Lexmark X340N – An Affordablee All-in-One Printer

The X340n from Lexmark is a mono laser and networkable printer aimed at small offices and at home. It combines scan, copy, fax and print functions within a reasonably compact unit for $ 349. The Dell 1815n, which comes at the same price, offers a bit faster performance except copying. In all, Lexmark X340n is an excellent multifunction printer that comes at a manageable price.

Design and Features

The LexmarkX340n design depicts work. Its control panel contains various buttons, including the switch function, the standard numeric keypad, preset faxing numbers and common options for every function. It also has two-line backlit LCD’s for clear reading in dim light.

Each X340n function can be customized, but to a specific extent. While copying, you can opt to fit several pages in a single sheet by shrinking them; optimize output by designating the original as text, (mixed or photo) and change output darkness.

During the resizing process, while the down button blows the page, the up button shrinks it, making it fully counterintuitive. In terms of scanning, the included software, the Abbyy, the Presto Page Manager and the Qlink can help you.

Overall Performance

In terms of copying, the Lexmark X340n gave print speeds of 13.19 ppm compared to Dell’s 12.29 ppm. The speed of black graphics in X340n was a bit faster than black text – 17.13 ppm for the latter and 18.48 ppm for the former.
The Lexmark also printed black, fine text – while the color looked uniform, the letters were cleanly formed. In scanning and printing grayscale graphics, it edged out Dell. It also handled both highlights and shadows better, preserving the details lost by Dell. For grayscale scan text, the X340n had better shadow handling and highlight compared to Dell. Though good details were seen in the color scans, they appeared bit washed-out.