Fast, high-quality printing on offer from Lexmark's latest business MFD.
Lexmark’s new colour laser MFD features a large (7in), clear and responsive touchscreen, plus a generous lower tray that can be made the default paper source to avoid frequent paper top-ups in a busy office.
Setup was generally easy, though the Ikea-style instructions seemed a little less clear than we’re used to (but maybe we were having a bad day). The process provides an opportunity to disable features that aren’t needed, such as email and fax, and to choose which buttons appear on the home screen and whether disk encryption is used. These and other settings can be changed via the device’s web interface.
A LAN quirk meant we needed to set the Ethernet interface to 100Mbps, but that’s achieved through a hidden menu, and Lexmark’s first-line support was unable to tell us how it was accessed. Once the enquiry was escalated we were quickly in business.
Printing, copying and scanning all gave very good results. You’d expect that from an upmarket model, but people passing through the office remarked on the high quality of the output. Measured print speed matched the claimed 23ppm, with an extra 15 to 20 seconds for the first page. Duplex printing is standard. The upper tray has a bypass feed that’s convenient for single-page jobs such as envelopes, while the lower tray incorporates a multipurpose feeder.
The scanner unit includes an automatic document feeder with automatic -- but two-pass -- duplex scanning or copying. ABBYY OCR software is included. Flexible copying options include every combination of double and single-sided originals and copies.
Lexmark provides multiple methods of network scanning including scanning to a shared folder or FTP server or sending the file by email, plus a network TWAIN driver. The optional ScanBack Utility can store sets of scan settings and destination folders, but has to be run for each job. We still prefer background software on each computer with a PIN or password to prevent users maliciously or accidentally sending scans to their colleagues.
Scanning to and printing from a USB drive are supported (e.g. for JPEG and PDF), and such a drive can be configured to automatically customise certain settings including the buttons shown on the home screen when plugged in.
This model is eligible for the Lexmark Rewards scheme, which provides one free toner cartridge for every 10 empties returned.
Available from Lexmark, retailing for $3,740.
APC rating: 8/10 (Highly Recommended)
