While Lexmark wasn’t the first company to release a multifunction printer on the market, Lexmark all-in-ones were probably the first printers to be seen in stores, especially because of their affordable pricing. One of the newer printers from Lexmark that costs about $120 is the Interpret S405.




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.

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