Customer Reviews

Lexmark Z52 Color Jetprinter

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I'll keep this short and sweet. This printer offers simply incredible performance on black and white text. It's fairly quick, although no where near the rated 15 p.p.m. It is however faster than the Xerox C-11 it replaced. Quieter than it's predecessor in my system, it is a decent to very good value at the going street price. Color performance on text is very good but not world class. Photo mode is no where near H.P. type performance but then again neither is the price. Recommended!!!

This is my third Lexmark printer and I'm extremely happy with this one. Prior to the Z52, I had a Lexmark 3200 that was also an excellent printer. I haven't been disappointed with a Lexmark yet. I looked seriously at the H/P's that were supposed to be comparable, but in my opinion, weren't! More often than not, the "comparable" H/P's were more money, print quality was, in my opinion, less than drop-dead wonderful, and if you believe at all in the CNET ratings, didn't rate as high as the Z52. This thing is really pretty amazing! The text is flawless, and the color prints I've got out of this printer are incredible. Several of them are matted and framed and hanging on my walls both at home and in my studio. I do photography for a living, so I'm extremely persnikety about what I consider to be "framing quality". Would I use this printer for professional digital work...no, probably not. But then that's not this printers intent. However, I have sold prints that came out of this printer.

Downsides? There really aren't any that I would consider worth mentioning. I read a lot of noise out there about the Lexmark "cost of ownership" being outrageous. I have to disagree. I hear all the time, "the ink cost is too high, the ink cost is too high". I don't believe it's any worse than any of the others. My ink cartridges seem to last longer than I think they should. I'm always thinking that I need to go buy more ink, but the printer thinks otherwise. If you do a lot of picture printing and you don't believe in anything but 8 x 10's, yeah, you're going to use a lot of ink. But like I said, I'm pretty picky about what I print and how big and how many. And if you live near a Costco, you can pick up 2-packs of ink that are significantly less expensive than buying two single cartridges. Printer speed is less than advertised, but then again, I haven't tried one yet that delivered as much as the manufacturer said it would.

In short, this is a great printer at a great price and is unbeatable for the quality it produces. If you're looking for a printer that does an outstanding job both with text and color imaging, you won't be disappointed in the Z52.

Experience with this machine started out terrible. Horrible black &/or color smudges. Contacted Lexmark support, waited only a couple of minutes to talk to a friendly, experienced, HELPFUL tech rep. Talked me through some troubleshooting, finally decided my scanner was competing for the port. Disconected the scanner and uninstalled the software and now it functions absolutely beautifully. Great color, clean crisp text, high speed, especially in B&W. Now I guess I'll go order a USB/Parallel port adapter...

After trying 4 printers (Epson & Compaq models) in a week's time, this Lexmark Z52 has found a home. It's print out for text is fast and the colors in text rich and brilliant. The printing of a photo is very slow but the picture is worth the wait. The software was easy to install and we had no trouble whatsoever as we did with the Epson drivers. Also it is much quieter then the Epson Stylus 400 we are replacing. We'd highly recommend this printer to our friends.

The Lexmark Z52 printer is a true gem and should be used for anybody that prints a lot and hates to wait. Before owning this I owned a Canon printer and it took about 5 minutes a sheet to print. On this baby it takes maximum one minute. The only thing it may take a little longer on is a picture. This printer prints quality papers, will last long, and is just great for any computer user to have. So there you have it. In need of a good printer that won't leave you sitting for minutes, buy this Lexmark Z52. It will be enjoyed by all.

HAPPY PRINTING!

I was looking to upgrade my three year old Hewlett Packard 722C color printer with a newer version that would produce photo quality resolution. Since I have been very pleased with all my HP printers in the past (I own several for business) I immediately gravitated towards them again, only to take a second look when I realized I would have to spend two to three times the price of a Lexmark with similar specs. The Z-52 was VERY well priced, and though the reviews complained it had a voracious appetite for ink, I figured it was probably still a good value if one didn't print like a fiend. (They were discontinuing it, replacing it with the Z-53, virtually the same model, if only ever so slightly faster. It was therefore quite discounted-- under a hundred bucks at QVC and came with a cable and choice of three additional software programs to boot) I had never owned a Lexmark, and was a little leary, but decided that, for the price, it was probably still a safe bet. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. The color tones were nowhere near as natural as the HP. Now, I should say that have a very discerning eye for color,and some may not be as picky. But, if you prefer Kodak film tones to Agfa, or a Sony Trinitron TV to an RCA, you'll know what I am talking about. Just to experiment, I printed a low VGA quality digital photo on my old HP 722C (300 dpi) and then ran it on the lexmark at a higher resolution (1200x1200 dpi). I then showed it to two not so discerning people who did not know which was which, and each chose the old HP 722C hands down. There was no doubt in my mind that the tones on the older HP were still superior, and the resolution was virtually non-distinguishable. All in all, it's an OK printer I suppose, but sorry to say I will be sending mine back and shelling out for a new HP.

Prints about 13 pages a minute for me. Color graphics and text look excellent for such a low cost printer. Printer does not take to long to calibrate. Very happy with purchase.

Sometime around the end of 2000, PC Computing ran one of their SOHO color-printer "shootouts," and the Lexmark Z52 came out on top. Consequently, I put it on my Xmas wish-list, intending it as a replacement for my old Epson Stylus 600.

As fate would have it, I got the Z52 for XMas - but it turned out to be nowhere near the printer PC Computing made it out to be. While the printer was fairly quick, and produced excellent b&w text printouts, the quality of the graphics output was deplorable.

The main fault lies in the Z52's dithering algorithm. The Z52 offers "2400x1200" dpi printing - which, if you do the math, is almost 3 times the resolution of the Stylus 600, which printed at 1440x720! Oddly enough, the output of the Stylus 600 was an order of magnitude better than the output of the Z52. At 2400 x 1200 with coated ink-jet paper, the dithering of the Z52 is so extreme that I can make out the dithering pattern while looking at the printout from four feet away. Needless to say, I switched back to the Epson.

I guess I'm surprised to see how many people actually liked this printer. It's actually decent if you're into the more common PC tasks (Word Processing, Printing Web Pages, etc.) However, if you're a graphics professional/hobbyist, avoid this printer like the plague!

I upgraded from a basic HP610 so I could get great color prints from my digital camera.I wanted another HP but let the store salesman talk me into getting a Lexmark Z52. It eats ink cartridges which cannot be refilled sucessfully. Constantly gives message "unable to communicate with the printer" and the color pictures and also black and white are terrible. I talked with Lexmark tech service and they had me send them some pictures illustrating my complaints and after they reviewed them phoned me to say they thought THE PICTURES WERE FINE. Unbelivable. Am shopping now for either an HP or a Canon.I have been working with this printer for 18 MONTHS so this is not a casual review after just a few days.

Recently installed a Z-52 in a Windows 2000 environment with a peer-to-peer LAN. Printer works fine. Has a great pinter interface with several very nice options. Resolution is excellent. Speed is great in normal mode, but if the resolution is increased to maximum, everything slows down drastically (much more data is being transmitted). The way the printer driver is set up does not allow you to print black based gray (i.e. 20%, 40%, etc. gray) when using other color. If the color option is selected, black based gray on the screen comes out pinkish blue (lavender). At normal resolution, constructed (as opposed to pure) colors tend to exhibit some striping. Tends to be a little loud.