Review: Lexmark X5270

While some may think of multifunction devices as business tools, there are a number on the market that are aimed directly at consumers: They offer high-quality color printing (some as photo printers), together with copying, scanning, and limited faxing abilities. The Lexmark X5270 is one of these: an all-in-one that offers low-cost multifunction functionality.

Design

Lexmark definitely manufactures some of the most stylish looking printers around -- the X5270 has an art deco look that would grace any desktop. The control panel sits just to the right of the cover, and offers three control buttons for the one-line LCD screen, along with Color and Black copy buttons, a Scan button, a Cancel button and a Power button. Paper feeds in from the back of the printer via a slanted in-tray that holds 100 sheets. Documents exit onto tray in front. The power cord and USB port are in back, to the right of the in-tray.

The top lid opens to reveal the 8.5 x 11-inch (letter-size) scan surface. You can easily pull the back of the lid up for books and other bulky documents. To access the ink cartridges, you pull up the lid and scan surface.

Installation

As is usual with most consumer-level inkjets, it is a simple matter to install the two ink cartridges: one black and one color. Interestingly, in order to access the cartridges, you have to prop the cover open using an attached plastic support, much as you prop open the hood of a car. It's the first time I've ever seen anything like this, and it did make me feel slightly insecure -- I felt as if I might knock the prop over while changing the cartridges (although it never happened).

I had no problem installing the included driver and software.

The Printer At Work

The X5270 is rated at up to 12 ppm black printing and 3ppm color (using normal print). In other words, it prints black text at a decent clip for an inkjet printer, and takes its time when printing color.

I had no problem with the quality of the black text that the device produced. Color images were clean and nicely defined, with no streaking or muddy areas. The color quality was good, although the tints wasn't as bright as the same images we printed using the Epson Stylus Photo R200. Trying Lexmark's photo inks (as opposed to their day-to-day color inks) could improve that considerably.

The driver itself offers the usual number of functions -- print quality, number of copies, paper size and orientation, and print layout -- in a clear, understandable format obviously designed for consumers. The printer will automatically assign these factors according to the paper type it senses, or you can select feature such as quality and paper type manually.