Customer Reviews

Lexmark X6170 All-In-One Office Center with USB Cable (15K0186)

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

 

 

I did a lot of research on these all-in-ones, and my top two choices were this Lexmark X6170, and HP's OfficeJet 6110. I owned both for two weeks and as a result have a very good sense of their strengths and weaknesses.

First of all, these machines are highly comparable, in terms of print speed/quality, ease of use, size, and set up. Both are stand-alone faxes if desired. However, they each have little features that distinguish them, for better or worse.

Lexmark X6170: Has the ability to adjust fax transmission baud rate, which came in handy when faxing to older fax machines. Can fax from within applications on the connected computer, and from another computer on a home network. A very nice feature that I used all the time. *Much* quieter operation, nicer, more intuitive keypad, with (refreshing) blue lights on the control panel. Also, a more interesting design. The paper trays are less accessible, and use a slide-out extender, which I don't prefer. No power save -- it's always "on". About $50 cheaper than the HP.

HP OfficeJet 6110: Extremely noisy -- makes lots of clunking sounds during printing. Paper trays are conveniently located at the bottom of the unit. However, printed copies come out somewhat curled at the edges. Cannot use fax features from the computer to which it is hooked up (i.e. cannot fax from within Word or other wordprocessor programs) A solid design, and a slightly smaller footprint. Has a "power save" mode. Can accommodate an optional 6-colour cartridge for photo printing.

Ultimately, for reasons related to problems with static on my phone lines, faxing to certain machines from the Lexmark was a problem. Lexmark's customer support was very helpful, but ultimately I had to return it and have kept the HP. Still miss some things about the Lexmark, tho...

Although the vendor, IBM, alleges that this machine does everything well, it is a failure. I've had three replacements of the X6170. I would advise purchasers to call immediately, when it needs servicing. Furthermore, X6170 doesn't have any endurance, when programmed to make at least 100 copies, it brakes down and reports error code 0502, which can be intrepeted as I've had enough. There are several problems with cropping of copies without warning, which forces stoppages and reprogramming for manual cropping rather than automatic cropping. Also, there is misreading of the amount of ink in newly installed cartigrades. The screen reports an empty cartrigde, which is in error.
In addition, some of the ordered cartridges were defective and failed to function in the machine. They were replaced by IBM, however I had to pay the shipping cost.
Overall, the X6170c is not a workhorse, as advertised. It is a dud, which requires constant troubleshooting and stoppages, before it can function effectively.
I would recommend using a HP model 270 as workhorse. It is old reliable and consistent. Sincerely, Cecil Benjamin

Please do yourself a favor and stay away from this piece of crap. Mine broke down twice to the point where they had to send replacements, and I rarely used it. The fax did not work at all in the second printer I got, and I was so fed up at this point with being on hold with the very slow customer service that I trashed the thing and got an HP printer. This is simply not a reliable machine in any way and there is no reason to buy it with much better options out there.

I can't say enough good things about this multipurpose marvel! I've had the machine for 9 months now and I'm still using the original ink cartridges. My girlfriend uses it more than I do, but between us I'm guessing we've probably printed over 300 pages. The sheetfeed scanner/copier works just about flawlessly - VERY few jams. We rarely use the flatbed scanner but it does come in hand for books and such. I like how fast and quiet the printer is.

I saw that one of the previous reviewers mentioned having problems with cropping. My girlfriend had problems with cropping soon after we got the x6170 and she got very frustrated with it. She finally figured out that if she changed the scan mode then it wouldn't crop things that you don't want cropped. I *think* she told me that it auto-crops when you scan in text mode and it doesn't auto-crop when you scan in image mode but I can't swear to that because that was back when we first bought it and she hasn't brought it up since then.

Overall I am VERY satisfied with this all-in-one machine. I definitely recommend it to others!

Update:
Several people said they had problems with the fax. I initially had a problem sending faxes and I resolved this by altering the maximum transmission speed of the fax (you can set this on the device itself but it's easier to change it via the Lexmark Fax Utility that comes with the software bundle). I ended up setting the maximum speed to 14,400 and I haven't had any problems with it since then. This does seem a little buggy (you shouldn't have to do that) but thankfully this workaround took care of the issue. All in all I have been very happy with the printer and I would definitely buy another one!

I've lived with this thing for close to a year and am fed up with it. If it's lucky it will make it to Salvation Army. If it's unlucky I'll run over it with the car on the way to Salvation Army first.

