Lexmark could tag their logo with the phrase ‘All the All-in-Ones' and they'd have no argument here. There are over 30 machines in the range, where some might say five would do. The X4975ve fits near the top and is one of the Professional range, which means high-capacity cartridges and a five-year warranty.

Decked out in silver and black, the machine has quite a low profile thanks to a near-horizontal Automatic Document Feeder (ADF), but this look is short-circuited by the standard paper input tray at the back, sticking up like a flag. Paper flows through to the pull-out front tray and you use the same feed for plain paper and photo blanks.

The control panel is obviously designed for the right-handed. Although the 61mm colour LCD is positioned centrally, with mode buttons directly behind it, all the other controls are to the right. These include menu controls and scan and copy buttons. To the right of the control panel itself are slots for memory cards and for PictBridge connection. This latter socket doubles up as a USB drive connector, so you can print image files from one or scan to it.

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You can connect via USB, Ethernet or WiFi, though you do have to get the machine close enough to your PC to connect it temporarily with a USB lead while setting up a wireless connection. This isn't needed by rival wireless all-in-ones and is an annoying restriction. The twin cartridges, one black, the other tricolour, clip into their holders in the head carriage, and software installation, which includes Abbyy Finereader Sprint for OCR and Lexmark's own productivity suite, is easy.

Real-world print speeds, even though Lexmark now quotes normal as well as draft figures, are only around half of those claimed. This is largely due to a long pause before the start of each print, which can be up to 25 seconds. Copy speeds are slower still, with a five-page black text document taking just under five minutes to complete. That is tedious.

Print quality is reasonable and for general-purpose correspondence will be more than adequate, though there is slightly more spread of ink into the paper fibres than with rival machines. Colours on plain paper are a little pale, but black text registration over colour is good. Photo prints are also above average and photocopies, particularly colour ones, give colours very close to the originals. This is reflected in the scan quality from the machine, too.

This is not a cheap all-in-one printer and, although it has many of the features you would expect, such as wireless connection, an ADF and walk-up print from a USB drive, its print costs - at nearly 4p for a black page and nearly 8p for colour - are high. The slow speeds, particularly when copying, also count against the X4975ve.