Lexmark has added wireless connectivity to many of its new printers and all-in-ones, and the Z1520 is at the top of its printer lineup, with automatic duplex printing and photo printing. It’s also available at a price well below the RRP.
Long and low are the best adjectives for the Z1520. Housed in a blocky white and silver body, it has a black panel highlight at the top and a smoke black flip-up input tray that can hold a hundred sheets. A gray plastic output tray slides out of the front of the printer, and a gray bulge on the back houses the built-in duplexer.
Onboard controls are minimal, with buttons for two-sided printing, paper handling, and power. Next to the small Wi-Fi antenna on the back is a USB 2.0 socket that offers two standard connections to the outside world.
A USB installation of the printer is straightforward; Just run the setup software and you’ll end up with a reasonable set of Lexmark applets, including a driver that supports page imposition and the built-in duplexer.
Installation for wireless, a key reason to buy this model, isn’t much more difficult, although you do need to temporarily connect the printer via the included USB installation cable, so you’ll need to have it near a PC during installation. You can then move it to a cheaper location if needed. The setup software automatically detects networks and all you have to do is confirm which one you want to connect the printer to.
Lexmark inkjet printers have never been staggeringly fast, and as always, manufacturers’ speed claims don’t bear much resemblance to typical, everyday printing. Lexmark states 10ppm for black and white printing and 4ppm for colour, while we saw 4.7ppm and 1.8ppm, respectively. Speeds over the Wi-Fi connection were slightly faster than with a USB cable, which is unusual.
Since the printer comes standard with a duplexer, we also ran our 20-page duplex document test, which took 4:49 minutes and showed a speed of 4:15 pages per minute. That’s about twice as fast as Canon’s PIXMA MP610, mainly due to the much shorter drying time between printing the first and second page.
The other speed anomaly occurs when printing PictBridge from a digital camera. This took around 35 seconds longer per 15 x 10 cm print than printing directly from an SD card, which was itself 18 seconds slower than printing from a PC. We tried two different digital cameras and experienced the same slow PictBridge speeds.
Print quality is very similar to Lexmark all-in-ones we’ve recently tested. Black text print shows some ink bleed into the paper and in one or two places where registration from one print pass to the next is not optimal.
Color printing is better, with spot colors and good black overprints. Color tones are also fairly accurate, making this a reasonable device for home office use. While the photo prints offer smooth gradations of tones and well-chosen foregrounds, they lack much detail in the shadows and are marred by scuffing from the pickup rollers, suggesting an over-rush to keep print times down.
Interestingly, not to say annoyingly, the driver software halted our print run and prompted us to replace the color cartridge, even though the color output showed no sign of degrading. It allowed black printing to continue until obvious ink depletion occurred. That kind of protection is adequate in a printer with permanent printheads, but the Z1520 has Lexmark’s heads built into each cartridge, so you won’t damage anything important while printing until the ink is really gone.
Comparing the page numbers we’ve seen with Lexmark’s claimed ISO page yields shows that their estimates are fairly accurate, so we used the company’s numbers. This gives a cost per page of black text of 3.73p and a cost of color of 8.68p. These numbers are reasonable and roughly mid-range for printers in this price range. They rely on the use of high-yield ink cartridges, even though lower-capacity, standard-yield consumables ship with the printer
“‘Verdict”‘
There are many features in the Z1520 that make the spec sheet look good, but once again it’s the core technology that lets the printer down. Black text on multipurpose paper isn’t as sharp as it should be, and photo prints suffer from overcolor. It’s time Lexmark updated its inkjet technology if it wants to compete with the likes of Canon and HP.
On the other hand, the wireless connection works well and increases the printer’s flexibility, and the duplexer performs better than its competitors when it comes to printing double-sided pages at reasonable speeds. If you’re happy with decent print quality and are on a budget, check out this device.
points in detail
print speed 7
functions 9
value 8
print quality 6