Description:
Lexmark calls it the "highest resolution inkjet on the planet." With 1200 by 1200 six-color printing and amazingly sharp black text, you get near-laser quality output but with all the savings and convenience of inkjet printing. Setting up the Lexmark Z51 was easy. Following the well written, colorfully illustrated Getting Started guide, we plugged in the printer, attached the cable, turned on our PC, and inserted the printer driver disks. The printer head automatically moved into position so that we could later insert the black and color ink cartridges into their slots. The printer head is designed so that you can't put either cartridge in the wrong slot. After the setup wizard had run, the driver software guided us through a head alignment test and printed a beautiful test page. Audible prompts tell you if there is no printer cartridge installed and tell you when printing starts and stops. In our test of the Z51, we printed several color and black-and-white samples in Quick Print, Normal, and High quality modes. The samples included graphics with a variety of colors and shades, scanned photographs, and text in several fonts. The results: For graphics and scanned photographs, the colors were bright and clear, even for tight-register samples. Quick Print (fast 600 dpi) quality samples were noticeably faded; Normal (normal speed 600 dpi) and High (1200 dpi) quality samples were much better, warm and true to the original, but printing speed slowed dramatically. For text, we conducted side-by-side comparison tests with output from a laser printer. Although the laser printer's output was sharper than the Z51's, we did have to inspect the samples very closely to see the differences. And for one sample, printed with a very tiny 4-point Times font, the Z51's page actually looked better than the laser printer's. We were impressed. Given the Z51's beautiful color and razor-sharp text printing, we think it would make an excellent addition to any desktop. Pros
- Beautiful, bright colors and sharp text
- Very quick and easy setup
- Attractive design
- Nice software bundle
Cons
- Printer cable a separate purchase
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