Lexmark X2470

We've become used to printers replacing the universal colour cartridge with individual tanks, allowing you to replace one tank rather than having to junk the entire cartridge.

The X2470, however, goes for the opposite philosophy: you don't even get individual colour and black versions. Everything is built into a single cartridge and, because this is so small, you can expect to be replacing it frequently. This is because the cartridge uses cyan, magenta and yellow to produce blacks -- it doesn't have any black ink in it. Rated at 165 pages, and costing around $30, the print cartridge for this unit will print documents for around 18 cents per page.

Of course, 160 pages out of a single cartridge is a best case scenario. Depending on how much ink your printouts use, the cartridge will run out much more quickly.

In most other respects, though, the X2470 is a solid, if uninspired, MFD (multifunction device). The one-touch buttons make it a very user-friendly device and the inclusion of a PictBridge port is a good addition. The print resolutions are very much the standard for sub-$100 MFDs as is the 100-page input tray.

We weren't too impressed by the speeds, but for the price, you shouldn't expect a speed demon. You'll need to be satisfied with just 1.7ppm for decent quality colour prints. Even its highest quality mode was no more than adequate.

Neither was the Lexmark particularly impressive at text. Even at the top setting characters were thick and lacked finesse. Scanning facilities were adequate given the price, but the low optical scanning resolution means that such features are always going to be rather limited.