Printers, I must admit I rarely use them at home. But they're one of those gadgets I must have. When it comes to buying printers cheap and cheerful does me just fine. My photos get developed at the chemists, so no need for one of those snazzy photo printer things. And why splash out loads when all I'm printing is the occasional road map for a friend?
So anyway, the printer that came with my p.c decided it was time to breakdown. So off I went looking around for printers. I don't think the salesmen understood that all I wanted was a bog standard, cheap and cheerful printer. So with no luck in the shops I go and check out amazon.co.uk. After a quick search I came across the Lexmark Z1420. After a quick look at it's features and price I decided it was the printer for me.
The printer is Colour inkjet and it's also comes with Wi-Fi. For £42 a printer that's wireless was a good deal I thought. Obviously a £42 isn't going to be any good for office or heavy duty home printing, it's made for people like me who print a few things off every now and then.
I really do like the look of the printer. It's basic looks are great. Every printer I've owned in the past has been multicoloured, with lots of pointless curves and buttons that confuse you. This is printer is mainly white with odd patch of grey on it. There's no stupid curves and you get one button to turn it on. The button lights up to. On the front face of the printer is the Wi-Fi logo, it glows one colour for wireless printing and another for USB printing. On top there's your paper input tray, it's grey and folds down. And on the bottom there's your paper out put tray which is also grey and slides in and out. At the back of the printer there's the USB output. The printer holds 2 ink cartridges. One black and one colour. Both are very easy to access and stick in. You lift up the cover in the middle and away you go.
Installation of the printer is simple. You connect the printer to your computer via the USB cable. From there you can install USB printing or for Wi-Fi printing. I don't think you can set it up for running both of them.
Once it's all up and running, it's fairly simple to use. You get a few options. You can print out normal text documents or you can use the image studio. In the image studio you can look and print out your photos, make posters or greeting cards. Easy! The greeting cards aren't really that good. Functions are basic. You add a photo to the selected theme, you can't change the photo size or text size in this option. I printed off some very strange looking cards. What you have to remember is I'm not using this printer for fancy cards, I'm using it for printing out the odd text document.
The printer speed is pretty decent, 1 page document flew through. A 7 page document I printed out took about a minute. It did have a couple of images on it to. This may have slowed it down a little. The quality of prints in either black or colour aren't greatest you'll ever see. The text didn't look as crisp as it would have if I had used my works mega bucks printer. Pictures looked slightly dull and blurred. But I don't care. It prints and it's readable.
I personally like this printer because it's cheap and looks good. If I was someone who used my p.c for greeting cards or printing of pictures I'd hate it because of the limited options and poor quality. If you're like me and print text documents once in blue moon I'd suggest you buy it. I know you would probably find something cheaper to do that task, but this thing is wireless and looks unique. I love it.
This product has not yet been reviewed.
27.09.2007 12:41
I personnally don't like Lexmark but they are cheap, great review though.
27.09.2007 12:00
useful review! nice!