The Worlds First Throw Away Printer? (Lexmark Z13)

Member Name: rob_writer

Product:	Lexmark Z13
Date:	17/03/02 (1801 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, Good quality, Cheap

Disadvantages: No cable, Small expensive ink cartridges, No USB cable supplied

When my old printer finally died it was time to go in search of another. I'm not the type of person who is impressed by the latest state of the art million dots per inch super photo realistic printer. All I want to do is print out text, maybe with graphs or diagrams in, but nothing particularly detailed and nothing that requires anything more than the most simple colour inkjet printer.

I also didn't want to spend a lot of money on it either, so I figured I'd just go for the cheapest one I could. From what I could remember the cheapest printer would have set me back £50 or more, but a quick trip to pricerunner revealed a £25 bargain in the form of the Lexmark Z13 from Jungle. While this is officially an offer price, a number of other companies sell the printer for around this price.

I had already used a Lexmark for a while, and found it was good, so I decided that it would be a good idea to get one, especially at the low price.

For £25 you got the printer and one colour cartridge, but no USB cable. This added another fiver to the order, although it should be noted that not bundling a cable with a printer is fairly common place with printers now-a-days regardless of the cost. It's always worth checking the price of ink when buying a new printer, as if you use it a lot then the cost of replacement cartridges is going to far outweigh the initial cost of the printer. Replacement Lexmark cartridges for this printer cost between £25 and £30, a rather high price in my opinion, but again it's a pretty standard regardless of what printer you have. It does lead to the absurd situation where a new printer (which comes with one cartridge) is cheaper than a printer, which makes me think I should just buy a new printer when the cartridge runs out, and I could always try to flog the printer for a fiver.

Anyway, as I thought I wouldn't be using my printer all that much I figured that it didn't really matter. I was of
course a little mistaken, as I was basing my estimations of print cartridge life on the old Lexmark I had used. Lexmark usually use the same print cartridge in all their models, and even different models of print cartridge were all a similar size. As it turns out they have changed the design, and made the cartridge about a twentieth of the size of the old one (slight exaggeration, but it is tiny!). This means after a month of low usage the cartridge is only 2/3 full, whereas you would have hardly noticed any depletion at all with the old Lexmark printer I used. Fortunately I had planned to refill my cartridges like I had with the old Lexmark, thankfully this is still possible with the new cartridges.

Anyway, on to the printer itself. You get it in a well packed box, with comprises of a printer, a power supply, one colour cartridge, instructions and driver CD. The printer is compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux (a plus point in my books as many manufacturers don't support Linux).

Installation is easy, simply set up your printer and plug it in (the manual explains this well), turn on your PC and install the software. Couldn't be simpler! The software sets up the printer by printing a test page and aligning the print heads. Within 5 minutes you should be able to use your printer.

The driver software is reasonably good, it allows you to change the quality, size of paper etc, and when something happens it tells you in a rather dodgy American voice. You can't help but laugh when your computer (in the worst American accent) says 'Please insert paper in the auto sheet feeder'.

That brings me to actual printing, which is a little of a mixed bag. First of all the paper feeder is rather good, it seems to work correctly even if the paper is a little bent at the edges, although it has jammed twice when there had only been one sheet of paper in the tray. It's certainly a lot better than older printers though, wher
e paper always used to jam or be fed in at an angle.

Print quality is good if you use high settings, after all the printer does do 1200x1200dpi. Colour is solid and vibrant, although I admit I have never tested the printers claimed photo quality. I never need to print photos and doing one for the sake of it would likely deplete half my ink! However, I have printer photos with the previous model (the Z12) and they were actually rather good, so one would expect the Z13 to be as good, if not better. Of course, they're not going to be as good as a more expensive printer, but then if you need to print lots of photos this really isn't the printer for you.

The only problem with printing comes from the lower quality the setting (fast speed, uses less ink). Rather than being black, text is a muddy colour and the 3 constituent colours are often visible. The Z13 only supports one cartridge (colour or black) at a time, so obviously on the lower setting it's trying to get away with using too little ink. Ignoring this mode and using the normal mode solves these problems.

Speed is reasonably good, although again is nowhere near the quoted times. When printing colour pictures or diagrams it is a bit slower, but again if you a fast printer then get something more expensive.

While there are quite a few little problems with the printer when you consider the price of it I fail to see how anyone can grumble. A printer for £25 is something that a year ago would have been outrageous, and while it's not as good as a new flashy Epson you could buy 5 of these for the price!

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