Lexmark Genesis multifunction inkjet printer
Lexmark Genesis review: The Genesis is a Lexmark printer that has an excellent scanner but expensive ink
Pros
- Clean and easy scans for photos and documents, small footprint
Cons
- Slow printing speeds in Normal quality, loading paper is an ordeal, the upright scanner design is questionable, no automatic document feeder
Bottom Line
The Lexmark Genesis is a multifunction inkjet printer that seems to be more focused on scanning and Web applications than document printing. Its scan quality is good and the design is novel, but we don't like the paper input location and the mediocre print speeds of this Lexmark printer.
-
Price
$ 449.00 (AUD)
The Lexmark Genesis S815 is a multifunction inkjet printer that uses a camera sensor to scan images instead of the moving bar used in conventional flatbed scanners. It's great for scanning since it produces clean and detailed images, but this Lexmark printer doesn't stand out from its competitors like the HP Officejet Pro 8500A Plus in terms of printing speed or quality.
Don't know which printer to buy? Use our printer finder wizard to pick the right model.
Learn how to pick the best printer for your home or business with our printer buying guide.
Lexmark Genesis: Design and specifications
The Lexmark Genesis has an upright design with the scanning surface angled almost vertically. The scanner has a clip for temporarily attaching documents or photos.
The Lexmark Genesis has an upright tray that can hold 100 pages, but is quite hard to access due to its placement at the printer's rear. The printer is rated to print up to 3000 pages per month, making it appropriate for small business use. The Lexmark Genesis's upright scanner has a resolution equal to a 10-megapixel digital camera — our A4 test scans were reproduced at 2538x3498 pixels.
Lexmark Genesis: Print speed, print quality, scan quality and ink cost
According to Lexmark, the Genesis inkjet printer can produce up to 33 black and 30 colour pages per minute in Draft quality. Our 50 page test document took just under 90 seconds to print in monochrome — right on Lexmark's figure — and a 50 page colour print was produced in 1min 58sec, which is around 26 pages per minute. Draft quality documents are produced quickly but are undersaturated and have occasional banding.
Normal printing quality is significantly slower. We recorded times of 11 pages per minute for black and seven pages per minute for colour, which is slightly lower than Lexmark's claimed figures of 18 and 11. Normal quality document prints are clean and text is easily legible down to 6pt. You can also print in the Lexmark Genesis's Best quality mode at 4800x1200dpi for photos, with good detail levels at the cost of high ink usage and slow operation.
The upright scanner is this Lexmark printer's most notable feature. It uses a CMOS sensor like a digital camera. In our testing we found it produced excellent quality results with a range of content from photos to small text documents. We were able to enlarge a scanned movie ticket stub to near A4 size with no visible artefacting.
The Lexmark Genesis S815 uses Lexmark 100 ink cartridges, which can be purchased in standard or XL size. Standard size black and colour cartridges cost $25 and $16 respectively and yield 200 pages, so each tri-colour page is 24 cents and each black page is 12.5 cents. These prices are quite high, but buying extra large cartridges should drive printing prices down slightly.
Become a fan of PC World Australia on Facebook
Follow PC World Australia on Twitter: @PCWorldAu
Stay up to date with the latest news, reviews and features. Sign up to PC World’s newsletters
Brand Post
Most Popular Reviews
- 1 Dell U3223QE review: A winning debut for an IPS Black monitor
- 2 HP Spectre x360 16 review: The right 2-in-1 at the wrong time
- 3 Acer K242HYL review: An affordable monitor for any occasion
- 4 GeForce Now review: You bring the games, Nvidia streams the hardware
- 5 Asus ProArt PA279CV monitor review: The go-to for content creators on a budget
Latest News Articles
- HP to sponsor young Aussie with ocean-saving innovation
- Samsung launches new Galaxy A smartphones in Australia
- Samsung upgrade their Australian tablet range
- Dell launches its Rugged range
- Sony launches three new 4K HDR Home Cinema Projectors
Resources
Macworld
What's new, plus best mac-related tips
and tricks
Business Centre
The latest business news, reviews, features and whitepapers
Videos
Watch our video news and reviews from around the world
Guides
Comprehensive buying guides, features, and step-by-step articles
PCW Evaluation Team
Pedro Peixoto
Aruba Instant On AP11D
Set up is effortless.
Cate Bacon
Aruba Instant On AP11D
The strength of the Aruba Instant On AP11D is that the design and feature set support the modern, flexible, and mobile way of working.
Dr Prabigya Shiwakoti
Aruba Instant On AP11D
Aruba backs the AP11D up with a two-year warranty and 24/7 phone support.
Tom Pope
Dynabook Portégé X30L-G
Ultimately this laptop has achieved everything I would hope for in a laptop for work, while fitting that into a form factor and weight that is remarkable.
Tom Sellers
MSI P65
This smart laptop was enjoyable to use and great to work on – creating content was super simple.
Lolita Wang
MSI GT76
It really doesn’t get more “gaming laptop” than this.
Featured Content
- Which Lenovo Laptop Should I Buy?
- Every TV in Samsung's 2022 line-up: OLED, Neo QLED and more!
- Top 10 best Android and Apple phones for under $600
- Everything you need to know about Smart TVs
- What's the difference between an Intel Core i3, i5 and i7?
- Laser vs. inkjet printers: which is better?