Over the decades I have sold lots of printers and several brands. I really loved HP and in the 90’s to early 2000’s they were quality laser printers. However, they like other manufacturers, they began to advertise, through retailers, prices that were lower than I could buy from distribution. When someone can walk into Staples and buy a printer for less than a “partner” can, something is wrong. I have tried Ricoh, which are great units, their problem was the toner was double to triple what everyone else’s was. Some toners were the same price but only printed 10% of what the others did. Next, we tried Oki brand. Every single one we sold crapped out in the first year. Then we began to focus on Lexmark and have sold many of their printers.

I have run into a brick wall on one series of their printers. These are color, laser, multi-function machines.
I sold several CX410 and CX417 printers. These are a reasonable priced multi-function machine. Unfortunately I have had issues. Lexmark claims the Imaging Kit needs to be replaced at 40,000 prints, however every one of these I sold have stopping working at 10 – 15,000 requiring the imaging kit.

I could not bypass or reset the warning. I went ahead and replaced kit, then the machine had various print issues from jams to not waking up. For one customer, after about two weeks of troubles, I replaced printer out of my pocket with a CX417, the replacement for the 410. Fast forward, with just over 10k prints made the unit quit printing requiring an imaging kit. I tried 3x to reset via instructions from Lexmark. Use the 2 & 6 Keys though. No luck. I even upgraded firmware to April 2019 and tried again. All failed.

I also have had fusers that “need” to be replaced way ahead of time. This stops the printer from working. I replaced the fuser (the Maintenance kit) at 20k prints, way short of the 85k their documentation say it needs to be replaced. Within two months the display showed that the fuser needed to be replaced again. The machine would not allow printing.
After the 2nd fuser, another machine would print 1 page, then jam, then fix the jam, print 1 page then jam again. I took the fuser out 3x to be sure I did it correctly. Since the unit was out of warranty Lexmark was of no support.

This has occurred on every CX410 and CX417 unit I sold or customers bought themselves.

That’s enough complaining, until we meet again, have a virus free week.