Pros & Cons
-
- Small and light.
- Fast performance.
- Built-in network connector.
- Reasonably good output quality across the board.
-
- Comes with only a starter toner cartridge.
- Paper capacity suitable only for light-duty printing.
Lexmark E120n Specs
| Color or Monochrome | Monochrome |
| Connection Type | Ethernet |
| Connection Type | USB |
| Maximum Standard Paper Size | Legal |
| Monthly Duty Cycle (Maximum) | 10000 pages per month |
| Rated Speed at Default Settings (Mono) | 20 ppm |
| Type | Printer Only |
With a bargain price ($149 direct), a footprint that needs minimal desktop space, and a paper capacity suitable only for light-duty printing, the Lexmark E120n is a decidedly personal laser printer. But it's a personal printer with a difference—network connectivity. That makes it a good choice for sharing in a home office or very small office with light printing needs. But if you're looking for a low-cost printer for your home, you likely want it for things like photos, party invitations, school reports, and other projects that require color. If that's the case, you need a color ink jet, not a monochrome laser.
When the E120n first showed up for testing, I was surprised at the size of the box it came in. It seemed too small to hold most ink jet printers, much less a 20-page-per-minute monochrome laser. But small or not, this Mighty Mouse of a printer was indeed inside the box, waiting to show what it could do.
Setup is as simple as it gets. The E120 weighs 15.2 pounds, making it easy to move around. If you're willing to let the input tray stick out past the edge of your desk, its footprint is just 15 by 9.25 inches. If not, the footprint with the tray is still smaller than that of most ink jets, at 15 by 13.25 inches.
Once you've found a spot for the printer, you simply slide out the toner cartridge, remove the shipping restraints, and slide the cartridge back in—easy enough once you know how, but I needed several tries to figure out how to get the cartridge seated properly. Then you can connect to your network (or to your PC with the USB cable if you prefer) and run the fully automated network installation program from your PC.
The E120n's speed and output quality are both good enough for most personal or business use, but well short of breathtaking.
Its 8-minute 47-second total on our business applications suite (timed with QualityLogic's hardware and software) is about 50 seconds slower than that of its only direct competition, the
For text quality, the E120n is a touch below par for a monochrome laser, but it's still better than almost all ink jets and more than good enough for any text you're likely to print. Most of our test fonts were easily readable at 5 points or smaller, and some were easily readable at 4 points. One highly stylized font needed 10 points for easy readability, however, which is unusual for a laser.
Graphics quality is typical for monochrome lasers, which means I wouldn't use it if I were trying to give a potential client a sense of my professionalism. But despite a tendency to show banding and dithering (a pattern of dots in gray areas) among other issues, the output is good enough for internal business use when you need to illustrate a point. Photos, similarly, are good enough for client newsletters or printing Web pages, which are the most likely uses for printing photos on a monochrome laser. By comparison, the HL-2070N did better than the E120n on text but wasn't in the same ballpark for graphics and photos.
The key issue limiting the E120n to light-duty printing—and the only drawback keeping it from being an Editors' Choice—is the low paper capacity. The printer comes with a 15-sheet multipurpose feeder, a 150-sheet standard tray, and no upgrade options. If you print as few as 50 pages a day, you'll be refilling the tray roughly every third day, which will quickly turn into an annoying chore.
Depending on how much you print, you might want to buy a spare toner cartridge with the printer. It comes with a starter cartridge with a promised yield of only 500 sheets. If you print a significant amount of full-page graphics, which use up much more toner than a standard page, and you print as few as 25 pages per day, Lexmark calculates that you may use up the starter cartridge in two weeks or less. The good news is that the replacement cartridges ($66.75 direct) are rated for 2,000 sheets. That works out to a running cost of about 3.3 cents per page, which is typical for monochrome lasers in this price range.
Part of what makes the E120n attractive is that it offers a better balance of speed and quality than its direct competition. But its biggest achievement is that it's a network printer at a stunningly low price.
See how the Lexmark E120n measures up to similar machines in our side-by-side
Benchmark Test Results
Check out the
More laser printer reviews: