Lexmark Pinnacle Pro 901 Review June 21, 2010 15:06 by Matt Bird

With the latest release of our fantastic Lexmark 105XL ink cartridge, offering 500 page yields for just £4.02, we decided to gain access to a machine that uses it for a little test run. After all, you wouldn’t want to enjoy costs of just over half a penny a page if it wasn’t a good print would you?....

Setting up the 901

Setting this printer up was a breeze, and with each stage of the process illustrated not just on my pc monitor but also on the Lexmark’s juicy 4.3inch touchscreen, no matter where my idle wandering took me I could still see instructions of what to do. With easy installation when connecting by USB and then installing the machine onto a wireless network, a definite thumbs up for the Lexmark 901.

The printer has an absolute wealth of features under its hood. Aimed at small office multi-function duty it comes with all the standards:

• Scanner
• Copier
• Fax
• Duplexing
• Automatic Document Feed

On top of all this though, the 901 comes with the new technological craze: Apps! Registering the machine on the Lexmark website opens up the ability to download apps to your machine for a whole host of additional functions. Covering abilities such as “Scan to PDF”, “Scan to Email” and “Business Card Scanning”, you can easily download and personalise functionality of your machine to tailor for the needs of your office exactly. All of these apps are accessible by the fantastic touchscreen display which I really must discuss.

Lexmark 901 Touchscreen and usability

A fair few printers are now being released onto the market with touchscreens seemingly added for the sake of it and providing no usability benefit. The 901 is not one of these.

The menu system is so user friendly, intuitive and easy to navigate I almost want to rip it off and attach it to all of my other printers. Responsive and a very crisp delay, for once the inclusion of a large display is well worth it. In fact the only real criticism I would have with it is the apps the printer comes with cannot be removed. A tiny flaw, but it really bugs me when I cannot change/remove default settings. So close to a full thumbs up Lexmark, so close.

But how does it print???

Ramblings aside, the important question, quality! Does £3.91 buy you good quality blacks?

Yes. Yes it does! I have to say I was pleasantly impressed by the performance of the ink cartridges for Lexmarks Pro 901.

The text was beautifully crisp and clear, even when reducing the font to levels you simply wouldn’t want to print at. Black images came out superbly, whilst text translated over colour images without issue. Colours come out with very good clarity with no noticeable banding effect. Quality wise, this machine really could cater for all business requirements, from photo-intense brochure and presentational printing, to everyday document printing.

The quality of copies was rather good as well. Even when scanning highly detailed images the images were dealt with respectably, and standard document scanning was very good if only a bit slow. A handy point, as speed may be the only drawback of this machine for small offices.

For the relatively low price of the machine and cheap running costs (when buying the larger cartridges) I think we can forgive Lexmark for speed not being mind blowing. Performance peaked at around 6ppm black and around 2ppm colour on standard settings. Setting the printer to high resolution mode drops the print speed significantly, but that is to be expected!

Conclusion

The print quality of this machine is very good, and its multifunction capabilities make it ideal for all home users and small office environments. Though its print speed is nothing to print home about (ha!), the quality easily makes up for this. When coupled with the astoundingly good value of the new XL Black 105 Lexmark cartridge, this printer is well worth consideration.