Customer Reviews

Lexmark P315 Snapshot Photo Inkjet Printer (20C0000)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I felt like I was taking a gamble buying this printer, considering that when I purchased it 3 days ago, I couldn't find any customer reviews on it and even Amazon wasn't listing the item yet. But given its competitively lower price than the Epson's and HP's comparable models, I decided to go with the Lexmark.

Overall, I am extremely satisfied with it. I've printed about 30 photos with it using the High Yield Lexmark Color Cartridge (#35) and recommended Fujifilm Plus Photopaper, both available together as part of Lexmark's P315 value pack. The printer interface is extremely user-friendly, and I've had lots of compliments on the photo quality. The average time to print from a Canon S50 with most photos set at a resolution of 1600x1200 pixels (Medium 1 setting) is roughly about 1 minute 40 seconds according to the printer's timer when printing in photo quality mode, which is fine by me. The cropping tool is handy, though I wish it would give options to crop photos in smaller increments or the length/width of the cropping box could be manipulated. I've read that the Epson Picturemate tends to lop off the top of photos and people have learned to adjust for it; the Lexmark doesn't have this problem and even allows for previewing of the picture before printing, which is a very nice feature. Another convenient tool is being able to scroll through your images on the printer screen and select which photos to print - photos can either be printed individually or multiple images can be selected for printing all at once. The prints do come out dry with no fear of fingerprint smudges and also borderless, save for the one edge that is perforated and can be torn off. I also like its small footprint, light weight, and the carrying handle.

However, you do get what you pay for, and though I don't have any experience with the HP or Epson 4x6 photo printers, after reading other Amazon customers' feedback, I have a good sense of what these competitors offered in their models that Lexmark doesn't have in the P315. As compared to the HP and/or Epson equivalents, major drawbacks of the P315 are as follows. The colors of photos are a bit bland; though the photos come out with fairly good quality, they lack that vivid punch. I've only used the High Yield color Cartridge #35 and have not yet tried the basic color cartridge #33. Even without the side by side comparison in the store of the Lexmark against the Epson using the same image, I could tell the colors were a bit washed out. This leads to my other observation that the default brightness setting for the P315 tends to be too bright; this can be adjusted on the printer's setting, so I wouldn't consider it a major flaw.

The second major drawback to the P315 is tied in with the design of this being exclusively a stand alone printer - to correct any photos for red eye involves transferring images between the compact flash card to the pc, edit the red eye on the pc, and transfer back to the compact flash card so that the P315 can read it.

I am happy with my purchase and it has been a good bargain. Yes, the color is a bit lackluster, but if it is an important photo, I figure I'll just take it to get professionally developed. Also, I was worried about being limited by the P315's paper option sizes, but again, if I want a larger photo I'll have to turn to the professional developers. But given that 4x6's fulfill most of my printing needs, the P315 is a great convenience and fits nicely in my budget.

I purchased the P315 laboring under the assumption that Lexmark would come out swinging in this competitive market category of personal photo printers. I learned, sadly, that they are only competing based on price and not a combination of price and quality. I printed several test photos which were shot at 5 megapixels with a Kodak DX7630 and was very disappointed with the results. The P315 has trouble with skin tones and dark colors. My family's photos rendered most everyone a reddish skin tone and our dark hair had absolutely no detail and looked, well, fuzzy. The photos were a little grainy and every area where the colors were not the primary shades but deeper greens, browns, blues were lacking detail in the extreme. I printed the exact same photos on the HP 375B with excellent results. The sales associates at Circuit City were so astonished, they asked if I could leave the two sets to demonstrate the differences in the two printers. The scroll through the SD card on the first go round is very slow and requires patience. After you scroll through all of them once, it does go faster. For those who are wondering, I did verify the settings of the printer was at the Photo level and not a lower quality. If you are only concerned about price and not the photo, this may be a choice to consider. Although, I still advise saving up for a better printer. You will probably be more satisfied in the long run.

I've had this printer for over a year now and I LOVE it. You can't beat the price, and the quality of prints is great for my purposes. I use it to print lots of photos of my kids to put in calendars to give to family and friends, and the last print I made is as good as the first. If you want something more professional quality, I'm sure there are products out there with more bells and whistles. The only real drawback I've experienced is that it seems to go through ink like water, but I suspect that's not unusual for this sort of product. I highly recommend this printer.

I bought this printer with the thought that it would be an easy way to print photos directly from my camara. I've owned the printer for about 1 year and now it won't read either my 256 MB or 2G memory cards, also the PictBridge isn't working with my camara either, it just freezes. Since you can't connect this printer directly to your computer, I am out of options I guess. I have a very expensive paper weight.

When I was able to get it to work, the pictures were of disappointing quality. I even went back and bought the Lemark paper specifically, thinking maybe that was the issue.

So all and all I would not recommend this product. I would suggest finding a printer that prints directly from the camara as well as from the computer.

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Our customers always want to see how the progress is going from time to time... This is the perfect solution to getting great looking pictures to them with or with out your PC....

First of all let me tell you that any one who says that this printer will not work with a computer is dead wrong! You can with any type of digital card reader hooked up to your computer transfer your images to your PC hard drive!

Fully edit, crop, merge, install a caption or what ever effects you want to add on with your pc! Then save the edited images back to your XD card for instance. Plug your XD card into the P315 AND PRESTO print your edited images! You can adjust the color and saturation or what ever in Photoshop (all versions) on your pc, like we have and you will have pictures that look as good as any from a photo print store!!!

On the fly or on the construction site we simply drop the XD card from our Fuji digital camera into the P315 and print out great looking photos with out text or any cropping....

We are very happy with this unit and it has helped us close every sale when we walked into the home owner's kitchen... Shot some before images, handed them to the customer and said.... Will see you again in 3 weeks for the final pictures of your new kitchen!

Fantastic printer for the contractor on the go!

After repeatedly trying to print from a card recommended in the booklet and after requesting technical support, I am unsatisfied with product and vendor. I emailed support on April 8th and was promised an answer within 48 hours and 4 days later am still waiting.

I was "re-gifted" this printer after dipping my toe into digital photography. I consider myself a 30 year amateur who still loves my SLR & negatives, but attracted to digital by the versatility & convenience. This is an ok printer for everyday use. The skin tones are too red, and resolution not great. Printing is very slow. I haven't used it enough to empty the 1st ink cartridge yet, so I can't comment on that aspect. If you're looking for something to just print those shots to hang on the fridge, it's ok. I'm now looking to purchase a better printer that will produce up to 5x7, at least, prints in the HP brand as I've had good experience with their brand, not so with Lexmark.

I purchased this printer for my daughter to use with her digital camera. Set it up the first day, and it does not read any memory cards. Only way to use it is to hook the cable directly to the camera. Will probably have to return this printer. Photo quality is ok, but certainly not spectacular!