Lexmark X85 Pro

Offered as a step up from Lexmark's popular entry-level multifunction devices for the home, the X85 is a versatile colour printer-scanner-copier for the small office.

It's presented here in its Pro edition, supplied with a useful collection of office imaging software packages.

In its smart black casing, the machine is built around a 1,200 x 4,800 dots per inch (dpi) inkjet printer and 600 x 1,200dpi CCD scanner.

Paper feeds in from a leanback tray on top and is delivered at the front. Although the output tray adds to the desktop footprint of the device, it pushes back into the unit when not in use, and the input tray also folds down when empty in order to keep dust out.

The Lexmark X85 Pro can be used standalone as a copier without having to switch on your PC and, in common with other Lexmark products, the buttons and status window are perfectly intuitive.

Quick-task buttons for scan to PC and scan to web can be set up to launch software when pressed. Particularly valuable is the bundle which includes optical character recognition (OCR) and fax utilities, although the device does not offer any fax functions.

Print quality is pretty good, both for general office documents and photo output onto glossy paper, but printing is slow. In our tests, a colourful pdf page took almost two minutes to emerge, while an A4 photo took nearly half an hour.

Scan quality is average, not helped by the almost entirely featureless Twain driver. We were also disappointed not to be able to colour-copy an entire A4 document without some being cut off, and by the clatter which announces the start of every print job.

The Lexmark X85 Pro is a good all-in-one, but we have seen better for less money.

SPECS

• Printer: 1,200 x 4,800dpi; 12ppm mono, 6ppm colour
• Scanner: 600 x 1,200dpi, 48bit
• USB
• Lexmark Twain driver, Lexmark Scan-Copy-Print Control, Abbyy Finereader (OCR), BVRP
• Faxtools, MGI Photosuite
• 460 x 360 x 270mm (w x d x h)
• 7kg

Price: £199 (£169.36 ex VAT)

Contact: Lexmark 08704 440 044
www.lexmark.co.uk