Lexmark X464DE

A multifunction monochrome, this printer comes with 128 MB of memory and can be comfortably shared by a work group of around twenty people. It has plenty of cards up its sleeve but won't be affordable to everyone.

Hardware

The only thing missing is colour, though organisations going for this printer are likely to be deliberately choosing a machine that doesn't include it. The X464DE does however have a large, tiltable, colour touch screen (15 cm by 9 cm) that's nice to use, especially for those with big hands. The screen isn't the most responsive however - you'll need to wait 4 seconds between when you request an action and its completion.

All the functions on this 4-in-1 (printer, copier, colour scanner, fax) can be activated with the screen and double sided mode and wi-fi and Ethernet connectivity are included. The printer is Windows, Mac and Linux compatible and it also supports PCL6 and PS3. Standard loader capacity is 300 pages but this can be extended with the addition of further drawers to increase capacity.

Speeds

There was some disparity between the speeds measured in our tests and those announced in the spec. Lexmark claims 38 pages per minute (ppm) but we scored it at 18 ppm. The double sided speeds drop to 9 ppm. These are comparable speeds to the HP LaserJet Pro M1212nf, a 4-in-1 monochrome for the enterprise sector, slightly better than the Samsung SCX-3205W (15 ppm), but a good way down on the 26 ppm yielded by the Canon i-sensys MF4570dn.

Quality: excellent

The quality of prints is precise, sharp and clean. We have no criticisms to make except for the presence of a slight print head line. The contour of the letters makes them perfectly legible and gives the X464DE a well-earned five star rating! We compared the prints to those with the Dell 1130 and the Canon i-sensys MF4570dn and the Lexmark clearly comes out on top for print quality.

Scanner and copier

The scanner resolution is 600 x 600 dpi. While the X6464DE excels as a printer, the scanner can only really serve as a back-up solution. The definition lacks precision and the image details and contours look slightly blurred. Skin colours have no nuance and are overexposed. It takes 12 seconds to scan an image at 300 dpi, which is pretty good.
 
There's a nice feature that allows you to send scanned documents to various destinations (USB key, email and network).

Energy consumption & Noise levels

The printer consumes 20 Watts in standby and 300 Watts when printing. The standby score is too high but is no doubt due to the power required for the screen and the small lamp illustrated above. Again, comparison with the Canon i-sensys MF4570dn, which consumes just 2.4 Watts in standby and 320 Watts when printing, isn't favourable.
Measured at 50 dB(A), the X464DE is fairly quiet.

Cost per page

High yield cartridge Standard cartridge