Years ago, I used to collect beer bottles. That was a fun hobby, and I amassed a huge assortment of them, almost 1400 at one point. But they took up a
lot of space, and so when I moved from Rhode Island to Georgia almost five years ago I decided to stop collecting them.
Ok, by now you’re saying that silly Bruguru, here he goes again, can’t he write anything without talking about beer, and just what the heck to beer bottles have to do with a bloody printer anyway? Patience, True Believer, for the game is afoot and all things will be revealed to you shortly. For you see, I developed a new hobby then, one that took up a lot less space: scanning assorted beer six-pack holders and setting them as Windows desktop wallpaper.
And now you see where I’m going with this. I needed a new scanner, and these days it seems to make more sense to buy a combo printer-scanner all in one unit. Yes, it slices, it dices, and does all that good stuff quite nicely. But wait! There’s more! These days, some units also double as copiers and fax machines too.
Such is the case with the
Lexmark X7170 all in one unit. It does everything I want it to do, and some things I don’t (but may some day).
Getting Started
Getting it home was harder than getting the printer up and running. The box is
big, really big. And the unit itself is considerable in size, taking up almost two feet wide by a foot and a half deep of desk space.
Once we had it situated, it was a snap to connect to the PC via USB cable (included) and a line (also included) to the phone jack for the fax. Then a quick software install set up the drivers and picture editing utilities. In no time, we were ready to go!
Usage
All of the controls are self explanatory, and faxing, copying, and scanning can be done at the touch of the button on the unit. You can select the number of copies and input fax numbers intuitively, and an LCD display will show you what you’ve selected. For some features (scanning) selection and settings are made through software on your PC.
Printer
First and foremost, this is a printer, and it does that job fairly well. Most of what we print consists of word documents for work or school, recipes found on the internet, and the occasional photograph. Text is crisp and clear for the most part, and colors are decent enough for most purposes.
The unit accepts multiple paper sizes through the adjustable feeder, including photo and card stock. As a photo printer, the X7170 seems a bit lacking, but for $130 you can’t expect much more than you get here. We don’t print a lot of pictures, but when we do the colors seem drab and the images are not quite as sharp as one might like. Print time seems a bit slow, but not overly so.
Copier
Copies are good enough for most of our purposes. You won’t get the quality you will with an expensive unit, and there is some degradation. Copies seem markedly lighter than the originals, but are still good enough for most purposes.
Faxing
Faxing works well, too. We’ve faxed a few documents without any problems. Incoming faxes seem to suffer from the same problems as copies, i.e. slight degradation, but overall we’re satisfied and I suspect that for most users the fax feature on the X7170 will be sufficient to meet your needs.
Scanning
Scanning quality is good, but not the best. When scanning at 300 DPI and retaining images at maximum quality I get decent results, though somne images have had a bit of distortion. This is a flatbed scanner, and the document feeder atop the unit flips up to allow access to the image scanning bed.
I’ve scanned photos, six-pack holders, album covers, and documents all with good results. The included software allows you to resize scanned images, crop them, sharpen them, and more. You can adjust quality to save file size, but quality will be impacted.
Scan speed is very good, and it takes about thirty seconds for most scans, if that long.
You can see an example of a scan at www.bruguru.com. The Alpha King image, among others, was scanned with this unit).
Cartridges
The X7170 uses two cartridges, black and white and color. They run about $22 each, or you can buy them in a set for about $40. A special photo cartridge is said to enhance photo quality, and runs about $25.
Pictbridge
If your digital camera is
Pictbridge compatible (my
Olympus Camedia D-425 is), you can easily print photos straight from your camera without having to save to your PC. A USB port on the front of the X7170 allows you to connect your camera directly, and with the push of a few buttons you’re printing away. Quality is no different than if you saved to your PC, but I find this to be a convenient little feature.
Service
About seven months after buying our printer, the scanner started to display a blue line across pictures it scanned. We called tech support, who could not resolve our issue over the phone. Since the unit was still under warranty, Lexmark shipped us free of charge a refurbished replacement unit in exchange for our old unit (they even supplied a postage paid return label and two new starter ink cartridges). We were very, very impressed.
Overall
For $130, we find the X7170 to be a good buy. It suits our needs quite nicely for every application it offers. Perhaps not for the die hard enthusiast or business applications, but well suited to the home. A three and a half star product, but for the money I'll round up to four.
