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Buyer's Guide: The Best Monitors 
Canon MP640 vs Lexmark S605
Marine Goy
Updated: February 18, 2010
Updated: February 18, 2010
| On the left, we have the Canon MP640, a high-end colour inkjet with a large (but not touchscreen) display, WiFi, double-sided printing and five separate ink cartridges. | | | | | | | |
On the right is the Lexmark S605, our current favourite: it's a multifunction WiFi printer with internet connectivity. |
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| 5 ink cartridges | | | 4 ink cartridges |
| Black & white: 9.2 ppm - Colour: 8.1 ppm | | | Black & white: 18 ppm - Colour: 11 ppm |
| Printer + Scanner + Copier | | | Printer + Scanner + Copier |
| WiFi and double-sided printing | | | WiFi, double-sided printing, touchscreen |
| Ink drops: 1 picolitre |
| | Ink drops: 4 picolitres |
| THE BACKGROUND |
 In terms of sales, Canon has long languished in third place behind HP and Epson, but for many power users, it has been number one for years. We like the all-round performance of its high-end printers, which are not only excellent at printing office documents but also great personal photo labs.Canon has had enough of coming third, though, and is hoping to move up in the world ... |
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 Lexmark, on the other hand, has suffered from a bad reputation in the European press for years. But in a miraculous twist, the manufacturer has made a phoenix-like turnaround, completely reinventing the printer from the ground up. The S605 is a real success story, and leads the competition by at least a generation. Can this new range save the brand, which is said to be struggling? |
| Canon is banking on a familiar formula: the usual excellent quality printing and reduced running costs with some extra features. Here, WiFi, double-sided printing and a second black ink cartridge to improve photo printing are all new. Is that going to be enough though, when Lexmark has rejected the traditional models to invent the idea of an ultra-connected, touchscreen printer with programmable features? Has the young pretender got what it takes? |
| HARDWARE: LEXMARK WINS |
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| Both printers have an excellent user interface, and both of them have exactly what we'd expect from a good printer: a large colour screen, double-sided pruning, WiFi and separate cartridges so you only have to replace the colour of ink that's actually empty. |
| Too many buttons: Canon is proud of all the advanced features it's crammed it, but to set everything up, there are buttons around the outside as well as a dial in the middle. That's fine, of course, but we would have much preferred a touchscreen rather than all of these physical controls. Two black ink cartridges: the MP640 uses five cartridges, including two different blacks. A pigment-based black ink is used for office documents as it lasts longer and handles rough treatment better, while another black ink is available for photos. It produces better black and white photo prints. Printing on CDs and DVDs: this isn't available everywhere. If it is, then a special loader is includeed to print on the white side of CD and DVDs. It works very well, and the quality is often better than professionally-printed discs. However, blank CDs and DVDs with a white finish are often very expensive. |
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Touchscreen: this is Lexmark's real strength. Not only does the S605 have a large colour screen, it's all you need to control the printer. Using it is quick, easy and intuitive. The screen could be a little more responsive, but it's easily an improvement on buttons.
Online functions: this is the REAL new feature. You can program your own features and assign them to individual buttons on the screen. For instance, you can scan in a bill and automatically save a PDF in a folder on your computer, or scan a photo and upload it straight to Flickr or Picasa.  Total number of points awarded for hardware features
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| SPEED: CANON WINS |
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Average Speeds: 17 seconds to print the first page on a warmed-up printer is just a little behind Lexmark's performance but it's still perfectly reasonable.
 Time to print the first page when printer is ready (s)
Fast Start-Up: in standby mode, the MP640 only adds one extra second to print the first page compared to when it's ready. That's excellent: the S605 takes a lot longer to wake up.  Time to print the first page when printer is on standby (s)
Double-sided printing: this is an indispensable way of saving paper and produces professional looking documents, but the speeds fall to 3.5 ppm.
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Much faster: 10 ppm, that's fast! But will you really make use of it? Both printers have quiet modes and double-sided printing, both of which are useful but cause the speeds to fall.
 Colour printing (ppm)
Better double-sided printer: printing recto-verso might half the average speeds, but the S605 is still noticeably faster.  Double-sided printing (ppm) Printing while active: 15 seconds doesn't even give you enough time to make a cup of coffee while you're waiting for the first page to come out. Careful, though, as it takes longer when you start from standby.
