Lexmark X4650

Part of Lexmark's 'home and student' series, the X4650 packs print, scan and copy functions into a reasonably small housing.

With its slanted front, the black and silver design looks impressive, while the built-in screen helps users navigate the various menu options. A memory card reader at the front allows for printing direct from all major digital camera memory cards, but the screen is really too small for previewing these.

As well as being able to hook up to a PC using a standard USB connection, the X4650 is fitted with a wireless network adapter. This means you can put it anywhere in reach of a home wireless network (should you have one) and print from any computer on the network. It's easy to set up, with the software automatically scanning for nearby networks.

Lexmark promotes the X4650 as able to produce 'lab quality' photos. We wouldn't go quite that far, but it's certainly capable of eye-pleasing prints. Colours were replicated well and there are plenty of sharpening/softening options within the printer software, but look closely and you'll see a nasty amount of speckling and a lack of fine detail. It is, however, reasonably fast, with an A4 borderless photo at best quality taking two and a half minutes to emerge.

Colour photocopying was sluggish, taking 76 seconds to reproduce an A4 document, but switch to mono and it's able to produce a reasonable A4 copy in just 12 seconds. Scans were of a good quality and can be copied to any computer on the network, or you can save them to a memory card or USB storage device attached to the printer.

The X4650 uses a single three-ink colour cartridge along with a black ink cartridge, while standard capacity replacements cost £19 and £15 respectively. The problem with combined colour cartridges is that once one colour runs out you have to replace the whole lot, binning any remaining ink in the process.

The main problem with the X4650 is its price: at £129 we were hoping for better quality prints. At the time of writing, though, Argos was offering it for £69, which is much fairer.