Design
Shiny, faux aluminum and sturdy, dark-grey matte plastic comprise the shell of the attractive Lexmark X7170. A clear, black-plastic automatic document feeder (ADF) rests on top and holds 50 sheets of paper above buttons and LEDs that glow with an interstellar blue light. Like other all-in-one devices, the Lexmark X7170 is top-heavy, but the cantilevered sides and curved-edge paper trays minimise this effect to achieve a ready-for-business attitude.
The top cover of the Lexmark X7170 combines the ADF, input and exit trays plus a scanner-glass cover. The cover opens stiffly, but its metal hinges slide on posts into the printer's body so that you can easily remove it to scan books or bulky objects. The X7170's round-edged control panel, which slopes downward from under the top cover, is easy to see and operate. The centerpieces of the control panel are a two-line, 32-character LCD panel, a 12-button alphanumeric keypad for faxing, and a button that chooses Copy, Fax and Scan modes.
The top cover of the Lexmark X7170 lifts easily without any tricky clasps, providing easy access to two ink-cartridge holders that slide to the center for quick changes. You'll appreciate the ease of swapping ink; since the X7170 uses single cartridges for photo, colour and black ink, you'll have to trade the tanks every time you try to print photos and text documents back-to-back. This hands-on process will likely annoy anyone who wants hassle-free, flexible features and prefers to keep the innards of the machine out of sight.
A 150-sheet paper-input tray and a 50-sheet exit-paper tray, which includes an adapter for printing envelopes and 4x6-inch photos, rest at the base of the X7170. A dedicated port for printing photos directly from PictBridge-compatible digital cameras rests next to the input trays. But without media-card slots, this machine forces you to have your camera on hand in order to print. Two telephone-connection slots in back of the machine will hook up to a telephone, a phone line, an answering machine or a computer modem.
Features
The Lexmark X7170 comes with a basic set of features in addition to its standalone faxing, copying and photo-printing capabilities. Without slots for digital-media cards, however, you'll need a PictBridge-compatible digital camera to print photos directly.
Once installed, Lexmark's Productivity Suite software makes document creation, sharing and management easy. Large, clear thumbnail icons point the way to common office tasks such as attaching documents to e-mails, scanning and editing text, creating PDF files from a wide range of formats and fine-tuning digital photographs. The machine's drivers even tell you whether a scan's resolution is good for onscreen display, faxing or printing. Abbyy FineReader optical character recognition (OCR) software turns hard-copy faxes into digital files.
The Productivity Suite enables you to easily program your fax settings via well-laid-out windows and tabbed pages that are better than the endlessly scrolling menu options on the tiny LCD control panel. Options within the X7170's fax software include the ability to create cover pages and set up speed dialing. The X7170 also features fax broadcasts, for sending the same message to a list of people, and delayed faxing, which helps you take advantage of low night time phone rates.
The X7170 isn't network ready, but you can pair it with Lexmark's N4000e 10/100 Base-TX Ethernet or add an 802.11g wireless external print server.
Performance
The Lexmark X7170 caught us by surprise in CNET Labs' tests since it was one of the slowest multifunctions we've ever tested. Despite the speedy reputation of Lexmark printers, this model somehow managed to eke out only 1.1 pages per minute (ppm) for printed text and took up to 9.6 minutes to finish an 8x10-inch high-resolution photo. Other inkjet printers, such as the Epson CX4600, spend just 3.0 to 5.0 minutes on the same job.
In CNET Labs' bevy of image-quality tests, the Lexmark X7170 came in all over the map, from poor to excellent. In our black-ink printing tests, it performed poorly, smudging letters.
The X7170 performed a bit better in our colour-graphics tests, reproducing a test document with excellent colour matching, good details and pale but otherwise accurate hues. Photographs showed a pronounced magenta colour cast. We also saw signs of oversharpening, an increase in the contrast between the adjacent tones or colours. The combined effect was especially noticeable in hair and skin.
As a scanner, the X7170 performed poorly. Its test black-and-white scan was faint, missing data in patches and unable to reproduce fine shading or details. The colour scan was also poor and washed out, with inaccurate colour matching and a blurry, out-of-focus appearance.
On the other hand, the scanning speed of the Lexmark X7170 impressed us. Its score of up to 5.3ppm for grayscale and 4.7ppm for colour documents is among the best we've tested. This device made copies at a slow 0.8ppm.
During our tests, this multifunction printer performed smoothly, without any problems. We tested it at the default factory settings, which can be adjusted to improve performance.
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
 |
Copy speed | |
Color scan speed | |
Grayscale scan speed | |
Photo speed | |
Text speed |
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
|
Colour scan | |
Grayscale scan | |
Photo | |
Graphics on inkjet paper | |
Text on inkjet paper |
Click here to learn more about how CNET Labs tests printers.
Performance analysis written by CNET Labs project leader Dong Van Ngo.
The Lexmark X7170 comes with a quick-setup poster and a user manual on CD-ROM, but it lacks a printed user guide. The installation takes an easy five minutes and requires little more than hooking a USB cable between the printer and your computer and following the setup poster's step-by-step instructions. The software and drivers on the included CD-ROM install quickly and easily, and both the CD-ROM troubleshooting section and Lexmark's Web site answer basic setup questions.
Like this article? Click below to send it to your mobile for free!
little_cheeky_chook@hotmail.com
25/06/2008, 09:24 PM
rating
7/10
good and easy to use. but it shat itself after 6 months and prints very slowly which has uneven ink when doing text.
Pros: cheap for what you get.
easy to use.
Cons: jams alot!
slow
uneven ink on text
largish
Report offensive comment
gngbrady
19/07/2007, 06:30 PM
rating
6/10
Hi I need to find out how to set up a lexmark x7170 to a duet line which I am having problems with
Report offensive comment
Scrapdaddy
28/12/2005, 06:02 PM
Good so far...
We just bought this unit from Costco for $99.99 on sale ($100.00 instant rebate). The price and Costco's return policy was right so, why not try it out. Color printing off the computer is great. Color scanning sucks. The color is washed out and the text is blurred enough to annoy you very much. And yes it does print very slow. As for perks, it has access panels for paper jams, it is very easy to set up/install (unlike HP!!!) and the ink cartriges are VERY EASY to replace. I love the fact that the power transformer plugs directly into the unit rather than it being mid-cord or on the wall plug itself. The blue lights are awsome as they match the rest of my computer. We bought this to replace our HP 5510 Officejet All-in-one. It did not last 2 yrs. Have had MANY software issues . It has also been getting noisier like it is getting ready to die. It prints Photos very well if you remember to change the settings. If not, you can kiss another sheet of expensive sheet of photo paper goodbye as it leaves a large amount of VERY noticable lines all over your picture.
Report offensive comment
11/06/2005, 11:56 AM
Cartridges are expensive
Have had a Lexmark X7170 for about 2 months. The first one didn't work right, and the first replacement also was a problem. Am now on my second replacement which seems to be working. Replacement from Lexmark was not very fast.
Have always had HP multi-functions or printers in the past and the Lexmark is inferior. Print cartridges last only 2 weeks for me, with very light quality printing--the HP cartridges lasted 6 weeks.
Unable to control incoming junk faxes unless you have caller ID. Scanning is adequate for me--I don't use it much but it seems faster than the HP.
Staples was recommending this machine when I bought it, now I am having problems getting the cartridges at Staples. I am also suspicious of the recommendation now--where they getting incentives to recommend it?
My next will be another HP.
Report offensive comment