Good printer but look for an all-in-one (Lexmark Z11)

Member Name: chris212

Product:	Lexmark Z11
Date:	15/05/09 (12 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good image printing

Disadvantages: Slow, noisy, expensive cartridges

Hi, this is a printer that that originally came with the first PC that I ever purchased over a decade ago in 1998. It was one of the reasons I bought the PC as printers were more expensive back then (I'm not sure of the printers stand alone price when I purchased the PC). The printer would be classed as bog stand, stand alone printer in todays terms, as all it will do is print documents.

The connection type of this printer, in the version that I purchased, is a parallel cable that is used to attach the printer to the PC. Which is an older way of connecting a printer, as the more modern way of connection is through a Universal Serial Bus (USB) or wireless.

One of the problems with this printer is the cost of consumables, by this I mean the printer cartridges. This printer will print in both black and coloured inks. The black ink is less expensive than the coloured ink, as recently I purched one for £19, where as the coloured ink retails for around £23. What I have with these inks is that that a cartridge will last for around 500 sheets of paper, but the more that is on the page the faster the ink will be used up. Which is cheap compared to when I first had to replace the cartridge as they priced around £50!

The quality of the print documents from the Z11 are of reasonably high quality for a printer that was part of a PC, with better quality of printing images that my more recent purchase of a HP laserjet 1020. The highest print setting for the Z11 is 1200 x 1200.

One of the problems with this printer is how fast the Z11 prints out documents, while on high resolution setting the printer is extremely slow, with 4 pages at bests. While on draft setting, this is the lowest print quality is gives the fastest speed of print out at 6/7 pages a minute. What you can guess from this is the print is very slow, but was average when compared to its competitors when first purchased. In addition to this the printer is very nosiy when compared more modern printers; so noisey that I was not able to print using the Z11 when everybody when to bed as it woud wake the whole house up!

What this printer does it does good but no more, it is a basic printer that has lasted a very long time, over 8 years before it started to print out phase, so it is now used as a emergency back up. I would recommend the printer if picked up extremely cheap, but would advise a person to purchase an all-in-one printer, that has cheaper cartridges.

Summary: If cheap buy, but avoid and go for an all-in-one with cheap inks

Processing/Quality:
Reliability:
Ease of use:
Print quality: