Lexmark Impact S605

Promise, unfulfilled

The S605 showed great promise, from a recommendation I read in a well-regarded consumer magazine. I should have gone online and delved more deeply into performance and reliability aspects. After a little less than a month of light use (less than 100 sheets of paper printed), the machine displayed a "printhead error" message. I painstakingly went through all available Lexmark troubleshooting from both the operating manual and Lexmark online assistance, all to no avail. I am a week into an online (email) session to attempt to resolve the issue, and it has gotten pretty complex, not to mention time consuming (so far, at least 5 hours invested in trying to straighten out the failure). Nothing has caused the "printhead error" message to be corrected. More and more I am coming to the conclusion that this is not a worthwhile effort. I just can't seen how anyone buying an item such as this should be involved in doing things such as extended troubleshooting, updating firmware, and other such things with an item less than a month old. In my opinion, the problem is not my problem - it is the manufacturer's problem, and I should not be using my time and effort to resolve this issue. There must be a reason why this item is selling for less than half the original price, and I think it may be related to reliability issues. I had used HP printers for over 15 years, with nary a problem - none. Looks like I am going back to an HP product for my multifunction printer needs.

lexmark printer S600 series

it's great for my home needs. the only thing troubling about this wireless printer/scanner/copier is that sometimes when changing modes you have to restart your computer. Installation was easy, printer cartridges were easy to install. It's a really good product for the money. I'm really happy with it.

Excells in printing

This printer excells in printing and scanning. It was easy to set up and begin using. In comparison to other printers we have purchased, it is right up there with the best.

2 printers ....2 duds

I received the 1st printer and it just quit working 3 days later... Best Buys sent me out another one right away... 2nd printer like 3 days later now it printing in poor color and Lexmark wants to send me a print head when that was the original problem with the first one before it just frooze... probably on sale for a reason even though it had great reviews!

Now I Know Why Everyone Was Complaining

About a week ago, I wrote a lengthy review about what a great product this.

I TAKE IT ALL BACK!

While I will admit that the ink cost and ease of set up does set Lexmark apart from other printers, the fact that the S605 failed after a week of owning it kind of outweighs those things.

Today I started getting red lines through all of my photos and documents with color. Also, while it was printing, it would stop for 15-30 second intervals and then resume. When I first got the printer, I could print a full color 8x10 photo in about a minute. Today, it took at least 5.

Needless to say, I returned the S605 to the store I bought it from where even the tech guys agreed it was better for me to buy a different brand rather than try my luck with a replacement S605. They even went as far to say that they have lost count how many people have returned Lexmark printers.

And before the Lexmark rep (who seems to comment on negative reviews here) horns in and tells me to update the firmware...I did that and it actually made the problem worse.

Take a hint Lexmark: Your products fail almost immediately out of the box. Try focusing on making a QUALITY item rather than spending millions on advertising your low ink costs.

Reliable and good page cost and yield when used with the 100XL Cartridges

I have had my Lexmark S605 at home for over six now and have used it daily for printing text, coupons, photos and a few times weekly for scanning photos and documents.

This printer has a bright 4.3 inch touchscreen panel used for both display and selections. It is easy to view and use and replaces the paper dust collecting buttons on my older AIO. The screen also provides information on printer physical and network installation during setup.

The S605 is a medium size wireless AIO without a fax that has a four cartridge printhead which uses either the Lexmark 100 or 100XL ink cartridges. It is shipped with the 100s, however, you will be disappointed, as I was, with the cost and yield of these smaller 100s. I recommend replacement 100XL usage since for about 60 to 70 percent higher cost you will get back a 200 to 300 percent higher yield.

If do a lot of black only printing and the higher cost of the 100XLs black cartridge is still a negative to you, choose a Lexmark printer, such as the Pinnacle 901 or Platinum 905 printers that can use the Lexmark 105XL cartridges, with a lowest cost black yield of about one cent per page for the 500 page cartridge.

Wireless setup took less than 10 minutes and settings were still intact after a few power failures during storms. The printer is located about 80 feet and 3 rooms away from my wireless router and I have had no problems with printing connectivity issues.

Paper is fed from the upper rear to the lower front which means unless you are printing using the automatic two sided, or paper saving feature you have a straight paper path during printing which works well with heavier papers. Colors and blacks dry quickly, so the auto two sided printing times are quick. The only paper jams I have had with the printer were user caused and easily removed. When you use two sided printing make sure the trailing edge of the paper has no nicks or bends, since the paper will be pulled back inside to print the second side.

