Lexmark - Z605 (ITreviews)

This is unusual. The Lexmark Z605 is a talking printer that uses its drivers and the speaker of your PC to tell you what the printer is doing in a 'You've got mail' kind of way.

Mind you there are no other indicators to give you a clue, and the only button on the printer is for power. Without those speaking drivers you'd be completely in the dark if there was a paper jam, or if the Z605 ran out of paper or ink.

While we're being nice to Lexmark, we may as well say that the drivers are well laid out and have menus to help you carry out specific tasks. By contrast most drivers assume that you know what you're doing when you change, say, saturation or contrast. The writers of those drivers are probably a little optimistic; while the Lexmark driver writers are probably closer to the mark.

This helpful approach from Lexmark includes cradles for the ink cartridges that are colour coded to make sure that you get the cartridges the right way round. In short, this is a printer that you might consider giving to your mum, if she hasn't already found one bundled with her new PC, that is.

The strength of this printer is its monochrome printing, and text looks good and clear. Colour printing, on the other hand, is unimpressive with images that were vague and unsatisfactory. To make matters worse, the three page per minute rating really hurt in these tests, and our A4 photo took nearly half an hour to print.

The Lexmark Z605 would be fine for dashing off the occasional letter, but the Canon i320 would do more for the same price.