Still no software, not even a realistic promise of it.
This was a mistake for our small office, and I hope the above helps others to avoid making the same error.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
When Speed Across the Board Matters, November 10, 2009
Our small office needs requires a printer that is quick not only in printing but in scanning. Until you reach the $3000.00 range, scan speeds are largely ignored. Our former laser printer was no longer being produced and we had to find a new model. This Lexmark blows away the top of the line home office ink jet in terms of print and scan speeds. In black and white text mode we're scanning between 15 and 20 pages per minute.
The rest of the printer is pretty straight forward and you can find stats for performance easy enough. It's software is basic and quick to install.
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