Lexmark has more consumer inkjet printers and all-in-ones than probably any other printer manufacturer. The Z1520 is at the higher end of the company's single-function printer range and includes wireless connection and duplex printing in its feature set.

Styled in white, silver, grey and black, it continues the blocky, functional look of recent Lexmark launches. A smoked, black plastic paper support folds up from the rear of the machine to take up to 100 sheets of paper and a grey telescopic output tray slides out from the front. To the right of the output tray are two memory card slots, which between them take most card types, together with a PictBridge socket for directly connecting a camera.

At the back is a wireless aerial, so you can connect the printer to any WiFi network, though you have to briefly connect it using the supplied USB cable first, while setting up. Installation of the printer via either connection is simple enough and Lexmark's supporting software is well-featured and logically laid out. The printer takes twin ink cartridges which clip in under the top cover to complete the installation process.

Print speeds are unimpressive, with a five-page text document taking 64 seconds via USB and 58 seconds via WiFi - it's unusual for the wireless link to be faster. The five-page text and graphics test took two and three-quarter and two and a half minutes, respectively. Printing from a PictBridge camera is particularly slow, taking nearly a minute longer than printing the same image from a PC.

The only area where print speeds are relatively good is in duplex print, where both sides of the paper are printed in a single run. Though our 20-page test print took just under five minutes, this is still faster than similar machines from Canon, for example.

Print quality suffers from the kind of text feathering that Lexmark printers have often been criticised for. The ink bleeds into the fibres of the paper, giving a slightly fuzzy appearance to the page. Colour print is better, with good vibrant tones and plenty of detail, though not so much in dark areas of photo prints. We also noticed some scrub marks from the feed rollers on photo prints.

Print costs work out at 3.7p and 8.7p for ISO black and colour pages, respectively. These are reasonable figures, though they're derived from the high-capacity ink cartridges which are about £15 each.

Lexmark's printers always look good on their spec sheets and the Z1520, with its WiFi and duplex facilities, looks better than most. It's the core print quality that lets the machine down, though, and continues to compare unfavourably with its main rivals. It doesn't give bad print, but it's not as good as the others.