Customer Reviews

Lexmark Z11 Color Jet Printer

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Pros: 1200 x 1200 dpi. Easy installation. Great outputs on photo-quality paper for photographs. Inkjet cartridge is easy to replace. Paper feeding is not messy as in some other printers. Excellent lexmark software included.

Cons: Slow in printing. Black & white printing could be better, but is excellent for this price range (The blacks are not totally "black", but I'm nitpicking). Costly cartridges, as compared to other brands (Canon & HP).

This printer has outstanding print quality when printing photosand graphics. It's print speed is decent, and it doesn't take up muchroom on your desk. The faults are all print cartridge related. First of all only one cartridge in at a time, so either you have the color cartridge in, or the black cartridge. Lexmark helped this problem by including a cartridge caddy on the back of the printer to store a cartridge that's not being used. The second problem is the cartridges are pretty expensive. For a $90 printer, the black cartridge is $28.99 here, and around $32 retail. Color is about $5 more. Pretty steep for a cheap printer. And unlike Epson or HP printers, you can't get generic Lexmark cartridges, so you can't save any money that way. The software is good, it talks to you and tells you what the printer is doing. 1200dpi photo quality is amazing. Just be ready to shell out the cash when your ink cartridge runs out. END

I've got this printer as Xmas present. Nice looking thing. Also it says on its box, that is 1200x1200 resolution makes it bigger resolution on the earth, (printers of its class). seems to be good printer. But printing quite slow... I've tried print color photo 600x720 pix with 1200x1200 max resolution, its took about 4,3 min to finish. Finnaly output is Really good. Of course text printing is much faster. So if you need to print text, its a great choise. If you need photo-like output this one is still good. Unless you going to use it for news-paper or magazin printing :). Bottomline: Buy it, for home use.

I bought this printer a couple of months ago and while the setup went very smooth, I have encountered a few problems. First, the printer can only use one cartridge at a time and while it prints color pages beautifully, the black text is not too sharp when using the color cartridge and such a hassle to switch between two cartridges. Also, a few people have noted the price of the replacement cartridges... $35 for color and $30 for black. Don't bother looking for generic cartridges like the ones for Epsons and Canons cause there aren't any. The other problem with the printer is the way the sheets feed into it. Sometimes, two or three pages will feed into it and it will throw off the other pages already in the feeder, so you can't really leave the computer while you're printing out a 10 page report. As for the cheap cost of the printer, don't even fall for it. It's all a cheap ploy for Lexmark to force you into buying $35 ink cartridges for years to come.

I bought this printer for my business for the sole purpose of printing black and white text. The price was the biggest factor in my decision (around $50 after rebate) and I was pleasantly surprised at the color capabilities this printer had. While it does print photograph color pictures rather slowly, they were of a much higher quality than I expected. If you are looking for a printer that is affordable and reliable, this is the product for you. Not to mention how friendly Lexmark printers are...when it tells you you are out of paper, and you load it, it even says, "Thank You." :-)

This is a so-called "windows printer", meaning all of the processing for the pages you want to print are processed by the printer driver, not the printer hardware. This has advantages and dis-advantages.

The advantages: the printer itself if very simple and is therefore very cheap and more reliable than most printers of its type.

Disadvantages: a dissapointment for Linux users and the main reason that the printer has a 4 star and not 5 star rating. I just could not find a printer driver for this printer for a Linux operating system. This is unfortunate and from various readings seems to be because the company forces developers to reverse engineer the driver. Linux development is very slow for the entire Lexmark series and win-printers in general.

The quality of the printer is excellent and it prints in 1200x1200 mode at the maximum (pretty rough on the ink cartridge though) and at 600x600 at the minimum. It easily matches any other ink jet printer we have in the office and beats most color laser printers I've seen. This is especially true for photo-like images, for which it is practically perfect.

The cartridges are a bit pricy though, about 1/3 the price of the printer itself which was a bit of a shock. This isn't too bad if you stick to 600x600, but a little pricy for the 1200x1200 mode.

I've had this printer for about a year now, and I can tell you that if you need an inkjet color printer and you're on a tight budget, this printer performs very well for it's cost. It's compact so it doesn't swallow up the space on your desk.

I love the easy install (just pop in the CD-ROM and it begins to set up on its own). It gave me no problem at all. I love the voice prompts ("Printing started") and the dialog box which shows you a lot of detail; for instance, the printing status, how much ink is left in your cartridge, etc.

If the voice prompt gets irritating I can turn that off.

I'm a scrapbooking instructor which means lots of color printouts and handouts. The print quality? Well, it's great for a 59.99 product. I mean, it is a LOT better than one would expect for this product. I've done prints of color pictures and the quality is fine for the work I'm doing. It's great for publishing your newsletters, brochures, postcards, banners, photos on photo paper, labels, envelopes, index cards, greeting card and even VELLUM (on transparency mode). It handles paper from 16lb to 150lb stock. It handles paper sizes including letter, legal, A4, A5, A6, B5, executive, postcard (4x6), index (3x5), and other different envelope sizes. I'd say this little product packs a whallop.

If you're looking for top-of-the-line photo quality and you want your pictures looking like they came from the developer, I would recommend the Lexmark Z52.

As for cartridges, they are PRICEY. At this writing the black (12A1970) runs for about $37.99 and the color (12A1980) for $41.99 in your office supply store. If you hunt around one can find it for a bit less. At least the cartridges are easy to load - just open the front cover and pop it in. Also comes with a cartridge storage unit.

To remedy the ink cartridge price crunch I would recommend buying one of those Universal Inkjet Refill Kits for 24.95 (see http://www.hsn.com and type in product #35809), which comes with the black and color refills, also easy to use.

Hmm, what else? Oh yeah, most printers do not come with the parallel printer cable, this one included. Buy an IEEE 1284 PC Parallel Printer Cable if you decide to buy this printer.

BONUS: You get a coupon for 2 free picture-editing software packages when you buy this printer.

Well, that's my experience with this printer. I'd recommend it highly if you really need a good inkjet but can only spend so much.

I've had my Z11 for abt. 2 yrs., it came w/my puter. The black printed ok but the color photos weren't very good. I'm lookin to buy another printer cause this one was slow, noisy, & has already broke down several times. It did give on screen info abt. ink levels, selection of print sizes, etc. Not impressed.

My wife and I have owned several and have given them as gifts to children and grand children. They are easy to use and cheap to operate, as they only have one cartridge. They do a good job on greeting cards and other simple chores. Remanufactured cartridges are available at reasonable cost as are refills, which I don't particulrly recommend. You can installa black cartridge if you're printing mostly text, for example for students. Black cartridges are easy and cheap to refill.
Highly praised entry level machine, very forgiving if you make a mistake ,and easy to get back on the track.

...the printer comes without a Parallel Port Cable, making it more expensive and and timely to order, since Amazon.com does not carry the cable.

If it looks too good to be true, it may not be. I may well return this and ask for my money back.