A Great Little Laser Printer for Home Use

Once the domain of business users only, the Laser Printer has come down in price sufficiently that home users and even micro-businesses can now afford them. A number of companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Lexmark and Epson hit on the idea that they could sell cheap printers at little to no margins and then recoup their costs by selling the inkjet and laser cartridges at a fairly steep price (and high margins for the companies). Japanese and Korean companies started selling the cheapest laser printers and the Americans followed suit.

The Optra E+ was one of the first 'budget' laser printers by Lexmark, retailing at between $200 and $300.

I bought mine at a thrift store for US$6.00 and have used it for about 6 months without any problems. As a discontinued product, you are only likely to find it at garage sales, office liquidations, eBay or thrift stores. I have seen some on eBay for about US$20.00.

Nevertheless, if you are a student, small business or someone needing laser quality printing (for resumes etc.), this is a great little printer. The emphasis is on little, as this is a remarkably compact machine (13.5 x 8 x 8 inches) and is cleverly constructed in such a way that paper trays are both functional when in use and discreet when not. When in use, the trays flip outward about 5 inches (output tray) to 6 inches (input tray) and the only issue here is to have that area clear (it can be a nuisance to shove everything to one side when you need to print).

Although resolution is only 600dpi x 600dpi, the output is crisp and clear. Although it is only rated at 6 pages per minute, it seems to be infinitely faster than inkjet printers rated at the same speed.

The printer has a serial port only and no USB connection, and while this may pose a problem for some, the people who will be looking at this printer will likely not be 'Early Adapters'.

The controls are well laid out and aside from the ON/OFF button being at the usual side of the machine, all the other indicators for 'Paper Jam', 'Error' and 'Ready' messages are all clearly visible.

The only problem that I have had is in printing card stock which invariably jams in the printer. Other than that, normal paper prints great.

Software can be easily found and downloaded from the Lexmark website. The printer appears to be only compatible with Windows, but even as it is a fairly old printer, software can be downloaded to run on even the newest Operating System (I am running it on Windows XP).

Printer cartridges can be fairly expensive at around US$60 - $80, depending on the retailer. However, they are supposed to be good for 2000 pages, so between 3 and 4 cents per page which is not bad.

At the ridiculously low price that I paid, it is impossible for me to fault it. And as these machines seem to be available at generally less than $50, I think they are a steal.