Customer Reviews

Lexmark Interact S605 Wireless Multifunction Inkjet Printer with Web-Enabled Touchscreen

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(18)
1 star:		(58)

 

 

My boyfriend and I were using this printer to send out mass amounts of letters for his company. It works fine and everything, except for the occasional paper jam which can be frustrating, but what was really frustrating is how much we were paying for ink. We were printing letters that were all in black lettering except for our email which was in blue. For some reason however all of our ink levels were going down like crazy and we weren't even using those colors or should have been using very little. We would take the ink cartridges out and touch the sponge tip where the ink came out and it was still very much moist however the printer wouldn't allow us to print if any of the cartridges were "empty".

I ended up doing a lot of research and even taking apart one of the ink cartridges. I found that there is a small chip attached to each cartridge that has a small amount of memory to keep track of how many pages are printed with that ink cartridge. Once it reaches a certain number of pages it claims it's empty and needs to be replaced. When I found this out I was so frustrating since it wasn't actually checking the levels or amount of ink remaining. So here I was paying for the ink but I couldn't even use it all.
And there is no way to reset the chip and refill the cartridges yourself. It was such a waste of money. I guess most ink cartridges and printers use this kind of technology but some you can buy a chip re-setter and refill them yourself...which is what I plan on doing.

This thing is ok and mostly does what it says it will although the so called Smart Solutions are a pain to set up.

However my real issue with it is the HUGE cost of printing.

From the print out on the self test I have had it 253 days and printed only 138 pages. These were 99% simple text letters (perhaps one or two - literally small photographs when I first bought it to see how it managed) The ink is now asking for the cartrides to be replaced. On the Lexmark website it is about £60 for a full set of high capacity refills. This means that it will be costing FORTY THREE PENCE per page of SIMPLE TEXT! according to my calculations.

I think this is just insupportable and am taking it back to Costco for a refund as I believe its basically a device designed to extort money out of its owners for ink. As others have said you cant refill the units as the chips dont appear to be resettable (although I have tried a few of the suggestions having googled the problem.

I will be going back to my Oki C3100 Colour laser for which 20,000 page refill set can be had on Amazon today for £80 which gives a per page price of 0.4p!!!! OK so maybe its ten times more (it wont be but lets suppose) it will still be 4p a page not FORTY!

Its a shame that the ink jet printer manufacturers (or many of them) appear to be acting as a cartel to extort the domestic customer in this way and perhaps the European Commission competition Czars will look into it?

I will email my euroMP and see what they have to say.

BE VERY CAREFULL WHEN BUYING INKJET PRINTERS in regards to the ACTUAL cost of printing not the idealised one suggested by the manufacturers.

I purchased this printer the other day to replace my Lexmark X74. The X74 printer still works perfectly (in WinXP), but will not work with the new Windows 7 OS. There is no new driver available for it. Lexmark has determined that the printer is too old and they will not develop a new printer driver for it. So, I was basically forced to upgrade my printer.

I really liked my old Lexmark so I decided to purchase another one. I did some research and settled on the S605. I liked the look of it and the wireless feature so I purchased it and took it home to set up on my wireless network.

I have to tell you that the installation went flawlessly. As mentioned in some of the reviews I read, that reading and following the directions made it go smoothly. In about 30 mins. I had all THREE of our computers setup and printing with this printer.

I gave this printer a 3 star rating due to it's printer cartridges. I am a little disappointed that the cartridges can't be refilled and are a little pricey. The cartridges (#100) have a chip installed in them that prevents the cartridges from being refilled. I've had my X74's cartridges refilled in the past and they worked perfectly - and cost a lot less than new cartridges. I only hope that I can at least get close to the number of pages printed, that Lexmark says I should get. Somehow, I don't believe that's going to happen. Probably will turn out like the estimated mpg your supposed to get on your new car - time will tell.

