An inexpensive photo printer...but you get what you pay for.

Author's Rating:

Pros: Very affordable for 4800dpi, Media card reader, Dual paper trays, Auto cartridge alignment function

Cons: Four color print, Auto feeder doesn't load paper at times, Inferior quality print for 4800dpi

The Bottom Line: 
The Z-65p is very inexpensive, but the print quality doesn't compare to other printers in the same $100-$200 price range. Not a very good product for the money.

Author's Review
With so many affordably priced 4800 dpi photo quality printers on the market, I recently decided to upgrade and get a dedicated photo printer that would truly showcase the great pictures I was taking with my 3.1MP camera. I must admit that I didn't shop around much, as I was already familiar with the Lexmark brand and have two other Lexmarks that I have had no trouble with whatsoever, a Z-42 and an X-73. While browsing the local Office Depot, I found a Z-65p and was very enthusiastic about its specifications 4800X1200 dpi, built in memory card reader, dual auto feed trays with auto paper sensing, and it was on sale! So for the unbelievable price of 106.99 I was on my way home with my new addition.

After unpacking the printer and getting everything hooked up, I followed the setup guide which instructed me to cancel all attempts at Windows auto device setup, and then run the install program on the enclosed CD. The first item installed was the photo editing software and the card reader software. After this was completed, I was instructed to restart the computer and then install the second CD. Upon restarting, the system crashed repeatedly until I was finally able to get the system back up in safe mode and used system restore to bring the system back to its pre-installation state. A second attempt was successful at installing the software and restarting, but after installing the printer software contained on the second CD, the system crashed again on restart and wouldn't start up. Finally after a few more tries, everything was installed and working properly. Apparently there was some major kind of conflict with the card reader on my system. At this point I was being a good sport about the whole thing, because a bad install isn't necessarily the printer's fault. But it's worth noting that from unpacking the box to actually being ready to print something took about an hour and a half. So much for plug and play.

Being eager to see just what I had been missing in print quality, I quickly brought up my photo editing software and sent a few to the printer and printed them at the max resolution. I was pretty impressed. The photos were much nicer than the ones I was printing on my old 2400x1200 printer and the colors were great. The print speed was fairly quick, too. The photos were a little dark, but I didn't really expect any better from a 4 color printer. Besides, they were a lot better than what I was used to printing.

The first big print job I did was about 60 photos. That translates to two 4x6 prints per page for 30 pages. I usually print a lot of photos, and this kind of thing was no problem for my older printers. The Z65p misfed pages, didn't feed pages and jammed several times during this printing. Also the paper eject consistently spit the photo paper out with such force, that it completely missed the out tray and landed in the floor more often than not. Also having to stand right there with the printer to make sure the paper was feeding correctly was no fun either. As fast as it did print, it wasn't fast enough for a job that big. Once again, I figured that it was worth it to have such good print quality at such a low price.

I thought I was used to the Z65p's little quirks and could deal with them until a few days later it just quit in the middle of printing. It seemed there was some sort of non-communication error with the printer, and nothing I did seemed to resolve it. It wasn't static in the USB cable or anything immediately resolvable, so I turned it off and let it sit for awhile. Upon returning a few hours later, the printer seemed to function normally, but for the next few weeks continued to exhibit the mystery problem. I thought maybe it was just getting tired and needed a rest, but it finally died for good after only a month of use. I only printed about 150 photos that month because I had to let it rest so much between times. Since the duty cycle claims to be 1000 - 9999 pages a month, I hardly think I was over using it.

I returned the Z-65p to Office Depot where they were more than glad to exchange it for me, but having had such a trying time with it I thought I would give something else a shot. I realize that all the problems that I had could have been a fluke, but I just didn't want to waste my time with another problem child. I didn't even have it long enough to really get a good feel for how well the card reader worked, although I had to keep it disabled most of the time...it would crash the system if I didn't. After deciding to return it after it finally quit, I was unnerved by the lack of reviews I was able to find on this product. Another good reason to check around BEFORE a purchase. I returned it, bought an HP Photosmart 7150 for about 50 dollars more, and have lived happily ever after. My advice would be spend the extra money sooner and not later. It wasn't worth 50 dollars worth of headache to learn the hard way, in my opinion.

In summary, the Lexmark Z-65p is a very inexpensive way to step up to a photo quality printer. It is very possible that the problems I encountered were only due to a bad unit, and might not be indicative of the model. I can say that the print quality pales in comparison with the HP printers. The printer itself is very simple and easy to use, when it works. The software package included with the Z-65p is a good one, and the ink cartridges are readily available. Ink life is about average, although nowhere near as long as some of the other Lexmark products. Although the 4 color setup makes it hard to compare with a 6 color photo printer, it works well for all around print use due to the dedicated black ink cartridge.