Lexmark X85 review

There must be a catch.

For just over £120, you can now buy a fully-fledged inkjet printer, scanner, copier and - via your PC's modem - fax machine. This multi-function device even looks good, finished in all-black with a flash of silver in the paper trays. So does the Lexmark X85 flatter to deceive, or is it one of the true bargains of the year?

I didn't have to wait long to find the answer. As soon as I lifted the X85 out of its box and onto a desk, I knew it was the latter. Thanks to a LCD panel that gives instructions and status updates, you don't even need a PC if you just want to do a quick copy. Just choose whether you want a mono or colour copy and go. You can even tell the X85 to reduce the copy so it fits on the printed page.

Admittedly, the X85 can't match a true photocopier for speed. A colour copy at 'normal' quality takes just over three minutes, with a mono copy appearing 33 seconds after I touched the button. If speed or quality are greater priorities, it's again easy to change the setting - still with the PC switched off. But we were quite happy leaving the quality setting at normal. The mono copy wasn't far off photocopier-level, and colour, while not perfect, was very presentable.

Thanks to an adjustable hinge, it's also easy to copy or scan books, magazines and other bulky objects. Naturally enough, scanning does require you to switch on your PC, but it's still dead easy. You can start scanning by simply pressing a button on the X85, wherein it defaults to 150dpi. This produces a good quality image and, importantly, produces it quickly - in a few seconds, in fact, for an A4 scan.

If you're prepared to wait for the results, the X85 goes all the way up to 600dpi (still far short of the 2,400dpi boasted by standalone scanners), but we suspect most people will use 300dpi. This offers an excellent compromise between quality and speed.

Lexmark ups the numbers ante when it comes to printing, with claims of 4,800x2,400dpi resolutions for photos. With figures like that, you might hope for results that are impossible to tell apart from those of high-street developers - but you'll be disappointed. Even on Kodak's glossy photo paper, images lack detail and the all-important skin tones don't look natural. What's more, you may have to wait over 30 minutes to discover this!

Thankfully, the X85 impresses more on everyday tasks like printing letters. Text quality matches that of standalone inkjet printers, with crisp characters and black blacks. This quality deteriorated slightly when the X85 printed graphics and text on the same page, but it was still presentable. And if you need to make the best possible impression, switching to high-resolution paper and the X85's top-quality mode will produce the goods. That said, if you place the X85's printouts side-by-side with those from a top-end HP DeskJet then the Lexmark's results are notably worse.

You shouldn't expect great printing speed from the X85 either. Although Lexmark claims up to 10ppm in mono, the best we could manage was 9ppm in draft mode. And when Lexmark says draft quality, it means draft quality. If you want easy-to-read results, use the normal settings, and expect 4ppm. Adding graphics stalls the X85 still further, with our single-page report - which contains elements like graphs and line drawings - taking one minute and 13 seconds to appear.

I've criticised Lexmark printers in the past for high running costs, but thanks to the option of high-yield cartridges, the X85 works out at 2.7p per mono page and 6.6p per colour page. With the black cartridge boasting a life of 1,100 pages, you won't have to replace it too often either, while the one-year, on-site exchange warranty covers you even if you pump out 3,000 pages per month - enough for the majority of small businesses.