Lexmark Printer MS431 or Multifunction? Use This 7-Point Office Printer Checklist

In September 2019, I approved a $2,100 printing setup because the main unit was $400 cheaper than the other quote on my desk. It looked like a win on a budget report. Actually, it looked like a win on one line of the budget report. That device needed a service kit before it hit 100,000 pages, jammed on heavier stock, and we replaced it in under two years.

I handle office equipment purchases for a company of about 200 people. I have done that for eight years, and I have personally made and documented nine significant mistakes that added up to roughly $18,000 in wasted budget. I now maintain the checklist that new buyers use before they approve any printer order.

This list is for anyone ordering an office Lexmark printer, trying to choose between a Lexmark printer MS431 and a Lexmark multifunction laser printer, or comparing business printers in general. It is not a spec sheet. It is written around total cost of ownership.

1. Write the total cost over 36 months before you compare prices

Total cost of ownership sounds like a phrase for finance meetings. Fine. Let me make it practical. Printer cost equals base unit plus shipping plus setup plus training plus toner plus maintenance plus service calls plus downtime plus disposal. If you compare only the first number, you are comparing discounts, not printers.

When our satellite office needed printing, I went back and forth for two weeks between a single-function printer and a multifunction model. The single-function unit was cheaper by about $400. But that office did not have a scanner, and the cheaper unit did not fix that. Nine months later we bought the multifunction model and paid for two expedited shipments to get the office working.

Start with the actual work. Pull the previous year monthly page counts. Ask how many people need scan to email. Ask whether your jobs are mostly plain text or dense forms. Then run those numbers over 36 months.

2. Compare supplies before you compare print speed

Print speed is on every spec sheet. Supply cost is not. Toner is usually where the total cost of ownership changes.

Vendor toner yield claims are often based on ISO/IEC 19752. That test standard assumes 5% page coverage. Real office pages typically cover more than that. If your team prints dense forms or invoices, the real cost per page will be higher than the marketing number.

When a vendor gives a yield number, ask which test method produced it and which cartridge part number it refers to. Then calculate price per page using the high-yield cartridge, not the starter cartridge. If you are deciding between a Lexmark printer MS431 and a higher-volume model, check whether high-yield cartridges are available and what they do to your cost per page.

3. Calculate whether supplies fit in your storage room

This step is easy to ignore. In 2017, I ordered copy paper and toner in bulk to hit a discount. The invoice was lower. Then the boxes arrived and a colleague asked where I planned to put them. We stored boxes in the corridor until we paid $350 to have a small wire rack set up. Call that a hidden cost.

Ask the supplier for packed carton dimensions and pallet count. Put those numbers into a cubic yard calculator. One cubic yard is 27 cubic feet. If the order is bigger than the storage space you can use without paying for it, add the extra storage cost to your total cost of ownership.

4. Keep the setup guide with the purchase order

A printer that will not show up on the network is useless no matter how good it looks in the box. Before you approve the order, find the official setup steps and keep them with your purchase order.

Setup steps are not universal. Searches such as how to connect brother printer to wifi will appear for Brother devices. A Lexmark printer uses its own network setup process, and the same guide does not fit both hardware lines. This matters more in an office with multiple brands because support work multiplies. Save the guide for the actual product, not the one the previous office used.

5. Print a real job and run a highlighter over it

Vendor demo pages are selected to look good. Ask the seller to print a file your team would actually print. Use the paper you plan to buy. Then take a highlighter and drag it across a filled paragraph.

If the highlighter smears the toner, that printer and paper combination may not work for your workflow. This is not usually written on a spec sheet. It is a 30-second test that has saved me from approving more than one bad print setup.

For color print jobs, ask about color tolerance. Pantone guidelines use Delta E to measure color difference. Delta E below 2 is considered acceptable for brand-critical colors; 2 to 4 is noticeable to trained observers. For print resolution, 300 DPI at final size is a standard minimum for most commercial work. A demo file shown at 72 DPI tells you almost nothing about a printed label or sign.

6. Add service time to the purchase price

A warranty period is not the same as a service cost. After the first year, response times vary. Ask the seller: What is the response time? Is it next business day or remote only? Are parts included? Is a loaner available? Then add one realistic service event to your 36-month cost if the printer will be used daily.

For a printer that is only a backup device, a slower service response may be fine. For the machine that prints invoices, one extra day of downtime can cost more than a service contract.

7. Plan how the printer leaves the building

I did not always include disposal in my cost review. Then I replaced a multifunction device and our security officer asked what would happen to the internal storage. That is a fair question. If the printer or MFP has a hard drive, data sanitization should be in the exit plan.

Check cartridge return and recycling options before you order, not when the box is empty. Many original Lexmark cartridges have return programs, but verify this at the time of purchase. Disposal and recycling are real costs, even when they do not appear on the first invoice.

The point of this checklist is the next 36 months

The purchase price is only what the invoice says. Total cost of ownership is what you explain 18 months later when the printer needs service, the toner was expensive, or the supplies do not fit in the closet.

So before you get lost in page-per-minute comparisons, take this list and put a check mark next to each line. If your office ordering style is anything like mine, the line you want to skip is the one that will show up later as another line on the expense report.