EXCLUSIVES

Lexmark's E323
Words by Bill Troop
February 2004

Lexmark's E323 is one of the smallest, most attractive laser printers we've ever seen, with a tiny footprint of just 14.5 by 15.5 inches. Its smooth black color fits into style-conscious environments like a glove.

Lexmark's E323 is one of the smallest, most attractive laser printers we've ever seen, with a tiny footprint of just 14.5 by 15.5 inches. Its smooth black color fits into style-conscious environments like a glove.

Why laser?

Although inkjet printers are better than ever, they can't come close to offering the speed or print quality of a laser printer. This is true even if you compare an inkjet with 4800x1200 resolution to a laser with only 600x600 resolution. There is a huge difference between laser and inkjet resolution, and the numbers are meaningless when comparing the two. Laser output is much crisper, much more accurate. Moreover, laser output is as permanent as the paper, while only a few inkjets even approach smudgeproof, let alone archival, quality. But many think laser printers are too large and too expensive for small offices and busy home environments. Yet, if you care about print quality, you have to go laser. Because the cost per page is so much lower with laser, if you have to print more than an occasional letter, you'll make up the difference in price quickly.

Enter the E323, which is much smaller and less expensive than the network-class printers you'd buy for an office. MSRP is $419, with street prices substantially lower. The E323 has parallel and USB 1.1 ports. The E323n is identical, except that it replaces the parallel port with Ethernet, for a list price of $599. We think $200 to add Ethernet seems excessive, and we'd like to see USB 2.0 ports. Apple operating systems OS 8.6-9.x, and OS X, are fully supported. The E323 holds 150 sheets of paper. An accessory tray, for $155, fits neatly onto the bottom and adds another 250 sheets of capacity.

Print quality

Superior print quality has always been key for Lexmark. Curiously, the E323 does not offer 1200x1200 resolution - which Lexmark pioneered several years ago. The E323's base resolution is 600 dpi, with a special "1200-dpi enhanced" mode, which interpolates 600x600 data and actually prints at 1200 dpi. The benefit is faster speed with complex documents. The difference between the interpolated 1200 dpi the E323 offers and the true 1200 dpi offered by higher end 'network class' models from Lexmark and HP is difficult to detect. But HP's 3100 competes directly with the E323, and offers true 1200 dpi. However, it is unattractive, and larger, with clunky, protruding trays. We did not test the HP, but those who have say Lexmark's 1200 enhanced is not as good as HP's true 1200. Although both printers print plain text at 20 pages per minute, the Lexmark prints about 2-4 times as fast as the HP when it comes to graphics-rich documents, such as PDF files.

Emulation

The E323 offers both PCL 6 and Postscript 3 emulation. Lexmark's emulations have long had the reputation of being equal and sometimes superior to the HP and Adobe originals.

Top loading?

Lexmark achieves its small size by having the paper load vertically from the top, like some inexpensive lasers HP put out for several years and then abandoned. There are problems with this strategy. The printer looks dorky when you have paper loaded; fault-free paper loading is harder; and objects can fall into the paper path if you are one of those supposedly rare people, like this writer, who are hopelessly bad housekeepers. The unprotected paper sitting at the top can also get creased or dirty. However, a $50 paper cover tray is available to meet these objections. We would prefer to see protected, horizontally-loading trays, but this is apparently impossible to achieve with a small, stylish footprint.

In summary

There are not - yet - any ideal choices in the petite laser category. If you need a stylish, small laser printer, and will be doing a lot of PDF printing, the Lexmark E323 is an excellent choice. For higher print quality, but clumsy style and slow PDFs, consider HP's 3100. Ideally, we would buy one of the true 1200 network-class printers from HP or Lexmark. But these are larger, more expensive, and less stylish.

That said, Lexmark's industrial design team has always produced the most attractive network class laser printers - even if they don't, yet, come in black or some other interesting color. Another advantage of network class printers is automatic duplexing. The E323 will duplex, but you have to refeed the paper, a cumbersome step. The automatic duplexers in Lexmark's network class printers require no user intervention and work flawlessly. Duplexed pages are attractive, and hugely environment-friendly.

Lexmark made its reputation by producing printers with consistently better text and graphic output than HP printers. Lexmark printers were also substantially more stylish, and visibly better built. We think Lexmark should refocus on those goals. That said, we applaud Lexmark for the attractive styling and the courage to go black on the E323. Despite a few modest negatives, many will want this printer because it's the only one they can bear to look at.

NEWSFLASH: Available when you read this will be Lexmark's new E220 printer. It's almost identical to the E323 but prints at 18 pages per minute instead of 20. Best of all, its street price is just $199 or less! At that price, we can unhesitatingly say it's a steal.