There are some good things about this printer--all in one copying, scanning and printing. And the touch screen is a nice addition. But the one thing a printer should be able to do reliably is print a computer document. This machine has a fatal flaw--it won't allow you to print if one of the 3 color or black ink cartridges are low. And since the cartridges don't seem to have as much ink as other machines, this happens a lot, which is really frustrating if you don't have multiple sets of the four cartridges on hand. And the worst part is the machine won't even let you print in black and white when one of the color cartridges is low! And to put the icing on the cake, the company isn't responsive to online ink orders--I've had an order on backlog for now over three weeks. This means that my printer hasn't been functioning in three weeks. You as a prospective customer don't deserve this frustration--hopefully this review will save you some!

Brand new S605 failed to install because one of the ink cartidges could not be "authenticated". I spent numerous hours trying to get it to work (since NEW products SHOULD WORK!). How can a Lexmark ink cartridge that was included with the Lexmark printer not be authentic? This is unacceptable! I called Lexmark, and they mentioned that this was a COMMON PROBLEM experienced by many users. Their solution was to send me a replacement ink cartidge. I asked for a rush delivery since it was THEIR fault. They said no, so I asked for an extra cartidge for my troubles. They said no. It has been over two weeks, and I have yet to receive any ink cartidge from Lexmark. So, now I have to spend money, gas, and time to drive to Staples and buy one myself. Thank You, Lexmark!

To summaraize, DO NOT BUY LEXMARK PRINTERS BECAUSE:

1. There is a good chance it will not come in working condition.
2. There is a good chance that the brand new Lexmark Ink Cartidges you buy will not be "authentic", and this will render your printer useless.
3. Lexmark Customer service is horrendous.

EDIT: I want to add another reason no one should buy any Lexmark printer. As mentioned in the other reviews, Lexmark has rigged their cartridges and printers to extract more money from the consumer. I have verified that the printer does not measure actual ink levels in the cartridges. I only print in black and white, yet the printer reads my color cartidges as empty and IT WON'T PRINT UNTIL I REPLACE THEM. Yes, you read it right. THE PRINTER WON'T PRINT IN BLACK IF YOUR COLOR CARTIDGES ARE EMPTY. I have 2 full black cartidges that are useless. I am throwing my printer in the trash and buying another because in the long-run, I will save money by not using Lexmark products.

Bought this in Oct 2009. Was attracted to the S605 by the built-in duplexing and the nice touchscreen. Installed wirelessly on 2 PC's and 1 Mac with only minor challenges. Generally prints nicely, scans are OK, copies are OK. We print 10-20 pages per day, so it gets reasonable use.

The rub is that this unit is still not ready for primetime, still having ongoing firmware and software updates. In the first few months we had to unplug it and replug it pretty much daily to reboot it. Rebooting a printer? The screen response is usually fine but sometimes is quite sluggish. Ink consumption is at the limit of being acceptable. The final straw has come in that the unit thinks the duplexer has a paper jam, although it doesn't, and will now do nothing.

I've never written a review before, but felt I needed to warn prospective buyers to look elsewhere. Pass on this one. Stick with HP or Canon.

An hour after my first installation, an error message showed up for "Printhead Error". A step by step direction was given that basically instructed me to remove the printhead and re-insert it. Fine, I followed. After the restart, the same message showed up again. This process repeated itself for three times and at the fourth time, I quit and picked up my phone. Bear in mind, all of these took place an hour after my initial installation (with all the alignment and test pages came out fine).

Lexmark's support was not so well organized. The first time I was transferred by the cartridge department to a "dedicated department". Fine, just another 5-10 minutes, we all have that kind of time. Then, a lady spent the first several minutes on the same personal information collection process and then said:" I am sorry, your issue should be directed to the wireless department." This is where I got annoyed and demanded an explanation for the correlation between "printhead" and "wireless". Ok, she agreed to help. We repeated the same removal and installation process of printhead again and again, she concluded it was a defective printhead. I would receive a free exchange. HAPPY, if the story ended here.

