Which toner fits the Lexmark MB2338adw?

From six months to a fortnight, with the same toner

Lexmark recommends a monthly volume of 500 to 6,000 pages for this machine. That is a factor of twelve, the widest range you meet on this kind of equipment — and it makes any general advice useless.

Do the sums with your own figures, there is only one to know. At 500 pages a month, a B235000 covers six months. At 6,000, it empties in a fortnight, so two cartridges a month. In between, the machine is exactly the same: what changes is the number of people using it.

That is also why Lexmark settled on so wide a range: this machine suits an isolated workstation as well as a small department of ten. The hardware keeps up; the consumables budget varies by a factor of twelve.

What the machine can take

It prints at 36 pages per minute, with automatic duplex, 350 sheets of tray capacity, an automatic document feeder, fax, Wi-Fi and Ethernet, and a 2.4-inch colour screen. Its maximum cycle reaches 50,000 pages a month — a mechanical limit, never a basis for calculation.

On a shared machine, the real expense is not the price of the cartridge: it is the work interrupted when it runs out on a busy day. One spare cartridge kept permanently is the only setting that matters.

Scan rather than copy

The document feeder serves both, and the two have nothing in common on the consumable side. Scanning to email costs nothing at all; copying uses exactly as much as printing. On a machine at the top of the range — several thousand pages a month — copying is generally what explains the gap between what you thought you printed and what you actually use.