The C522n's boxy taupe-and-brown shell stands 19 inches high and is 16.5 inches wide by 14.5 inches deep and weighs only 57 pounds. A control panel on the printer's "forehead" provides buttons to navigate easily through the logical menus and select settings. The entire front wall swings out on sturdy hinges to expose the toner cartridges and other imaging components. The components are easy to remove and replace; better yet, they line up in a single-pass design that improves speed and reduces moving parts. Lexmark provides 128MB of memory and Ethernet standard with the C522n, but you can expand its memory to 640MB and add Wi-Fi capability.
IS managers can monitor the C522n through the printer's embedded Web server or with Lexmark's MarkVision enterprise-oriented printer-management software, while befuddled end users can quickly print a guide to color quality, a booklet on media, or simply a menu map. The printer also comes with several well-written PDF manuals.
The C522n is good but not flawless. The slanted inside wall of the main paper drawer prevents paper from sticking together but makes adding and removing paper awkward, and no catch at the end of the tray's rails means it's easy to pull the tray out--and drop it on the floor. Instead of a full-featured auxiliary tray, the C522n has only a single-sheet, hand-fed bypass slot; to keep two kinds of paper available, you'll need to buy the extra 500-sheet drawer for $299. Also, the control panel LCD is not backlit, making it hard to read in nonoptimal lighting conditions.
But those are relatively minor concerns. In performance and print quality, the C522n excels. It printed CNET's plain text document at 14.4 pages per minute (ppm), approaching the 16.2ppm average for all color lasers, including top-end models, that we've tested in the last year, and it hit 12.3ppm on color graphics, much faster than the 7.9ppm average. Our print-quality jury also liked the C522n. Its plain text was a dark matte black with no fuzziness or rough edges, so that even 2-point type was legible. It captured good detail and shading on grayscale photos. Color graphics and photos did not come out quite so well: accurate colors and good detail were somewhat marred by crosshatching and blotchiness.
 |
Color graphics | |
Color text | |
Black graphics | |
Black text |
|
Color graphics | |
Color text | |
Black graphics | |
Black text |
Lexmark backs the C522n with a one-year onsite warranty. Free, toll-free tech-support is available on weekdays from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and on Saturdays from noon to 6 p.m. ET for the length of the warranty. You can add a year of support for $124, two years for $244, or three years for $402. One concern: consumables for the C522 can add up. A page of plain black text costs about 3.2 cents, and a lightly covered color page about 15.6 cents. For comparison, HP's Color LaserJet 3600n costs $200 more, but runs about 2.2 cents per text page and 12 cents per color page.
Product Specifications:
Product Description:
Lexmark C 522n - Workgroup printer - Color - Laser
Printer Type:
Workgroup printer - Laser - Color
Dimensions (WxDxH):
17.3 in x 20.2 in x 19.1 in
Weight:
57.1 lbs
Max Media Size (Standard):
A4 (8.25 in x 11.7 in)
,
Legal (8.5 in x 14 in)
Max Media Size (Custom):
8.5 in x 14 in
Print Speed:
up to 20 pages/min - Color - Letter A Size (8.5 in x 11 in)
,
up to 20 pages/min - B/W - Letter A Size (8.5 in x 11 in)
,
up to 19 pages/min - B/W - A4 (8.25 in x 11.7 in)
,
up to 19 pages/min - Color - A4 (8.25 in x 11.7 in)
Max Resolution ( B&W ):
1200 dpi x 1200 dpi
Max Resolution ( Color ):
1200 dpi x 1200 dpi
Image Enhancement Technology:
4800 Color Quality
Interface:
USB
,
Ethernet 10/100Base-TX
Processor:
312.5 MHz
RAM Installed ( Max ):
128 MB ( 640 MB )
Language Simulation:
PCL 6
,
PDF 1.5
,
PostScript 3
Media Type:
Cards
,
Labels
,
Envelopes
,
Plain paper
,
Transparencies
Total Media Capacity:
250 sheets
Monthly Duty Cycle:
45000 pages
Modem:
None
Networking:
Print server - Ethernet
,
Fast Ethernet
Type:
None
Copier Type:
None
System Requirements:
HP-UX 11.0
,
HP-UX 11.11
,
IBM AIX 5.1
,
IBM AIX 5.2
,
IBM AIX 5.3
,
Apple MacOS X
,
Apple MacOS 9.x
,
Debian Linux 3.0
,
SunSoft Solaris 7
,
SunSoft Solaris 8
,
SunSoft Solaris 9
,
SunSoft Solaris 10
,
Citrix MetaFrame XP
,
IBM OS/400 3.1 or later
,
Microsoft Windows NT 4.0
,
Citrix Presentation Server
,
SuSE Linux 9.0 Professional
,
SuSE Linux 9.1 Professional
,
SuSE Linux 9.2 Professional
,
Microsoft Windows 2000 Server
,
Microsoft Windows Server 2003
,
Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS 4
,
SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8
,
SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9
,
Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0
,
Microsoft Windows 98SE/2000/ME/XP
,
Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
,
Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server
,
Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
,
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition
,
Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS 3 for AMD64 / EM64T
,
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition
Manufacturer Warranty:
1 year warranty