Printer Reviews

The Lexmark Z11 is a very inexpensive printer. Heck for this price you can't go wrong. It's easy to setup and use (withnice 'voice' promots telling you whats going on with your printer). Igot this for my mom and she loves it.

However, there are groups who will find this printer a bad buy: - Anyone who does alot of black and white printing (this is alot of people) - Anyone who needs high speed color printing - Anyone who dosen't like spending tons of money on ink cartridges.

Baically you'll be paying ALOT for ink on these puppies. It's really expensive even for an inkjet. A recommendation, if you print black and white alot, get a laser printer like I did. They are, yes, more expensive but everything is sharper (all inkjets are compared to laser printer quality, ever notice that?) and you can print a ton of pages. For example, I have the HP LaserJet 6L (the 1100 sold on amazon is the same thing...next gen)...my $50 toner cartridge pops out 2,500 PAGES! The $30 black cartridge for this Z11 only prints 600 pages. You do the math.

I'd also recommend the Canon for the color inkjet printers. There are, of course, ones to avoid...but usually there high end ones are very quick and produce great quality prints. You have to do some shopping around though.

Another disadvantage is the one cartridge system that I thought we left years ago in the industry. This means if you are printing a page mixed with text and color pictures, you have to use the color cartridge which is expensive and does not produce good quality black.

So in other words, find another printer and don't let the price sway you.

I had this printer for 4 years....it's great for basic stuff. but I now have a digital camera, and found a printer where I can insert the memory card from my digital camera and upload my pics easier.

this printer is kinda slow, only 4 pages per minute....
but, the quality is good, and it didn't need any service in 4 years.

great for everyday use
but now that i'm getting into photos....I needed a better printer

First of all, this is a parallel port printer, is not USB, which is the most current technology and and what all current printers are using, or so the purists say. For me, this old technology is not a bad choice at all. I own a 4-port USB hub and it is already at capacity with my other peripherals, so I'm lucky my printer is not USB because I would have had to either purchase an additional hub or remove one of the other devices.

The printer is light, compact and very easy to install and setup (it has Plug N'Play technology).

There is only one ink cartridge slot available on the printer, you may either install a color catridge (12A1980) or a black-and-white only cartridge(12A1970). The cartrdiges are pricey and if you do a lot of heavy printing, the total cost of ownership will be very high in a very short term.

Printer speed is not the best, but you cannot ask for miracles at this price level. The good thing is that you can set up the print quality (draft, normal, best, custom) using the Properties option in Windows based on the document you are printing. This quality setup affects considerably the print speed and ink consumption levels. The factory default is Normal, but I changed it to Draft since I'm on the cheapskate group.

The printer software keeps an ink-level estimate, warning you when a replacement is near. I've found that the warnings are a bit on the early side and that you can print for a while longer after it occurs.

The only major problem I have found with the printer is the infamous paper jam (but who hasn't?) - Most of the times it has to do more with the paper and humidity factors than with the printer itself, but it is a pain to reset the printer after it happens.

I recommend this printer for anyone on a tight budget or if you are running out of the increasingly valuable USB ports.

I've used dozens of different types of printers and have owned several HP printers. I switched to Macintosh a year ago, and got the LaserJet 1300 several months ago. I've decided to give the printer away, and will probably replace it with the Brother 5070.

My first gripe with the 1300 is its minimal documentation. There is also no help and the tech support information online is weak.

My second gripe is unreliability. The printer doesn't have a display to name errors. It has three indicator lights. The printer frequently stops working, and all three lights come on. The manual says that when this happens, I should turn the printer off, leave it off for a bit, and then start up and try again. This usually does little to help. The manual also says that if this continues, I should call for tech support.

So I called for tech support. My first call was apparently to the wrong group. The technician insisted on collecting all of my contact information at the start of the call, promising that he would give me support after we went through the full, long, contact survey. And then he did. He told me I called the wrong department and gave me the phone number for the right department. The second technician walked me through loading a new driver onto the Mac and doing a hard reset of the printer.

The manual doesn't tell me how to do a full reset of the printer (restoring it to factory state) and I didn't realize this was going on (the tech would tell me what to do next, but not what we were doing at the more global level, maybe she didn't know) until we were fairly far along. So I still don't know how to do this, and don't know how to find out short of calling HP for support again.