A useful feature of the printer is the Lexmark Smart Solutions. There are about 65 user selectable functions, such as those that allow scanning to email, scan to PDF, two sided copies, printing blank sheet music, graph paper, calendars, sudoku puzzles, viewing news, stamps.com, monitoring Twitter and Facebook and more. You can also use a memory card or usb stick and save scans to those devices without a computer. A few solutions are preinstalled but all are easily downloadable from the Lexmark Home Page application that is installed on your PCs during installation. The application also allows easy firmware and software updates and ink level viewing and printer information messages.

I have also used the Lexprint App that allows IPhone, IPad, and Ipod Touch users to download and print text and pictures to this and other Lexmark printers.

Terrible printer at half the price

I picked this printer up on sale for $99 and I don`t recommend it even at that price. It is relatively compact, easy to use, and fairly easy to set up (though it took FOREVER). The benefits end there. The print quality was terrible from the beginning, with little lines through all the dark-colored parts of anything I printed. After a few days it started printing grey/black boxes all over every page. I contacted Lexmark customer support for both of these issues. For the black boxes, the agent had me do a deep print head clean. It did clear those up, but the poor quality was an issue. He had me check the ink levels and I found to my surprise that I was down to 1/2 the cartridge of back ink after 12 days of owning the printer (and doing only moderate/light printing during that time, the ink-heaviest stuff I printed were the test pages). After printing the two test pages that went along with the deep clean, the black ink level dropped to 1/4 and started printing grey instead of black. I complained about this to customer service, and he kept insisting that this was normal and just because I was using it too heavily (I wasn`t!). Finally after pointing out the cartridge is rated for (an admittedly very low) 170 pages and I was getting "low ink" warnings after 59 pages and that I had printed TWO PAGES that supposedly used up 1/4 of the cartridge, he grudgingly agreed to send me a replacement ink - but I`d had enough. I was afraid that if I waited around to get the black ink cartridge and it turned out it really WAS like that on the norm instead of just a defective cartridge, then I`d be outside of the return time frame. And I had no reason to take the risk to give this printer another chance. The printer went back to the store, and I picked out a new one from a different manufacturer. I will say though that Best Buy was wonderful with the return and with helping me find a better printer.

Mostly pleased

I would have given this printer 5-stars but I can't seem to get the "blue" ink to print properly. All of the other colored (including black) ink cartridges work fine. Since day one, I have tried everything from replacing the blue cartridge to a deep cartridge cleaning cycle on the printer. Unfortunately, this greatly effects the quality on "all" of my colored copies.

ZERO stars! Failed out of the Box! MultiDysfunctional!

My Lexmark S605 Printer failed out of the box! Ink cartridge could not be "authenticated". Lexmark did eventually send me a new cartridge. But....after I had printed perhaps 10 pages, I began to have new error messages, the most frequent of which was "printhead error". The printer screen gave a non-effective fix technique, then suggested calling customer support. Customer support was in India?, very bad phone connections, said that my printer drivers (on my two week old printer) were out of date, so I downloaded the new drivers, no help. (I was actually able to use the printer if I unplugged it, plugged it back in while my computer was running, then dicked around for 10 minutes.....) I had a computer geek friend use the printer with his computer, and the latest drivers, and he too received the same error message. So, I exchanged the printer, and the new one seemed fine. Now, 10 days and about 10 printed pages later, I am again getting the same "printhead error" message....... It appears to me that Lexmark has sold me a product that is not yet ready for the marketplace, a brand new product that will never work.

Update: Printer #2 never worked either. Got a new error message as well: "Printhead could not be authenticated". So Lexmark is having trouble authenticating both their own ink and their own printers....! Anyway, I exchanged it for a cheap little Brother printer, not very sexy, but has worked every single time so far.

I wish the many people who wrote glowing, gushing, positive reviews for this product would wait a couple of months, then write their review. I suspect that many of these reviews would be less positive....and more accurate! I do have a complaint regarding Amazon reviews -- there should be a 0(Zero) star rating for products that fail to work entirely.

Very disappointing

Well lets see-I was really excited to get this new printer-I felt I was upgrading (finally) to something a bit nicer then what I usually used. HOWEVER- The first week of ownership and I already had to call Lexmark and have them send me a new printerhead- It went bad and I hadn't printed but a few pages. After further review, and going online and ready other reviews, apparently this is a standard problem w/ this model. The printerhead actually comes out rather then just being able to remove the ink cartridges. I have never owned a printer that had that ability and apparently it is the cause of the problem. It kept giving me "error" messages stating to pull out the printer head and wipe it. Well after doing this about LITERALLY 30 times I finally had it. So in a nut shell-I would not purchase this product and I will also ,in the furture make sure the printer I buy does not have a removeable printerhead. Hope this helps...