Though the Lexmark P450 is a remarkable device that can print and burn CDs, this machine is still a photo printer at heart. The company claims the P450 is the world’s first 4 x 6-inch photo printer with a built-in CD burner. However, we encountered some technical issues while trying to copy pictures onto a CD and will update this review once we have the official word from Lexmark.

Design
The P450 caught the attention of some colleagues while it was sitting on our desk recently and the general consensus was that it's undeniably cute. Measuring 153 x 276 x 235mm, the P450 didn't take up too much space on our table. As a guide, this inkbox takes up as much surface area as four CDs arranged in a square.

The machine weighs a hefty 2.95kg and it's really not a good idea to carry it around like a fashion accessory. It's strange why does the unit weighs a ton but feels hollow and empty to touch.

In line with the company's mission, which is to "uncomplicate printing, business, life", there are minimal buttons on the machine. Lifting the 2.4-inch color LCD reveals the operator panel with six buttons (five of them with a rubber surface). These keys are intuitive enough except for the color palette option, which opens up the onboard image editing menu.

The power key (which lights up in a cool blue hue), PictBridge port, built-in memory card readers and the CD burner sit at the front of the printer. Below the CD burner is a flip-down tray for holding printouts.

The P450 doesn't run on batteries so there's a power adapter sticking out from the rear of the unit. Unless you are planning to bring this printer to parties, it shouldn't bother you all that much.

Features
Lexmark claims the P450 is the world's first 4 x 6-inch photo printer with a CD burner. What this means is you can copy your photos directly via PictBridge, a USB flash drive or a memory card onto a CD-R sans PC. Alternatively, you can also select pictures to be copied from a memory card to a USB flash drive.

You should note that the P450 cannot connect to a PC for printing of pictures. The official statement from Lexmark is that the company positioned the machine as a standalone printer. However, from a user perspective, the inability to print from a PC severely isolates the printer from a wealth of image-editing functions that can only be done using the computer. In addition, printer firmware can be updated only via external devices like a CD instead of directly using a PC.

Unfortunately, there are no thumbnail previews. So if you happen to have 1,000 images on your memory card, you have to thumb through 499 frames just to get to the 500th picture. Holding down the right or left button will enable the fast forward or backward option (the LCD monitor whites out while doing this), so if you know approximately which photo you want to get to out of the thousand, it would probably save you some time. That said, if you're looking for alternative compact photo printers that also allow you to preview images, HP's Photosmart 475 and 385 are good ones to begin with.

The P450 comes with basic onboard image-editing functions. For example, you can rotate, crop and zoom, remove red-eye, enhance, apply color effects, and select the print quality and number of prints. Clicking through the various options was rather responsive, though our fingers suffered minor cramps after a while due to the stiff rubber buttons.

In addition, the built-in memory card slots can read a total eight cards (CompactFlash Type I and II; SmartMedia Card; Memory Stick; Memory Stick Pro; Secure Digital; MultiMediaCard; and xD-Picture Card) and the smaller media formats using adapters.

The P450 allows printing in multiple copies. However, the maximum number of prints you can set for one picture is limited to 10. If you wish to print 20 copies, you have to repeat the procedure twice.

Hardware-wise, Lexmark's ink cartridges incorporate the printhead. This is good news as the printer will not waste ink running a regular clean cycle each time the unit powers up.

Performance
The P450 took an agonizing 1 minute 38 seconds to turn on from the power outlet. Routine shutdown and startup of the printer (using the Power button) in between print tests were timed to be at 3 seconds and 4 seconds, respectively.

We liked how the timer on the LCD screen counted down to the completion of the print job-- though we must say it wasn't exactly very accurate. However, the loud clunky noise generated when the first piece of photo paper was fed for printing took a point off our total score.

On average, the difference in printing speed from a USB 2.0 flash drive and our high-speed Imation SD card differed by approximately 10 seconds or less, with the SD card taking a slightly longer time. We managed to print about 30 pieces of photo-quality images before a low ink warning popped up.

It was a mixed bag with regard to the built-in CD burner. According to a Lexmark representative, the built-in CD burner has a read and write speed of 24x and the number of pictures that can be burned is limited by the capacity of the CD used. However, our preliminary test results said otherwise.

Unfortunately, we don't have official test results on the CD burner yet. However, based on our initial tests, it took a much longer time to copy an image with a larger file size on our Imation CD than one with a smaller file size. We suspect this was due to a buffer memory issue in the printer that limits the speed of copying to a CD and are awaiting confirmation from Lexmark on this.

Image Quality
We were generally satisfied with the print quality from the P450. Colors appeared to be slightly more saturated in most of our test prints at photo-quality levels. However, unless you are scrutinizing the pictures at close proximity, you probably cannot differentiate between a picture printed in normal quality and another in photo quality.

Our draft prints exhibited severe banding issues which made it good for only preview purposes. Do note that while printing borderless pictures, the printer does crop the edges of your image. Don't be surprised that if your head is exactly along the top of the picture, it may get chopped in half.