subject: Lexmark X3650 Printer - Difficult To Recommend. [print this page] The X3650 is easy to installThe X3650 is easy to install. When installing the software you are given various options as to what you want to include such as Abby Sprint OCR and Lexmark's Productivity Sprint OCR. This means you don't have to include software that is of no use to you. Aligning the print head is also a simple process. Compared with other current all-in-one printers the X3650 was quite slow at just about everything.
The X3650 produced dark but fuzzy draft prints while eight decent standard quality prints took about a minute. The X3650 could take over a minute to print a colour page which means that although the print quality was good it would not be ideal for long colour documents.
There are memory card slots on the X3650 but they are not convenient to use without a preview screen. The easiest way to print photos without using a computer is with an appropriate camera connected to the PictBridge although prints are poorer in quality. The X3650 took more than 12 minutes to print six 6x4 inch photos which was slow when compared to similar Canon and Epson printers and the quality of print was not that great.
For some strange reason the X3650's default setting for the scanner interface is Legal instead of A4 but it can be changed easily. The interface doesn't close after a scan which makes it easier to scan batches of documents. It is simple to make use of although there are only a limited number of settings. The X3650 created decent scans of documents. The limited 600 dpi optical resolution meant that enlarging documents or scanning photos did not give very good results.
The X3650 takes black number 36 or 36XL and a colour 37 or 37XL cartridges. Even using the high-yield cartridges the X3650 is still an expensive printer to use, in no small part because when one colour runs out you have to replace the colour cartridge even though there may be plenty of the other two colours left.
Although the Lexmark X3650 is not an expensive machine it is difficult to recommend because it did not excel at anything especially when compared with much of the competition.
