A little bit of yourself in this section. There are 3 three text graphics associated to this section; Subscribe me, Advertisements and About Me. I hope either one will suit your need. 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 glow 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 slide 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, remarkably 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, integrated on top. The machine also features a two-slot memory card reader and the now usual PictBridge socket.
At the rear 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 process 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 around 7 ppm when printing our 15 -page document , which is OK , but not great . What is more extraordinary is the colour print speed, which was nearly as quick at6ppm .
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 produced a very acceptable photo in just 21 seconds. This is the fastest photo print we have seen from an all-in-one printer in a long time.
If it had been a rubbish print, we wouldn’t have been as stunned, but it showed astounding levels of detail, strong natural skin tones and no detectable blemishes we could spot . The otherphotos in our tests are similarly good.
Printing on plain paper is fair , However black text shows a slight jaggedness to the characters and text looked a little off colour rather than jet black. Colours on plain paper were by and large good .
The machine takes six epson ink cartridges, with light cyan and light magenta accompanying 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 aconvenient control touch panel . There are one or two hitches, including wireless installation and the level of racket the machine makes, but neither are enough to deny it being a great printer.