The printer worked OK for a few months, locking up occasionally but not so often that the machine was unusable. But now it's back up to its old tricks. 3 lights, printing stops, and power off only lets me get a few more pages done before I get 3 lights again. I spent several hours one night troubleshooting this, and three hours (clocked) a few nights ago troubleshooting this, and finally gave up.

The HP web site provides no useful information, or at least none that I could find.

The website did provide access to drivers to download. I can either download the OS X driver from September 2003 (I think I'm using that one) or I can order (and pay money for). That disk is dated April 2004. I can't tell whether the driver on the April 2004 disk is more recent than the September 2003 driver or not. I also can't tell what the driver version number is for my printer. (The About information for the printer doesn't have it and did I mention there is no help under the help menu?)

My impression is that this is a driver problem, not a hardware problem.

Maybe I can clean it up, for a while, with a full reset of the printer and a reload of the latest driver.

But at some point, the time I lose is more valuable than the cost of a replacement printer. I passed the threshold a few nights ago. We've had some driver problems (I have a lab at school) with some HP multifunction printers and the Macintosh. Not as bad as the 1300, but for the first time in 20 years, I'm going to buy a laser printer that is not a Hewlett-Packard.

I just upgraded from an HP-1200 series to this HP-1300 printer, and I'm extremely pleased. I loved my 1200 series printer, but HP actually managed to make some improvements with this machine. Specifically, it's slightly quicker and runs even quieter. I use my printer a great deal to print long manuscripts, so I really need one with these qualities. The only possible debit is that the printer is slightly larger than the 1200 series - I keep bumping my chair into it, but I think that's a small issue! For the price and quality, you really cannot beat this printer.

For the price, this printer does a NICE job. It's fast, I mean SUPER FAST and the print quality is very good. I highly recommend it as a home office printer. In addition to being fast, it's QUIET. I've researched this printer and am VERY happy with my decision.

I agree with the above. It jams all the time. Don't waste your money on this printer!

I purchased this printer because I have had a great deal of success with HP products in the past. I must say that I have been extremely disappointed with the performance of this printer. It ROUTINELY attempts to take in more than one sheet of paper (e.g., 5 or 6); consequently, I have had a tremendous amount of paper jams. This has become such a problem that I now prefer just to wait and print my documents at work. Beware!

I've used this printer for over three years now and I've never had a problem. I print a very high volume (more than a printer this small was designed for, really) but it's worked flawlessly for me. It handles envelopes, cards, and other odd-sized paper just great. I've never had a particular problem with jamming - it jams every once in a while, like any printer, but far less than the HP 2500 down the hall, and the design makes it very easy to clear jams. It also goes from power-on to printing the first page in around ten seconds, which is much faster than other lasers in the office, some of which take up to a minute. It's reliable, fast, durable, flexible, and has a small footprint on the desk.

I purchased my X85 6 months ago, since then, I got a lot of troubles with this priner. The first time I used it to print a color photo, it came out all pink. called customer service, they send me a new catriage, now the color is still not right, the images are either too blur or two dark. Also the copy does not seem right. sometimes the first couple of black copy came out all black ink, after a few times, it will do copy. the quick mode does not work properly either. And it constantly lose connect with my computer ( I use window XP). Finanlly I got fed up with this printer, and I call customer service again, now they have 1800 or 1888 number for technical support, upon my request, they agree to send me a new model x5150 with a reasonable extra charge. The new X5150 works great with photo printing, now I can send picture to my family and friend printed from my printer. Compared with X5150, X85 is a trouble maker. Would not recommend this, but Lexmark customer service is not bad.

This is my 3rd Lexmark printer in the last 3 years - i've upgraded all my previous printers because of my growing experiences with computers, digital cameras, etc. Every one of my Lexmark printers I've been pleased with the speed, quality and performance - never had a single problem.
I started looking at replacing my Z53 when I realized I needed a scanner (and a copier would be nice also). This Lexmark Z85 All-In-One printer had the most and best options (ie - computer doesn't need to be turned on to make copies). this printer is fast, has excellent quality, and has all i'll ever need and more. Also, it's not eating the ink cartridges - I do alot of "photo" pictures and the ink levels are hardly being touched - very pleased with how long the cartridges are lasting. The on-screen ink level guides is also nice.

