Lexmark Pinnacle Pro901 Printer Review
The good: The Lexmark Pinnacle Pro901 grabs your attention with its penny-per-page black ink costs and its large, color touch-screen control panel. It’s also fast with printing photos and quiet during operation, and it boasts a five-year warranty.
The bad: In order to hit such a low black-ink cost, the Lexmark Pinnacle Pro901 turns out text that isn’t as deep black as competing models, and Lexmark’s SmartSolutions app site is poorly designed. Plus, it’s slow with copies.
The bottom line: The Lexmark Pinnacle Pro901 is a well-designed, compact multifunction printer, and its low cost per page helps it earn our recommendation for those who can stomach slower print speeds.
Design and features
The Lexmark Pinnacle Pro901 is a compact device for all it can do, measuring 9.8 inches high by 18.3 inches wide and 15.4 inches deep. Part of the reason is its single 150-sheet, silo-drawer-style paper tray, (although you can add an optional second paper tray to the bottom, sold separately of course.) On top, the printer maintains a small profile despite a 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF), and overall with its curved lines and black-and-gray color scheme, the Pinnacle Pro901 boasts a clean, modern design.
The front of the printer is dominated by a 4.3-inch color touch-screen LCD. It sits at a fixed angle, but remains very readable whether you’re sitting or standing. On either side of the screen you’ll find touch-sensitive virtual icons including with familiar navigation functions such as “home,” “back,” and others. The power button on the right edge of the front panel is the only physical button, and you get a PictBridge USB port and multiformat media card slot just below that. Around back, you get the classic multifunction trio of Ethernet, USB 2.0, and modem ports.
Installation is straightforward: install software and drivers from the bundled CD, plug in the power cable and then connect the printer to your PC. You can connect via Wi-Fi using just the printer’s touch-screen LCD; you simply choose your network from a list, enter your password, and you’re done. We conducted our performance tests using a direct USB connection and were glad to find Lexmark buck the industry trend and actually include a USB cable in the box. The power cord is on the short side, measuring only 6 feet, which may limit where you’ll place it or require the use of an extension cord.
Thanks to its large, colorful icons, navigating the touch panel is easy. Copy, scan, and fax icons populate the home screen, along with a fourth icon for Lexmark’s SmartSolutions. Along the bottom of the home screen you’ll find smaller icons, including one that enables the Eco Mode (power saver after 10 minutes, dimming the screen, and two-side printing). A clear, graphical view of remaining ink in each tank sits in the lower-right corner. The LCD will display alerts when you are about to run out of paper as well.
The flatbed scanner features a 1,200-by-4,800 dpi resolution, and its hinges pull out an inch or so, which makes it possible to scan or copy pages from a thick textbook. You can initiate a scan from the printer, or scan to a PC including an option to select which application will receive the scan. You can also scan to a memory card or a USB drive connected to the printer, or send the scan to e-mail when the printer is connected to a network.
The Pinnacle Pro901 employs a four-ink tank system: black, yellow, cyan, and magenta. A high-yield color ink cartridge (model 100XL) costs $19.49 and is for a rated 600 pages. That works out to 3.2 cents per page. The high-yield black cartridge (105XL) costs only $4.99 for a rated 510 pages, which is less than a penny a page. The cost per page for color prints is roughly average, while spending less than one cent per page for monochrome prints is industry leading. In comparison, the Epson WorkForce 840 costs more than 3 cents for monochrome pages, while the Lexmark Prevail Pro705 costs 5 cents per monochrome page.
Performance
The Lexmark Pinnacle Pro901 turned in a mixed performance in our tests. It proved an average performer on our monochrome text color graphics and presentation tests, but it was remarkably fast at printing a 4×6 color photo. However, it only pumped out 7.05 pages per minute (ppm) on our black text speed test, which was about a page slower per minute than the HP Photosmart Premium C410a, and nearly 5.5 pages slower a minute than the Epson WorkForce 840. It was approximately a page slower per minute than the WorkForce 840 and PhotoSmart Premium C410a on our presentation and color graphics speed tests. The Pinnacle Pro901 turned the tables on our photo speed test, printing 1.85 photos per minute.
Copying speed is not the Pinnacle Pro901′s strong suit. It managed to copy only 3.44 pages per minute. In comparison, the Epson WorkForce 840 hit 5.84 ppm and the HP Photosmart Premium C410a hit 4.74 ppm on our copy speed test.
Although colors appeared vibrant on both plain and photo paper, we found the quality of the black text lacking. Black text was not as deep and dark as what the Epson WorkForce 840 and HP Photosmart Premium C410a produced. Perhaps that’s the price you pay for paying less than a cent per page for monochrome prints.
The Pinnacle Pro901 is quiet during operation and coupled with its compact size, it’s a good fit for scenarios where the printer will be positioned close to you on your desk rather than positioned in another room or far shelf.
Service and Support
Lexmark backs the Pinnacle Pro901 with a generous five-year warranty, though you must register the printer within 90 days of purchase to get the last four years of that term. The warranty includes toll-free lifetime priority phone support. Online, you’ll find a comprehensive list of FAQs, how-tos, warranty extension information, and driver updates. Users having trouble with the printer can contact technical support via live chat or e-mail (according to Lexmark, it responds to questions within one business day) from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m. PT weekdays and from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday. Finally, Lexmark also offers customer service training in both their printers and general computing at designated authorized locations. Online courses are also available.
Conclusion
If you can live without the deepest, darkest black prints, the Lexmark Pinnacle Pro901 is one of the most cost effective MFPs around thanks to its cheap black ink refills. Color prints cost a bit more, but they are bright and vivid. For home offices, we recommend the quiet and compact Lexmark Pinnacle Pro901.
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