(Refurb) Lexmark 16ppm laser printer $219

[beergeek]

The Geeks have the Lexmark Optra S 1625 16ppm B/W Laser Printer for $219.00. The printer is a refurb, and comes with a 180 day warranty. It comes with a stock 17.5K page cartridge, which normally goes for ~$110 by itself. The printer has PCL and PS level 2 support, and an alleged 65K page/month duty cycle, and (also alleged, since I can't find them) options for big paper trays, duplexer, network card, etc. The sucker is heavy, so shipping is expensive (~$50), and it's a Geek Special, so no coupons.

Has anyone used one of these and/or know anything about them? I've never been a big Lexmark fan, but this appears to be a pretty heavy duty printer for much less than half what the equivalent (admittedly new) HP or Brother would cost. [What I really want is a brand new HP 8150DN for $200, but that seems a bit unlikely ].

 

[numatrix]

I took a chance on this Lexmark printer for the office. An error message that I keep getting is a defective cartridge. Been trying to arrange an RMA for the toner, Compgeeks have been very slow in responding. The printer is in pretty good shape and I really hope it's only a toner problems and nothing interanally bad with the printer components. By the way, this thing was boxed with lots of foam. It block my whole hallway at the office before I had a chance to unpack the sucker. They seem to have been refurbed by IBM.

Toner is a high yield cartridge for 17.6 k pages. about 150 bucks to replace from stapes. Hope it runs.

 

[mothra0]

Anyone else have experience with this printer?

I just ordered one.

Thanks beergeek....it seems like a good deal considering it comes with a new 17.5k page cartridge. My small printing needs should make the cartridge last until I'm about 65 yrs old (assuming I live that long).

 

[Cyberian]

I used to service these printers, and they are as good as any in their price range.
I am 95% sure that 250 and 500 sheet auxiliary paper trays are available.

If they have been properly refurbished, this is a very good deal.

 

[Anami]

I have loved the Lexmark Optra laser printers for some time, having bought refurb Optra R (older series), R+, Optra S1650, and Optra S1250. The S-xx50 series is imminently upgradeable, and I believe the S-xx25 series are essentially identical. See the Lexmark S1625 webpage or the User's Manual. I've got the standard paper drawer, plus two stacking 500-sheet feeders, plus a stacking duplexing "slice". It takes standard EDO memory (*not* required as pairs), so it's easy to pour in a spare 16MB or 32MB or odd mixtures of these.

What is so cool about the Optras (even back to the R series), is the 1200 dpi actual dot pitch. It's so killer. These printers are hella heavy duty, like a real office laser, doncha know! Buy the basic unit and then slowly add to your collection until you've got a mambo stack in the corner, impress your friends! I didn't need the output sorter or the heavy envelope feeder (see the User's Manual link, above). I do leave the front multi-purpose feeder door open, with 10 business envelopes queued up, ready to print. You can tell the laser that each feeder has a certain kind or size of paper, so you can have card stock in one, letterhead, etcetera. These are so cool. I love them. There are also some maintenance and repair CDs out there, so you can see exploded diagram, electrical troubleshooting, repair flowchart, and all. Just like the pros!

 

[beergeek]

Anyone know how the Lexmark compares (print quality and reliability, mostly) to the Brother 1650 or 1850? The Brother printers are less heavy duty, I believe (but probably adequate for my needs) and don't have the paper handling expandability, but they come standard with duplexing, and have USB as well as parallel interfaces.

 

[Wedesdo]

Hehe... Really good deal. I still like the LJ4 I got for $60 though... Can't beat the price on the toner - $10 for 8k yield cartridge. Too bad it's only 600 dpi and 8 ppm, but you really can't tell the difference between 600 dpi and 1200 dpi text anyways.

Hum... I know the office is looking for a new printer. Might point them to this, hehe.

 

[Danman]

Can I put a NIC in this printer? The ones we have at my school are Lexmark Optra S printers just like these but have NIC's which make them independent machines. Anyone know?

 

[bit]

thanks for the hot deal. This used to cost around $1000.

review is pretty good.

 

[darren]

hey numatrix - let us know how it turns out.

im interested in this printer as well but would really like to hear some user opinions who have purchased it from compgeeks!

~darren

 

[Avecmoi]

Just bought... Seems like a great deal!

 

[beergeek]

Having started this thread, I still haven't ordered one. What I see looks good, but I'm very interested in a duplexer, and somewhat interested in bigger paper trays, more RAM, and Ethernet. Lookng around, I see some of that stuff on eBay, but pretty expensive. In particular, the duplexer for the Optra R is pretty inexpensive (~$25-$35), but that for the S is $100+. Anyone know of a better source? I saw one 500 sheet tray, but none of the assemblies that the tray fits into, and none of the Ether cards (perhaps not completely surprising).

