 "Lexmark X 1270 All-In-One Printer")
Lexmark’s new starter level all-in-one printer may look good and have the user-friendly features that you’d want from a budget printer. But it falters at the one point that matters the most.
Read on.
Build
The Lexmark X 1270 looks great on any desktop with its sleek looks and friendly design and comes in ‘iPod-white’ color, which seems to be catching on with everything these days.
The A4-sized scanner is located under the top lid of the X 1270. The printer section is top loading with the prints and photocopies coming out on the bottom tray of the device.
When it comes to build quality, there’s little to complain about here. The device is bright, well designed and very user friendly. If I had to nit-pick in this section it would be that the trays in the printer feel like cheap plastic that I would normally be very careful with while handling. Like I said, just nit-picking.
Features
As in all MFDs, the Lexmark X 1270 can scan, print and photocopy in both color and black and white. There are one touch scan, color copy and black and white copy buttons provided on the top of the printer to make things easy. Unfortunately these buttons do require that the device is connected to a computer before you can use any of these functions, unlike many MFDs these days that can perform these functions independently. Still,that’s not really a big deal and considering it’s a budget MFD, some privileges will obviously be cut down.
The X 1270 can be used as a fax device too, using the software bundled with it. But since the MFD doesn’t have any hardware fax support, you will need an additional fax modem attached to your computer.
__PAGEBREAK__
Performance
Starting with the printer, we got a performance that was quite similar to what we got from Lexmark’s own Z645 budget printer. The print quality was visibly dithered and the sharpness levels were relatively unsatisfactory; and this was on high quality glossy photo paper. The colors seemed bright and lively but that didn’t help much in the overall result.
Regular document printing speed was a lot better than the Z645’s at around 10 seconds per sheet. Add color and an image to the document and it would get a bit slower. One thing you don’t want to attempt on this one, unless you have a lot of time to kill, is photo printing. At best quality settings on a glossy photo paper, the X 1270 took over 26 minutes on a full A4-sized print.
Photocopying was not too fast either with the device taking close to a minute and a half for a single black and white photocopy and double that time for a color one. Moreover both photocopies had around an inch and a half of blank area on the top of the copy due to the scanner’s incapability to scan the complete area.
Quality-wise there wasn’t much to complain from the black and white photocopy (besides the blank area), but the color photocopy messed up the colors by quite a big margin. In our test, the colors came out inaccurate to a high extent and the device seemed to have trouble in reproducing the browns in the test image.
__PAGEBREAK__
Scanning was reasonably clear and sharp. It does a decent job of scanning documents, photos and plain sheets of paper, but if you’re planning on scanning anything with a little complex embossing or layers of paper placed on top of each other, the part that’s not touching the scanner base comes out blurred. Scanning 3D objects are a strict no-no.
The scans were relatively sharp
The colors were a bit dull in our scanning tests so a little software adjustment is advised after scanning.
Uneven objects caused blurring and the colors were not accurate
Since the X 1270 uses the exact same cartridges as Z645, the cartridge capacity was also similar. We got 105 pages of print before the color cartridge showed signs of deterioration, which is very low by any standards. With the cartridges priced at Rs 842 and Rs 916 for black and color respectively, the page output just doesn’t justify that cost.
Conclusion
The problem with the Lexmark X 1270 is that it offers something good, but under-performs in all its offerings. It’s a good looking printer with a nice set of features, but the output is simply disappointing. The Lexmark X 1270 can be yours at a street price of Rs 4,490. But really, do you want it?
 "Israel targets top Hamas leaders in Doha; Qatar, Iran condemn strike as violation of sovereignty")
 "Nepal: Oli to continue until new PM is sworn in, nation on edge as all branches of govt torched")
 "Who is CP Radhakrishnan, India's next vice-president?")
 "Israel informed US ahead of strikes on Hamas leaders in Doha, says White House")
 "Israel targets top Hamas leaders in Doha; Qatar, Iran condemn strike as violation of sovereignty")
 "Nepal: Oli to continue until new PM is sworn in, nation on edge as all branches of govt torched")
 "Who is CP Radhakrishnan, India's next vice-president?")
 "Israel informed US ahead of strikes on Hamas leaders in Doha, says White House")
