Lexmark X6570

The multifunctional Lexmark X6570 is aimed at home and small offices, with impressive fax features at its heart.

Although wireless networks have become very much a part of homes and small offices up and down the country, the wireless printer and multifunction device markets have yet to catch fire. Realistically, it's only a matter of time before this situation is rectified, as the ability to send documents and pictures to a printer from any machine on the wireless network must be desirable in a typical multiple-PC home or office. Lexmark has been leading the way for some months now, and its latest range of printers and MFDs is fully equipped to jump aboard the wireless bandwagon.

The multifunctional Lexmark X6570 is aimed at home and small offices, with impressive fax features at its heart. 33.6Kbps transmission is available, and the 25-page ADF (auto document feeder) turns this into a highly capable fax machine.

But that's not the only interesting trick the Lexmark X6570 has up its sleeve, and the ability to smoothly print on both sides of the page is a feature you're unlikely to get without paying a significant sum for a good laser printer.

Although setting up the Lexmark X6570 isn't the shortest of processes, it is about as easy to follow as it could be. Lexmark's excellent installation routine takes you through every step, displaying picture after picture so that you can see exactly what you should be doing. Connecting the Lexmark to the wireless network is a cinch, thanks to the colour-coded indicator. In practice, we had few problems sending a document to the device when it was on the other side of the room.

Being a multifunctional printer, the Lexmark X6570 can of course handle printing, scanning and copying as well as faxing. While there's nothing special about the Lexmark's specifications, we found that the X6570 handled most tasks with aplomb. You should be expected to wait for high-quality text output -- the highest mode is considerably cleaner than the others, but slows you down to just 1.3ppm, as opposed to 13.3ppm and 6.1ppm for the two lower quality modes.

The Lexmark X6570 is pretty good at colour photos as well, with a palette that's just a shade dark, but nonetheless rather vivid and exciting. You will have to wait again, with decent output available in the middle mode at a rate of 1.4ppm (pages per minute). As a scanner we found the Lexmark X6570 to be very acceptable, producing fast and fairly accurate scans in most cases.