Customer Reviews

Lexmark X2600 All -In-One Printer (12L1685)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

I purchased the Lexmark X2600 primarily because, out of all the printers on the shelves, this was the cheapest. I wasn't looking for quality--I just needed something that could print and scan. It came without a USB cable or black ink. The cable I could understand--it's pretty much a given for any printer--but the ink was a little odd. Why include color but not black?

I picked up some black ink along with the printer since I only intended to print text files. The print quality is mediocre, but you get what you pay for. I'd be willing to let this slide and would probably never write this review if not for what happened next.

Only a couple weeks after purchasing the printer, having printed, at most, about fifty or so black and white pages, I was informed that the included color ink cartridge was about to run out. I had no idea why it was using color ink to print black, but I didn't really care. Finally, after sending it a print job one day, a warning popped up that the color cartridge was completely empty. That's annoying, but whatever. I click ok and re-send the print job. The warning pops up again. It won't let me print. I make sure "black-only" is selected in the options menu. No dice.

I assume there's some way around this. There's no way an empty color cartridge would seriously prevent you from printing in black. No printer I've owned has ever done that. I ring up tech support and am told that, BY DESIGN, the Lexmark 2600 will not print AT ALL without a color ink cartridge. I'm sorry, but that's just inexcusable. Poor print quality? Fine. Lousy ink levels? Sure. But you're telling me I have to spend $40 on ink I'm never going to use on a printer that costs only ten dollars more so I can print in black and white?

If not for the scanner--which still works, thank god--I would have a $50 paper weight right now. I've never encountered such a bold-faced attempt to force the consumer to purchase ink. I'm no stranger to ink cartridges that are only half-filled or claim to be "out" when there are still 100 prints left in them, but this is a new low. Let this serve as a lesson. Even if you're on a tight budget, go ahead and spend the extra money and buy from a reputable company. Fifty dollars sounds like a great deal, right up until you have to spend another forty dollars less than a month later. Avoid Lexmark at all cost!

We bought this printer at a local store just for a cheap printer for shipping labels, some documents, and scanning ability. Nothing had to be super high quality. So for $40 I thought it was a good buy...well now I know better.

1) The prices for replacement ink is outrageous. I could buy a new printer for the price of the ink.
2) Apparently within a few weeks of buying this they stopped stocking ink at every store close to me. And I have had a very hard time finding it online for less than $50! Which to me is just totally insane!!!
3) The printer guzzles gas worse than a Hummer H-2 guzzles gas driving in town. I printed less than 50 pages of text only pages before needing more ink.
4) The printer comes on all by itself at the oddest times. Which is a waste of energy, and kind of eerie. Especially when I am sitting at my desk in an empty house and the printer starts making noises! Then turns on without me touching it and being across the room from it!

I haven't purchased ink to refill it yet, considering that I haven't been able to find it anywhere for a reasonable price. I am now looking to recycle it and just buy a new printer, that will be more cost effective.

Hope this helps anyone considering buying this...DON'T!

The speed of this printer is awesome. However, it wasn't clear ordering it online, that it did not come with the necessary cable to connect it to the computer. Nor did it come with ink, and the ink cannot be found at Office Depot, Staples, etc. The only source has been directly thru Lexmark. The print quality is just okay... we had awesome print quality with our HP, but it was slow; we got speed with the Lexmark, so it's a trade-off I guess. I would recommend shopping around a bit more, and maybe paying just a bit more to get speed AND better print quality.

The only good thing about this printer was its price. Everything else is a hassle to deal with. Every time you replace an ink cartridge you have to allign the printer heads several times -- which in turn wastes more ink! You have to allign the scanner every time you change cartridges as well. This makes no sense at all to me... As others have said, you cannot print anything when one of the ink cartridges gets low, whether it's black or color. Lexmark's tech support is horrible. They talk to you like you're an idiot, or something. "Well, did you try unplugging the printer, and plugging it back up?" The print speed is decent, but the quality is really bad. You cannot print pictures with this printer at all. It leaves little lines (spaces, actually) on all of your pictures. You're better off to spend a little more on a *GOOD* printer. The 2600 may seem like a good deal at first, but by the time you spend out so much money on ink you probably could've bought a better printer cheaper in the first place.

