Lexmark Home Office Series Review 
Make/Model: Lexmark Home Office S305 (‘Impact’)/S405 (‘Interpret’)/S505 (Intuition)/S605 (‘Interact’)
Type: Small Office/Home Office (SOHO)
Web site: www.lexmark.co.uk
Typical online prices:
Impact: £100
Interpret: £125
Intuition: £150
Interact: £180
The first of two series of printer models that Lexmark have released this year, the Lexmark Home Office Series is aimed at the home and small office market, as the name implies. All four printers in the series share the same general design, a matte black body with grey and glossy black trim; this makes it quite unobtrusive, a characteristic favoured in newer printers, though perhaps they were trying too hard to make these machines look sleek, like in case of the Kodak ESP range.
The entire range makes use of Lexmark’s new ‘Vizix Print Technology,’ which is basically shifting from a dual-cartridge system (black and colour) to a quad-cartridge (black, cyan, magenta, and yellow). The main strengths of this change is that now, when one colour cartridge runs out, the other colours are still usable (with the old, dual-system when one colour ran out the entire cartridge was considered dead, even if the other two colours were completely full), making it more economical overall. HP and Dell, who both use predominantly use the dual-cartridge system currently, could stand to learn from Lexmark’s break from tradition.
All four models boast colour printing, scanning, photocopying, and multiple compatible paper sizes, as does any self-respecting Multi Function Printer these days, while the Interpret also offers faxing, mounting a number pad on its interface to assist in doing so. The scanners on the Home Office series are all flatbed, mounted under a fold-up lid, and are listed as having a 48 bit colour depth with the higher end machines (S505 and S605) printing at a resolution of 4800×1200 dpi, and the lower end machines (the S305 and S405) printing at 1200×2400 dpi – with most inkjet printers struggling to get over 600 dpi, this resolution should be enough for almost all printing jobs.
Like many newer printers, Lexmark have embraced the rather popular Wireless connection for this range of printers, with even the low end model having it, at a reasonable price, too. In addition to these links to the user’s hardware, the two lower end printers have a memory card reader, so you can print photos and some documents directly. For those with multiple computers, they should perhaps look towards a different printer, as none of the range have networking capabilities.
The Impact and Interpret claim a rather reasonable thirty pages per minute printing speed, which is actually comparable to some low end Laser printers, but at a much better cost. Colour printing is slightly slower, though not as drastic a drop as might be expected; neither of these offer duplex printing, so, despite the new ink cartridges, aren’t as environmentally friendly as might be hoped.
The S605 has an attractive touch screen of similar dimensions to that of an iPhone, and its own applications (allowing things such as one-touch copying, and photo previewing) available at their SmartSolutions Centre. 
All four printers have a similar footprint, hovering around the fifty by thirty five centimetres (twenty by fourteen inches), with the S605 a little bigger, and the other three noticeably smaller. Along with a relatively low height (the S405 is an exception with its added ADF tray on top), this makes all four printers suitable for most desks, happily taking only a small amount of space from the most cluttered of work areas.
Verdict
Overall, Lexmark have made a solid series of printers, which will fit into most single-computer offices, either at home or at work, that are comparable to some Epsons and other multi-cartridge machines, yet cheaper to run due to less expensive individual cartridges.
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