Lexmark Platinum PRO 905 printer ink cartridges

The Lexmark Platinum PRO905 inkjet printer is a 4 in 1 business model that has four individual ink cartridges. When new the printer is fitted with standard capacity 100 series ink cartridges. Lexmark also produce a high yield version of these cartridges, the 100XL and we recommend you purchase these as replacement cartridges. The 100XL cartridges will last you three times as long and are barely twice the price of the standards. This will reduce the cost of each print and represent the best value for use in this printer.

Lexmark Platinum Pro905 printer review

 While all printer makers have made moves to rationalise the number of different print engines they have in their machines, Lexmark has gone further than most by using exactly the same engine in all seven of its new Home and Professional series of all-in-ones.

The one thing that seperates the various machines is the feature set of each model and that's where Lexmark needs to play it sensibly. The Lexmark Platinum Pro905 is definitely the top of the line and rests higher than the Prestige Pro805, but with £100 difference in their srps, how much extra can it offer?

2 things distinguish the two models is the fax facilities and an extra paper tray. The printer itself is very like the Prestige Pro and as with that unit it has a 50-sheet Automatic Document Feeder (ADF) over the scanner. The Platinum Pro can produce double-sided copies, but only by feeding the originals through twice and scanning to the machine's memory; the scanner head is single-sided and there's no duplex feed.

Results from the speed tests are interesting. The Lexmark Platinum Pro 905 generated a speed of 4.05ppm on our five-page text print and this improved to 6.38ppm on a 20-page test. The five-page text and graphics page was produced at 2.94ppm.

Considering that they all use the exact same print engine, you would think that test results out of this machine could well be practically the same to those from the various other models in the Home and Pro series. Actually, although there's just a small difference between the platinum pro and the prevail pro, some are important.

For example, this machine was visibly quicker when printing on duplex, having the 20-side, 10-page document printed in 5 minutes and 12 seconds, which took 5 minutes and 32 seconds on the Prevail Pro. However, a single page, colour copy from the flatbed took 47s on this machine, but just 32s on the cheaper model. A five page black and white copy from the ADF likewise concluded in the Prevail Pro's favour, getting 1:17, whilst it required 10s more on the Lexmark Platinum Pro 905.

As far as print quality goes, the new Vizix engine offers improvements on both plain and photo paper, compared with the previous generation of Lexmark inkjets. The black text looks sharp, although there is a little feathering of text into the paper nap which makes it look a bit fuzzy.

The colours for business graphics were bright and undeterred, and is almost identical to the originals. We were surprised with the results of the photo prints as it was much closer to the top Canon, Epson and HP can offer, in which they used to trail by a large margin. In general, the print quality is more than adequate.

Being a part of the Professional selection of all-in-ones, the Lexmark Platinum Pro 905 ink cartridges have the 105XL black cartridge. It is, to any intents and purposes, just like the 100XL cartridge, however is available at under £4.

The black cost in particular is very good for an inkjet and is down to the cost of several laser printers within the £300-£400 area. The 105XL cartridge is rigged not to function in the Home series of all-in-ones, thus the reduced costs are only open to those buying the higher end Professional series.

It definitely is exorbitant, having to shell out £370 for an inkjet all-in-one. While the Lexmark Platinum Pro905 is actually a reliable machine, that has valuable bonuses such as duplex print and copy, wireless connection, dual trays, fax and a touchscreen user interface, you can get something similar for almost half the price like the Canon PIXMA MX860. If perhaps you just need something for print and copy demands, you can consider the more affordable Lexmark all-in-ones with almost same speed and quality.