If you check out everything that it offers, the Lexmark X9350 seems like the ideal multifunction printer for your home or small office. Its price is good too and it retails for somewhere around $300. You'll get pretty much everything you need in the X9350 including printing, faxing, scanning, copying and yes, even decent quality pictures without being forced to keep the printer connected to the PC.



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.