However, the Lexmark X4550 text printing is not very accurate and clear, which can be a little annoying, but it doesn’t look too bad either, compared to other devices of its class. The photo printing is not extraordinary either, while the color cartridges are separated in two: one black cartridge, and one tricolor cartridge. To escape the standard four-color printing, you can install the Lexmark Photo cartridge for six-color printing, which will improve the images’ quality.

The speed of printing isn’t too fast either, which is specific for a home destined multifunctional. You can print 20 pages in black in two minutes time using the draft mode. For 10 colored pages the time will be even more expanded, of up to four minutes and thirty seconds. If you use the four color cartridge, the time will be less, of two minutes and twenty-five seconds. The black and white documents will spare more time, of fourteen seconds per page. The average time spent to copy a color page is one minute and twenty-four seconds.

The scanner works better than the printer, and it has an 8.5 x 11.7 inch flatbed hinge technology and 600 x 1,200 dpi. It can handle well books, magazines, or photos scanning, and the images rendered are crisp and clear. The copies made on simple or photo papers have a nice overall appearance, though they had a slightly red shade.

The scanning can be done to either a wired or a wireless network, and it is closely related to Adobe Photoshop Elements and Microsoft Word software, to which the scans can be directly sent. If you want to scan during a long time printing process, you may have problems with the scanning process, because the Lexmark X4550 device was not equipped with enough power so that it can all times work as a multifunctional device. It is a multifunctional device that will not allow you to multitask too much, but you will benefit from each of its options for faxing, scanning and printing, each option being recommended for individual use.

There is a flash card reader that supports MultiMediaCard, CompactFlash, SD, and xD-Picture Card formats, which can be used with the wireless connectivity option. You also have the possibility to print from the card at once. You don’t have a preview option, which can be consider a con for this multimedia device, but you can print a proof sheet that will guide you to the selection of pictures and sizes you will want to print.

This particular printer was designed for use in a home office and it offers some of the best features on the market compared to similar devices. The Interpret S405 is part of a whole series of Lexmark printers, all featuring relatively odd but interesting names that start with an ‘I’, the Impact S305, Intuition S505 and Interact S605. All of the four printer are designed and based upon roughly the same model, with a tweak here and there. In fact, the print speeds, ink used and print head are the exact same.

Another thing the four printers seem to share is the design. They come with a black and gray shell with glossy accents here and there. On top of the S405 you can find an automatic document feeder, that function that makes our lives much easier when we have to manipulate a higher number of sheets we wouldn’t really want to feed one by one. The input tray sits at the back of the device and the paper eventually ends up on the output tray sticking from the front.

The control panel lays on the front of the printer and is pretty hard to miss. A number pad is present for easier faxing. Navigation is done through a four button set and with the help of a 2line backlit display. There are also buttons for every available function of this all-in-one printer, namely copy, scan, fax and photo print.

A USB slot works for both normal connections as well as for direct printing straight from compatible PictBridge camera. The single memory card slot comes with support for SD, Memory Stick and xD formats. If you also consider the Ethernet port and WiFi for networking you could say you’re getting a full set of options for printing from any given device (or devices). In an home office this is a very nice thing to have as you might want to use the digital camera you have around as well as hook up two computers to printing without any kind of wire.

If all of the above sounds decent, then things are about to become even better when talking about this Lexmark color printer. Lexmark claims 17 pages per minute for black printing and the Interpret S405 can do about half of that in reality. The printing speed of photography is not bad either and overall you could say this Lexmark color printer is pretty fast for an inkjet all-in-one.

Print quality varies based on what you’re actually printing. Black text is satisfactory but far from what a pretentious user would expect (who’d be much better off with a laser printer). Color graphics and photo printing are pretty good for a printer of this class and price. As a conclusion the only flaw you could find with this printer is the high price of consumables.

Now most office users may prefer a laser printer. This is because the maintenance cost of a laser is said to be way under the one of an inkjet. Lately this has changed, as at least consumables will get you to around the same costs. Toners may be more expensive but they are higher capacity so overall you’ll spend more money less often. What inkjets shine in, however, is photo print and color quality.

Lexmark tried their best to come up with a high quality printer that at the same time is as affordable or more so than a laser. This all-in-one color inkjet offers the possibility of equipping a 105XL black ink cartridge instead of a 100XL. The 105XL costs about ¼ of what the latter does. The cost per black page you end up with is actually below the one of lasers.

When considering a Platinum Pro 905 what you’ll be getting is printing, scanning, copying and fax machine. For all it features, the printer’s size is average, at 12.1 x 18.31 x 15.42 inches. The darker, more serious design, with round edges makes this printer look professional and blend in an office environment very well.

