Lexmark Optra E+

Author's product rating:   

Picture quality	Good
Printing speed	Average
Colour sensitivity	Satisfactory
Ease of use	Satisfactory
Value For Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Very long working life
Disadvantages:	Installation might be a pain in the neck !

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I own this laser printer since 1997 and I ensure you it is still under great working condition.

After over 23,000 pages (that's over 11 pages per working day), I can only say one thing: It worths every penny I spent to buy it.

The only ugly part of living with this printer is installation (especially under Win9x, Me) since the drivers are not preset for premium printing proccess. I recommend you to read the manual at least once before you try to install the printer as a PostScript Level 2 printer. Do not try to install the printer twice (once as a PS2 under the name e.g. Lexmark PS2 and once - better printing quality - as a PCL5 under the name Lexmark PCL5 - faster print speed) and try to use it once as a PS2 and once as a PCL5. This will confuse the printer driver which will start printing the printer software code.

For your own protection I strongly suggest you to avoid installing MarkVision (the Lexmark printing control panel facility) which was especially made by Lexmark to drive you nuts!

However, after you are done with installation, you will start working with one of the most heavy duty printers ever!

Lexmark recommends to print on paper stock of up to 180 gsm, while I have printed - with a little pushing - paper stock of up to 300 gsm with no problems.

If you are a graphic designer, you will find Optra E+ (with PS2 enhancement) ideal for printing in-house newsletters and other mass mailing documents (brochures, flyers etc.). The Optra E+ prints at 15 (heavy graphics + pictures) to 30 (text + simple line art graphics) pages / min.

Print quality is great for text and line art graphics while images are fine printed under PCL5 emulation. Unfortunantely, the photoconductor unit prints full page images in exceptional quality only when it is brand new (100-200 pages). Beyond that point the photoconductor unit gives exceptional printing quality with smaller images (1/4 of a page and smaller) and of course text and line art graphics (up to 1,000-1,500 pages. The photoconductor unit gives great printing quality for at least 5,000 pages (Lexmark says 12,000) while print cartridge gives you great printing for around 3,000 pages (Lexmark says 5,000).

If you are looking to buy a used printer - since as far as I know Lexmark has stopped producing this model - (I don't sell mine though - lol), I believe Optra E+ is an excellent choice!

Note: Ratings are given having last laser printer models in mind - not compared with other models launched around 1997.