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS PRODUCT - WORTH EVERY PENNY!!

Never had a printer quite like it!!!! This thing does EVERYTHING!!!

The machine is OK, the support... there is none. The software is a hack job, again no support. I loaded it on Win 98 & it created all kinds of conflicts with other software (Publisher from Microsoft in particular).

These machines are known for placing random ink marks on your paper after a jamb. If you have paper jamb inside the machine (as opposed to in the feeder), you will inevitably have random black marks on every page thereafter. It has been a continuing problem and since Brother doesn't have a fix for it, they tell you to replace, you guessed it, the $160 drum unit! That's over half the price of what they sold the machine to us for. Think twice before buying. As stated before, the scanning and copying on this unit leave a lot to be desired.

Considering that the street price on this machine is under $...(plus a... rebate) you are getting a lot of bang for the buck. What I was looking for a was a reasonably priced multifunction laser printer that would be used primarily for printing text, occasional faxes, and document imaging. I found what I was looking for in the Brother MFC-4800.

Looking at it function-by-function, the laser printing quality is excellent (and fast) when it comes to text, but achieves only average quality when printing graphics. For my fax needs the MFC-4800 fits the bill and even provides features that I'll never use (broadcasting, and fax forwarding, come to mind) .

The quality of the scans is acceptable for my uses (archiving phone, cable, and credit card statements, etc.) However, the document feeder does seem to be overly sensitive to slight misalignments, thus creating a scan that is at a slight angle. Copy quality is significantly worse than average, but acceptable for making copies for archival or backup purposes. If you need to make copies where appearance matters, e.g., of handouts for a presentation, definitely consider going to a copy shop, or even a convenience store.

As far as installation goes, I'm using Windows XP Pro SP-1 and installation was uneventful. XP drivers and software were included on the installation CD-ROM that was included in the package. Buyers of units that have been on store shelves for a long time may need to download the XP drivers from Brother's web site. The included OCR software works with XP. In a review on another site, and even on Brother's web site, I read that the OCR software was non-functional under XP, but I am able to scan a document and edit the resulting text with no problems.

Even if all you need is an inexpensive laser printer, the MFC-4800 should be considered especially since it is in the price range of most other single function printer only units. If you decide on buying it, you will probably find its additional functions to be icing on the cake.

As a copier, it works well. But we have spent at least 10 hours with online help trying to make it function as a printer. The tech reps on the phone have re-installed the software multiple times and disabled just about any resident applications possible (to the point that our Norton Antivirus isn't working properly). Out of frustration, we have gone back to our old laser printer (boy, those HP machines just keep on going...), hoping that we'll tackle the problem again soon.

To top it off, in the middle of a copying job we received the J1 message on the copier, meaning we have 10 (that's TEN) copies left on the toner cartridge, so we had to stop the copying run. Went to every Staples, Office Max, and Office Depot in our area...even went on line to check Staples and Office Depot--NO ONE had them in stock. That's a problem caused by the manufacturer, not the distributors. In desperation, called Xerox, who said they can be bought here at Amazon.

Xerox really dropped the ball on this product, whose specs are good but lots has gotten lost in the execution. I would not recommend this product until they have worked out the bugs, probably 6 months-1 year.

How can a company grow its business when there's no follow through on service once you've purchased, and outrageous costs for parts? On a scale of 1-10, I'd rate my XD at a 10. I've had it at least 3 years, never had a problem. Then I experienced an "accordian" paper jam. Need a New Fuser Assembly. The one dealer near me said he no longer sells parts, only new copiers. Cost of part - almost as much as the copier. Time to wait for part - 10 days. Technician cost to install - almost as much as the toner, per hour. Result - I'm buying a brand new Canon.

I own several XD100 copiers and have had the same problems with each one. A plastic guide just inside the right hand door breaks signaling a J2 jam, the gear on the end of the hot roller breaks causing the paper to jam at the roller, and the drum unit develops lines before the end-of-life light signals replacement which I correct with a recycled drum from a local toner cartridge recycler. A technician can easily replace the other parts.

