Written
: 9/24/2000Lexmark's PR rep, Anne DiNoto was nice enough to send me
one of the companies top-of-the-line Inkjet printers for review, the Lexmark
Z52.
Thermal inkjet technology
Black: 2400 x 1200 dpi
Color: 2400 x 1200 dpi and 7 picoliter drop size
Black draft: Up to 15 ppm
Color draft: Up to 7 ppm
Input capacity: 100 sheets
Output capacity: 50 sheets
Minimum media weight: 16 lbs.
Maximum media weight: 150 lbs.
Automatic and manual envelope feed
Quiet printing: 45 dB(A)
Duty cycle: 5,000 pages/month
Color: 275 pages at 15% coverage
Black: 600 pages at 5% coverage
Energy Star-compliant
Parallel interface: IEEE-1284 compliant bi-directional parallel cable, or USB for Windows 98/2000 and Mac OS.
LexExpress(tm) one-year exchange warranty
All in all a decent set of capabilities for a printer in
this price range. In this price range you will find a few worthy competitors,
namely the Hewlett Packard HP932c, and the Epson 860, both with MSRP's of $199,
although all 3 printers can be found for less than their MSRP price.
The printer unpacked and installed easy enough. The printer comes with both USB and parallel interfaces, and both interfaces worked just fine here. This is a dual cartridge printer of course. One cartridge a dedicated black, and the other a 3 color cartridge. The regular 3 color cartridge can be replaced with a special "Photo" cartridge, but I was unable to obtain one of these (Best Buy out of stock grr) for the review.