Memory upgrade isn't too bad - 32MB from Crucial is $33.

Someplace I seem to recall seeing that this printer used an Intel EtherExpressPRO (8255x based) PCI card as its internal NIC. I wonder if this is true and if I could just drop one of these (at $10 or $15) in, instead of trying to find a deal on the "official" NIC...

Decisions, decisions...

 

[nexialist]

Been thinking about this deal too. The Geeks are about 45 min away so I could will-call pick it up to save on shipping.

Need a fast, reliable printer in my classroom and 17.5k copies? kids burn thru paper and ink jets are prohibitively expensive.

Are these much bulkier then a brother HL-1240?

 

[chefsresource]

I have a ton of experience with Lexmark S series printers, all of it good. A client of mine starting using them, they have at least 50. I bought one NFR for our company a few years ago, it has been flawless. It's a 1620N, basically the same printer but with a print server in it. I have had good luck on Egay getting a few extra items for it, like extra paper trays.

A rock solid printer.

 

[MrHappyMonkey]

toner seems mighty expensive $214.99:Q

 

[beergeek]

Yes, the toner cartridges are expensive, but they are supposed to last >15K pages. Also, OD is not the place I'd be most likely to go for a replacement. There are a couple of places on Pricewatch that show shipped prices in the $100-$110 range and several others in the $150 range. No idea of how reliable these vendors are - hopefully it'll be a while until I need to find out...

 

[Morbius]

The Optra S line of printers are almost infinitely upgradeable. You can add additional paper trays(500-sheet) and additional output stackers. These are heavy-duty, business office type printers and should last you forever.

If you want ethernet connectivity you will need to purchase a Lexmark ethernet card. If you are interested in one of these, PM me and we can probably work out a deal ( I have some new in the box and some that were pulled from machines and have been tested).

 

[salfter]

Originally posted by: beergeek
The Geeks have the Lexmark Optra S 1625 16ppm B/W Laser Printer for $219.00. The printer is a refurb, and comes with a 180 day warranty. It comes with a stock 17.5K page cartridge, which normally goes for ~$110 by itself. The printer has PCL and PS level 2 support, and an alleged 65K page/month duty cycle, and (also alleged, since I can't find them) options for big paper trays, duplexer, network card, etc. The sucker is heavy, so shipping is expensive (~$50), and it's a Geek Special, so no coupons.

Has anyone used one of these and/or know anything about them?

A place where I used to work had a similar model (the Optra S 2420...main difference is the speed). They'd go through printer cartridges once every 4-6 weeks...that's a lot of printing. The only time it gave us any trouble was when the office manager got some cheap-ass refilled cartridges that leaked toner inside the printer, and that was nothing that a rebuild kit wouldn't fix. (The printer normally needs a new fuser, rollers, and some other stuff (about $400) once every 200k pages or so...it had a fraction of that since its last rebuild when the refilled cartridges screwed it up. The $400 cost of the rebuild kit provided a lesson to the office manager on false economy.)

If you stick with new cartridges, it should last nearly forever in home or small-office use. Even shared among a dozen accountants (with their fetish for paper), you should do fairly well with just some infrequent maintenance.

 

[whistleclient]

did anyone get one of these? how do they work? my 5ppm laser isn't cut it in the speed department.

 

[whistleclient]

,

 

[nexialist]

Well I got one of these and finally set it up. Drove out to the Geeks, it's about 40 miles awy so I saved shipping which would be a bunch....the shipping box is huge.

This printer is also big compared to my Brother HL-1240.....it's about 4 inches higher, and about 3 inches higher. and weighs 41 lbs. It's built like a tank....it's made to crank out lots of copies. By comparison the Brother seems flimsy.

Prints 1st copy in 14 seconds and is very fast....very nice shading/pinting at 600 dpi. Has a jet-like whine when it starts up....noisier than my Brother.

Huge new 17,500 print cartidge.....windows 98 recognized it as an Optra S 2450, but all the markings are Optra S 1625.

It's for my 2nd grade classroom where it will be networked to 8 computers. Should take us a while to burn thru all those copies.

Dan

 

[whistleclient]

dan-- what's the "idle" noise like?

my HP laser right now goes in and out of a silent standby power mode pretty quickly, which is good because i work out of my apartment at home and i don't need anymore noise pollution?

also, about how many pages per minute (of text) do you estimate you get? it says it's rated for 16ppm, but i'm always curious.

thanks

 

[nexialist]

Idle noise is really quiet, I can barely hear it over my CPU fan.....28 dba idle, 48dba when operating.

I just ran off 22 spelling work sheets....printed out 18 in 1 minute.

Can't figure why Windows would recognize it as an Optra s 2450.

Great printer for the price

Dan