Lexmark Prestige Pro805 Review

Lexmark Prestige Pro805 Review

Lexmark Prestige Pro805 Review

Out of the box, the Lexmark Prestige Pro805 is a monster of a multifunction printer: measuring 25x46.5x39.2cm and weighs at 9.27kg it's definitely a large add-on to virtually any workspace. Together with the other oddly-titled range (which include such gems as the Impact, Prevail as well as Intuition - find us a printer that is intuitive and we are going to eat our hat), the Pro805 is a wireless-enabled device that prints, scans and can even check the weather forecast for you. Priced at around 120, this printer does indeed amount to a good buck, so you need to make sure it's completely capable of doing what you want before spending a wad of money.

It is thus evident that the Pro805 has an array of calling cards, however the most interesting of these is the 4.3-inch web-enabled touchscreen which takes the place of the conventional colour TFT screen at the front of the unit. It is finished in piano black which gives a nice touch to the traditional Lexmark look. The Smart Solutions interface lets you download applications to set up on the printer (like RSS feeds, and one-touch printing for widely used documents as long as a pc is attached to the printer at the time).

Connectivity is taken care of thanks to 802.11b/g/n or the standard Ethernet port at the back of the device. At the front alongside the touchscreen are standard PictBridge connections (though only for SD, Memory Stick, xD and MMC cards). At the back, set beside the Ethernet port is a USB cable connector if you don't feel like freeing yourself from cords. A great addition for business people is the scanner's ability to read business cards as well as import information into a communications program of preference (such as Microsoft Outlook). There is automated duplexing too. The included Lexmark Prestige Pro805 printer ink cartridges are XL (high yield) consisting of three colours - magenta, cyan and yellow - and black. Paper consumables are entered from the front of the unit.

The first time we encountered the touchscreen interface is when we set-up the device, and we were really impressed. It is nice and responsive, and also user-friendly. It also gives a nice visual indication (which has tiny animated bubbles!) to inform you the present ink tank levels.

This is where our admiration for the printer begins to deteriorate. In our experience, there's usually an element of any printer that proves frustrating, and for the Pro805 it wins the tearing hair accolade for using the most tricky ink tanks. It was not easy to get the cartridges to snap into the printhead.

The speed is also an issue with this printer, taking one minute and thirteen seconds to produce the first page of our standard test document sent via the USB connection, with delay of 10 seconds or more between printing the pages soon after.

On the brighter side, the text quality was quite good at standard 12-point font, although there were some noticeable smudging and banding across text at larger sizes. Print speed was somewhat slow at almost double of Lexmark's claim of 24 seconds for a 10x15cm photo quality print on photo paper. The quality of the print was decent, although nowhere close to lab quality with observable droplets and also over-saturated colours.

Among the perennial claims of Lexmark is the cheap cost of running their printers that goes down to 1p per page on black text. The Pro805 is equipped with four ink cartridges ( one black and three individual colour). Best buy is the 100XL cartridges in return program format.

Lexmark Prestige Pro805 ink cartridges can be found here.

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