Review: Epson Stylus SX400

Epson Stylus SX200 and SX400 were released a few months earlier sans fanfare. Both printers claimed to offer lab quality prints at a fast pace. The higher model SX400 came with a 2.5” LCD screen while the base model didn’t.

A review conducted by Doug Harman on SX400 approves the print quality and appreciates the price set. The print quality from the printer was termed excellent with good colour and detail, despite the technology not utilizing light cyan and light magenta inks which is mandatory for other photo printers.

Scanning quality was found to be excellent as well. Epson Easy Photo Fix package could fix colours on faded photos hassle-free. Another packaged application, PhotoEnhance produces refined skin tones on images, and also reduce dust and dirt on a scan.

Epson’s claims of printing 34ppm for both grayscale and colour were found to be false; the part that dazzles me is the most is the difference between the claimed and actual speed.

Sure, in fast economy mode a single page of text takes about 15-seconds to print a very grey sheet of text, in normal mode, that rises to 24-seconds and the print quality is more than adequate, though text is slightly fluffy. In high quality (photo) mode, it takes 59-seconds to print a page but text quality is excellent. And so, for ten sheets of A4 text and graphics the SX400 takes around 3 minutes and 45 seconds in normal mode.

Yet, with the misappropriation in the speeds, the printer with its excellent print quality coupled with an economical price of £120 is a good bet. The reviewer feels that at £30 cheaper without a LCD screen, the SX200 would be a better choice over SX400.