I bought the Lexmark s405 printer a few weeks back. It has nice looks and the ability to connect wirelessly. It is also very quiet which is a advantage. In terms of value overall though, I would have to rate this as very low (1 out of 10) - this is due to the fact that Lexmark have now introduced to their new inkjet printers - including the s405 - a 'lockdown' microchip.
This chip means you have absolutley no way to refill (either yourself ot high street shop) any of the cartridges unless you send it back to lexmark or buy a new one. The microchip tracks the ink levels and once empty will not function until you have replaced it. Even if you leave the label intact and refill the cartridge before it has run out it remembers the previous ink level - so either way Lexmark have you over a barrel. (A quick google search of US sites will confirm the above).
The really frustrating thing is that even if you have ink in other cartridges of the printer, the printer will not fucntion until you replace the one emty one. This means you need to have spares to hand or put up with a printer thats out of action until you get to the shops!
First of all the good news. The printer prints, the fax faxes, the copier copies and the scanner scans. Even the WiFi connection configured itself seamlessly. Now for why I have put it up for sale:
a) The scanner is incapable of scanning correctly to pdf. In a multipage document some pages are upside down, some the right way up, some are rotated 90 degrees clock-wise, and some rotated 90 degrees anti-clockwise. It is impossible to avoid it happening and impossible to rectify it manually. Even my distributor repeated the errors on his own system and has been trying, without success, to obtain a fix from Lexmark.
Secondly, the scans make enormous file sizes - typically 1 mb per page - so a five page document takes up 5 Mb of space!
I store electronically a wide range of office documents from bank statements to signed contracts. For me, and on this one reason alone, Lexmark is unfit for purpose.
b) The outrageous running costs. I had been led to believe that Lexmark had mended its ways - but not for me. The Return program is not even available where I live (Cyprus) so I'm stuck with single use cartridges at 20 Euros a piece.
OK, so when the printer decides to print, the quality is actually very nice. The scanning was also good.
However, within the first day of using my printer, 5 different error messages had appeared. I accept that printers go wrong, but to this degree, and on the first day is just not acceptable. Some error messages hardly made sense (for example, I had apparently not inserted the cyan cartridge... I clearly had - and correctly - then it printed the document when I 'OK'd the error message.)
The instruction manual and online help is FAR from helpful, and only seems to cover a small amount of what is actually needed by the consumer. There is no explanation or help with the on-printer controls.
I can't wait until my printer has deteriorated further. Ha.
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