The copys are top quality, and for the price, the machine functions great.

The cartridges are expensive and run out very quickly. Changing cartridges requires a study of multiple lights -- is one flashing or not? The paper loader is finicky. It finally jammed in a way that it could not be fixed and, if it could, it would not be worth the cost of the repair. Best news is that my retailer exchanged the now-useless cartridges, of which I had to keep four in stock. No wonder this model has been discontinued. To those who own one, per the science officer in 'Alien': "You have my sympathies."

I got this printer free with my Snow iMac 600 mhz. The printer is "cute", but a little too noisy for my tastes. My daughter has the Epson 8 cubed printer & it is so quiet & nice....much quieter than this one.

The output is great (even photo-quality using glossy paper), especially compared to the HP 694C that it replaced. I do seem to run out of black ink rather quickly, but have not tried the Rhinotek ink cartridges yet.

I think the cons are: noise level & the fact that the driver software won't "remember" my page setup options for saved documents (as in, I have to re-set everything each time I print). The price & the quality of the output make up for these drawbacks.

This printer has excellent output in both color and BW while maintaining good economics. When this printer first came out, you could only purchase Epson replacement cartridges. Now you can purchase after market cartridges and/or reprogramming kits for the "chip" embedded in the ink cartridge making this an extremely economical printer. I recently purchased a color and BW cartridge.... I agree with the other consumers that the printer is a little noisier than a laser jet, but not much more than other ink jets in this price range.

For economical printing and ease of finding replacement cartridges on the web, I would highly recommend this printer.

The HP 1220C is a very good printer, good speed, excellent graphics with rich, vibrant colors. It's not as fast as my HP 2000C printer but I think the print quality is better, less banding. I just wish the 1220C had seperated color cartridges, but you can't have everthing. Overall, it's a very good performer with lots of nice features, i.e., the pull out area in the back of the printer for clearing paper jams. I have printed posters, digital photos, brochures, programs and have not been disappointed in its performance.

I'm an unabashedly big fan of HP inkjet printers. I have found their color management drivers, not to mention their ease of connectivity, to be completely conducive to excellent output. The quality is obviously superior to HP's chief injet rival, Epson.

This printer is no exception. Aside from the somewhat obscure color cartridges (my local suppliers don't stock a lot of them because they're only used in three other printers), I've found nothing to complain about in the two months I've been using it.

The printer is truly whisper silent, and it's massively faster than my old HP 890. I print on odd sizes of paper, so I love the fact that I can now do special jobs without having to go to a service bureau to make tabloid and larger sizes. The onboard memory is sufficiently large to allow me to dump really complicated graphical files without tying up my CPU. As an example, a full-color, legal-sized flyer with multiple graphical layers used to take something on the order of 12 minutes to send to the printer and print. Now it's a matter of 3-5 minutes. True, some the speed increase is that this printer connects through a USB port, but I suspect that even if I hooked it up with the parallel connection, there'd be a massive improvement in speed. At any rate, I used to sometimes crash my computer if I tried to do smething else while a complicated project was printing. Now, nothing I do outside of starting a 3-D game will shake my system.

I cannot recommend this machine enough. However, you should take a look at the 1220Cxi version, just in case you need the added PostScript flexibility.

I have used this printer for four years and it still works perfectly. I prints photos on photo paper beautifully. I love being able to print 11x17, and friends and family ask me to print for them. I use this printer heavily but have only bought new cartridges once in four years. I often print using the print quality of 'Fast'. The 'Fast' option looks like 'Normal' for most printing except photos. This printer was worth the expense. I also have an HP LaserJet 4L that is still working after more years than I can remember, and it's still fast compared to many newer printers on the market.

What has been glorified as a premium graphics printer -- isn't. This printer is old technology in a new box. And, I wound up having to BUY their latest RIP software ($158) to get it to run w/ Windows 2000. But worst of all was Epson's customer service. I had over 22 contacts w/ them in three months and, in the end, they were unwilling to take the machine back.

During those three months, the printer's lack of performance was blamed on a variety of things. Me - "it's a complicated machine, you are probably are doing something wrong." The paper - "Epson only guarentees print quality on Epson paper." My software - "Your software may not be able to produce files that are good enough."

