Lexmark Platinum Pro905 review

Lexmark’s Platinum Pro905 is wince-inducingly expensive, but has lots of features including a 4.3in touchscreen, a fax and a memory card reader.

Two paper trays at the bottom of the printer can handle up to 300 sheets of A4 between them. The top tray can also handle 6x4in photo paper and envelopes.

It also has USB, 10/100 Ethernet and 802.11b/g/n WiFi. If you want to connect to a wireless network, you’ll need either a router that supports push-button WiFi Protected Setup (WPS) or a temporary USB connection to your PC. We’d have preferred to configure these using the touchscreen, which can instead be used to download free apps. Most merely add settings that we’d expect the Pro905 to have already, such as scanning to a file and two-sided eco-copy modes.

The scanner interface is basic, but it’s easy to use and remains open between scans. Scan quality is good, although scans of photos looked a little cold. Copy quality is excellent and we were impressed that a mono copy took just 22 seconds.

Our 6x4in photos printed in well under a minute and looked great, with rich, vivid colours. However, Lexmark’s expensive new photo paper means they cost up to 47p each. Both colour and mono documents looked great at standard quality and even draft text was sharp. Standard-quality text printed at a quick 7.3ppm. Unfortunately, colour documents printed at just 1.5ppm, which is one of the slowest speeds we’ve seen.

This is a deal-breaker in an expensive MFP that would otherwise be ideal for a small or home office. Canon’s Pixma MP640 lacks a fax but can hold plenty of paper and is a far better choice for serious printing, not least because it costs well over £200 less than the Pro905.