Lexmark P315 Photo Inkjet Printer (20C0000)

Rating:
Summary: Overall good quality and competitively priced
Review: I felt like I was taking a gamble buying this printer, considering that when I purchased it 3 days ago, I couldn't find any customer reviews on it and even Amazon wasn't listing the item yet. But given its competitively lower price than the Epson's and HP's comparable models, I decided to go with the Lexmark.

Overall, I am extremely satisfied with it. I've printed about 30 photos with it using the High Yield Lexmark Color Cartridge (#35) and recommended Fujifilm Plus Photopaper, both available together as part of Lexmark's P315 value pack. The printer interface is extremely user-friendly, and I've had lots of compliments on the photo quality. The average time to print from a Canon S50 with most photos set at a resolution of 1600x1200 pixels (Medium 1 setting) is roughly about 1 minute 40 seconds according to the printer's timer when printing in photo quality mode, which is fine by me. The cropping tool is handy, though I wish it would give options to crop photos in smaller increments or the length/width of the cropping box could be manipulated. I've read that the Epson Picturemate tends to lop off the top of photos and people have learned to adjust for it; the Lexmark doesn't have this problem and even allows for previewing of the picture before printing, which is a very nice feature. Another convenient tool is being able to scroll through your images on the printer screen and select which photos to print - photos can either be printed individually or multiple images can be selected for printing all at once. The prints do come out dry with no fear of fingerprint smudges and also borderless, save for the one edge that is perforated and can be torn off. I also like its small footprint, light weight, and the carrying handle.

However, you do get what you pay for, and though I don't have any experience with the HP or Epson 4x6 photo printers, after reading other Amazon customers' feedback, I have a good sense of what these competitors offered in their models that Lexmark doesn't have in the P315. As compared to the HP and/or Epson equivalents, major drawbacks of the P315 are as follows. The colors of photos are a bit bland; though the photos come out with fairly good quality, they lack that vivid punch. I've only used the High Yield color Cartridge #35 and have not yet tried the basic color cartridge #33. Even without the side by side comparison in the store of the Lexmark against the Epson using the same image, I could tell the colors were a bit washed out. This leads to my other observation that the default brightness setting for the P315 tends to be too bright; this can be adjusted on the printer's setting, so I wouldn't consider it a major flaw.

The second major drawback to the P315 is tied in with the design of this being exclusively a stand alone printer - to correct any photos for red eye involves transferring images between the compact flash card to the pc, edit the red eye on the pc, and transfer back to the compact flash card so that the P315 can read it.

I am happy with my purchase and it has been a good bargain. Yes, the color is a bit lackluster, but if it is an important photo, I figure I'll just take it to get professionally developed. Also, I was worried about being limited by the P315's paper option sizes, but again, if I want a larger photo I'll have to turn to the professional developers. But given that 4x6's fulfill most of my printing needs, the P315 is a great convenience and fits nicely in my budget.


Rating:
Summary: Not best effort from Lexmark
Review: I purchased the P315 laboring under the assumption that Lexmark would come out swinging in this competitive market category of personal photo printers. I learned, sadly, that they are only competing based on price and not a combination of price and quality. I printed several test photos which were shot at 5 megapixels with a Kodak DX7630 and was very disappointed with the results. The P315 has trouble with skin tones and dark colors. My family's photos rendered most everyone a reddish skin tone and our dark hair had absolutely no detail and looked, well, fuzzy. The photos were a little grainy and every area where the colors were not the primary shades but deeper greens, browns, blues were lacking detail in the extreme. I printed the exact same photos on the HP 375B with excellent results. The sales associates at Circuit City were so astonished, they asked if I could leave the two sets to demonstrate the differences in the two printers. The scroll through the SD card on the first go round is very slow and requires patience. After you scroll through all of them once, it does go faster. For those who are wondering, I did verify the settings of the printer was at the Photo level and not a lower quality. If you are only concerned about price and not the photo, this may be a choice to consider. Although, I still advise saving up for a better printer. You will probably be more satisfied in the long run.