The color ink jet printer features a 4.3 inch display that’s bright and extremely to read. On the LCD you’ll find a button that Lexmark calls ‘SmartSolutions’ which can be programmed for one-touch execution of a series of actions. The Platinum Pro 950 comes with a few presets but this feature is being offered specifically for the user to make special ones for that particular office’s needs.

One of the good points of this printer is definitely paper capacity. There are two 150-sheet input trays. The top tray can store photo paper. To further sustain it’s office qualities the printer also features a duplexer, which will allow printing on both sides of a paper and an automatic document feeder with a 50 page capacity. Quality of the prints is good towards very good, regardless of the type of media used. The speed is however slower than in the case of most competitors and the Platinum Pro 905 will reach around 6 pages per minute on default settings for plain text.

As a conclusion, the Lexmark Platinum Pro 905 is an all-in-one color ink jet printer with plenty of useful features that can handle an office perfectly. Because it provides great flexibility there are few tasks that it won’t manage to do properly. Monochrome print costs are highly affordable, but otherwise this printer isn’t cheap at all. Of course, as always high-end printers don’t come with cheap price tags.

Add to that an automatic document feeder with a capacity of 25 sheets that ensures easy copying and faxing of multiple pages without having to manually put the sheets of paper into the scanner, PictBridge that allows printing directly from a compatible digital camera and two memory card slots on the front of the device (supporting SD, xD, Compact Flash, MMC and MemoryStick cards) and you can say you got yourself a deal.

The design of the printer was kept nice and simple and you won’t have to be a scientist to figure out what every button does, or to set the printer up when you receive it. It will take a user probably under a minute to insert the two ink cartridges in their designated places. As soon as that is done the printer will ask for paper so that it can print an alignment page.

Before someone considers purchasing this device, mostly because of its extremely convenient price, they must be aware of the fact that low prices usually involve some sort of compromise on quality, speed, functionality or sometimes maintenance cost for the future.

There are several such compromises to be made in the case of these Lexmark color printers. One of them is versatility when it comes to wired connectivity. Its user will be limited for using this printer on a single PC with the help of a USB 2.0 connection. There is no Ethernet port on it so through wires it won’t work as a workgroup printer. The list of ‘what you won’t be getting’ also includes the duplexer (so if you want to print on both sides of the paper you’ll have to do it manually). Instead of a color display you’ll be getting a small two-line display that works just for setting things up and not for previewing photos.

The printer makes perfect use of the two ink cartridge system and is equipped with a black and a tri-color cartridge (cyan, magenta, yellow). To get better quality for photo printing you do however have the option of switching the black cartridge for an extra tri-color photo cartridge that switches you to six-color printing. Obviously no user expects to buy exceptional quality and the speed of light from a printer that costs less than $150 and offers several functions, including faxing which is usually expensive. In fact, the Lexmark X6650 should look and act cheap, but it manages to offer average. Which is obviously more than you’re paying for.

They develop and manufacture printing as well as imaging products. While the many Lexmark photo printers on the market do offer good quality, you’ll be pleased to know that they also joined the portable printer race with their P350. The Lexmark P350 comes with a white and silver case and a handle that folds up and it’s meant to inspire portability.

Right on top of the printer you’ll discover a 2.4 inch LCD screen that swivels allowing for multiple viewing angles depending on what’s more comfortable for its user. For control you’ll be getting four directional (arrow) keys, an OK button and a back button. Aside from the aforementioned ones you’ll also be getting print and one-touch red-eye-removal buttons.

The input tray is situated on the back of the printer and can handle as many as 25 sheets of photo paper whereas the output tray is right in the front. Also on the front you will find a USB port and the memory card slots. There is a very high number of memory cards the printer supports including Compact Flash, Memory Stick, SD, MMC, xD and variations.

The printer uses a single cartridge (tri-color) with pigment ink and can handle quite a few sizes of paper of up to 4 by 8 inch (which is a somewhat atypical format). Upon it’s release on the market this printer also introduced two new technologies to the public, Lexmark’s Evercolor II ink technology and Perfect Finish Photo paper. The Evercolor ink is, as mentioned before, a pigment based ink that promises a quicker dry time as well as prints that are waterproof.

P350 is pretty versatile as printing and can offer direct prints from a memory card, compatible digital camera, PC or even Bluetooth devices (provided you buy a Bluetooth adapter separately). At the moment of release P350 was one of the most affordable Lexmark photo printers around. While this doesn’t make it the highest quality printer and it’s printing speed is rather on the slow side compared to competition it remains a satisfying choice. Only clear inconvenience is the lack of a battery pack (optional or included) because it makes the device feel less portable.

