Review: Lexmark X73 All-In-One Print Center

Reviewed By: Kirk Hiner

Review Date: October 15, 2001

Format: USB Inkjet printer, scanner and copier

Developer: Lexmark

Minimum Requirements - Mac OS 8.6 through 9.x: 300MHz G3 with built-in USB support, 64MB RAM, 12MB hard disk space

Minimum Requirements - Mac OS X: 300MHz G3 with built-in USB support, 128MB RAM, 30MB hard disk space

Specs: See full specs at Lexmark's website

Mac OS X Compatible: Driver for OS X available at the Lexmark website (not compatible with OS X 10.1 at press time)

Retail Price: $179

Availability: Out now

I'm a little worried about the Lexmark X73 I was recently sent for review; I'm afraid it's going to suffer a nervous breakdown. This is party Applelinks' fault, partly Lexmark's. We're the ones putting it through a test the likes of which no home or small business owner would ever perform, they're the ones trying to force too much technology into too small a box.

Lexmark makes some amazing printers at great prices. The Lexmark Z52 may currently be the best printer deal available. Indeed, Apple has certainly embraced them with a couple special offers when purchased with a new Mac. I was therefore jazzed about trying out the Lexmark X73 All-In-One Print Center which adds scanning and copying functionality to the proven Lexmark printing technology.

I need to remember I don't particularly care for jazz.

The printer itself is fine. It's as easy to set up and run as were the Z52 and Z32, and the print quality was just as good. The X73 gives 2,400 x 1,200 dots per inch at nine pages per minute in black/white and five pages per minute in color. Color management is simple and effective, and the quality is impressive even without high grade paper. Smooth, bright colors are easy to achieve, perfect for printing business reports, greeting cards and such. All this comes at a price, however. Lexmark ink cartridges are about $10 more expensive than most competitors' products, and they tend to run out more quickly.

The copy functions, although friendly, are not as impressive. A brief manual and PDF are offered, but a quick look at the printer panel reveals that you won't need to look at them much. If you want to copy something, just place it on the scanner bed and hit either the color or black copy button. A little while later, you have your copy. It's not very fast, but the results are great. It's sort of like making toast; drop it in, wait for the chime, and enjoy the results. "Cracking toast, Gromit."

If you want them, more options are available. Launching the Lexmark Scan & Copy Control Panel allows you to select from color, grayscale and b/w original and set the number of copies. The usual. Opening the Copy Settings dialogue box goes on to offer more traditional copy functions, such as the original and output paper sizes (the X73 support letter, legal, A4, A5, A6, B5, executive, index, postcard and multiple sized envelopes), copy quality, enlargement percentage, and so on. It all works fine, just slowly, especially if in the background. If you do a decent amount of copying, you're better off just driving on down to the local Kinko's...or hiring monks.

The whole thing falls apart with scanning, I'm afraid, as some nice features are marred by inconsistent results and messy controls.

Again the printer panel allows you to scan documents directly to e-mail and fax, which I like. Beyond that, the Control Program allows you to define to which e-mail program a scan should be sent, or you can choose to scan it directly to a file, the clipboard, or another program of your choosing (you can set these up yourself for easy access later on). In an odd reversal of the norm, I could scan documents directly to PhotoShop using the Lexmark Control panel, but I could not use TWAIN from within PhotoShop to access the Lexmark X73. Where's the sense in that?

The scan settings are again simple to figure out (Color Photo - Fast, Color Photo - Better, Web Page Image...you get the picture), but the Advanced settings--where your only choices are color depth, descreening, and resolution--just get in the way. The next step takes you to yet another Simple settings, allowing you to select your document type and used the assigned default settings for that type. You can also select Custom to at least choose your own color depth and resolution. Selecting the Advanced tab gives you control Brightness, Contrast, Descreen, Blur, Sharpen and Gamma (on the Blur and Sharpen options, the only choices are Blur/Sharpen and Blur/Sharpen More). Your selections can be previewed, but I didn't find the preview to be all that accurate; the shadows and highlights tended to be exaggerated in photos, and the colors were sometimes over-saturated. The Lexmark X73 fared better on artwork such as flyers and presentations.

Of course, at this price point, it's difficult to fault the Lexmark X73 All-In-One Print Center too badly. It does what it claims to do, only it handles some tasks better than others; the print quality is as good as you'd expect from Lexmark, the copier functions are simple but slow, and the scanner features and quality are lacking. Also lacking is an ethernet option which would greatly improve its functionality in a small business setting.

If you really need copier capabilities, don't have a lot of room to spare and need to stay under $200, the X73 will prove dependable even if it doesn't always yield the best results. If you have a little more room and a little extra money, however, I recommend picking up the Lexmark Z52 printer and finding a higher quality scanner, many of which also have copy functions built in. It's kind of like buying a stereo system, I suppose. You can get passable performance out of a compact system, but if you really want good results, you know you'll have to buy individual components, most likely from separate companies.

Of course, then the only thing to suffer the nervous breakdown will be your bank account.

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