So close and yet so far.
Written: Nov 25 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Stunning color accuracy, unmatched by any other inkjet manufacturer; software easy to use.
Cons: Undependable, slow, flimsy, inconsistently supported, supplies expensive and inconsistent in quality, supplies hard to find, not appropriate for daily use, certainly not appropriate for professional use.
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| saraarts's Full Review: Lexmark Jet 5700 InkJet Printer |
The only reason to buy a Lexmark inkjet printer is that Lexmark printers offer simply the best, most accurate color rendering of any inkjet -- when they work. There, unfortunately, is the rub, and it's a bad, burning rub.
Customer service for me has been inconsistent. Lured by the astoundingly great color accuracy, a $50 rebate I never got around to collecting, and a favorable Ziff-Davis review, I ordered my Lexmark 5700 at the manufacturer website. The product was delivered to the wrong address (even though I had filled out the order form myself online) and I had to wait weeks to actually get this corrected. However, when my first 5700 died after only eight months (and actually, it may not have died; it may have been the cartridge; more on that later), I had a replacement, per warranty, the next day.
Now, after using up two of these puppies, the original purchased 5700 and the reconditioned replacement Lexmark sent me in exchange -- and by "using up" I mean using to the point where fewer than 1 in 4 prints are keepers -- and after spending hours on the phone with customer service troubleshooting, I have to tell you that the main problem seems to be those cartridges -- though there's something else going on as well that I can't figure out. The cartridges are the actual printing portion of the machine. Quality is inconsistent at best. Apparently, whenever I get a cartridge with ink smearing out of the mouth before I even install it, it's a bad one; and that has happened to me at least half the time. However, when I first received each printer, each worked much better even with bad cartridges than each ended up working even with good cartridges. There was a steep and steady deterioration of dependability and quality of output regardless of cartridge quality, although getting good cartridges is also a serious problem.
Most of the time, I get horrible banding when printing at 600 dpi on high-quality white 25 lb. bond designed specifically for inkjets. The "quick print" option rarely prints legible type at 9 pts. or below; since I use this feature for printing out black-and-white text off of websites or similar sources, this means this feature is almost useless. Since the cartridges cost $30 apiece and every other one seems to be bad, this is a huge problem. Also, even with a "good" cartridge, I'm lucky if I get one out of three prints of a quality even approaching something I wouldn't be ashamed to send out. It has taken me up to an hour to print a single image, and since the quality is undependable, this can represent an enormous waste of time. On thicker paper, the ink smears. On thinner paper, the banding is intolerable. I have never been able to print a single #10 envelope with my logo on it; envelopes consistently either jam or smear.
Furthermore, the printable area is small relative to my needs and not evenly margined; it has a significantly bigger margin at the bottom of the page than at the top making it a huge pain to center anything.
The machine is lightweight and was easy to install and to find a home for in my crowded studio, and in terms of software alone it has been easy to use and maintain, although the Windows NT interface is far superior, far more advanced and capable of far greater user control, than the Windows '95/'98 interface. However, construction is flimsy and certain things, such as the ink supply monitor, have proved undependable. I usually run out of ink when the software thinks I have half to two-thirds of a cartridge left.
In terms of professional use, it has not proved an appropriate choice, not even for just printing letters. I've wasted a lot of paper on this machine.
I will never buy another Lexmark, ever, no matter how superior the color accuracy. This is sad, because none of its competitors, not one, has ever surpassed, let alone matched, this one attribute, which is my single most important need in a printer, the close second and third being print quality and dependability, respectively. The problem is, my Lexmark 5700 only achieves print quality to match the color accuracy a third of the time -- and only when I have a good cartridge. Sadly, I need a significantly better solution than that for everyday use.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
saraarts
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Member: Sara
Reviews written: 7
Trusted by: 0 members
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