Lexmark Genesis S815

Hardware

It makes quite an impression when you first see it. Here in editorial we've had "what's this new TV?", "looks like an Oyster top up point / cash machine / computer screen" or quite simply, "Hey! That's original." As you can see, the Genesis S815 looks like anything but a printer. The reason for this is it's standing up on its hind legs (and it has opposable thumbs)! Whether you like this design choice or not is a matter of taste. Its facade is glossy and quite a magnet for finger marks. Lexmark has designed it with a duster to hand on the inside so you can clean it up regularly. The large, intuitive touch screen means you can navigate your way around it no problem. Lexmark has cottoned on to the fact that users like to be able to use their printer without necessarily linking it up to a computer. Here, in the smartsolutions centre, you can import around sixty applications associated with various online services (Facebook, Twitter, Google Calendar, Sudoku and so on).


The wi-fi n connection gives you additional freedom and allows several users to share the printer. While the load space seems thin, it can in fact house 100 sheets. It comes with a set of four separate cartridges (black, cyan, magenta and yellow). The Lexmark-patented Vizix technolgoy promises bright colours and rapid drying times.




Speeds

Office document speeds are fine for home use: 9 pages per minute (ppm) colour and 14 ppm black & white. This is comparable to the Lexmark Pinacle Pro901 (5 stars), which is orientated towards the pro market.
As always double-sided mode slows things down. Black & white double-sided doubles your print times (6 ppm). Photo speeds are also comparable to the Lexmark Pinacle Pro901. 1 mn 15 seconds to print a colour A4 and 38 seconds for a 10 x 15 cm is the right side of average. The Epson PX820FWD, designed for photo prints, is hardly any faster: 1 mn 10 for A4 and 25 seconds for 10 X 15 cm.

Quality

For both photos and office documents we give the Genesis S815 a 5-star rating. The shading on graphs is detailed and nicely nuanced. The characters are clear and legible. The quality is quite simply there.

Although the photo quality does stand up well to photo specialist printers, there is a pronounced sharpness to the rendering. And its too much! Contours, particularly around faces, sometimes give a collage effect, such is the accentuation on lines. If you look at our Face-off, all other photos look blurred in comparison with the Genesis S815.
 
We've zoomed in on a small area for you below to illustrate the contour accentuation effect. The R3000 is an A3 photo printer, Epson's latest.

R3000 Epson	Lexmark  S815

Scanner and copier: new FlashScan system

The other particularity of this printer is its scanning technology: it doesn't use the traditional scan bar. Under the hood there's a veritable 10 Megapixel digital camera, a technology known here as FlashScan. It allows you to scan any document noiselessly in three seconds and you can send your scan straight to a memory card or an email address. Blue, red and then green lights flash onto the document in turn. It's like going clubbing. Take a look:


Lexmark is proud of the record times. Three seconds for a preview and four to convert it to 75 dpi and only four seconds for a 300 dpi. These are the fastest times we've seen. Other printers average at least twice this.
On a traditional scanner, a scan bar moves slowly under the glass to record the data line by line. FlashScan uses a totally different approach and a digital camera records the whole image at once.

The scanner quality left something to be desired however. It's a long way off what a good digital camera gives. There's a lack of precision (as so often with scanned documents). This is obvious in the photo above which looks slightly blurry beside the original.

Energy consumption & Noise levels

This printer consumes 5 watts on standby, 19 watts when printing. Some ink-jets go under 1 W on standby, so we feel more could have been done here.
Noise levels are low at 45 dB. Those who fall in love with the design will be able to keep it close by!




Cost per page

Although the printer itself is expensive, cost per page is under average: 6.7 pence/page with the XL cartridges.


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