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The Lexmark X2650 is 42x30x15cm, add paper into the tray at the rear and that adds 20cm to the last figure the height. Should you also extend the output tray this adds another 13cm to the second figure the depth. Both the extended paper trays are a mid grey colour and there is a matching band in that colour that forms the left and right sides of the unit.

The flatbed opens landscape from the front and to the right of this are eight flush buttons (all with icons) and a single LCD display that shows either a number or a letter. This is a four ink two cartridge printer. They are easy to fit and in fact the whole process from removing the various bits of tape to a working unit with software installed took only fifteen minutes and on my XP system and around 240MB of hard disc space.

There are only two inputs both on the back right of the unit for power and USB. The installation has a total of four click boxes and one is somewhat confusing offering fax capabilities when this is an All In One but that is the joy of using a single installer for more than one product. The software package is called Lexmark Productivity Studio and is a little clunky but works well enough allowing the novice user to access all parts of the unit and perform all the tasks within the products remit. I believe 'fax capability' refers to the ability to send via Windows should you have a modem, there is of course no receive mode.

See also: Multifunction printers

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The front end has a single starting screen the left side that offers help in downloading and preparing photos. The right side has Scan, Copy, Fax and Email as icons with and area below called Document Management that apart from Working with Documents and Photos also has Convert to PDF and Scan / Edit Text (OCR)

Like most All In Ones it can copy without it being connected to a PC. Black copies took 15 seconds while colour ones took 100 seconds. This is a huge differential but no mater how often I tried I got the same results. If you copy from within Windows then you can change the resolution but I could find no ability to enlarge or reduce.

Scanning was okay the OCR works with the normal proviso that if you give it good input you get good output. Should you need PDF this works fine but I think the novice user is more likely to want to send as an attachment to an email where the size can be reduced this is especially useful if either the sender or receiver is still on dial up.

As a text printer I found it quite good, you can read the claimed print speeds on the Lexmark website, I got 15PPM printing the nonsensical 200 word test page. 13PPM was the speed of the more normal 1500 word document spread over four pages. The quality of output was quite good with only a slight grey colour certainly a lot better than some other manufactures draft mode, called by Lexmark 'Quick Print'.

As a photo printer I was quite surprised it printed an A4 image in just over six minutes, the quality was acceptable. The software provided gives a number of options but this does not include printing four 15x10cm images on a single page. Most other manufacturers now offer this facility. While the images are of course slightly smaller than the stated size it does fully utilize an A4 sheet. So the best I could print was four 9x13cm images that leaves an inverted L at the top and right side of the sheet, 2.5cm at the top and 3.2cm on the right this took Five minutes and forty seconds. I also tested the normal mode and this produced an A4 print in three minutes and forty seconds, the quality was as good as some other units. There is no option to produce borderless however if you print an A4 image it uses all but around .1cm on the right side and the top of the sheet automatically.

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