The X6170 from Lexmark is an all-in-one scanner, copier, and fax machine that delivers both the quality and features that today"s users demand. Utilizing a thermal inkjet print method, the X6170 provides full color print resolutions up to 4,800 x 1,200 dpi as well as print speeds as fast as 19 pages per minute (black, lower-resolution mode). Copy speeds are as fast as 16 pages per minute (black), while optical scanning resolutions are as high as 1,200 x 4,800 dpi (Up to 19,200 x 19,200 dpi enhanced). The X6170 connects via its USB 2.0 port and provides optional external network adapter support (print only) via Lexmark"s N1 Ethernet adapter or N5 wireless adapter. (Speeds reported by manufacturer. Actual print and copy speeds will vary depending on computer and type of document.)

A wide variety of paper types and sizes are supported, including A4, A5, A6, B5, executive, legal, letter, index card, plain paper, envelopes, photo or glossy paper, transparencies, labels, iron-on transfers, and more. The 8.5-by-11.7-inch scanning bed supports originals up to letter size, while a 50-page automatic document feeder provides a convenient way to create prints, copies, or scans from multiple page documents. A multiple copy function provides up to 99 copies at the press of a button, with a zoom range of 25 to 400%.

The X6170 has a 100-page maximum input capacity and a monthly duty cycle of 5000 pages, while operating noise levels are around 48 dB during printing, 45 dB during copying, and 44 dB during scanning. PC compatible only, the X6170 also comes backed with a one-year limited LexExpress warranty.

What"s in the Box
Lexmark X6170, online user"s guide, setup sheet, #82 black print cartridge, IDU TH-OCR (for Chinese OCR), Lexmark Photo Editor, phone cord, All-In-One #83 color print cartridge, installation software CD-ROM (drivers and software), power supply with cord, ABBYY FineReader Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software, e.Typist Entry (for editing Japanese), USB cable

REVIEWS:
1) Buyer beware: 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.
2) I would not recommended it to anyone, I am extremely disappointed with it: 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.
3) Horrible machine: 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.
4) Awesome printer!: 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!
5) Multiple Disapointments: 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

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