Written: 9/24/2000
Written by: TronŽ
Price: $179 
Supplied by: Lexmark

Lexmark'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. Here are the basic specs:

• 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.

Next page: Taking a closer look

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