Lexmark produces a user-friendly photo printer and scanner for the amateur photographer.
While the advent of digital photo kiosks (which provide quick, high-quality prints for less than $1) may sway some users from photo printers, Lexmark is evidently convinced there’s still a market for such a product. The P6250 also incorporates the ability to print borderless, six-colour images at 4,800dpi (4,800 x 1,200) using thermal inkjet technology, as well as a 1,200 x 2,400 (optical) CIS scanner for digitising and copying. There’s no fax capability, but this won’t be an issue for most home users.
The Lexmark boasts a number of compelling features such as the 2.5in colour LCD, enabling comfortable viewing of image previews and animated tutorials.
The ink cartridges are a mixture of pigment and dye-based colours — a feature unique to Lexmark — but this hasn’t resulted in any tangible increase in print quality over unmixed cartridges such as those in the Brother MFC-620CN (see below). Lexmark claims that black cartridges will last through 475 pages at 5% coverage, while colour cartridges will print 450 pages at 15% coverage. Unlike the Brother, the P6250 lacks a networking port and can’t be connected directly to a hub, switch or router to be used as a print server. An external print server can be purchased for $294.63.
PictBridge compatibility enables users to connect a digital camera directly via USB, CF, SmartMedia, MMC, SD, Memory Stick or x-D cards. Photo optimising software is bundled, though most users will already own more sophisticated editing programs. It also includes OCR software to scan documents and convert them into editable text.
The P6250 reproduces text documents and images well. Photographs are vibrant, but detail in darker areas is lost and some banding is evident. A 1,14MB JPEG test image prints from PhotoDisc in one minute and 20 seconds.
While the P6250 is ideal for amateur photographers, connoisseurs will find that a dedicated photo printer produces more detailed prints, while the hefty ink cartridge costs common to Lexmark printers ($43.99, $37.99 and $42.99 for photograph, colour and black cartridges respectively) are another deterrent.

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