I will NEVER buy another Epson printer, mostly because of what I have been through with their customer service.

I haven't had any problems with this printer in the 2+ years I've been using it, but there are some things you need to know before you buy this printer. First, this is not a printer for personal use, it is intended for a workgroup of graphic designers. It's capable of printing pages that are over 17" wide, and it has high-end capabilities that only a professional would need (or even care about). And since most professional graphic designers use Macs, that might explain why the PC users are having all the problems.

Because this is a pro-level printer, it's very important to read the instructions carefully. I had a hard time getting it to recognize paper sizes until I sat down and studied the manual, and since then it's worked perfectly.

Lastly, this printer is huge. Turning it on takes 10 minutes, so we never turn it off. I gave it four stars instead of five, because we the printer is technically overkill for us, and trying to get the RIP software and color matching to work was too much trouble for us. Plus, it's pretty much outdated nowadays, especally with the Epson 2200 that's now available.

I have used this printer for the last three years. As a visual designer and a fine artist I have used this to print all sorts of design projects, illustrations, and web pages.

The colors this produces are a better match to what I see onscreen than any other color printer I have used (HP deskjets, HP color laser, Apple color laser). Even at "normal" quality on cheap paper, the prints are good enough to frame. I used this printer with photo quality paper to print the portfolio I show at job interviews. The dithering is subtle, with none of the dark-dot-amongst-light-dots problems that cause a speckled look on cheap printers.

The colors are vibrant, but ACCURATE (unlike the HP printers that always print colors oversaturated). As other reviewers have noted, the ink cartridges (separate for each color!) last a long time, typically several months with heavy usage.

The printing is fast, even at high quality, much faster than color laser printers, and comparable to most desktop printers.

The flat paper tray (as opposed to inclined) rarely jams. The tray can hold about 50 sheets of paper, so it is good for use in an office environment being shared by many people.

This can handle even light card stock, although I have had some varieties of 80# card stock JAM and refuse to go through. Unfortunately, the stock is forced to go through the rollers, and there is no way to open the back to allow it to go straight through and avoid jamming on heavy stock. This is the only bad thing about this printer.

It works fine, more or less, for printing text (never tried printing photos with it). But whatever money you save on the price of the printer you will pay back tenfold in ink catridges. This thing goes through ink at an unbelievable rate, and of course, Lexmark ink cartriges are among the most expensive (if not THE most expensive) of any brand.

It's all about cost-per-page with printers, at least any printer that gets regular use. This thing is the printer equivalent of a Hummer, only less cool.

Our Lexmark Z32 has the personality of a tempermental brat. It has a voice that was fun to hear for two days, but it insists on saying the same thing all the time. We hushed it. The printer can do professional looking work if everything is lined up right, but somehow it doesn't stay aligned and the characters--the letters--are often a mess. If the Lexmark has a paper jam or thinks it has a paper jam when it really doesn't, it automatically cancels the print job even after the problem is corrected. Tempermental. Maybe I have a computer problem that keeps the computer from making contact with the printer at times or maybe the printer is pouting. I'm not sure. At any rate, any time saved by this super efficiently fast printer is lost because of having to stop and restart the job. I abuse it with enormous assignments, and it appears that it balks after several minutes and pretends to be sick. I have one more complaint. When it spits out all that beautiful clear work quickly or when it is a little messed up--it doesn't matter--it sends the papers flying all over the room. I have to stand by it and catch them. I'll keep using it throughout its wretched life, but I am not sure that it is the best choice of printers. I don't really know how I could change though, because I am now familiar with all of the Lexmark's bizarre moods.Jane Riley, author of SOLOMON'S PORCH, THE STORY OF BEN AND ROSE

With the understanding that this is not supposed to be a top-of-the-line photo printer, nor is it intended for high volume use - does the job and does it quite well. I use mine to print greeting cards and promotional bookmarks. Its supplies are too expensive, and are used up too quickly, for me to print flyers and brochures. But it will handle 110-pound card stock that makes my laser printer jam, its output is vivid and fairly accurate (although skin tones can come out looking weird on occasion), and it's easy to change the cartridges.

Not a bad little printer if you just want to print a few greeting cards or documents in color, a few times a week.