Lexmark Color Inkjets

Introduction

The past year has seen some significant shifts in the inkjet printer marketplace. At the low end, rebate programs led to prices on inkjet printers that approached zero dollars as marketers took advantage of the fact that the real money is made in consumables. Meanwhile, true photo quality emerged at mid-range prices, as under-$400 units joined high-end models in achieving true photo quality, thanks to ever smaller print nozzles, delivering super-high resolutions of up to 2.9 million dots per square inch.

The Market Leaders

Hewlett Packard continues to be the leader in ink-jet printers with a 45 percent of the inkjet market in Canada in Q1 of 2001, but Epson has fallen to number three position, with a 14% share, leaving Lexmark to come in as a solid number two position, with 24 percent of the market, and Canon holding on to a 12% share. All other players account for only about 1% of the market,. In total, printer manufacturers are expected to sell a total of 1.8 million units in 2001.

Lexmark's Z Series

Lexmark, hoping to capitalize on this new-found market strength, has revamped its printer lineup with a new series of models in its consumer-oriented Z series. These units sport a new 7-picolitre drop size (the old Z51, for comparison, delivered 18-picolitre drops) and use a new ink the company says is formulated for 2400 x 1200 dpi printing on plain paper. Several new models were released in May, 2001, ranging from a low-end Z22 model the company says should finally mark the end of the single ink-cartridge printer, to a 16 page-per-minute Z53 unit that sells for under C$200. All are equipped with USB 1.1 ports and come with Windows, Mac and Linux drivers; all but the mid-priced Z33 model are also equipped with parallel ports.

Best Bets

Of the bunch, the Z33 printer is clearly the most user-friendly model, with a helpful, task-oriented user interface that leads users through common printer maintenance tasks and troubleshooting procedures. It prints monochrome pages at up to 9 pages per minute. Here's a brief comparison of the new Lexmark models and how they compare to comparably performing models from Epson and HP.

* requires special paper

The HP DeskJet 842 provides a mere 1200x600 resolution, for a total number of addressable dots less than one-quarter that of Lexmark's comparably priced printer. The Epson, while providing the highest horizontal resolution on photo paper, actually works out to a lower number of total addressable dots, with 2.1 million dots per square inch versus the Lexmark units' 2.9 million.

Rebates

Although consumers may find them a hassle, the low redemption rates of end-user rebate programs mean that buyers have a little extra work to do to get the low, low prices quoted in advertisements. However, Lexmark says it has tried to minimize the hassle factor by not requiring users to cut up their product packaging, preferring instead a copy of the sales receipt.

Warranty

Lexmark Z series printers are covered by a one-year, next-day exchange warranty, in which a defective printer is replaced with a new or refurbished unit in one business day.

Paper and Ink

Although Lexmark has not yet released cost-per-page information on the new printers, it's worth noting that, in PC Magazine's Dec. 2000 cost-per-page test, the Lexmark Z32 ended up costing a whopping 42 cents (Cdn) per page. This is more than triple that of an HP 952C DeskJet, which works out to 14 cents (Cdn) per page.

In our tests, the Z33's colour cartridge ran out after printing 40 letter-size photos. We managed to print another 300 text pages before the unit's black cartridge gave out.

Lexmark says it has reformulated the inks for the new printers and says they are designed to be optimized for Kodak (glossy) photo paper, but boast that, unlike some competing models, the units are capable of delivering their highest resolution on plain paper. We found the output on glossy stock to be good, although on close examination, a slight row of indentations where the paper advance mechanism (apparently, some sort of metal pinwheel) can be seen. Oddly, grayscale images also print using the colour cartridge by default. If "Print in Black and white" is selected, output quality is noticeably reduced.

Lexmark cautions that, because the print head is integrated into the cartridge, refilling cartridges will result in reduced print quality. The suspicious among us might suspect that this is a party line designed to sell more $45 print cartridges, but Lexmark says the print heads are designed only to last for only one cartridge's worth of printing and reduced print quality will occur (and the warranty will be voided) if third-party inks or refills are used.

The Z33 uses regionalized colour tables. The company says its research has revealed that Asian customers prefer warm hues; North Americans prefer vivid colours and Europeans prefer natural tones. Therefore, the installation program sets the colour table according to which region you say you live in. Apparently, those looking for natural skin tones have to fib to the setup program and say they live in Europe. We found that images tended to print darker and more reddish than those output on a HP printer connected to the same computer. Overall, we were pleased with the photo output quality, although .

Caveats

Although none of these Lexmark printers suffer from the single ink-cartridge holder limitation that put the Lexmark Z11 on our cautionary list upon its release, it's worth noting that buyers of the low-end Z22 model should plan on buying an optional black cartridge, as the unit does not ship with one. Thus, if the optional ($45) black ink cartridge is not installed, the unit "fakes" blacks when printing color, by overprinting the other inks, wasting ink and producing muddier results than we'd like. When the black cartridge is in place, text is crisper and printing is faster, as the printer does not have to make multiple passes of the Cyan, Magenta and Yellow inks to simulate black. The Lexmark printers, unlike some competing models, are designed to produce optimal results with four-colour ink cartridges.Although it's too early to judge long-term reliability of the new models, a look at the historical statistics may give you a clue as what to expect. In PC Magazine's subscriber survey of printer reliability and satisfaction ratings, Lexmark's inkjet models scored a "C" in the year 2000.

Availability

• Lexmark's 2001 series of Z series Jetprinters hit store shelves the first week of June.

For Further Reading:

• MyMac: Lexmark Z53 Colorjet Printer
• PC Magazine: Comparing low-cost printers