Lexmark P350 review

Although Lexmark's P350 inkjet photo printer is no longer in production, it's still available to buy.

It takes a standard Lexmark colour cartridge and photo paper, so getting replacement consumables shouldn't be a problem. A high-yield Lexmark #43 cartridge should be enough for 100 6x4in prints, but at a steep cost of around 26p per photo. A #45 ink and photo paper pack is also available, which is better value at around 20p per photo.

Driver installation went smoothly, although you may have to disable any anti-virus software you have running before installing the printer. There are plenty of options available if you want to print directly from a memory card, including brightness adjustment, red-eye removal and various borders and preset colour effects. Unfortunately, images could only be viewed and selected one at a time, and data from our SD card was read frustratingly slowly. The menus include an option to enable Bluetooth, but this is an optional extra.

Print speeds were fairly quick at 10 minutes and 14 seconds for six 6x4in prints, but print quality was the worst in the group. Dark images were murky, while brighter colours were oversaturated. All our prints suffered from a distinct purple sheen, which was particularly visible when they caught the light, and the ink failed to dry completely, coming off on our hands even after several hours had passed. Pictures got stuck to each other and were damaged when we tried to detach them, and the ink ran off the page when we accidentally spilled a drop of water on one of our photos.

The P350 is easy to use and inexpensive to buy. It supports direct printing at its highest resolution of 4,800x1,200dpi, and it's small and portable with a sturdy carrying handle. It might be a good printer to use on the move without having to worry about damaging expensive equipment, but the lack of any battery option is limiting. With such poor print quality, it's impossible to recommend the P350.