Lexmark Z815

Regular readers will have noted how Lexmark perennially picks up the wooden spoon in our recent group tests. However, this latest offering promises to be its best photo printer yet.

It's certainly one of the most stylish we've seen with its silver and grey casing adding a hint of suave to the machine - the look is a definite nod towards Canon's high-end BubbleJet printers. The faade itself is minimalist and only contains power and paper-feed buttons.

In our initial text test, which uses a measured 5 per cent coverage of text and tables, it managed a pedestrian rate of just two pages per minute (ppm). At least a decent progress indicator appears to keep you company. Quality was mixed. It displayed good contrast, but there were far too many areas where letters, and even whole lines, were banded. Words remained readable, but if you want to print a smart letter or professional report you'll be disappointed. There's an option to use a black ink cartridge, which takes the place of the photo cartridge that normally sits next to the tricolour, but bizarrely it produced much lighter and more streaked results.

Speed increased to 6.5ppm in fast draft mode (way behind the quoted 20ppm), though streaking was even more defined and vertical lines regularly skewed in several places.

Still, this printer is designed to produce photos above all. In our first photo test, we printed a borderless 6 x 4 inch colour headshot. From arm's length, quality was good, though skin tones were a little orange. Up close, while detail wasn't bad, banding was noticeable. That said, undemanding users will be quite happy with the results. However, time was still a factor as it took three-and-a-half minutes to appear. While this is significantly better than the Lexmark P707's score of almost 14 minutes, it's still some way behind the A-Listed Canon i865, which managed it in just 77 seconds.

These results scaled up in our high-resolution photo-montage test. Here the noisy and frantic horizontal pace of the print heads only masked the slow vertical progress of the print towards completion. While its time of ten minutes bettered the P707's 26-minute score, it was miles behind the i865's three-and-a-quarter minutes. Again, quality was fine from all but up close; banding was rife under scrutiny, though flesh tones were natural.

We also printed a borderless black-and-white photo. The blight of banding was less of an issue here but there was a noticeable green tinge throughout. It should also be noted that the ink didn't readily dry - due to the amount of colour needed to be combined when creating the greys and blacks - so avoid brushing past it for a while as some intriguingly colourful streaks could appear.

Our final tests use plain paper. In fast draft mode our www.streetmap.co.uk page appeared in a modest 28 seconds and remained readable. Our complex CorelDRAW image, printed using default settings, saw good detail but large bands blighted darker colours.

The driver is the usual Lexmark fare with several wizard-type menus spoon-feeding your choice of settings - a sign that this printer is aimed at the IT novice.

Overall, the Z815 is Lexmark's best photo printer, and reasonably good value considering it's only £60, but it's still some way behind the competition in speed and quality. There are two excellent alternatives sitting on the A List and we'd without hesitation recommend one of them instead.

Author: Nick Ross