Now, I am sitting here with the new printhead installed, unfortunately, also knowing the same problem came back again and again. Yes, the removal and re-installation process worked now. Every time the error shows up, just routinely took it out and put it in. I even started to have an illusion that this might be an enormous technological advantage that I was not capable of appreciating. Or, just a well-intentioned design for more wrist and finger work-out.

Why do I still give it a two star rating? The functionality is quite nice, touch-screen control, slick shape, customized icons, wireless N, scan to USB and more. Setup took me a snap of time and use has been very easy. If this product failed, it would have to be the manufacturing quality.

For more years than I care to remember I used the Lexmark X83 that scanned, copied, and printed better than the competition; yes even better than the HP's. I took a blank check, scanned it in my brothers HP and scanned it in my Lexmark, and the resulting printout was almost scary how true to life it was and the colors were more accurate. That being said, I quickly became a Lexmark printer fan. The one problem is that I hated having to buy the expensive cartridges. This S605 comes with multiple cartridges, so when you run out of yellow for example that is the only one you have to purchase, instead of dumping the whole cartridge when only one color is low.

Then I discovered the advantages, and economy of laser printers. The ink never dries out because it is already dry powder. With its large capacity it comes to a penny or two per page instead of the dollar plus for a full page color photo. But, for photographic excellence the inkjet's have the reasonably priced lasers beaten. Pertaining to the text quality, the laser wins hands down. I admit that I took out a magnifier to see the real difference, but the difference between the laser on black and white text and this Lexmark, the S605 was substantial (under a maginfiying glass). Inkjets, this one included spray out wet ink and that causes slight fuzziness on the edges when compared to a laser my latest laser purchase, which was the Brother HL-2170W 23ppm Laser Printer with Wireless and Wired Network Interfaces That one is a network ready wireless unit but does not scan, nor does it copy, have color capabilities or any of the sophisticated web enabled touch screen features of this S605. So if you want to print out the occasional photo and enjoy color capabilities, and being a Lexmark fan, I highly recommend this S600. One other thing I want to mention is that after comparing the print quality results of both the laser and the inkjet is that although the inkjet costs more for ink costs it also creates a much higher quality, thicker richer text image. It looks like it was poured on the page. The laser prints cheaper but in addition to the powder equation, it also uses less ink resulting in a thinner text; clear clean but thinner.

With the color instead of all black and white reminds me of some marketing and advertising data I had read. They conducted a study to measure the comparison between an all black text written advertisement, and the same ad with a second color, and the one with 2 colors produced 40% better results. I printed out a page with all black text, and just a small logo in blue that immediately attracted me to the page, rather than just a boring page of plain text. Of course there are color lasers as well, but they are usually more expensive in making the initial purchase. For about the same money, you can pick up the brother 2170W and this printer and have the best of both worlds, plus you have the ability to have printers in 2 locations. With both printers loaded, you always have the option of a printing job coming right out alongside of you, or from coming from the printer in a more distant location (another room for example) in the other format.

Setup was relatively easy. I tried the CD setup to automatically recognize my Verizon supplied wireless router for FIOS and it didn't automatically setup using the one touch button on the router as instructed. But when I went with the USB cable wireless setup, I was able to choose manual setup and it worked like a breeze. I was surprised to see that the manual setup was that easy; all that all I needed was to input my WEP key number when it asked for it, and it took care of the rest. So overall Lexmark did their engineering, and made setup very easy. I was also pleased that I could add another computer, or as many as I would like, even my XP machines. My interest in newer printers was due in part to my need to find something that would work with Vista and XP in the same network.

The web enabled touch screen feature is impressive. It has a large LCD screen right on the front of the printer that you can actually access the web from as well as a lot of other functions. It's the most modernistic approach for a printer that I have seen. All you do is create a user name and account to access Lexmark's "Smart Solutions" such as Apple Hot News, Business Card Scan, Eco Copy, Google Calendar, Mobile Me Photos, MSNBC Headlines, and more... Once you have saved your choice of these solutions, they are immediately ready to use right at your fingertips on the printers touch screen. So this printer does a lot more than just scan, copy and print.

