Labs

Epson's entry-level multi-function printer is adorned with the bare minimum of controls, featuring just a handful of buttons to enable you to carry out basic copying functions. And, unlike the majority of the devices in this group, it produced copies that looked almost as good as its prints, with accurate colours, no banding, and sharp text reproduction.

We were also impressed by the DX4400's scanner, which was easy to use thanks to Epson's excellent scanning control interface. Our pages came in sharp and clear, with bright, accurate colours across the spectrum.

However,

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with a maximum optical resolution of only 600x1200dpi, the DX4400 isn't worth buying purely for its scanner. Sadly, it's not really worth buying for any of its other features, either. The DX4400 was incredibly slow to print at all settings above draft quality, a problem which also affected its copy speed, while copy quality was similarly uninspiring. Overall, it was the slowest printer in the group. Our ten draft text pages emerged in a quick 44 seconds, but were pale, jagged, and virtually unreadable. Higher-quality text wasn't perfect, but only suffered from a slight fuzziness, and we were pleased with the accurate colouring of our mixed text prints of presentations and magazine pages.

Unfortunately, ten colour pages took almost a quarter of an hour to emerge, and even plain mono text took over 30 seconds per page. Photos were slowest of all, with over half an hour to wait for six pictures. They looked fairly sharp, but suffered from dull, flat colour.

Print costs are also high, at 8.3p for a page of mixed colour and mono printing. This machine is by far the weakest in the group, and easily outclassed by Lexmark's X2550, which costs £11 less.