The PC-less photo printing happens due to the great PictBridge technology that allows producing photos straight from your compatible digital camera. Moreover, the printer also has a built in card reader that also allows direct printing.

Because it includes an automatic document feeder as well as a duplexer, you can just set off to have a cookie while it’s doing its job, and know for sure you’re saving paper and money because it prints on both sides of a sheet. Since it’s network ready, all the users in your office will have no problem queing jobs and relying on the same printer. For an all-in-one inkjet the size of the Lexmark X9350 is more than reasonable.

It weights less than 23 pounds so you won’t need the whole office to assist if you plan to move it to another spot. The design somehow reminds you of Apple’s philosophy. The device is simple, roundish and white with brushed silver areas. Paper handling was kept rather simple. The input tray has a capacity of 150 sheets and its cover works as the output tray as well. For a higher capacity of paper Lexmark provides an optional secondary input tray.

A 2.4 inch fold-able color LCD and a simple menu make navigation easy and convenient. The LCD can also be adjusted so that the user picks the best angle for viewing. Navigating is done with the help of four direction keys and an OK button. There’s also an alphanumeric keypad that serves a clear purpose, it ensures that the user can conveniently dial fax numbers or change the number of prints/copies required.

The color all in one printer features two ink cartridges, a black and a tri-color (cyan, magenta and yellow). If you want higher quality and fidelity when printing photographs, the black tank can easily be swapped with another tri-color one. The cost of the ink tanks is rather affordable and you’ll be able to purchase one for around $25. This seems a bit odd because in the case of certain devices from Lexmark you usually pay a more than convenient price initially then end up spending a whole lot on replacing the ink.

So if this printer is so great, why is it much cheaper than most of the competing devices? There are two major points that make this device satisfying yet not great. One of them is the printing speed. Scanning speed is satisfying, at around 6 ppm for color and 8 ppm for mono, but the speed of printing is almost disappointing at around 2 pages per minute in color. The quality of the prints isn’t brilliant either. Even when replacing a black cartridge with a second tri-color one for six-color printing you won’t get great results.

As a conclusion, according to its specifications the Lexmark X9350 should be top of the line. Unfortunately, aside from all the bling like an ADF, duplexing and great faxing features, this color all-in-one printer doesn’t do so good in exactly what is important, speed and quality.

The P350 is faster than the P315, has the ability to print from a computer, and prints photos that are essentially waterproof. The P315′s photos were so lacking in water resistance that even after ample drying time, they would still smudge when touched with moist hands. But I held a freshly printed photo from the P350 under running water and rubbed it, with no visible effect.

Output quality is certainly good enough for snapshots to hand out to family and friends. Every photo I printed displayed true photo quality, with subjects ranging from landscapes to snowscapes to portraits. That said, a few flaws prevent it from being ideal. In our test photos that include people, for example, skin tones looked a touch yellow. In most cases, the color shift simply made people look tanned, but in one case, the face looked jaundiced.

A more global issue, though, is that most of the P350′s photos show a slight case of differential gloss, with some areas reflecting light better than others. You can see this effect only from some angles, but at those angles it gives the photos an odd look. You also have to be careful about how you handle photos you care about, because they’re relatively easy to scratch. After I finished evaluating photo quality, I noticed several subtle scratches that were caused just by shuffling through the stack and sliding the back of one photo over the front of another.

Print speed is a little on the slow side, but well within the typical range for small-format photo printers. The P350 was slightly faster than the A516 when printing from a computer, at 1 minute 30 seconds per photo (the A516 took 1:47), and just a bit slower when printing from a Canon PowerShot S60 camera or CompactFlash card, ranging from 2:04 to 2:38 compared with 1:43 to 2:06 for the A516.

Lexmark claims photos will cost 29 cents each, based on a $29 (street) print pack with enough ink and paper for 100 photos. Ink cartridges and paper are also available separately, but if you buy them that way, you’ll wind up with a higher cost per photo.

The P350′s one serious disadvantage over the A516 is its higher price, which leaves the A516 safely in place as the Editors’ Choice for low-cost dedicated photo printers. But if you do spend the extra cash on the P350, you’ll get a larger LCD screen for better previewing, editing features that the A516 lacks, and a reasonably good value for the price.

Read full review on pcmag.

Lexmark‘s text print is of reasonable quality, if a little heavy. There’s little spatter evident, but it still looks slightly overprinted. Colour graphics are not too hot, either, with obvious banding in areas of solid colour. This is particularly true of colour photocopies, where the main colours are also reproduced considerably paler than when printed direct.

