Review of the Lexmark X5650 printer and scanner
Lexmark X5650
Once you get the rather large and bulky Lexmark X5650 out of the box one wonders how so much gear could be sold for under £100. In fact only the cheapest discounters will sell you one for a few pennies under£100. But for this sum you do get a fax machine and an automatic document feeder (ADF) for the scanner and fax. You also get a well specified card reader, PictBridge support for printing directly from a camera, and a novel feature in the form of a front USB port designed for convenient connection to a laptop – though it’s recessed a bit too much. WiFi networking, which has been featured in some other budget-priced Lexmark models, is not an X5650 offering.
We tested the X5650 with Lexmark’s optional #31 Photo cartridge, which replaces the plain paper black cartridge. This endows the printer with a set of main CMYK and photo cyan and photo magenta inks, which should have given the X5650 a distinct photo printing advantage. Alas, all our prints exhibited a nasty green cast, something we have seen before with Lexmark printers when used with a photo cartridge. Print speed was not particularly swift, either, with an A4 borderless photo taking almost 6 minutes.
Printer Max. Dots Per Inch (Dpi): Up To 4800×1200 dpi
No. Inks/Colours: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black Or Replace Black Cartridge With Photo Cyan And Photo Magenta And Photo Black Cartridge
Ink Type: Pigment Black, Dye/Pigment Hybrid
Scanner Max Resolution: 600 X 1200 ppi
Scanner Type: Contact Image Sensor (CIS)
Scanner Sheet Feeder?: Yes (Up To 25 Sheets)
Fax Facility: Yes
Copier Facility: Colour And Mono
Memory Card Types Supported: CF I&II, CF Microdrive, SD/SDHC/MMC, Xd, Sony Memory Stick Pro
LCD Screen: Small Mono Status Screen Only
Dimensions: 205 X 465 X 295 mm
Weight: 7.5 Kg
Verdict
At least the x5650’s scanner quality is good, though the Canon MP540 can scan faster.