The Lexmark Z815 high-performance inkjet printer produces outstanding colour photos and documents. It is the perfect choice for printing your prized photos and valuable documents.

The Z815 is aimed at those who want to move up from their budget printer to something that can handle good-quality photos as well as normal text documents. Like its competitors, Lexmark is also getting better at design and the Z815 is nicely sculpted without being bulky. The colour scheme is designed to blend in with current trends in PC design.

In action, its text quality was good but nothing to write home about. In normal mode, the text was blurred, but perfectly readable even at small sizes. In the higher-quality mode, which is slower and uses more ink, the text was clearer but still only around average quality. Photos were good, however, and even on plain paper were clear, bright and colourful.

It was on coated (glossy) photo paper, that the printer really started to perform well. The pictures came out sharp, with good levels of detail and much higher contrast than on the plain paper. Although on some of the pictures it is possible to see the dots made by the printer, this was only really noticeable close up.

The printer is easy to set up, with a simple step-by-step poster inside the box providing clear instructions, and the included CD contains the driver software, which is also easy to set up and get to grips with.

The only real gripe is its speed. Plain text came out at eight pages per minute, while the full-page photo took over five minutes to print.

Lexmark Z815, Colour, 2400 x 1200 DPI, 12 ppm