Lexington, KY –- In a January 30 press release Lexmark announced
the debut of a new line of printers aimed at the SMB and enterprise environments. The new
series is aptly named OfficeEdge, as they offer the performance of a laser, at the price and
color quality of an inkjet. As of right now, the series has two models: the OfficeEdge Pro
5500 and Pro 4000.
A nice feature right off the bat with these two devices is their driver. Both come with
Lexmark’s Universal Print Driver which makes them easy to incorporate into office
environments, regardless of the make and model of other printers in use. The driver supports
both PCL and PostScript printing. IT administrators will also find remote monitoring of the
device is easy via the Embedded Web Server as well as the Markvision Enterprise tool for fleet
management.
Both of Lexmark’s newest offerings are ultra-fast, boasting speeds of up to 21 ISO ppm
black pages per minute, and 14ppm color. The Lexmark Pro4000 has a 2.4” LCD screen and the
Pro5000 has a 4.3” LCD touch screen. Both machines offer the convenience of automatic two-
sided printing as well as a 50-sheet ADF (also auto-duplex) capable of handling up to legal-
size (8.5x14”) pages. They have standard paper input capacities of 300 sheets, expandable up
to 850.
Both machines use a new ink formulation, called Vizix Pro. It is a pigment-based ink and
is used in both standard cartridges and their high-yield equivalents. The ink is formulated
to make the boldest and most vivid inks that have the highest resistance to smearing and water
than previous Vizix inks. The sharp colors allow users to keep more printing jobs in-house,
rather than paying extra to outsource them. All of the cartridges can be recycled through the
Lexmark Cartridge Collection Program (LCCP) which is a free program, and more importantly,
benefits the environment by keeping empty cartridges out of landfills.
Lexmark has worked hard to make business processes easier with their SmartSolutions. To
that end, during this quarter, Lexmark will be releasing 12 more SmartSolutions to go along
with these new, office-centric business machines. Some of these will include: “‘E-Mail & Save
to Network’ and ‘Copy, E-mail & Save to Computer.’”
Knowing that today’s workforce is a mobile one, Lexmark has got businesses and employees
covered there as well with the new OfficeEdge machines. The units are both compatible with
Lexmark’s Mobile Printing App which was announce last November. The app works with both
Android and iOS-powered devices and allows users to print from almost anywhere they might find
themselves.
With regards to the new printers, Marty Canning, Lexmark executive vice president and
president of Imaging Solutions and Services stated,
“‘The tremendous
business-class capabilities we’ve integrated into our new business inkjets, along with a
compelling value proposition, make them viable alternatives for demanding, heavy use
workgroups. Our customers working in shared use environments, such as doctor offices and
branch banks, will find that the OfficeEdge Series is an ideal choice for managing their
workflows and professional-quality color documents.”
Lexmark has also received outside input in favor of their new products. Marlene Orr, a
senior analyst for printers/A4 MFPs, Buyers Laboratory LLC, said about the Pro 5500, remarked,
“‘While the Lexmark Pro5500 has many traits that are on par with other
legal-size color inkjet all-in-ones, including excellent reliability, it has a number of
features and capabilities that set it apart not only from inkjet competitors, but laser models
as well.’”
The two new machines are available now, direct from Lexmark. The OfficeEdge Pro 4000 is
listed at $249.00 and the OfficeEdge Pro 5000 for $399.00.
