Lexmark must feel it has a winner with its current design of all-in-one machine. The little 'round-edge box with a chunk cut out' look has certainly become a characteristic of its entry-level multifunction machines, though the X3480 comes in at a higher price, just touching £100.

For this extra money you get a couple of noticeable improvements. For a start, there's a control panel projecting from the front edge of the device, complete with a single-line, backlit, LCD display. This gives you messages in plain English, so it's easier to work with the machine than earlier ones, which relied on winking lights.

This USB-connected machine also has a pair of memory card slots which cater for the most common five card formats, and a PictBridge socket for directly connecting a digital camera.

Since it lacks a colour LCD, you either have to use the display on the back of your camera or print out a proof sheet of images, which you can then mark up and scan back in to select the images to print, how many of each and their size. This system works well enough, though you may waste a bit of ink in printing the proof sheets.

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The software bundled with the X3480 includes an OCR application and faxing tool - there's no built-in, hardware fax engine - as well as a document handling program that's similar in concept to PaperPort, though not as sophisticated.

Lift the main scanner section of the device (which has a 600 x 1,200dpi optical resolution) and you can get at the integrated print head and ink cartridge. The three-ink design, pioneered in the earlier X2470 machine, certainly makes maintenance straightforward, though you lose colour fidelity, particularly in black text, which is never truly back.

Normal text print mode is blacker than in earlier models, but switch to draft mode and you get a greeny grey. Photo prints from the 4,800dpi print engine are surprisingly good, however, and several other manufacturers use three-ink systems for their dedicated photo printers.

Printing, from the feed tray at the back to the rather flimsy telescopic output tray at the front, is slow, with a five-page text document taking 2 minutes 17 seconds and a 'best quality' photo print coming in at just under 3.5 minutes.

Prints cost just under eight pence for a typical text page and just over 23p for a 15 x 10cm (6 x 4-inch) photo print. Neither of these prices is particularly good and the photo print price is particularly dependent on the price you can find for Lexmark photo paper.

The X3480 is available exclusively through the Dixons Stores Group, so you know where to find one.

The real danger for Lexmark in marketing this machine is that its price is higher than the normal entry-level figure. At £40-50, the price of the X24nn series, there's little competition, but at close to £100, the current price of the X3480, there are models from Canon, Epson and HP which offer more features and better print performance than this device.