It has to be said, I’ve had computers for a long time now, 20 plus years in fact, and alongside everyone has been a good work horse of a printer. In the beginning that was my trusty Epson FX80, a slow, noisy, dot matrix affair, but one that stood me in good stead for a number of years. As printer technology developed, and my budget increased, I upgraded, and I admit to having tried most of the well known brands on the market. But somehow, Lexmark has always passed me by, so I was delighted to get a trial of one their current all-in-one range, the X4650. Now, I’m a little dubious about all-in-ones, as, whilst the idea of one device really appeals, the reality has seemed a bit of let down. The last multipurpose I had was large, slow, cumbersome, and cost me more than most laptops do these days. When it broke, I took the decision to move back to separate devices and I’ve never considered that a bad choice, until now!

The X4650 is smart, sleek, fast and above all compact – No bigger than my current single purpose inkjet. It’s also wireless, which was pretty much the icing on the cake for me.

Set-up was a breeze, with clear concise instructions, and everything packed in the box in such a way that you couldn’t help but read the Quickstart guide first. My only problem came when I realised that, in my excitement at its wireless-ness, I had set it up too far away from the computer for the USB cable to reach in order to do the initial configuration. D’oh! Cue me dragging the dining room table over to the desk... promptly followed by a bemused voice from behind me “Why are you moving the table? You have a laptop!” Somewhat embarrassed, I put the furniture back, and completed the install. Simple. Cartridge install was just as easy, and I soon had a test print in my hand and a big green “wireless active” light on the device.

First test was a straight forward print of a mixed text and images document, 1..2..3..4.. whoosh, and there was my document in glorious colour.  Impressive, definitely better than what I have at the moment.

Next I opted to print it again, this time in draft mode, 1..2.. whoosh, and not bad quality either. Not such vivid colour, but would still be perfectly presentable for text only documents, or where the quality of pictures was less crucial.

Right, so far so good, time to try out the copy function. This proved every bit as simple, quick and stress-free. Colour, black and white, images and plain text; all duplicated as easily as with the supersized monster copier in the office.

Finally on to the scanning, and this is where the X4650 really won me over. I’m used to a hardwired, A4 scanner, it’s old and temperamental, but it does pretty much what I ask it too, if I’m lucky and the wind is from the West or something similar. It couldn’t be more different with the X4650. First, obviously is the wireless networked aspect, which means that you can choose which computer you want to scan to, very nice. The next thing it offers is a menu choice of the programs on that computer that can receive scans. No more fighting with text scanned as images or vice versa. Tell it you want to scan to PDF, and it does. Want it in Photoshop, and off it goes. I admit, I scanned rather more than I needed, just to keep testing.

New to me, but standard on many current printer models, there are slots available on the front for a variety of memory cards, allowing an easy way to print off photos without needing to move them to the computer first. It’s a handy extra if you like to have your digital photos in hard copy with the minimum of fuss.

Not really, but paper handling would probably be my main concern. As a primary printer it doesn’t have quite enough ‘umph’ for me. I am accustomed nowadays to 200+ sheet paper trays and auto duplexing, and the smaller feeder wasn’t as beefy as I’d like. The official specs say the feeder will take 100 sheets, which is still reasonably impressive, although I didn’t load more than about 50 during my tests. But, I already have a workhorse for the big print jobs, and the X4650 would certainly prove its worth as a secondary printer for higher quality single sided printouts.

All in all, I’m really pleased the Lexmark  X4650 came into my life, it’s opened my eyes to the recent improvements in technology, and shown me that in the current market, quality, speed and simplicity can go hand in hand with economy.

For more information and technical specs see: www.lexmark.co.uk. Available from Amazon for less than £80