Lexmark Z 615

In the middle of printing an important assignment my Stylus packed up, big style. Ahhh! I had a deadline looming and about 3 spare Epson cartridges sitting there with nowhere to go. You might think that I would have bought another Epson, so that I could continue using said cartridges, but I had found the printer so noisy that I decided to switch brands and flog the cartridges on Ebay.
I was in Asda when I saw the Lexmark Z615. Well under 30 quid for what seemed a pretty decent spec - 14 ppm black, 8 ppm colour, 4800x1200 dpi - all seemed okay. So I dusted off my trusty wallet and forced open the rusty zip. So to home…

Right then. Just install the printer, get the assignment printed and posted off and the deadline is toast. Then I realised that I needed a USB lead, and had none spare (it does say this on the box, but I hadn't noticed as the print was small and there was loads of it in every language under the sun (other than Manx, I notice)). Nooooooo!
Run down stairs, run to car, run back to house to get car keys, run to car, shoot off to PC World (obeying all speed restrictions, of course), sprint to USB leads, elbowing startled shoppers out of the way and muttering "I'm on Trigger Happy TV" to them by way of apology, dash to checkout, throw a tenner at the startled young man there, sprint to car, drive home (obeying all speed restrictions), sprint up stairs and collapse on floor.
Half an hour later and I had recovered enough to try and install the printer. Was straightforward enough as XP did the legwork (good job - my legs were shot).
Before printing there was a short nozzle alignment process to go through, which was generally okay, but one part involved making tricky decisions over which was the clearest print out in a list of printed letters - I found it quite difficult to decide between three or four, so I just went for the middle one.

Once I was printing, I was quite impressed - quality seemed fine - certainly for text. Later on I was to find that for images it was also pretty good quality for so cheap a printer. The stated print speed was accurate - I had about 600 pages of text to get through and it printed them off with good speed. The paper load slowed things a little, though, as it can't hold more than about half an inch of paper in one go, and so I had to keep returning to feed it... print lower quality and monchrome and the pages fly out while you use far less ink (see later).
However, it was the noise that came to my attention the most - or rather, the lack of it. Sure there were some clicks and clunks, but this was MILES quieter than my Stylus had been (the echoes of that beast having only just died away). I also thought it was a good size - far smaller than the Stylus had been, with top and bottom folding away quite neatly.

So, in these terms the printer is not at all bad. But as everyone knows, the printer is only half of the beast… there is also the ink to consider.

The cartridges are WAY too expensive - just a touch under £20 for a colour cartridge seems pretty standard in comparison to HP & Canon etc, but they last no time at all! This means that this cheap printer is actually an expensive printer with a low initial outlay. Consider this before buying, as there are far better spec printers out there for only a couple of tenners more outlay, which dissolves after a few months of use…

Of course, you can always get your cartridges re-filled. I read the review by 04s2lao with interest, as the EXACT SAME THING happened to me, only in my case it was with the blue ink.
I sit here now with a dead printer that lasted about four months.

Would I recommend this printer? Only to someone I don't particularly like…