One last thing that I want to mention is that when I was using the Lexmark X83, although I loved the machine one of my pet peeves was that when the electricity went off, like during a summer storm, the printer, even though it was off, when the juice was restored, it would turn on, and place the cartridge in the middle of the carriage, and just sit there for days drying out, unless I would notice it, and go over and hit the power button, which would immediately park the cartridge in the protective position. Needless to say, I went through more cartridges than were necessary. This one the S605 automatically parks the cartridge after a certain period of inactivity time. I would prefer that they park the cartridge after every run, but I am not an engineer, so maybe there is a reason for that beyond wanting to sell more cartridges. Hands down you cannot beat a laser for saving money on printing supplies.

I'm glad I have this, and am already looking forward to being able to print T-Shirts, with the iron ons for fun, and cards, photos etc. I also like the idea of having a scanner handy. The only thing is that I wish I had gotten the one with the 4 way that does faxes as well. Overall a nice machine with tons of features not normally found in a printer and I also have to say that my 10 year old X83's never failed, so I am expecting a long life out of the S605 as well. From one Lexmark fan to another, buy it.

These are just a few of the items that are needed to have a complete kitchen. ;-) The printer was a perfect match to the computer, which is an MSI touchscreen and is small enough to fit almost anywhere. You just never know when you might need to print out that recipe, store coupon, or perhaps a knitting pattern.

This was an interesting printer to set up, different from the ones I have done before. I say this because the quick start manual says to make sure the printer is not connected to anything and install the software. In all the other printers I have set up, the manuals walk you completely through the setup. This printer walks you through the complete procedure using the CD and the LCD screen on the printer. The package print head is located inside the printer and the CD will make you aware of that. But, I investigated inside first before I did anything else, and removed the printer head. The ink cartridges are in the area where the paper is ejected. After completing the steps of installing the print head, and then the ink cartridges, the printer will want to align the print head, and upon doing so a page is printed out. Make sure the paper tray is fully extended. Otherwise, the paper will either jam or wrinkle, inside the area. The paper tray has a small lip at the end to prevent the paper from sliding off. Next comes the procedure of finding your network. Again, this is where the Lexmark is different from any other printer. I have set up a few wireless printers, and most printers are set up using their LCD display, usually somewhere in settings or network or however the printer manufacturer describes it. The Lexmark does it through the computer that you're setting it up for. Going through the steps it will ask you if you have a certain type of router that has a button on it that I have never seen. When you answer no, the next window that comes up asks you to connect the provided USB cable from the computer you are working on to the printer. By pressing continue it will search for your network, which you can identify and enter an encryption key if needed. After that, Lexmark lets you know it has made the connection and to disconnect the USB cable. Now you are able to print wirelessly. So I gave it a try just to see if there was a lot of lag time between sending the data from the computer to the final print out. My setup goes from the kitchen to a room where the router is and back to the printer in the kitchen and to my surprise the lag time was very short.

The next thing I usually do is to try out the software that was installed on the computer. Under Lexmark there's a program called Printer Home. This is what you want to click on in order to have the versatility of the printer. There are four scan categories to choose from - photo, documents, e-mail and PDF. The scan to photo has two options; one, the single photo, and the other is split into individual photo. The second one was interesting. Lexmark will ask you if you want a test page printed out at the end of the set up. It prints out a page with a color bar on the top, the Lexmark logo on the right hand side, some hot air balloons in the middle and another color bar at the bottom of the page. When you select the second option of splitting the photo into individual photos it literally saved four versions of the photo. The color bar was one, the logo was the second, the hot air balloons was the third, and the color bar at the bottom was the fourth. This was an interesting first for me. I can definitely see some interesting possibilities. Of course the rest of the categories are pretty straightforward. Scanning to a document or to an e-mail or making it a PDF. The Printer Home software gives you the most options of how you want to scan and save different things in different formats. Plus it has other options at the bottom of its page, such as print head alignment, wireless setup, and so forth. Next it was time to use the LCD control panel on the printer. The LCD panel swings out from the body of the printer and stays in its 45° position by friction. So I wondered if the panel would stay in his position as you push down the different icons on the screen. The touchscreen is very sensitive, so pushing on the screen is a very light touch, and that helps the panel stay in position.

