painting a pretty picture
Written: Sep 14 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: cheap cheap cheap...and good quality prints!
Cons: top feeding printer
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| that's Full Review: Lexmark Jet Z22 InkJet Printer |
Living in the digital age, I found my computer suddenly filled with digital images. Yet I had no color printer to create these digital images into physical ones. With the prices of color printers dropping dramatically in the past couple of months you can now get a pretty decent color inkjet printer for less than a hundred dollars. So recently I decided to crack down and buy myself a printer.
As I researched on the internet it seemed that the inkjets all had the same problems: the ink was very expensive, the text quality was poor, and most of the time the best image quality is only available if using photo quality paper.
In my case all I really wanted to do was print up the images that I had and to perhaps make signs or to add some excitement to my papers. I have a supply of photo quality paper from friends and I also own a laser printer to do all my normal text documents. So all I really cared about was the quality that this printer would print out my images.
So with this in mind I decided to go shopping. First I searched online to see what was out there. Then I went to best buy. I don’t particularly like top loading paper printers, but it seems like this was the new trend with ink jets. At best buy you can go around and see test prints of all the printers. I was looking for the printer that had the least amount of “lines”. For some reason all these printers end up with horizontal lines going through the images. I first noticed this when my friends who owned Epson printers were having problems with their image quality. But the printers that got rid of this problem the best were way out of my price range. So now I was at the point where I figured that I’d get lines no matter what and to just look for a printer with good resolution.
I went back home and to my computer and started looking for deals. On dealnews as well as other sites, there was an advertisement for a thirty dollar Lexmark Z22 printer. For that reason I decided to purchase this printer. It came to me in a few days and after the rebate and shipping costs I only paid around forty dollars for my new color printer.
The Good
1200x1200 dpi resolution. This is just great! I thought for the price that I was paying I would not get that great of a resolution. But this printer really surprised me. My first image that I printed was on regular quality paper and it turned out great! It was not pixelalted at all, nice smooth colors. Even the text was crisp. Of course not as nice as my laser printer but there was no smudging or leaking of the letters that I see on the HPs. Now granted this is the first time I printed so the ink cartridge is nice fresh, so perhaps I should update this review later on when the ink has had time to bleed a bit more.
Easy setup. The directions for setting up and installing the printer was great, as long as you read the instructions first. And this isn’t intensive reading or anything – it’s a poster like size diagram of how to install your printer properly.
Separate color and black ink cartridges. Now I wasn’t expecting this because of the cheap cost of the printer, but I was really happy about this as well. This way you don’t have to buy a whole new ink cartridge if you run out of black (the most used color) in your cartridge. Right now I only have one cartridge in my printer because it only comes with one color cartridge, but hopefully I’ll go and buy a black cartridge when I have the time. The concept of two cartridges was to save you money in the long run. I don’t really know if this will really save me money because most of my text prints will be out of my laser. But it’s nice to have the option.
The Bad
As I stated before I don’t like top feed printers. I just think that they are very inefficient on space. I mean it takes up so much more space that it doesn’t really need to. If it were like the hp printers that have a bottom feed where the paper rolls up, then all it adds is a bottom layer where you add the paper. With the top feed system you have the paper feeder sticking up out of the printer. This makes it hard to find a good place for the printer. I feel like it could break easily, as well, by having something knock it down.
The speed. I think that these printers are a bit slow. I can’t time it of course, but I just hate waiting this long for a print, especially if you have multiple prints to do. The box claims 6.5 pages per minute. And I guess this is fast for an ink jet printer, but in life I think that they are rather slow. That is why I generally use the laser printer for most of my larger prints.
I’m not too sure about the ink consumption right now either. But it doesn’t seem to use too much ink. Considering what I’m using this printer for (mainly images) I do expect it to use up a lot of ink and hopefully it won’t, but I’ll update this review when I do have more information on that.
Price of the ink cartridges. It seems like the ink cartridges cost just as much as the printer itself. That does seem a bit odd now. But I’m not complaining that the printer was this cheap.
Overall
I think this printer is a great first printer. Good for a student that doesn’t really have a lot of printing to do. I don’t think that I would suggest it to small office though. But then again I don’t think I would suggest any ink jet to a small office. They should be considering a color laser printer. If this is for you own personal use then this is a great printer. It will do anything that you will need it to do and at this price there is nothing that should be stopping you. If you’re just looking for a printer to do your everyday uses I think this would be a good buy.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
that
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Reviews written: 22
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