Lexmark's entry-level, four-color printer, the Z33, offers good print quality on plain paper, high resolution, and a decent print speed. Its design is straightforward, with a rear paper-feed hopper that folds down on top of the printer when it's not in use, and a simple pullout tray at the front to catch the printed pages. There are just two physical controls, power and paper-feed buttons on its top surface; everything else is done through software.
Insert the tricolor and black cartridges, load the printer driver on Windows or Mac OS, and the Z33 is ready to go. The driver is well-designed and offers useful information, such as ink level and automatic detection of cartridge replacements. The twin-cartridge design means that black print comes out looking truly black, and it prints a lot more quickly than a single-cartridge, three-color printer.
In our tests, a standard five-page text document printed in less than 1.5 minutes, giving the Z33 a real-world print speed of around 3.5 pages per minute. The 5-by-3-inch photo print on glossy photo paper also came out well, with generally accurate color, good definition, and no noticeable banding at its highest 2,400 x 1,200 dpi resolution. The print time--just under 3 minutes--is fair for a printer in this price range.
Color print on plain paper is well-detailed, and the high resolution means there is little sign of the dottiness that dithered colors can show. The smaller size of Lexmark's two ink cartridges means they have lower capacity than other brands, but the cost of replacement is also low, so overall cost per page is broadly comparable.
The Z33 comes with a one-year exchange warranty, during which time Lexmark will swap out any faulty device. As an entry-level product, this versatile, four-color printer offers a good compromise between speed and print quality, and it won't leave you penniless. --Simon Williams
Product Description:
The Z33 has been carefully designed to match your everyday printing needs. Whether this might be for personal or business use, the possibilities include photos from digital cameras and scanned images; professional documents, reports, business cards; web pages and documents featuring both images and text. The Z33 lets you spend your time being creative, not waiting for the results. The laser-crafted print head of the Lexmark Z33 produces the highest resolution in its class! The perfect positioning of the individual microscopic dots (each less than half the width of a human hair) ensures that the output is flawless. The graphics is vibrant, the colors - breathtaking, and skin tones are true-to-life with smooth transitions and incredible details. Lexmark formulates its own solid particle pigmented black ink in conjunction with its high-resolution print heads. The result is an ink that is not only waterproof and fade resistant, but also produces text that is crisp, dense and with no "feathering" to the edges of characters - as close to laser print quality as you will get, without a laser! Lexmark technology development is based on its extensive research into what the customers actually want and need from their printer: print quality, ease of use and value.