All-in-one machines, which can scan and copy as well as print, are a major growth area in the printing market. As they become more popular they drop in price, but the cheapest device we've yet come across is Lexmark's new X2350. At least one supplier is offering the machine for under £35 all-in.

It's well known that printer manufacturers sometimes sell new machines at cost or even below, budgeting to make their money on the string of ink cartridges you'll need to keep it running. It can be expensive to run these machines, but Lexmark has taken another approach.

The X2350 uses just one cartridge, conveniently called the No 1 Cartridge, which costs around £12.50. This gives running costs of about 5p per 5 percent coverage black page and 25p for 15 percent coverage colour. These are reasonable costs in comparison with other entry-level all-in-ones, so Lexmark isn't recouping all its money in high ink prices.

The X2350 has a very simple design; a white rectangular block with all its edges rounded off and with a cut-out at the front. A feed tray telescopes up at the back and an output tray pulls out from the front. There are just three control buttons on a small panel at front right, which control power, scanning and copying. There's no status display; just a single, blue power light.

PC software supplied by Lexmark includes its All-in-One Centre, which provides an OCR (optical character recognition) applet and basic photo editing. The X2350 can produce photocopies without being connected to a PC but to do anything clever, like enlargement or reduction, you need to control it through software.

Print quality on plain paper is no better than average. Because there are only three colour inks, they're all mixed to simulate black, but actually give you a dark browny-grey instead. This gives text and graphic prints a rather washed-out look, though they're adequate for general use. Print photos on glossy photo paper, though, and it's a different matter. Prints are vivid and lifelike; very acceptable. Lexmark could usefully make more of the device's photo capabilities.

Print speed is low. Although rated at 15ppm (pages per minute) in draft mode, we couldn't get more than a couple of plain paper pages out per minute in normal print mode. A 15 x 10cm (6 x 4-inch) photo print took over two minutes to produce. So it's no sprinter, but still usable for home printing and copying tasks.

Verdict
This is an inexpensive all-in-one, but it's not 'cheap' in other respects. It prints, scans and copies effectively and although we're not over-excited by its plain paper print quality or speed, it's passable and photo prints are pretty good. When you balance efficacy against the price and running costs of the X2350, it looks like great value.

Company: Lexmark

Contact: 08704 440044

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