Lexmark P 315

Author's product rating:   

Picture quality	Excellent
Printing speed	Fast
Colour sensitivity	Excellent
Ease of use	Very easy
Value For Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Easy to use, very portable, good top class photos at a good price .
Disadvantages:	None as yet .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Since its launch in 1991 Lexmark, and its products, have won over 2000 awards and industry accolades from all around the world. One of their secrets of success is that they develope and own the technology in their products, they were the first company to develope and market 4800x1200 dpi (dots per inch) resolutions. With this and several other advances in the industry they have been at the front, with other leaders, in laser and inkjet printers either for the home or office user. They will, in my opinion, continue to grow as long as they keep the consumers interests and input paramount during the design and development of their future products. Bearing this in mind, and already being a Lexmark product user for some number of years when these new all in one photo printers came on to the market well I had to have one. This one, the one I'm about to review, is the Lexmark Portable Photo Printer P315 weighing in at 2.2kgs or 4lbs 13ozs approximately.

Its dimensions are 142mm/5.6inches High x 274mm/10.8inches Width x 211mm/8.3inches Depth which means it is very much a portable printing lab that we have used on many occasion, like taking it with us on some of our many trips up north to see the family. Taking pictures and then being able to print them out at will whenever needed and as many times as you want, without the added expense that you would have at a kiosk or photo printing shop. Each high definition borderless 10x15 cm/4 x 6 inch print only takes 38 seconds when you print in QuickPrint mode, there are three Colour speed modes quick =38 seconds, normal =70 seconds and photo =140 seconds. The really good thing with this printer is that you don't need a PC for it to operate, you can connect it straight to your camera via USB cable from the PictBridge port on the front of the printer.

The other way is via memory card and this printer is compatible with several different memory cards such as Compact Flash I & II, Microdrive, Multimedia Card (MMC), Secure Digital (SD), Memory Stick Pro (<512MB), Memory Card (MS), Smart Media, XD Picture Card (<512) and Memory Stick Duo. There are only two slots on the front of the machine that remarkably take all these memory cards, we only have the Fuji XD Picture Card that is with our camera but have used a memory card from a couple of other cameras and a mobile phone, so it is very versatile indeed. The colour of the printer is mainly dark grey with the top cover being silver. The printer comes in the box with a power supply and line cord, one High Resolution Colour cartridge number 33, a fairly thick multi-language Installation Guide, Lexmark Premium Glossy 10x15cm Photo paper sample pack, Service and Warrantee information. You get 1 years guarantee from Lexmark and the power requirements are 90v AC-270v AC input.

Across the top of the printer there is a retractable carrying handle for portability, a 2.5 inch/ 63mm LCD screen, various buttons that I will describe to you in a minute and a lid that lifts up for you to change ink cartridges, and changing the cartridge is a very simple operation. As soon as you lift the lid,(with the machine turned on), the ink cartridge realigns itself so that you can easily get at it, press a spring loaded lever, lift out the spent cartridge, pop in the new cartridge and then just spring back the lever till it clicks and that's it. On closing the lid the printer resumes its pre-start position and you are ready to go. I have bought a replacement cartridge and photo printing paper just for spare and have not needed to use any more ink just yet but I did run out of the sample paper that came with the printer package, they only give you 5 sheets of 10x15cm/ 4x6inch. I bought these from inkfactory.co.uk and the Premium glossy photo paper, by Jettec, was £9.99 vat included this was for a hundred sheets of 10x15cm/ 4x6 inch.

The ink cartridge, (Lexmark number 33 or 35), was £15.78 including vat now as you will already know you can buy cheaper versions or copies but that is entirely up to you. There is another one you could try called Lexmark High Yield colour Inkjet Cartridge this is for top quality photo printing at £21.51 including vat, but the quality I've got with the cheaper cartridge is good quality anyway. The paper input tray is also on the top of the machine and there is a maximum of 25 sheets at any one time, no output tray so you will need to have it on a flat surface so you won't need to watch them when printing out your prints. On-Board memory is 32MB of SDRAM/Flash 16Mbit. The four position LCD Control display can be used to preview your photos and check the status of the printer it allows you to enhance and edit, crop and rotate, sharpen and adjust the brightness using the buttons next to the display on the control panel. 1. button press for the photo memory, 2. Stop/clear which is for stop that print job, 3.Start.

