Handling

The Impact S305 is an attractive little WiFi printer, and all that's missing is a double-sided printing mode and a colour screen.  As with the rest of Lexmark's range, it too has moved over to different coloured ink cartridges, whose XL versions are cheaper to run than the average.  It's compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux. 

If you look at the whole of the manufacturer's range, the consumer multifunctions for 2010 come in four different versions: the S305, S405, S505 and S605.  All four use the same basic printing equipment, so, however much you pay, you get the following:

• WiFi
• the same printing speeds
• the same printing quality
• the same quality for scanning and copying
• the same cost per page

As you can see, from the entry-level up to the top of the range (which is twice as expensive), the printer itself remains exactly the same, but with various options.  The S505 gets a colour screen and double-sided printing, both missing on the S305, while on the S605 the display is larger because it's now touch screen and accommodates new programmable features.  You can, for instance, configure it to scan a paper document like a bill or letter and archive it in a specific folder, or send it to an e-mail account.  The S405 is a little different: it has a black)-and-white screen and a fax.  That's what's different about the different options, but the quality and speed of the printer, scanner and copier in each is identical. 

That's why this is just a quick look at the S505.  For more information, you can look at our test of the S605.

Speeds


Lexmark has really stepped things up a gear compared to its previous generations of printers.  With 10 pages per minute in colour, almost 15 ppm in black and white, this is a fast printer--once it gets going, anyway.  Unfortunately, you're not likely to enjoy such speedy printing, which only comes into its own on long documents.  For one or two pages, though the printer seems much slower, because of the long wait to print the first page.

Energy and noise consumption

While printing, the S505 is very quiet, producing just 47.5 dB on our photo test and 58 dB while working on a text document.

The energy consumption is also held in check: 15 W while active (compared to 25 W for the majority of other inkiest, and 350-1200 W for laser printers).  The only snag is that it still uses 3 W while on standby.  That isn't much, but why can't it be under 1 W?

Quality

Overall, the quality of printed documents is very good.  The results are accurate, with clear, sharp characters, but we have two tips.


• First of all, make sure you don't grab office documents straight away, especially if you have clammy palms.  The black ink doesn't dry quickly enough, and still comes off weeks later in some cases, so you can wind up obscuring text.

• Secondly, for photo mode, it's best to specify exactly what paper stock you're using.  There is an automatic mode, but we didn't like it and it produced some very odd colours.  Once you tell it what paper you're using--we followed Lexmark's recommendation and used PerfectPhoto Finish papers--then the results were excellent, and much better than the results that we were used to.

Scanner and copier

Once again, Lexmark has improved the speed and quality on offer.  A prescan takes just over five seconds, and a full scan of 4 x 6'' photo at 300 dpi takes 15 seconds.  That's better than average, and the result is reasonably faithful to the original, despite a small tendency towards red tones.

The copier function struggles because of the time it takes to produce the first page.  A single black-and-white page takes just over 21 seconds while a colour copy is ready in 30 seconds.

Cost per page

Lexmark has two different versions of its cartridges: standard (cheap to buy but without much ink) and XL (more expensive but with much more stamina).  Go for the XL cartridges every time, as they can halve your running costs in some cases. 

The tables below use the recommended pricing from Lexmark, but you can make even more savings if you buy online. 

Cartridge	Price	ISO Lifespan	Cost per page
100 black	£12.97	170	7.6 p
100 cyan	£8.11	200	4.1 p
100 magenta	£8.11	200	4.1 p
100 yellow	£8.11	200	4.1 p

Using the normal cartridges, you end up with a total cost per page of 19.9 p.

Cartridge	Price	ISO Lifespan	Cost per page
100XL black	£20.28	510	4.0 p
100XL cyan	£14.58	600	2.4 p
100XL magenta	£14.58	600	2.4 p
100XL yellow	£14.58	600	2.4 p

With the XL cartridges, the total cost per page will be 11.2 p if you use the recommended prices, but you could easily reduce that by looking online.