Photo prints, as we’ve noted before on Lexmark machines, are considerably better than plain paper prints, relevant to their main rivals. Colours are a little over vivid, but nothing objectionable, and there’s some micro-banding noticeable, though prints are still OK for everyday use.

Lexmark is honest enough to quote print speeds for print in normal mode, as well as draft mode, but 15ppm for black print and 5ppm for colour print doesn’t match up to what we saw. Our five page text print completed in 47 seconds, so just over 5ppm, while our colour document took 2:24, only just over 2ppm – this isn’t a quick machine. A photo print took between 2:23 and 2:59, depending on the source of the image, which is also slow.

There are a lot of different ways of buying cartridges for the X5470. There’s a standard yield black and a standard yield tri-colour cartridge, but then there are high-yield versions of both these, too. You can also buy the standard yield black cartridge in a twin pack. Then there’s the photo cartridge, which introduces an extra three colours to the basic cyan, magenta and yellow and you can buy this separately or in a combo pack, together with the standard colour cartridge.

The conclusion is that the Lexmark X5470 is a good looking all-in-one machine, in a chunky sort of way, is easy to set up and use and is quite feature-rich for its asking price. It’s not that quick and doesn’t print that well (particularly when printing colour graphics), but it’s quite cheap to run, as some compensation.

Read full review on TrustedReviews.

Here are some paragraphs form the review made by PcMag. The slots support most of the major formats of memory card, including xD and MicroDrive, but not the older SmartMedia. There’s PictBridge too, so you can print directly from compatible digital camera.

A small LCD screen displays menu items and options in real English, which is an improvement over the simple indicator lights most machines in this price bracket use.

The X3480 feeds paper from a hopper at the back to a rather flimsy telescopic output tray at the front. It can also be used without a PC, printing out photos from a memory card or making photocopies from the scanner.

Although it has no colour LCD display to preview images, you can print out a sheet of thumbnails and choose (by ticking boxes) which ones to print, how many and the required size. Scan the sheet back into the X3480 and photos will be printed.

Prints from the single, three-colour ink cartridge are not too bad. Text comes out a sort of dark, bluey-grey rather than black, but photo prints are lively and reasonably lifelike.

With just a single cartridge to replace, print costs are variable. A text page costs just under 8p, which is high even for an inkjet printer, while a colour one, at around 23p, is pretty reasonable.

The main advantage Lexmark used to have over the opposition was price, but there are now several all-in-one printers in the £50 to £60 range, all of which print blacker text and several of which print cleaner photos.

Therefore, it’s hard to recommend the X3480 against these devices.

Via pcmag.

An AIO should let you take advantage of all of its capabilities. The X342n doesn’t. In particular, you should be able to use it to fax from any PC on the network. But with the X342n, you have to print a document and fax the hard copy instead. This wastes paper, wastes time, and ensures that the faxed version won’t be as readable as it would if you had faxed it directly from your hard drive. On an equally sour note, even though the Lexmark X342n lets you scan to a PC over your network, you have to jump though some unnecessary hoops to do that.

The X342n also drops the ball just a bit on paper-handling. It comes with a 250-sheet input tray, which should be enough for most small offices, and it offers a 550-sheet option ($199 direct) for a total 800-sheet capacity. But unlike the similarly priced Dell MFP Laser Printer 1815dn or the Editors’ Choice Brother MFC-8860DN, it doesn’t include a duplexer for printing on both sides of the page, even as an option.

The X342n’s speed and output quality are acceptable, but nowhere near good enough to make up for its shortcomings. I clocked it on our business applications suite at a total of 12 minutes 9 seconds (timed with QualityLogic’s hardware and software, www.qualitylogic.com). I’d call that tolerable but sluggish. The Dell 1815dn took about two-thirds the time, and the MFC-8860 took only a little over half as much.

Text quality is on the low side for a monochrome laser, but that’s still good enough for almost anything short of desktop publishing. More than half of our test fonts were easily readable, with well-formed characters, at 5 points, and some were easily readable at 4 points. Only one heavily stylized font with thick strokes needed 10 points.

Graphics show obvious dithering, in the form of patterns in some levels of gray. I wouldn’t hand them out to an important client or customer, but they are easily good enough for any internal business use. Photos also show dithering but are good enough for things such as client newsletters and printing Web pages.

Ultimately, the Lexmark X342n can do the job it’s meant for: taking the place of a printer, fax machine, copier, and scanner. But it doesn’t shine at any of these tasks, and it’s easy to find other choices in its price range that do more, cost less, or both, making it hard to recommend the X342n at this price.

Read full review on pcmag.