While all printer makers have made moves to rationalise the number of different print engines they have in their machines, Lexmark has gone further than most by using exactly the same engine in all seven of its new Home and Professional series of all-in-ones.
The one and only thing that seperates the different models now is the set of features of each machine and that is where Lexmark has got to play it with care. The Platinum Pro905 is definitely the top of the line and rests higher than the Prestige Pro805, but with 100 difference in their srps, how much extra can it offer?
A couple of things distinguish the 2 models is the fax feature and also extra paper tray. The printer itself is very similar to the Prestige Pro and same as with that machine it is also equipped with a 50-sheet Automatic Document Feeder (ADF) just above the scanner. The Platinum Pro is capable of producing double-sided copies, however, only by scanning to the machine's memory and feeding the originals through twice, this is mainly because the scanner head is only single sided and does not include a duplexer.
The speed tests proved to be interesting. The five-page text print from the Platinum Pro returned a speed of 4.05ppm which improved to 6.38ppm on our 20-page test. It took an average of 2.94ppm to print a five page text and graphics sample.
Seeing that all of them make use of the identical print engine, you'd assume that test results out of this machine would be nearly identical to those from the other units in the Home and Pro series. Actually, while the differences between the platinum pro and the prevail pro are not large, some are significant.
For instance, on duplex print this machine was clearly quicker, taking only 5 minutes and 12 seconds to print the 20-side,10-page document compared to Prevail Pro's 5 minutes and 32 seconds. However, it took 47s for this machine to spit out a single page, coloured copy from the flatbed, while it only took 32s on the cheaper model. A five page monochrome copy from the Automatic Data Feeder likewise finished in the Prevail Pro's favour, taking 1:17, whilst it took 10s longer on the Platinum Pro.
Compared to the previous generation of Lexmark inkjets, the new Vivix engine is steps ahead in terms of print quality on both plain and photo paper. The black text looks sharp, although there is a little feathering of text into the paper nap which makes it look a bit fuzzy.
Colours for business graphics are bright and very smooth and colour copies are unusually close to originals in colour. We were surprised with the results of the photo prints as it was much closer to the top Canon, Epson and HP can offer, in which they used to trail by a large margin. Overall, the print quality is beyond enough.
Being a part of the Professional selection of all-in-ones, the Platinum Pro905 Lexmark printer ink cartridges include the 105XL black cartridge. It is, to all intents and functions, the same as the 100XL cartridge, however is available at under 4.
Particularly, the cost for the black prints is very good for an inkjet and is below the cost of some laser printers within the 300-400 area. The 105XL cartridge is designed to not operate in the Home series of all-in-ones, so the reduced costs are merely open to those purchasing the more expensive Professional series machines.
It definitely is exorbitant, having to shell out 370 for an inkjet all-in-one. Even though the Platinum Pro905 is actually a reliable printer, equipped with lots of useful bonuses such as duplex print as well as copy, wifi connection, dual trays, fax and a touchscreen control panel, you can get something similar for almost half the price like the Canon PIXMA MX860. If perhaps print and copy are your main requirements, you can get same speed and quality from cheaper lexmark all-in-ones, too.
All Lexmark Platinum Pro905 printer ink cartridges can be found here.
