Lexmark's most-in-one printer - Reviews - Hardware - Printers/Scanners

Lexmark's X83 All-In-One should really be called the Most-In-One; it's a colour inkjet-based multifunction that combines a flatbed scanner, a printer, and a photocopier in one box.

However, it doesn't have its own fax capabilities, working instead with your PC's modem to complete this task. Still, it seems like a bargain; for AU$649, you're getting a device that cranks out good-looking text and graphics on plain or coated papers, all at a relatively fast clip. For the truly budget-conscious, however, its high ink costs will eventually outweigh its initial low price.

X marks the spot
Using the well-detailed, illustrated Getting Started guide, setting up the X83 is straightforward. The device connects solely via USB, though it ships without the cable. The included CD contains drivers for Windows 98 and above but offers no Windows 95 support. You can download drivers for Mac OS 8.6 and above from the Lexmark Web site. In addition to the driver CD, a second disc features MGI's PhotoSuite, a basic photo-editing application, and Black Ice's Impact ColourFax Lite software. The boxy-looking (due to its flatbed scanner) multifunction measures 46 cms wide by 54 cms deep by 31.5 cms high with its paper trays fully extended. The top-loading input tray can take 100 sheets of plain paper or 10 envelopes, among other media types; the output tray extends out of the front of the device.

Using the multifunction is easy and intuitive. The printer works like a printer; put the paper in the top, click Print, then pick up pages from the output tray when it's done. To copy or scan an image, you slip a document onto the photocopier-style scanning window and press one of the buttons on the X83's well-laid-out console. To lighten/darken, enlarge, or choose the number of copies, use the respective function buttons. Furthermore, there are two copy buttons: one for colour and one for monochrome prints. A copy-quality button cycles through three options--Photo, Normal, and Quick--and there's a menu button for more complicated functions such as Clone (for filling the page with multiple copies of a smaller image) and Poster (for blowing up the image across multiple pages).

Printing with aplomb
The crux of any multifunction device, of course, is its printing, and the X83 did generally well in our labs' tests. It printed text at 4.2 pages per minute (ppm)--faster than the Xerox WorkCentre M940 and the HP PSC 750 by .5ppm. However, pages with mixed colour text and graphics came slower than those of the X83's competitors, at a little less than .75ppm. Next to the PSC 750's score of 1ppm, this looks a little disappointing. When it came to quality tests, however, the X83 never missed a beat. On coated paper, text and graphics looked excellent, with accurate colour matching and sharp detail. On plain paper, text looked good, but quality dipped slightly.

Smooth scanning ahead
Lexmark's scanning application is top-notch stuff, too. Visible as a little icon in the system tray, it took up only about half a megabyte of RAM and didn't cause any grief in day-to-day operation on our test systems. The program allows you to scan directly to a file, to email, to an application, and to any fax software you might have. Despite the X83's lack of fax hardware, it smoothly acts as a front end for PC-based faxing. MGI PhotoSuite 8.1 and OCR software from ABBYY round out the software bundle. These are both capable programs, though we found ABBYY's FineReader OCR had difficulty properly formatting tables from some documents.

But most scanning operations can be executed from the hardware itself. The X83's console has Scan and Scan To, a couple of buttons for scanning to the computer. The Scan button puts the X83 on standby until you fire up the Lexmark control software, while Scan To lets you control the operation from the hardware. You select the operation (scan to email, fax, an application, or a file) from the LCD menu and press Scan; the process begins automatically.

We found colour scans to be acceptable, though colour matching was off, and reds looked muddied. Our greyscale scan also looked fair and lacked sharp focus and detail. The scanner has an optical resolution of 600 dots per inch (dpi), though we tested it at 150dpi; it captures colour at 48 bits.

A capable copier
Acting as a standalone copier, the X83 does a pretty good job. It cranked out text-and-graphics copies at the rate of about 2ppm in our tests and 4ppm for plain text. If the copier is in power-saver mode, it takes about 30 seconds to wake up, which is a drag, but the LCD displays a countdown to keep you informed. We'd call the quality of the copies good overall rather than excellent because of a slight dip in the sharpness of text reproduction on plain paper--but it's better than that of many other inkjet multifunctions we've tested.

Are you being cheated?
For all the X83's good qualities, the high price of ink replacement will make it less of a bargain than it looks like at the store. If you buy ink cartridges at retail prices, you'll be paying about twice the cost per page than you would with some of HP's OfficeJet and Xerox's WorkCentre multifunction lines. Our sample pages cost US$O.11 cents per page of text and a whopping US$0.73 cents per colour page.

At least Lexmark isn't skimping on support. There's a one-year warranty with (here's a big plus) a toll-free technical-support line that's open 12 hours on weekdays (7am-7pm Mon-Fri EST). The Lexmark Web site also offers driver downloads, FAQs, user guides, an interactive knowledge base, and email support.

Lexmark's X83 multifunction offers good multifunction capabilities in an inexpensive, easy-to-use package. But for the long term, the device's high ink replacement costs could offset the initial savings.

The good: Inexpensive; excellent all-around print quality; speedy text printing; well-arranged front panel.
The bad: No standalone fax features; high cost per page; sluggish colour printing; no archiving software; no Windows 95 support; no USB cable included.
The bottom line: The X83 skips some fax features but performs well as a copier/printer with great-looking output. It's too bad the Lexmark's low price will eventually be overwhelmed by its high ink costs.

Lexmark X83
Company: Lexmark Australia
Ph: 1300 362 192
Price: AU$649
ZDNet Rating: 7 out of 10

For ink jet printers, we emphasise colour graphics quality. For laser printers, we emphasise text quality, speed, and paper handling.

Multifunction printer speed
Pages per minute (longer bars indicate better performance)

Color text/graphics

Print text

HP PSC 750

1.0

3.6

Xerox WorkCentre M940

0.8

3.7

Lexmark X83

0.7

4.2

Multifunction laser printer quality

•

Poor

••

Fair

•••

Good

••••

Excellent

Printer	Text		Graphics
Printer	Plain paper	Coated paper	Plain paper	Coated paper
HP PSC 750	•••	•••	••••	••••
Xerox WorkCentre M940	••	•••	••••	•••
Lexmark X83	•••	••••	••••	••••

The Lexmark X83 more than held its own against the competition, delivering the fastest text output of the three multifunctions we compared. On quality tests, it was nearly perfect, except for a slight hiccup on plain-paper text.