Lexmark X4975 review

The X4975 has some impressive features, including wireless printing, automatic document feeder, built-in duplexer, LCD screen and memory card reader.

Its design isn't bad either, with modern curves and a business-like silver and black finish. The buttons and levers all have a reassuring sturdiness, which you can't take for granted among today's consumer printers.

When it came to testing, the X4975 didn't perform horrendously, but nether did it set the world alight. We'll start with its good points. We got some excellent photo prints, with subtle tones and a good level of detail, but some of the brighter colours were overly saturated, and this cost the Lexmark a few points. Our black-and-white image was spoiled by a magenta tint, but again the finer details were well reproduced. Photo output didn't have us jumping for joy, but neither did it make us wince. Ten minutes for five 6x4 inch images, of average quality, was not a good speed, though.

As there's a big sticker on the lid of the X4975 proclaiming it 'Ready for business', we looked forward to great things from text and documents. Our expectations were obviously too high. Draft text was very fuzzy, and best quality was simply darker, with the same blurry edges. Our business document wasn't wonderful either: again, text lacked sharpness, though graphs and charts were well rendered. Just over nine minutes for ten pages of text would make most business users feel distinctly unready, and the scanner, too, was slow, talking a minute and 15 seconds for our A4 page.

If you just need the ability to scan and print stuff now and again, with no particular requirements for quality or speed, the Lexmark does give you all the right features. But it's not particularly good a printing photos, really rather poor on text, and not fast at anything. It's not cheap, either. You could get better printing for a lot less, or the more capable Epson SX600FW for a little more.