Copying offers a lot of options. Things like number of copies, color or black-and-white. You can also select more options, which expands the versatility of copying, such as two into one, eight to one and 16 to 1. Along with other options such as paper type, paper size, quality, and the band plays on. This is where an automatic document feeder is missed. If you had a two-sided sheet that you wanted to print out, you have to scan one side and then the other manually. This printer does have the capability of duplexing, which does add to the features.

Next feature tried from the LCD control panel on the printer was scanning. The options here are a little limited, compared to using the software. When you choose scan you have the option of scanning to the computer, scanning to memory device or scanning to e-mail. When I say a little limited, I mean that everything I scanned to a file was always in JPEG form, whereas the software gives you the option of other formats. The computer would have to be on anyway in order to scan to the computer or to e-mail, but if you are just scanning to a memory device, I guess this would be very convenient.

The last icon on the LCD control panel is Smart Solutions. It comes with a few smart solutions on it to begin with, I.D. card copy and photo reprint. But in order to get the full features of smart solutions you need to go and create an account at the Lexmark website. This is easy to do. You can either click on the link that the software provided on your computer under Lexmark or on the LCD panel under the smart solutions icon then click on more options. There's a link there that will send your browser to the smart solution page. The only other one I added to my smart solution was the MSNBC link, but there are quite a few to choose from. There are even smart solutions that you can customize for copying and scanning.

I also had to see what would happen by plugging in a USB thumb drive into the printer. It recognized the thumb drive and gave me three options on the LCD screen. One is photo, the other is document, and the last is send to e-mail. I chose photo to see what the LCD screen would display, and lo and behold, two pictures I had put on the thumb drive showed up. So I decided to print out one of them. You can just accept it and print it or you can go into more options and adjust all the settings. Then I tried looking at a document. It listed of all the supported documents, which are many, on the thumb drive. Next I removed the thumb drive and inserted a USB cable from my camera to the printer. The Pictbridge icon came up. When I tapped the icon, it told me to print from the camera, so I scrolled through the LCD on the camera, picked a picture, clicked on more options, selected my settings and printed the picture. With the 4.2 LCD screen, looking at pictures makes it easy to decide what you want to print out. The bottom of the LCD panel has four icons, one for eco-mode (duplexing, printing in draft, and reducing the backlight on the LCD panel), one for duplexing, one for settings, and the one that I appreciate the most is the amount of ink that is left in the cartridges.

My first all-in-one was the original Lexmark for home users. This continued to work flawlessly until the day I got rid of it. The biggest reason I upgraded to another type of printer was because of the cost of the ink for the Lexmark and the problems of the ink drying out when not in use. I hope this situation has improved. I like the uniqueness of this printer because of the LCD screen and the option that it gives you to interact with the outside world rather than just print or scan. Is this a printer I would use for a small business - No. Is this a printer I would use for the home office? I think that would depend on how much printing I was planning on doing every day. With each cartridge having a yield of 100 you could be using ink at a rapid rate. Is this a printer I would have for personal use, most definitely. This is a fun printer to use, and it has enough versatility to suit my personal needs at a reasonable price.

The 105XL cartridge can be modified to work with the S605.

The 100, 100XL and 105XL are all the SAME physical cartridge, just with different size ink fills.

The 105XL physically fits into the S605 with no modification. When installed, the printer says "unsupported ink cartridge." How does it know, seeing as it's just an ink well and not a print head? Under the label at the top is an RFID chip. All you have to do is swap the chip with an 100 or 100XL cartridge and the 105XL will work in your S605 printer. Happy printing!