Lexmark Z53 review

Gallery

Verdict:

Review Date: 1 Aug 2001

Price when reviewed: (£133)

Reviewed By: Tim Danton

Our Rating 4 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

Lexmark's Z52 walked away from our last printer group test with a Top 50 award and plenty of plaudits.

With its successor, the Z53, costing £14 more, we were keen to see if it could justify the price increase.

Design

There's little to distinguish the Z53 from the Z43 on the outside or the inside. They share all the same specifications apart from print speed, with the Z53 claiming a maximum 16ppm compared to the Z43's 12ppm. No surprise, then, that it was just as easy to set up, and our only criticisms are those we level at the Z43: the page of alignment patterns and the lack of separate colour cartridges.

Print quality

Don't expect any great leap in quality over the Z43 by spending an extra £30 on Lexmark's flagship inkjet. Once again, we were impressed by the printer's text quality on plain paper - even on the draft setting, it provided superior results to some of its rivals - but it couldn't extend this across the gamut of tests. One slight improvement was in the report. The Z53 picked up the varying colours well, making it a good choice if you need solid results but don't want to pay extra for paper. As with the Z43, the photo and newsletter tests were more disappointing.

Speed

If you'll only be using the Z53 for basic tasks, you won't be disappointed by its speed - it blasted through our five-page document in 53 seconds. Dropping to draft speed reduced the wait to just 30 seconds. Things started to slow when the pages became more complex, though - our business report emerged after 71 seconds, while the A4 photo took almost 10 minutes.

Overall

The Z53 doesn't do quite enough to justify an award, but if you want a printer mostly for text and only occasional colour documents, then its low mono running costs and competitive price push it into contention.

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