Epson’s PX800FW under the spotlight

Photo printers and all-in-ones are usually separate machines, but not with this latest offering from Epson.

The Epson PX800FW all-in-one machine has a low profile black exterior and a wide touch panel, which hinges out for control.

You can load documents for scanning of up to 30 sheets. The long, wide control panel ratchets up to show at a variety of angles. At its centre is an 89mm LCD display surrounded by some touch buttons which illuminate orange, as required. There are only two tangible buttons, for power and the CD tray. Rather than having a separate CD holder you have to locate and slip into the front of the printer, the Stylus Photo PX800FW has a slim grey tray that slides out when you press the CD tray button.

The paper tray, unusually for Epson, slides out from the front, underneath the control panel, and takes up to 120 sheets of very thin paper and up to 20 sheets of glossy photo paper in a separate tray, incorporated on top. The machine also features a two-slot memory card reader and the now usual PictBridge socket.

At the back are sockets for USB and Ethernet, plus a socket for phone line and handset, fax is built in as well.

WiFi connection is also provided , but the set up procedure does seem arduous .

Software wise Epson provide the usual discs, including utilities for CD/DVD printing and printing from the Web. Also supplied is a copy of Abbyy Finereader Sprint for OCR.

Epson as usual quote print speeds in draft mode, which most of us will never use due to it being poor for all but basic use. We found the machine produced a black text print speed of about 7.5 ppm when printing our20 -page file , which is OK , but not that impressive . What is moreimpressive is the colour print speed, which is almost as quick at6 pages per minute .

But the best performance of all is the speed at which the machine can produce a 15 x 10cm photo print. By plugging in SD card in the front , we made a very acceptable photo in just 20 seconds. This is the quickest photo print we have seen from an all-in-one printer in a long time.

If it had been a wish-wash print, we wouldn’t have been as astonished, but it showed remarkable levels of detail, strong natural skin tones and no noticeable imperfections we could spot . The otherphotos in our tests produced similar results .

Printing on plain paper is reasonable , However black text shows a slight roughness to the characters and text looked a little off colour rather than jet black. Colours on plain paper are by and large good .

The machine takes six epson ink cartridges, with light cyan and light magenta added to the normal cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Ink cartridges are numbered T0801, T0802, T0803, T0804, T0805 & T0806.

Verdict

A great looking and efficient photo all-in-one, with the extra facilities of dual-paper feed, CD/DVD printing and a handy touch-panel for control . There are one or two hitches, including wireless installation and the level of noise the machine makes, but neither are enough to deny it being a great printer.

Epson’s PX800FW under the spotlight

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