Lexmark Mobile Printing (for iPhone) is a free app designed to let users print out PDF documents, image files, and clipboard text and art from an Apple mobile device (iPhone or iPad) connected to the same WiFi network as a compatible Lexmark printer. Though a step up from the LexPrint photo-printing app, it lacks features we’re seeing in other apps; namely, the ability to print out Office documents or initiate scans. Lexmark Mobile Printing is only compatible with select Lexmark printers and MFPs, which excludes some that work with LexPrint. PDFs printed through Lexmark Mobile Printing generally were better formatted than those printed through AirPrint, though the Lexmark app’s PDFs were subject to hangs.
Basics
Lexmark Mobile Printing is available for free through the iTunes app store. The same app is good for both the iPhone and iPadâ€"an Android version is also available. I reviewed it for the iPhone here, though I also tested it with an iPad and noticed no functional or performance differences. This app works with Lexmark printers and MFPs that support IPP network printing and Direct Image printer language. Compatible models include the OfficeEdge Pro4000 and Pro5500, the Pro715, Pro915, S215, S415, and S515â€"all inkjetsâ€"plus most of Lexmark’s laser series from recent years. (A complete listing is available in the iTunes App Store’s description of the product.)
This excludes many inkjets more than a year old, including the Pinnacle Pro901 I generally use for Lexmark print app testing. (When I searched for it with the app, it didn’t show up on the list of supported printers.) Many older inkjets do support the LexPrint app, which is limited to photo printing. But, in addition to installing LexPrint on your i-device, you may also have to install a LexPrint Listener utility on your computer.
Once you install Lexmark Mobile Printing, you can search for supported printers on your WiFi network; it had no trouble locating my OfficeEdge Pro5500. The program’s interface includes tabs along the bottom: Add Device; Jobs; Photo; Clipboard, and About. Above the tabs is white space, in which appears a list of supported printers, documents ready to print, or a photo preview, depending on what task you’re working on.
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Testing
I first tested the app’s photo printing. It can print photos either from your i-thing’s photo albums or directly from images shot from within the app. Its printing choices are limited: which printer to use (in case you have more than one Lexmark printer on your network); the number of copies; the number of pages per side; one- or two-sided copies; and if two sided, whether the pages are flipped along the long or short side. (The choices are the same whether you’re printing from photo, Clipboard, or PDF.) AirPrint’s choices are just as sparse: printer; page range; number of copies; and one- or two-sided copies.
Through Clipboard, you can print out emails or other documents copied in your clipboard. To overwrite the Clipboard, you simply save a new document to it. Like AirPrint, it is able to print out HTML-formatted documents, and in even fewer pages. Clipboard printing worked flawlessly in my testing.
Lexmark primarily intended this app to facilitate the printing of PDFs for SMB and small workgroup users. To print a PDF, you must first load it in some other app (I used GoodReader and Adobe Acrobat for testing), and then open it in the Lexmark app. In printing PDFs, it provided some smarts that AirPrint lacks. (I tested Lexmark Mobile Printing on a Lexmark OfficeEdge Pro5500, which is also AirPrint compatible, so I could do a head-to-head comparison.) For instance, in printing out a landscape-oriented full-page illustration, it used the entire page, while AirPrint rotated and shrunk the image to fit the portrait width while leaving swaths of white space above and below. Photos in PDFs printed with the app were generally brighter and showed better color than those printed via AirPrint.
A downside is that I encountered several hangs when printing out PDFs. The printer would stop printing in the middle of the document, and I’d have to cancel the job. Sometimes the printer would go through the time-consuming process of rebooting itself after a hang. The hangs seemed related to how the app processes the file, as they happened at the same spot in a document if I tried to print it more than once (and from both my iPhone and iPad), it would stop at the same point whether the document was loaded in GoodReader or Acrobat, and the issue didn’t show up when I printed out the same document from one of those two apps using AirPrint. They tended to occur in longer, complicated PDFs.
Lexmark Mobile Printing (for iPhone) is free, and well worth trying if you have a compatible Lexmark printer. It has some qualitative advantages over AirPrint such as printing clipboard documents in fewer pages, better formatting and photo reproduction in PDFsâ€"and it supports many Lexmark models that aren’t AirPrint compatible.
Though Lexmark Mobile Printing (for iPhone) suffered occasional hangs in PDF printing in my testing, Lexmark’s other printing app, LexPrint, doesn’t print PDFs at all and is limited to photo printing. Speaking of limitations, adding support for the printing of Microsoft Office documents in a future version would greatly improve the new app. But as is, Lexmark Mobile Printing offers the convenience of letting you print PDFs and other material straight from your iPhone, and formats them nicely to boot.
For more iPhone Software, see:
•  Lexmark Mobile Printing (for iPhone)
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