The new Lexmark P450 photo printer with CD burner apparently has it all, and at under R2 000, is likely to cause a stir on the local scene. However, on the negative side, Lexmark ink and photo paper costs are still too high.
The P450 is a standalone unit that makes it possible to print and store photos on CD without a PC. Transferring photos to the P450 for printing or archiving is easily done by plugging a PictBridge-enabled camera, USB drive, or memory card into the appropriate port or accessing images stored on optical media inserted into the CD drive.
Supporting 10 different memory card formats means the P450 is able to print images created using most common digital cameras.
To edit the images, simply flip up the 2.4-inch flip-up colour LCD screen to reveal the control panel for interacting with the printer menu. This beats having to print an index sheet and work with reference numbers to select the image you want to print.
The editing features enables the user to crop, rotate, fix colours and remove red-eye, as well as add various effects such as sepia. Although it does not provide the full range of editing features found in a PC-based photo-editing suite, the P450 provides the most useful editing tools for convenient use.
Small footprint
The P450 is compact (15.3 x 27.6 x 23.5cm), giving it a small footprint and making it highly portable, although a carry handle of some sort would be a nice addition.
The printer lives up to claims that it is easy to use, and delivers reasonably good quality photo prints on Lexmark premium glossy photo paper at 4 800 x 1 200dpi resolution, but printing is relatively slow at around three minutes per print and the ink is also slow drying. On the first run I allowed several prints to pile up, but soon discovered they had stuck together and had to be reprinted.
Although the paper feeder at the back of the printer holds up to 25 sheets of 10 x 15cm photo paper, each print has to be removed immediately and laid out somewhere to dry.
In formulating the ink, Lexmark has concentrated on making images more fade-resistant. Perhaps now it should look at reducing the recommended drying time of 24 hours, which presents the challenge of what to do with the prints until they are dry enough to be stacked.
Ink issues aside, even images from a mobile camera phone are good quality and transferring the images for printing is also simple and easy to achieve using an optional Bluetooth adaptor that plugs into a special USB port at the back of the unit.
The inclusion of a CD burner is a great idea, but again the burn speed is slow at around 30 minutes for 150 images.
Dirty little secret
Despite some shortcomings, the P450 would make an ideal portable device to provide on-site viewing, printing and storage for photo projects away from home or the office.
Initially appearing to have everything most users would require, there is one dirty little secret to be revealed about the P450. Although the printer is seductively priced, the cost per print works out disappointingly high.
At R60 for a pack of 20 sheets of premium high-density glossy Lexmark paper, photos cost R3 before a single droplet of ink is applied. In testing, the supplied ink cartridge was able to print 140 photos. At a retail price of R350 per cartridge, that adds another R2.50 per print to give a total of R5.50 per print.
Unfortunately, the P450 also has a single cartridge system. This means that running out of any one of the base colours of cyan, magenta and yellow requires discarding the cartridge, even if not all colours have been used up.
Unless the Lexmark ink and photo paper costs drop dramatically, at nearly four times the price of prints from photo shops, the purchase price and convenience of the P450 are unlikely to attract as many buyers as it might otherwise have done.
As a concept, the Lexmark`s P450 scores high in terms of aesthetics, portability versatility and convenience, but hopefully the issues around speed, quality, ink and the cost of consumables will be resolved in future models.
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