Time to print the first page when printer is ready (s) |
| QUALITY: CANON WINS |
Great photo and office printing: you get five cartridges with two blacks, one that's pigment-based for documents and the other with document ink. Ink drops are invisible. Quality: offce printing Qualité photo
 Quality: photo printing Watch your fingers: even after a few days, the ink is still a little damp. If you touch it with your fingers, you can easily smudge it.
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Improved photo printing: Lexmark has put a lot of work in and has really improved its photo printing! Whatever you do though, don't use the automatic mode. Instead, make sure you specify the photo paper you're using. Even when you do, the accuracy of the colours is still a touch behind Canon.
Lexmark has never struggled with office printing, and it confirms its excellent reputation here. Drying: as good as Canon, worse than Epson: the ink dries a little better than on the MP640, but only a little. Epson's printers do much better at this.  |
| ENERGY CONSUMPTION: A DRAW |
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Low consumption on standby: this is the best performance we've seen so far. Just 1 W on standby meets the 2012 standard. Lexmark lags behind with 4 W, which is low, while laser printers often need 15 W or more.
 Energy consumption on standby (W)
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Low consumption: when they're working, neither of these printers needs much power, but Lexmark has a small advantage. Remember that these measurements can't be compared with laser printers, which require from 250 to 1200 W.
 Energy consumption while active (W)
Noise: the 3 dB that separates these two is definitely audible, and the MP640 is noticeably quieter than the Lexmark, which does have a silent mode. We suggest you turn it on, even though it will effect the printing speeds.
 Noise levels while active (dB)
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| SCANNER & COPIER: CANON WINS |
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Fast but a little red: with such a high resolution, the scanner should be good enough for a pro. But it will need to get better at reproducing colours accurately, as we found a discrepancy of up 8.2% for some shades, which is above average.
Quick copies: a copy takes only 20 seconds in colour or black-and-white. That's very fast. .gif) Time to make one copy (s) |
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Slow, but accurate scanning: although Lexmark has made its scanner faster, it still lags behind the MP640. However, it reproduces colours more accurately. The average discrepancy is just 5.5%, compared to Canon's 8.2%. |
| COST PER PAGE: CANON WINS |
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Economical: at 7.6 p per page, printing with Canon really is cheaper than average. Big users will definitely appreciate the lower running costs.
 Cost per colour page (p) |
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Above average: at just under 20 p per page with the basic cartridges, the Lexmark printer is almost twice as expensive as the average multifunction.
XL cartridges cheaper: when you need to replace your cartridges, you have two options: standard or XL. The latter are more expensive to buy, but end up twice as effective as the 'normal' cartridges over their whole lifetime. |
| RESULT: CANON FOR DEMANDING USERS, LEXMARK FOR AN EASY LIFE |
| Canon: better printing, harder to use Demanding users will definitely prefer the Canon MP640. It's the perfect all-rounder, and produces excellent results in every mode, with accurate office documents and gorgeous photo prints. It's cheap to run to boot. When is touchscren coming? The only thing it's missing compared to the Lexmark is a touchscreen, that would have made it so much easier to use. |
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Lexmark: going further than quality
Practical and well thought-out, this printer is for anybody who wants a handy multifunction printer but doesn't need to print pages and pages. Even using XL cartridges, the cost per page is still above average. Intuitive interface The touchsreen interface and programmable functions were both great surprises on this printer. They make it simpler and easier to use and inaugurate some useful new features, like automatically archiving scanned documents or uploading your photos straight to Flickr. We reckon that all the main manufacturers will eventually include features like this. |
| Is touchscreen here to stay? Lexmark was the first make the move, and HP has followed suit, along with Epson for its high-end printers. Canon is holding out for now, but it's definitely the future: buttons are over. A touchsreen makes it easier for everybody to get on with their printer: there's no more searching for the right button to start printing up again or adjusting the number of copies. Are programmable features worth it? Yes! We set up loads, including 'a scan to e-mail feature', an archive of drawings by our kids, a folder for storing important bills and so on … We ended up using these features as much as we did printing itself. Do printers need to be connected to the web? Even when your computer is switched off, the S605 is connected to the Internet, and can download RSS feeds, photos from Flickr or even display your calendar onscreen. More and more features like this should follow: they're sometimes tricky to set up and slow to start up. Lexmark says it's working on them. When all is said and done, we expect the Lexmark S605 to go down in history as the first of a new generation of printers. It isn't perfect--the cost per page is still higher than with Canon's printer; the photo quality could be improved, the black ink could dry more quickly and the programmable features could be easier to set up--but the signs are very promising. It's already an excellent product, with more power, more features and easier to use than its rivals. The competition is going to have to take note! |
