Lexmark recently announced no fewer than eight new AIOs covering office and home use, with the Prevail on test here being targeted at small business and the home office, with a range of useful features and a tidy graphite and black design.

Setup is fairly straightforward, though for some reason you're given very little information, during software setup and through the supplied literature, on how to remove the safety-tape tags and install the print-head and cartridges. Once this is done, though, the whole process, including configuring connection through a wired or wireless network, is illustrated nicely. Fax setup, paper alignment and finally a test page complete the initial configuration, after which you're encouraged to get acquainted with Lexmark's Printer Home software.

Though fairly light on features, there's a range of maintenance tools here to clean and align cartridges, check ink levels and check settings. It's a fairly minor point, but is nice to see these sorts of controls easily accessible, particularly in office environments where multiple users and high yields mean that things can, and inevitably will, go wrong.

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Additionally Lexmark Printer Home offers quick access to scan settings where documents can be saved as photos, PDFs, converted to text using the supplied OCR tools or scanned and emailed. The remaining configuration is done through a combination of the Windows print settings dialogue, which offers a quick and easy way to select quality and paper size/type as well as automatic image enhancement, and the controls on the printer itself.

These are well laid out and, combined with a 2.4-inch colour display, make adjusting settings and managing jobs straightforward. A range of fairly standard controls sit alongside an ‘eco-mode', which savers power and paper by dimming the backlight, enabling the power-saver mode after 10 minutes of inactivity and enabling double-sided (duplex) printing. There's also a dedicated control for switching between monochrome and colour printing, which is a nice way to ensure that coloured ink isn't being used inadvertently.

Alongside the control panel is a multicard reader and USB port with PictBridge support, and stored photos can be browsed and selected via the LCD, an index sheet printed or media shared on a network.

The main paper tray holds up to 150 sheets and the top-mounted ADF (Automatic Document Feeder) holds up to 50. Although a wide range of paper types and formats are supported, there's no dedicated photo tray so manual sliders in the main tray will need to be used to adjust for various tasks . Overall the Prevail is easy to set up and easy to configure and use, with impressive support for various media and print modes, so we were keen to see if it would perform in terms of speed and quality.

Lexmark quotes draft print speeds of up to 33ppm but during our tests we found 15 to be more realistic. Similarly, you can expect around eight standard quality prints in a minute, half the alleged 16ppm. We're not too worried about these inconsistencies, however, as text quality in both modes is impressive. Even small lettering is extremely clean and clear, and the only difference between the two modes is a slightly deeper black at the regular setting, so draft should be fine for most tasks.

When it comes to photo output, the Prevail is pretty quick and finished a full-colour, A4 sized print in under a minute and a half. 6 x 4-inch and 5 x 7-inch photos take about half this time, though sadly these speeds aren't backed up by high quality. At the highest setting with photo quality paper, the Lexmark had some serious problems picking up subtle shades, while dark areas are often represented by a black blur, with very little visible detail. Lighter shades fare better but images were still fairly grainy, so it's fair to say that quality photo output is not one of the printer's strengths.

Performance is pretty good for scans and copies, however, with a full A4 page taking around 20 seconds to arrive as a file, email attachment or opened in an application of your choice on the host computer. We did encounter some issues with the automatic document feeder that caused jams at paper weights over around 165gsm, which underlines its limited capabilities when dealing with photos.

We were a little underwhelmed in terms of performance, then, and it's fair to say that the Prevail is clearly targeted at text-based output and would be better suited to an office environment rather than as a versatile solution in the home. These inadequacies are made up for somewhat with a healthy range of features and intuitive operation, so for those who won't suffer too badly from the drawbacks highlighted above, it's still a capable competitor.

Despite some performance issues, particularly when it comes to handling and printing photos, there are plenty of good things to say about the Prevail, which offers solid text printing, helpful features and is generally nice to use.