Entered CNET Catalog: 09/09/2004
SKU: P915
Manufacturer: Lexmark International Inc.
Manufacturer description
The Lexmark P915 is the perfect printer designed for ease of use. Upload your photos using your memory card then simply view and print your favorite photos using the animated color LCD screen. You can even use the Lexmark Photo Software to enhance your photos at the simple click of a button. Perfect for all your home printing needs.Product summary
The good: Inexpensive; large, clear LCD preview; fast text printing; nice software bundle.
The bad: Long dry time results in frequent ink smudging; flimsy components; generally poor print quality.
The bottom line: The P915 is a viable general-use home printer, but it lacks the features and the quality that photo enthusiasts or presentation creators need.
Average user rating: from 5 users
1.5 stars
Editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 04/13/2005
The front-panel LCD screen is large and bright, enabling you to easily see a preview of your prints and the printer status information. It also provides a graphical representation of the ink levels in the two combo cartridges--you pair either a black or photo cartridge (light CMK) with a standard CMY cartridge--and the type of cartridge in the printer.
The P915 supports a wide variety of paper, envelope, and card sizes, and the printer lives up to its borderless-printing-media claims, with output ranging from the small Hagaki format (3.9x5.8) to full 8.5x11-inch sheets. As images are printing, the Lexmark displays a countdown timer on the LCD, but the company's team must have learned information display from early Microsoft programmers because the timer fluctuates up and down on each refresh, making it an almost worthless estimate.
The included support software is simple and easy to use. When you insert a media card, a pop-up dialog asks if you would like to save the images to your computer or select images to print. Lexmark's Fast Pics image software lets you select the photos you'd like to print, the number of prints, and the output size, though you're limited to 4x6, 5x7, and 8x10-inch sizes. You can also use the Print Center utility to output various layouts of multiple prints on pages up to 8.5x11 inches; this is useful for scrapbooks, photo frame collages, and contact sheets. The driver software has a friendly voice that tells you when printing has started and stopped, but if you print a lot, you'll probably want to turn it off. From a distance, text looks OK, but closer up, you can see the results of poor control over ink droplets and printhead alignment; jaggies and ink spray are the predominant problems. Furthermore, the slow-drying ink wicks along the grain of plain paper and, as mentioned earlier, tends to smudge. Photos printed from the Lexmark P915 will smudge easily if touched within a few minutes of printing, so you will have to be sure to avoid contact with the print surface and not allow multiple prints to stack up on the paper-exit tray. On our graphics test, the driver exhibited some odd behavior, printing black text and graphics with both process black and CMY composite ink when using the standard color and black cartridges (usually, it's one or the other). As a result, these items have a slight magenta halo, not to mention the huge waste of ink. Furthermore, we saw both printhead and color banding on the coated paper. A typical text page should run you about 4.2 cents in ink costs; an 8x10 photo uses approximately 24 cents' worth of ink.
The P915's photos lack the dynamic range of other six-ink printers, producing muddy shadow areas and oddly intense flesh tones. We also spotted several pizza-wheel-type tracks from the feed mechanism running down the length of the page.
The prints may not be very good, but they come out relatively quickly. Though its photo-print speed is fairly average for its class, the P915's text-printing speed is quite zippy for a photo printer.
CNET Labs inkjet printer perfomance
Measured in pages per minute (longer bars indicate better performance)
Measured in pages per minute (longer bars indicate better performance)
 |
Photo speed | |
Text speed |
Canon iP4000
0.6
6.7
Epson Stylus R320
0.3
1.9
Lexmark P915
0.2
6.4
HP Photosmart 7960
0.2
4.6
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3 4 5 User Rating:
1.5 stars
out of 5 user reviews
I would not recommend it.
Pros: well, it's cheap. at least I hope it was.
Cons: poor print quality, uses ink quickly, flimsy material, I could go on.
Review: I received this as a gift, my in-laws thought they'd buy me a nice photo printer since we had a new baby in the house. Great, I thought, I can print some of the best photos of us and her instantly instead of having to order prints. Um... no. Every time I print photos with this thing, it puts weird black marks on the pictures, but mostly on people's faces and other parts where skin is showing. How does it know where skin is, you ask? I wish I knew. I could print a picture of an object, and while it would still not be great, and the color would be off, it woudln't have the marks. Print any photo with people in it? Black marks on their skin. ***? I fiddled with setting, tried getting new ink cartridges, nothing helped. Speaking of ink cartridges, these things seem to suck them dry after not much printing. AND I tried to save money by buying brands of ink that aren't Lexmark, and it won't recognize they're in there. It will let me print, sure... and will use the ink from them... but the screen on the machine continues to warn me that I'm out of ink. Uh, no I'm not, but whatever. And it sucks the paper in crooked almost every time so things are not printed nicely and if it's something I need to look decent, of course I have to print it a few times to try to get it right, and guiding the paper in correctly with my hands is the only way to be sure of that. The paper guide pieces are flimsy, they fall off freqently, one piece broke off when there wasn't even any pressure being put on it, etc. Hmm, what else... it's slow, noisy, and sometimes when I tell it to print it will just sit there. The screen comes on and off at random times for no apparent reason. I'm sure there's more but I'll stop there. I guess you could say I really don't like this thing! I'm looking for a new one, obviously. I only print from this one now if I need directions or something else that can look sloppy and it won't matter.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 5 user reviews
it is crap, It is really crap
Pros: free, no other pros
Cons: expensive operating costs, junk, paper feed is horrible, always jams
Review: do not buy, do not buy. Please give it to someone you don't like.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 5 user reviews
Don't Buy Lexmark
Pros: Packaged nicely in the box
Cons: Prints like CRAP
Review: I would never recommend this printer to anyone interested in a printer that prints photos. I wouldn't even recommend it for black and white pages either.
User Rating:
3.5 stars
out of 5 user reviews
DECENT QUALITY FOR THE PRICE-NO PROBLEMS HERE!
Pros: CHEAP PRICE,EASY MENU OPERATION,LIGHT, COMPACT,PRETTY GOOD PHOTO QUALITY
Cons: NOT FOR PROFESSIONALS, FRAGILE DESIGN
Review: I BOUGHT THIS FOR $80.00 AT WALMART. IT IS A GREAT DEAL. I PRINTED NUMEROUS PHOTOS, AND HAD NO PROBLEMS. I GOT GREAT QUALITY PHOTOS, UNLIKE THE OTHER REVIEWER. BEAR IN MIND--- THE PHOTO IS ONLY AS GOOD AS THE QUALITY AND SETTINGS OF THE CAMERA TAKING THEM, AND THE QUALITY OF THE PHOTO PAPER!! ALSO, IF YOU USE A COMPUTER TO PRINT PICS, YOU HAVE TO BE CAREFUL OF THOSE SETTINGS,TOO!! FOR THE PRICE AND DECENT QUALITY OF PICS,....I SAY BUY,BUY,BUY!!!
User Rating:
1.5 stars
out of 5 user reviews
Returning mine right now
Pros: cheap andlight enough to carry under one arm
Cons: never was able to print one decent picture
Review: Bought this to replace a Lexmark 710 because of the supposed photo quality and the memory card input. It never operated correctly on my cheapo emachine using XP with a gig of memory. I will return it and try the HP that costs about the same.
