Lexmark's z605 Colour Jetprinter is the smallest units in our roundup of budget printers, measuring 13.4 x 40.3 x 21.55cm and weighing in at an extremely portable 1.77kg, nearly 250gm lighter than the next heaviest unit. As such, it'd make a good portable unit if you were on a constricted budget, although naturally there are even smaller alternatives. The z605 is finished out in grey and black tones, giving it a more serious, business-like finish -- or, depending on your viewpoint, a rather dull and pedestrian one.
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Lexmark's printer driver was arguably the easiest to use for novice printer users in our test group, as it encompasses easily guiding users through printing onto multiple media types and with specific applications (text, photo printing and so on). Like every printer in our test group except the Epson, a USB cable isn't supplied, so you'll need to factor that into the total cost of the z605.
The z605's printing performance saw it place third in our printing tests, still well ahead of the very slow Epson unit, but behind the speedy Canon and HP units. Print quality for text pages came in at the bottom of the pile, albeit in a very close race indeed. Text pages had a slight tendency towards smudged text, and our test photo looked rather ordinary. The Epson printer was admittedly even slower at photo printing, but at least there was a good quality result at the end of our wait with that unit.
The z605 has a unique approach to printer consumables within this price range. While every other vendor sells a single black and single tricolour cartridge, Lexmark offers both in two varieties, for users seeking moderate or high yeild printing results. The black cartridge will set you back around AU$33 for the moderate version (205 page) or around AU$47 for the high yeild variant (410 pages). That works out to around 16.1c/page or 11.4c/page respectively for black text, using Lexmark's own yeild figures. Colour cartridges cost around AU$36 for moderate and AU$51 for high yeild units, with page yeilds of 140 and 260 pages respectively. That works out to around 25.7c and 19.6c per page depending on cartridge type. Even with the high yeild cartridges, though, the z605 is still the most expensive printer to run in our comparative feature.
Ultimately the Lexmark z605 doesn't really stand up all that well against any of the given printers we've reviewed here, except in that it's smaller and lighter than most of them, making it only recommendable if you're looking to do a small amount of printing with a unit that may move around quite a bit.
Lexmark z605
Company: Lexmark
Price: AU$99
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 1300 362 192
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A Canon wins and the ads on the site are for Epson? Ya gotta love that.