Epson SX405 : Good little all-in-one (Epson Stylus SX405)

Member Name: tor0908

Product:	Epson Stylus SX405
Date:	03/09/09 (405 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fast printing, only four ink cartridges, wireless printing, compact size

Disadvantages: No direct CD printing, wireless sometimes hit and miss, loud printing

I've always quite liked the idea of a wireless printer that everyone in the household can use to print their various documents, so when I saw an offer at PC World for the Epson Stylus SX405 (Wifi Version) on offer for £69.99 and free delivery I decided to take the plunge.

I already had an all-in-one printer/copier/scanner - the Stylus RX640 - but it was quite bulky and space on my desk was limited, so the smaller dimensions of the SX405 appealed to me.

First off, it doesn't actually have inbuilt WiFi; the printer comes with an Edimax print server which you plug in to the USB cable to enable wireless printing. It's quite a small print server but requires it's own power supply which I think is a bit of a disadvantage if you have limited plug space and/or want to cut down on the cables that end up being thrown behind your desk.

The instructions to set it up are fairly clear and concise but it did take me some time as you need to plug the print server into your wireless router and your computer; and since my computer is upstairs and the router is plugged in downstairs you can see the problem.

After much cursing and sweating and extending cables and things the print server was set up correctly. I don't think you need any special knowledge of print servers or IP addresses to do this, although you can have a more complicated set up involving assigning IP addresses if you want to.

The wireless facility seems to be a bit hit and miss though. Sometimes you can put the printer on and send a document through to print but you just get a 'printer is not ready to print, please check your connections and ensure that the printer is on' error. Other times the document will start to print but suddenly stop because the print server has gone dead. I find this incredibly frustrating when printing a large text document, as you have to cancel the print job, reboot the print server and print the document again. It does work, but not smoothly by any means. However, given the price of the printer I don't want to complain too much as I can always go back to connecting it to my PC via USB cable if it gives me too much trouble.

The printer itself is a nice shiny black colour and is quite compact. You can scan or copy documents up to A4 size which is useful, and unlike my previous printer you only need four ink cartridges which really cuts down on cost.

A slight downside is that the ink doesn't appear to last very long, I printed out two copies of my sister's university assignment and was completely cleaned out of ink. I noticed that you can buy high capacity black cartridges for this printer though, and the cartridge that was in did come with the printer so I'm thinking they didn't have a huge capacity to start with.

The printing speed is really good, much faster than my RX640. It is quite loud though, and at one point I thought I was going to get a document jam because it sounds like it is ripping the paper through the printer. Unless you are using the printer to print lots and lots and lots of documents this isn't too much of a problem.

The print quality is excellent and I have printed out a couple of photos that I scanned in and I don't think you can tell the difference between this one and professionally printed pictures to be honest.

Other features of this printer are memory card slots for direct printing and picture bridge compatibility. I haven't tried either of these though, as I tend to use photoshop to edit my images before printing them. This model doesn't have direct to CD printing either, which is a bit of a shame as I found that quite useful on other printers and all-in-ones that I have used in the past.

Despite the little annoying problems with the wireless print server I think this is a decent printer/copier/scanner and for the price I would recommend it for anyone with more than one computer in the house.

Summary: Good printer, decent price