Number 4. is the power on/off button, 5. this one is a four way arrow cursor with up for scroll through menu options, cropping, and skipping forward through ten pictures at a time. Down is the same as up but skipping backwards through ten pictures at a time on the memory card, press the right arrow cursor to increase the number of prints and to display the next picture on the memory card. left cursor is the opposite of right. Number 6. button is used to change the number of photos you want to print and to change crop sizes. Pressing number 7. will rotate the image in the control panel display 90 degrees counterclockwise to ease viewing, and finally button eight is choose a menu option or choose a displayed photo for printing. Ease of use with this device could not be any easier, the first time I used it was without reading the instructions and I was well happy with the results.

Printing from a memory card is so simple as long as you stick to a few rules, only use one type of memory card at any one time, a small light will light up when the machine is reading the card, insert the card with the makers name uppermost. Some cards have an arrow on them which should be facing the printer on insertion and some have an adapter which should have the gold contacts facing up over. Firstly load up your paper and switch on the machine press the down arrow key to highlight the slide show then you need to press select, the photos will then be displayed for five seconds at a time but you can skip or go back using the arrow keys you can then press stop when you are ready to print your selected photos. The printer, whilst in operation, is extremely smooth and quiet and just seems to glide through the numerous printing jobs given to it. The whole of the under side of the printer is covered with a fixed thin rubber mat, and being thicker in each of the four corners, (feet) helping to dampen any noise.

You have the option to customise your photos before the print takes place, this means you can crop, adjust the brightness, change the number of prints, change print quality or change blank paper size. This way you can select another photo and do something different with it and so on. Pressing print at this stage brings up a preview then press start to begin the printing process. Remember not to remove your memory card until the light, next to the card slot, stops blinking if it is still blinking this means the card is still transmitting data. Printing straight from a digital camera using a USB cable and connecting one end to the camera and the other end to the PictBridge port on the front of the printer. You must refer to your own cameras documentation for step by step instructions on connecting by this method and making sure your camera is set to the correct USB mode. To print a photo in black and white, make sure your memory card is inserted and you are on the menu screen then press select.

Find the photo you want to adjust using the arrow buttons to scroll then press 'Select', press 'Menu', this brings up the photo menu, press the 'Down Cursor Key' until you highlight 'Print Colour' then press the 'Right Cursor Key' till you highlight 'Black & White', press 'Select' then just press 'Start' to print your pictures and they do equal 35mm quality photos. Don't worry if I've complicated it a bit because the manual that comes with the printer is very thorough and tells you a lot more than I have here, for instance cropping a photo is so easily achieved just by following the step by step guide given in the book, the same for adjusting the brightness, viewing a slide show and adjusting the number of prints that you want. Digital Print Order Format (DPOF) on some cameras means that you can specify which photos to print and how many copies before the memory card is removed from the camera.

The factory default settings, which you can easily change back to if you get into trouble, for blank paper size is 4" x 6" are controlled and selected from the 'Menu' display and can be changed to Hagaki Card (100mm x 148mm) or A6 (4.13" x 5.83" or 105mm x 148mm) or even Photo (4" x 6"). Other changes you can make through the 'Menu' display are paper type this is Glossy, Plain and Coated or print quality this is Draft, Normal and Photo, you can also turn the preview display on or off. You have got language settings and power save settings, this is set to 20 minutes by default, lastly there is restoring factory settings which I have already mentioned above. Troubleshooting guides are a plenty in the manual and seem to cover every possible eventuality. Transportation is a doddle as long as you remember to take the power lead with you, and remembering that it will save you money in the long run as you will not need as many memory cards, and they are not cheap, because once you have printed off your pics then you can wipe your memory card clean and use it again.

When I bought the Lexmark Portable Photo Printer P315 it was £54.95 at the beginning of December at pcworld, now it is £79.99 in-store or on-line for a great £59.99 but then you can not get it delivered you have to reserve it on-line and then go and pick it up. Value for money compared to some of the same type of machines on the market must put this printer near to the top of the list as I have yet to fault it, so I have to recommend this product to you if only for the quality of the black and white pictures we have now got of our grand children. Please take the time to search the Lexmark website for any answers to questions that I have not covered. Happy printing.

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