What's good: Low purchase price. Setup and software installation was easy with good directions. Scanner bed is glass not plastic (no scratching issue). Gives you a variety of options to pick from when scanning a document. Printer produces clean reasonably crisp output.

What's bad: Ink consumption is high and ink cartridges are small. Plan on buying a lot of them at $30 a pop. All color inks are in one ink cartridge instead of separate cartridges for each color. Run out of one color and the cartridge is shot. Paper jams are a way of life. I typically use 24# paper for important output and recycle whatever I can find for unimportant printing. It doesn't matter what I put into it 25% of the time it will either jamb and have the print head crunch the leading edge of the paper up till it can't move anymore or pull the paper in at an angle so the print is is horribly skewed on the page and unuseable. I'm starting to see random hardware errors when printing. It will politely give me a hardware error number and shut itself down. Converting a scan to a text document is hit and miss. If what you're scanning is a simple black and white text page with no font changes, embedded graphics, sidebars or tables it does fine. If your document contains any of the above be prepared to spend a lot of time manually correcting the crazy text conversion this will output. Use as a copy machine is frustrating because the default darkness setting is so light the copies are useless. You must manually adjust the darkness each time you make a copy. Oh and the darkness adjustment isn't linear, going from +1 to +3 produces little change in the printed darkness. Going from +3 to +4 is a huge jump.

Bottom line: Unreliable and cheap in both senses of the word. I never know how many attempts it will take to get a clean scan/print. I've easily sent more paper to the recycle bin than I've been able to use. I'm ditching this and going with a separate printer and scanner.

CRAP!!!

Seriously the worst fax machine I have ever owned, even worse then my terrible $59 brother!

This can only fax a few pages at a time, 2 to be exact. Anything above that won't go through.

SSSSLLLLOOOOOWWWW Printing and Faxing... Turtles walk faster than this thing prints and faxes!

Printing out pics is a nightmare, granted this isn't really made for that type of printing, but if you decide to print out a small pic it looks terrible.

Calling customer service is great until the operator starts talking and you can understand a darn thing he says. I've called several times so it wasn't a one time thing.

All in all the worst purchase I ever made, and buying from staples I thought I was safe however they only have a 15 day return window. I will never purchase a Lexmark again!

I already had a Lexmark Z53 printer and was very satisfied with the print quality. Needing a new fax machine I decided to buy this Lexmark X6170 based upon a great review on another site and I have been thrilled. I was up and running out of the box in about 20 minutes. The software is great. It lets you change your options either on your computer or on the printer's control panel. It shows the level of the toner cartridges every time you start to print. The cartridges are lasting a long time too. The fax machine will pick up a double or triple ring so you can order this feature from your phone company (with a separate number) for about $5/mth and not have to pay for a dedicated phone line. The 50 sheet document feeder works flawlessly for both faxing and copying. Its base is only 10 x 19 inches so it can be angled on a narrow desk or work-space. I can't say enough good things about this machine. Buy it - you won't be sorry!

I bought the Lexmark 6170 to send out resumes using the manual fax feed feature. And I thought since it was cheap and also had a scanner and a printer, I decided to buy it and what a misatke that was. I had thousands of resumes to send out by fax and when I started using the Lexmark fax, almost one half of the faxes would not go through. The display on the Lexmark would read "remote fax error". Well, I do not really think so! I have been sending my resume to top notch engineering companies which have state of the art electronic office equipment including printers and faxes. The problem is with the Lexmark fax. I am so frustrated with this Lexmark machine, I am about to to throw it out of the window. All of the time I spent typing dates on fax transmittal letters and printing them is now wasted since I could not get the resumes faxed in time. And I bet you any money that even the few resumes which made it through, were send via two or three trials, so the employer would not even be able to put the whole thing togther to read since it is bits and pieces of several fax trials. Now, I have to go buy a stand alone fax machine and start the process of typing and printing thousands of transmittal letters all over again. The Lexmark fax got even worse yesterday and today, and now it does not send out faxes now about 70% to 80% of the time. My resume package consists of 6 pages. The Lexmark would send a page or two then stops and displays error messages. I can't take it any more. It does it with every fax number and every area code I send faxes to. What a piece of [...] that Lexmark is. I chose the unit because it was the cheapest on display. I will NEVER buy a Lexmark product ever again.