News Headlines
- Mon, May 20
- Shadow Warrior announced, reimagining of 3D Realms' classic FPS from the Hard Reset developers
- Batman: Arkham Origins debut trailer adds Deadshot to the mix, odd Queen Industries reference
- PlayStation 4 teaser features a blurry black box, "See it First on 6/10/2013"
- The New Xbox: How would you improve Xbox LIVE?
- Sun, May 19
- Infinity Ward drops a Call of Duty: Ghosts teaser for next week's reveal at the next-gen Xbox event
New Articles
Related Articles
 |
Specifications:
- Microsoft Windows 95
- Microsoft Windows 98, 2nd Edition
- Apple Mac OS 8.6 or 9.x with USB Interface
- Microsoft Windows 2000 Server
- Microsoft Windows NT 4.00
- Windows Me
- Linux - Red Hat 7.0, SuSE 7.0, Mandrake 7.2 or higher
Installation and First Impressions:
The Z33 gives a good first impression. It is considerably larger then the Z22, and its clean and simple design is appealing to users that simply want quick plug and play functionality. And with the USB connection installation was a snap. Unfortunately, USB is also the ONLY port that the printer supports.
The Z33 has a custom installation program that installs the drivers, an ink monitor, and some other small utilities like a progress monitor. The drivers are 100% custom written for the Z13,Z23,Z33 series of printers and differs quite a bit from the drivers for the Z22.
Several things were immediately apparent to us when we first loaded up the Z33 and started to do some test prints: the Z33 is leaps and bounds ahead of the Z22 in terms of performance, in spite of a very small gap in price.
Surprisingly Budget Priced Performance
The Z33 wont be able to compete against inkjet printers in the $200 and up range, but for a printer that can be found for under $80, this printer rocks!
While text was still not crisp enough for professional use, quality wise, text printouts on plain paper were quite a bit improved over the Z22. Whats more impressive is the quality of colour printouts on plain paper. The Z33 still had some problems handling pure black backgrounds, but given the price class, it actually performed above our expectations. Colour graphs, charts, and even photos looked quite impressive on plain paper. We were especially impressed with the useability and vibrance of the colour charts we printed.
Printouts on specialty photo were clean and very impressive. Again, this sub-$80 printer seems to print several magnitudes better then the $50 Z22.
 |
Aside from the obvious speed of the printer, the quality is quite a bit higher then we were expecting. We arent afraid to admit that we were expecting similar results to the Z22 when we started this test, and we certainly got a lot more then we bargained for. And thats what this puppy is: a HUGE bargain. If you are looking for the perfect low cost colour inkjet for your home, this just might be the ticket you were hoping for. With fiercely competitive print speeds, print quality that puts it at the top of its class, and prices as low as $73 on the net, how can we not recommend it?
Find the Lowest Prices on the Net for the Lexmark Z33
Overall Score: 91%
- Comment on this article (4)
- check out our other Inkjet articles
- read more Lexmark Z33 Color Jetprinter reviews
- visit our Inkjet section
I purchased the Z33 recently and found that one of the programs which comes with the Lexmark printer drivers is a spyware called: LEXPPS.EXE
My firewall program "ZoneAlarm" warned me that LEXPPS.EXE was trying to access the internet. Now I did some checking on the Internet and it seems that this program appears on computers that have a Lexmark printer installed. I phoned the technical support of Lexmark but they denied that it was their program claiming instead that it was a windows program. I looked at the program with an hexadecimal editor and found the Lexmark name in the program.
I do not see why my printer would need to access the Internet. The only reason I can think of is that they are spying on their customers.
JG