Don't buy this, spend an extra $25. The print quality and color resolution is terrible compared to both my HP and Epson. I paid $40 from Wal-Mart and the replacement ink is more that $40. It came with only a color ink cartridge and no instructions (they were obscurely listed on the cd I only discovered later), so I thought they'd forgotten the black. The next day I called Lexmark, with a seven minute wait, to hear that I could print color and black with the color ink cartridge. Either the printer is too new or a limited model, but you can only get Lexmark replacement ink.Fortunately, the best price is on Amazon! If you do any photos at all, get a printer with a slot for your camera card, loading it via usb from camera to computer is so 1990's. The print quality is so bad, I can't consider printing a photo with it. This model does have a separate photo color ink cartridge, like we used in the first HP printers circa 1995. Epson has good photo print quality but expensive ink, so in the future, I will definitely price the ink along with pricing the printer. This can't even be a word processing utility printer because of the poor print quality and no fine tuning adjustment ability, even the margins are hinky from time to time, so the chips inside must be not be very complex. It's only a matter of time that I invest in better quality. Kodak is advertising $9.99 replacement ink, and seems to have some great ones for $150. Worth looking into.

I hate this printer. What a waste of money. I bought it because it was the cheapest printer on the shelf. However, I later found out that I'm not allowed to refill the cartridges. Walgreens and other places are banned from doing it. So, I'm forced to buy brand new ones. In addition, the printer will not work unless you have a working color cartridge in it. So, you end up paying up the nose in ink cartridges. I've tried several times to load a black and white cartridge, but my printer won't recognize it, so I'm screwed with printing in only color. The store won't even allow me to return my cartridge, so I'm screwed there. I'm done with Lexmark! I think their idea of enforcing "no refilled cartridges allowed" is shady and very bad business. You'll save yourself a lot of headaches by avoiding this printer or any other Lexmark printer in the future.

I bought this after other lexmark printers I've purchased in the past have become damaged from moving...this one is awesome. It can take a beating and everything is included. I load my sd card in and the pics just send to the folder and I can crop them through easyshare. The scanner is easy to use and the ink is all in one cartridge. For the price and benefits what else can you ask for.

The all-in-one printer is really nice. I have scanned with it a couple of documents and the quality is pretty good.
The printer does not include the blank ink, you have to buy it separately. It does however, include the multi-color one.

i needed a new printer for my "older" pc...most (higher end ones?) these days with all the extra bells-n-whistles (camera card slots, lcd screens, etc, etc) apparently are too much for my ancient pc to deal with. i had bought a new HP but it killed all my already used usb ports (internally in the pc so that the devices plugged into them wouldnt work), then i tried several Epson's (NX series) and they did the same thing!
i almost gave up on finding a new printer that would work with my pc, then tried this Lexmark because it seemed quite "basic" compared to the others i tried...IT WORKED...YAY!
i didnt buy it here, but would certainly recommend it to anyone who needs a new printer with good quality and features for an older pc.

I actually have the X2670, which is the same thing in black, but that item isn't available on Amazon at the moment. I got this printer as an "I'm Sorry" from Lexmark for past mistreatment and for not replacing an earlier model when they should have. So, I guess I shouldn't complain but when I discovered the ink situation, I knew I had to warn others.

When Lexmark sent this as repayment for past sins, I was happy although it wasn't nearly as valuable a model as the one we bought (that they didn't replace) a few years back. Still, they didn't have to send it at all. I gave my Canon Pixma MP190 multifunction to my husband, even though I love that printer, because I found that the scanner on the Lexmark worked with my laptop, and I could never get the Canon to work with mine.

The Lexmark and the Canon are in about the same price range, but the quality of the print from the Lexmark is not as good. It also runs through ink faster, believe it or not. Canon printers are known for using a ton of ink but between these two, the Lexmark is worse.

And this is what I hate: When the ink gets low, it shuts the printer down. You can no longer print. With the Canon, you can shake the cartridge and just keep using it until it runs out. All my HP printers were like that, too. Not this Lexmark...it got low, gave me a warning, printed a few more pages and stopped...while the printing was still good. It hadn't even begun to fade.

I should be allowed to decide when to replace a cartridge. This is as bad as the HP printers that don't allow other brands of cartridges to be used. My Canon Pixma MP190 allows off brands of ink, but it won't keep track of the ink levels for you. And I had an HP printer that refused to print without HP ink. I switched to Canon after my HP printer refused to print when I put in a new HP ink cartridge...not an off brand. With the cartridge costing $35 for the HP brand and still refusing to print, it was time to switch.

One other thing I want to add is that minutes pass between the time you send the print job, and when it starts printing. Most printers start right away, or after a few seconds. It can take 1-3 minutes for this to start printing.

What do you buy? Printers that break easily or don't work from the get-go. They charge a lot for ink, demand THEIR ink, and shut everything down when they don't get it when they want it. I may just donate the Lexmark, but then I'm without a scanner because Canon can't seem to be able to help with this. Anyway, The Lexmark X2600 series works okay for the money, setup is easy, no scanner issues like the Canon has, and if you don't mind the printer telling you when it wants ink whether or not it needs it, then go ahead and buy it.