Product Reviews

Epson has been conspicuous by its absence from the multifunction device (MFD) market recently. The company was among the first to launch a combined inkjet printer/scanner/copier in the late 1990s, but its original products had limited appeal. Since then, its principal inkjet competitors, Canon, HP and Lexmark, have made MFDs a more successful sector, so Epson has belatedly decided to rejoin the party.

Its first product in the new family is the Stylus CX3200, a fairly compact and attractive-looking device, which, like its competitors, combines an inkjet printer and flatbed scanner into a single unit. The main advantage of this is that it saves space, reduces desktop clutter and means you only have one device instead of two to plug into the power supply and your Mac's USB ports. The other benefit, which Epson is keen to emphasize, is that you get a low-cost colour-copying device thrown in to the bargain.

The CX3200 has a wide range of built-in photocopying functions, including such advanced features as the ability to resize the copy, adjust lightness/darkness, produce a border around a copy, make a mirror image copy and create multiple copies on a single sheet. All these are directly accessible from the control panel on the front of the device, so you don't even have to plug it into your Mac. The control panel is easy to use, and is far less daunting than on some MFDs.

Get set

Setting up the CX3200 to work with your Mac is pretty straightforward, particularly on Mac OS 8.6 or Mac OS 9. The installer places all the necessary files and support applications on your hard drive. Then you just plug it in and you're ready to go. Unfortunately, we were disappointed by the support for Mac OS X. We were pleased to see OS X-specific instructions in the guide, even though there's no unified installer as there is for Classic.

The trouble is that the OS X software provides only a basic level of functionality, and all the extras you get in the OS 9 version, such as optical

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character recognition software, a copying utility and ArcSoft's PhotoImpression image editing package, are not included. While some are far from elegant, most provide useful functionality. That OS X versions are not provided significantly reduces the CX3200's utility, and Epson should address this immediately.

Basic interface with the 600dpi scanner is via a very simple utility called Scan To File. Double-clicking it brings up a dialog, where you can choose a destination and name for your scans and select a file format (JPEG, PICT or TIFF). Then click on Next and the software does the rest. This uses the software's automated functions for cropping, setting image quality depending on whether the item being scanned is a photo or a document.

TWAIN peaks

The results are generally pretty impressive, and many users will not need any more functionality than this. But if you do, you can exit Auto mode, and enter the TWAIN driver. Here you have full access to the scanner's features, which are pretty advanced. You can set resolution, colour depth, descreening, unsharp mask and a host of advanced calibration features that you would normally only expect to see on a more expensive scanner. The TWAIN driver can also be accessed through any TWAIN-compliant imaging application such as Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.

Printing with the CX3200 is much like printing with any other Epson. Under OS X, you pull up the Print Settings section of the Print dialog, where you can select the media type and adjust the ink settings. There's also a colour management panel in the Print dialog.

Print speeds are acceptable for a home device - we managed to get just over five pages of plain text out in a minute, which, unsurprisingly, is nowhere near the quoted speed of 14 pages per minute (ppm). Print quality is also reasonable, although perhaps not as good as we've come to expect from Epson printers. Despite promises that the CX3200 uses its latest printing technology, such as 5760dpi print resolution and variable size droplet technology, we found that text was not as crisp as we'd have liked, and ink droplets were visible in photo output. These problems were not bad enough to rule out using this product at home, but you won't get the sort of results you would from a dedicated business or photo printer.

Epson's re-entry into this market is a reasonable, but not outstanding, attempt to regain some ground. The Stylus CX3200 is stylish and offers good value for money, but its print quality and substandard OS X support prevent it from being a truly excellent product.