The Lexmark C522n has a low upfront price for a color laser printer, but its per-page printing costs have the potential to knock a chunk out of your budget down the road.

The C522n is easy to set up, although like most color laser printers, it's quite bulky and heavy at nearly 60 pounds. The package doesn't include a USB cable, so you will need to supply your own ($20 to $25). The paper tray and cartridges load from the front, which makes both setting up and reloading a quick and easy process. The C522n is network-ready out of the box, and you can add an 802.11g Wireless Print Adapter ($249) if you prefer wireless connectivity.

Output speeds are generally good. The C522n can produce the first page of a job in as little as 13 seconds, even after a period of inactivity. The package includes a 250-sheet paper tray and a 250-sheet output tray, and a 500-sheet paper tray ($299) is available as an option. The C522n ships with a generous 128MB of RAM, which is upgradeable to 640MB.

The C522n supports printing resolutions of up to 1,200X1,200 dpi for monochrome printing, and the equivalent of 4,800 dpi (2,400X600 dpi) for color printing. Output quality is good, although photos fall a bit short. Text is generally good, even at small font sizes. Line art is crisp and solid, with few or no breaks, even in fine lines. Color graphics reproduce well, with little or no banding. Color and grayscale photos are good enough for business and general-purpose use, but they fall a little short for any applications where image quality is a high priority.

The C522n's per-page printing costs are higher than average, running about 3.3 cents per page for monochrome and about 18 cents per page for color. You can save some money if you take advantage of Lexmark's toner cartridge return program, but you will still pay about 2.6 cents per page for monochrome and about 14.6 cents for color.

Pros:  Budget-friendly price, fast output, expandable paper capacity, ships with a generous amount of RAM, generally good output quality, draft-mode quality is very good and can help you save on toner
Cons:  Noisy, relatively high per-page printing costs, no option to add a duplexer

Warranty
1 year, with onsite repair