Design
With every generation of its market leading iPod personal music player, Apple's snipped a couple of millimetres off the size of the unit in just about every direction. Now, the physical laws relating to the conservation of energy state that all that extra mass has to have gone somewhere, and we reckon we've worked out where -- into Lexmark's X5470, a four-in-one printer, fax, scanner and copier that looks more than a touch like an iPod -- if iPods were capable of going on Super-Size-Me style eating binges of white plastic.
The physical design of a printer is usually your last concern when making a purchasing decision, simply because for the most part people don't spend time looking at printers. There's also not that much you can do with a unit that has to accept paper of certain sizes and incorporate certain functions, and these two factors have allowed printer companies to get away with units that were frighteningly ugly in the past. As such, while we're unlikely to take the X5470 home to meet mother, it's still a printer we wouldn't be embarrassed to be seen out in public with. Everyone knows that it's all to do with a printer's personality, anyway.
Features
The X5470 is a four-in-one multifunction centre of the type that's quickly becoming the norm in the printer market. As a stock printer it's a four-colour model, although an optional 6-colour photo cartridge is also available. The onboard optical scanner works at a resolution of up to 600x1200 dpi, which is decent but not spectacular for this level of home/SOHO MFC, and the fax is a 33.6Kbps model. Lexmark rates the X5470's print speed at up to 25 pages per minute in draft black and 18 pages per minute in draft colour; colour levels beyond that see the rated speeds drop to 15 and 5 pages per minute respectively.
From a connectivity viewpoint, the X5470 uses a USB type B connector for straight PC connection, and is capable of using the optional wired or wireless ethernet adaptors, although Lexmark will slug you extra for those. It's PictBridge compatible, and comes with photo card slots for CF, SD/MMC, xD and Memory stick media cards.
On the software side, the X5470 ships with a driver CD that also includes simple photo editing and scanning software; as with most MFCs in this price range it's functionally capable software, but anyone wanting anything but simple solutions would be better served with any of a number of consumer-level image editing software options, such as the recently released Photoshop Elements 5 or Paint Shop Pro PHOTO XI.
Performance
Setting up the X5470 was suitably simple; it's been quite a long time since we've seen a printer that didn't come with straightforward installation instructions, and the software install is likewise quite straightforward. Once we got into printing, we found that the X5470 did very well on straight black prints, which it delivered with a solid level of quality and at quite a nice speed. There's always a disconnect between the real world and claimed speeds of printers, if only because the average consumer rarely spends all day just printing reference documents in draft mode. In our tests we found it capable of around 10ppm for full coverage black, which is acceptably close to the stated 15ppm. Likewise, draft black printing revealed an average page speed of around 20ppm, within a tolerable grasp of the stated 25ppm speed. Colour pages can vary even more widely, especially as consumer colour coverage can vary from a simple colour letterhead to full-on colour and photo pages. Again, we came within tolerable levels of the claimed page rates, where we managed around 2.5ppm in full colour coverage for a A4-sized picture print on plain paper. We didn't have access to the optional photo cartridge for our tests, so we can't comment on photo printing speeds.
We only hit one quirk with the X5470 during our test period, and that was one that's all too common in consumer-level printers. Whenever the paper tray was loaded with more than just a couple of sheets of paper, we'd find that it was prone to paper jams, which became more prevalent the more paper we loaded into the tray. As noted, this is hardly a unique problem, and generally the printer itself would warn us before we had to drastically unkink any paper, but it's a worthwhile matter to note.
Lexmark covers the X5470 with a one-year, next business day replacement policy for customers on the eastern seaboard of Australia; those living in slightly more westbound or obscure directions still get the one year but may have to wait a little longer for replacement units according to company representatives.
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wondrinfree
12/08/2008, 08:17 PM
rating
1/10
What a fantastic scam Lexmark have conned us with. Cheap printer with very expensive ink. They've added software which only allows Lexmark ink to be used. They are laughing at us. I wish I had never bought it.
Pros: Nothing! never ever buy Lexmark.
Cons: You will be limited to their over priced own brand ink
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lexmark x5470
03/07/2008, 03:15 AM
rating
2/10
stops printing after half page. choose other printer.
Pros: fax is ok
Cons: poor scanner. terrible as a printer and expensive ink.
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rongnghe
02/04/2008, 01:35 PM
rating
3/10
Phantom Noises...
Pros: Well when it wants to it prints...
Cons: It randomly turns on and off at any given time it chooses. Which is terrible at 2 in the morning.
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teri
29/02/2008, 01:40 AM
rating
2/10
I am having the exact same problem as you Wes. I spent over an hour on the phone with tech support and they told me to take my computer in to update the USB driver. I shouldn't have to do that!
Is there any other solution? My computer is only 4 years old - this is ridiculous.
Pros: Can't install the dang thing to find out if there is any.....
Cons: Can't install it and tech support - which the calls are routed to India - they are of no help and they disconnected me twice.
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kingfisherman 125
18/02/2008, 02:53 PM
rating
2/10
it dont work on vista been trying since dec trying to get your tecto fix it is a joke even the phone no they gave me was false check it out for youself
Pros: service request is 1-796370991 as u can see im desperate ill try anything please take the time to pass on to some one whos in charge it a joke im gfed up
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Hugo
01/01/2008, 11:15 AM
rating
2/10
I am about to get rid of this nightmare, no-one can help me get it to work running Mac 10.5 it comes up with error message caused by IJ Print Quality Plug in. have reinstalled several times, it worked once and has gone back to its old ways.
Cons: It will not print, scan yes print no!
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Gae
14/12/2007, 11:20 AM
rating
3/10
I have Lexmark 2500, i have installed as per directed by information booklet. Got to print test page and scann it then NOTHING. the whole system just stops!!!!!
Pros: It looks good
Cons: It doesnt work!
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Tommy
22/10/2007, 11:16 PM
rating
2/10
Paper-jam paper-jam and my second printer (can you believe I bought another same printer) and guess what! Paper-jam paper-jam after just two months
Pros: Looks good
Cons: Paper-jam paper-jam after paper jam
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jonoooooooo
03/10/2007, 12:46 PM
rating
2/10
Fsater to handwrite everthing, stay well away from this hunk-of-junk
Pros: Good paperweight, when thrown in frustration it makes a good size hole in the wall for air circulation
Cons: i give this a 1/10 because it works 1/10 attempts! They brag about this 10page auto-feeder but its easier to feed manually. Just got the printer working again but now the fax wont go. The scanner is pathetic quality.
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James G Montague
11/05/2007, 11:34 AM
rating
4/10
Does a pretty good job of printing when it works correctly
Pros: Cheap to purchase
Cons: Extremely long wait on telephone when using tech support of Lexmark/
Heavy use of ink, and doesn't alow you to refill. Must use authentic Lexmark Cartridges
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