Lexmark P4350 review

Lexmark's P4350 multifunction device combines a colour scanner, which has a decent resolution of 1,200x2,400dpi, and a six-colour inkjet printer.

As you'd expect with a USB device, it's easy to install. You simply run the driver from the product CD and plug it in when you're told to. The software that comes with the device is easy to use and contains lots of useful settings to control print quality and speed. We did, however, have difficulty getting the print application to work with the P4350's driver. We couldn't find a way from the program to the driver settings page - an odd oversight.

Print quality was reasonable and detail was picked out passably well, though not as sharply as some of its competitors managed. Colour was generally accurate, though prints came out slightly brighter and more saturated than the originals they were based on. The P4350 also had some difficulties producing smooth graduations in colour and tone in some parts of our test picture, leading to a slightly grainy effect in the effected areas.

Scan quality was reasonable, though the scan engine had some difficulty distinguishing between different shades of dark grey. This will make discerning details in shadow tricky. Colours were reasonably accurate, although purples ended up looking slightly too blue. The de-screening option, which removes the unpleasant moire interference pattern that can appear on scans from magazines and newspapers, also worked well.

Print speeds weren't all that impressive: only 1.5 pages per minute for a text document and five minutes for an A4 colour photo. As long as you use the high-yield cartridges, running costs were industry-average or even slightly less. The copy function worked fine and was easy to use.

The P4350 isn't a bad printer/scanner, but if you can afford it we'd advise spending £20 more on HP's PSC1610.

Author: Karl Wright