Product Reviews

This new entry to Epson's Stylus range of inkjet printers is firmly pitched at home users, particularly those with conservative amounts of space available for peripherals. The SX400 is an all-in-one inkjet printer, scanner and copier that shares most of the features of the earlier SX200, adding an LCD screen to improve its capabilities as a standalone photo printer.

While it can't be properly termed petite, Epson has done its best to minimise the footprint by narrowing the lower part of the case. In keeping with this, the built-in paper feeder and tray collapse in an accordion-like fashion and fold back into the printer when it's not being used. They don't have the rigidity of fixed or detachable trays, but they're sturdy enough not to diminish the overall build quality. On the top, the control panel and the scanner's lid are a slick black with a gloss finish that inevitably attracts fingerprints.

The control panel includes a bright 6.3cm screen that pops up, so you don't have to lean over the printer to use the onscreen menus, which use a combination of graphics and textual prompts. In conjunction with a logical arrangement of buttons, we found them easy to use.

There are two memory card reader slots lower down on the front side. The scanner bed sticks out from the base of the unit, so you may find yourself leaning down to see the ports. They accept the major memory card formats, including large capacity variants such as SDHC that are increasingly common, along with PictBridge support. The readers allow use as a standalone photo printer, with basic features like cropping and the ability to print index sheets for reference.

Four separate cartridges provide cyan, magenta, yellow and black inks with Epson's DuraBrite Ultra system, and they can be purchased individually or as

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a complete pack, providing flexibility when printing a large batch of photos with dominant colours or large volumes of monochrome documents. As Epson indicated, we found the first set of cartridges ran down quickly - replacement, full capacity cartridges have a longer lifespan, so buyers should factor this into the initial cost as it only takes a few dozen best quality photos to drain the cartridges.

Printing a 6 x 4in photo at best quality took several minutes and, with the driver's vivid printing option enabled, the results lived up to the name. Some colours were oversaturated - comfortably so - to provide a rich look with a minor impact on details such as creases in material, but home users printing bright family and holiday snaps will be pleased with the results. More ambitious photography enthusiasts may be disappointed with the results on subtly lit images, though turning off the quick print mode reduces oversaturation but roughly doubles printing time.

Epson claims that the SX400 will print up to 34ppm, but at the fastest speed we got was 15ppm of black-and-white text. The faintness of the text certainly matched expectations for a draft-quality setting. Text was darker and more defined at the normal and best-quality settings, though the latter will rarely find use due to taking over a minute to print a page. The default setting was an acceptable compromise, with crisp enough text at just over 15ppm.

The device's copy function produces one or more copies of a single page independently of a computer. The original's detail was retained, though it also picked up texture from the original paper on its default settings. The same was true when hooked up to a Mac and used as a scanner up to 1200ppi. Tweaking the software settings will work around this, but it presents a learning curve before you'll be entirely accustomed and able to get best results from these features.

While printing isn't as fast as expected, we were happy with text on the default settings, and the colour in casual photos is pleasing. Issues of oversaturation on photos along with darkened scans and copies can be overcome by tweaking settings. This is inevitably quicker when printing photos from the Desktop, in which case the cheaper SX200 may suffice - it'll save you £40 through its omission of an LCD screen, though this is at the expense of convenience when using the copier function.