Solid full featured printer.
I have primarily owned HP printers for the last 15 years but was having sporadic problems with my main printer an HP D360 photo printer. I was tired of troubleshooting with HP so I decided to give in and go with the Lexmark Prevail Pro705. I shopped around and didn't really do much research prior to buying. I knew I wanted to try a new manufacturer and was hoping to get a multi-function unit. I was in an office supply store and asked if Lexmark was comparable to HP quality and saw for myself that there wasn't a lot of difference in quality.
The Prevail Pro705 was the new model at the time of purchase (Oct 14th 2009). This is my first purchase from Lexmark and I am very pleased. The most appealing things to me about this particular model were the number of features (Fax Scanner Copier Printer) the 5 year warranty and the slightly lower costs per print than the HP model. The color cartridge claims to get about 200 prints more than the HP 02 color cartridges so that (ideally) means more prints for less.
After unboxing the printer I first tried to set it up on Windows Vista Ultimate PC connecting via USB cable (included). I was able to print a test page but had difficulty printing pictures- the progress bar would only go to about 30% or so. I contacted tech support help troubleshoot my issue. They spent 4 hours trying to tweak things while remotely connected to my computer with no luck. At the end of the first support session I was worse off- the printer was struggling to print a complete test page. Fortunately my issue was escalated to second level support whom I was able to get in touch with the next day. After another two hours of trouble shooting I was told this was an issue that may need to be submitted to the software engineering team. I was getting ready to pack up the printer to return it but I decided to mention to the technician that I had another computer (a netbook) that had Windows XP on it and if that would make any difference. The tech recommended that I try to install the printer on that using the USB cable. I followed his instructions later that night and was able to get the printer installed and it printed everything including pictures perfectly. After that I thought I'd try printing using wireless (instead of the USB) from my Vista computer and everything worked perfectly. Apparently there are still some bugs that need to be worked out for Vista or it is possible that my Vista computer has other issues that prevent the printer from functioning properly over USB. Since I also had issues with HP printer I think it is possible that my computer settings are the culprit. The Lexmark support technician said the issues seemed to be related to a firewall on my computer though we disabled that and still had the problem. The tech support people were very helpful and spoke good English despite being in another country.
Had it not been for the trouble that I ran into while installing the printer on Vista and the lengthy tech support calls I would have given a 5 star review. There are many pro's: the photo prints are very comparable in quality to my HP D360. The printer makes some noise when printing but a lot less than my old printer. The wireless capability of this printer was a life saver and it was very easy to get set up with the software included (I am using a dlink wireless N router with WPA security). It seems that it is also possible to set up the wireless capability from the printer but I didn't try that.
The copy functionality of the printer works well. It took less than 30 seconds to make a copy and it looks very clean though some colors (like light grays) seemed to be a little darker on the copy. There is also an "eco" setting that will automatically make copies on two sides of the page. This is a nice feature and saves paper which I like. The eco mode also puts the printer into sleep mode after a certain amount of time.
I would recommend this to anyone looking for a solid multi-function printer. It seems to have similar quality and capability to the more expensive HP printers.
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