It’s not the most stylish printer we have ever seen, either – it’s so rigidly rectangular that the corners of the unit are actually quite sharp. However, it includes all the main features that you’re likely to need from an office printer, including scanner, copier and fax machine, plus a 50-page document feeder, and automatic two-sided printing.
The Pro915 supports both Ethernet and Wi-Fi networking, so it’ll fit simply into your existing office setup. The 150-sheet input tray must be fine for most small businesses, and there’s an option to buy a second tray that holds 550 sheets if required.
We like the way that the LCD screen displays a countdown of the pages as they print out, however it’s annoying that the printer asks you to confirm the paper size every time you put more paper into the tray.
Print quality is very good – text may be a particular strength, producing very smooth, delicate text characters. The Pro915 also produces sensible photo output even on plain paper. However, its speed is disappointing for a printer costing over £250. Lexmark quotes speeds of 10ppm for black and white printing using the Pro915’s ‘laser-quality’ mode, and 6ppm for color. We have a tendency to use its standard-quality mode in our tests, but still only got 8ppm and 4.5ppm respectively.
Lexmark’s Pro915 produces admirable print quality, but isn’t very fast or particularly cost effective
Running price is also something of a mixed bag. Lexmark boasts about the low cost of black printing – at just 1.9p per page – but omits to mention the high cost of its colored ink cartridges.