Epson Stylus CX6400 All-in-One Multifunction

• Color printing, copying, and scanning
• Up to 22 ppm print speed, up to 16 copies per minute
• Up to 1,200 x 2,400 dpi optical scan resolution, 48-bit color
• Slots for digital-camera memory cards
• USB 2.0 interface; PC and Mac compatible

I was looking for a color printer, as I only had a b/w laser printer. Since I have owned digital cameras since 1999, it was time to get a photo quality printer.

Performed exhaustive reseasrch. Conclusion 1 device must have separate ink cartridges to conserve ink and expenses. That ruled out anything by HP.

I really wanted an awesome photo printer to go with my Canon S400 Elph (4 megapixel) camera. There are dozens of great photo printers with separate ink cartridges. I was able to narrow my finalists to Canon and Epson.

I loved the Epson R300M, because it had a 6-ink system, and it could print directly on white CD-R discs with it''s special tray. It also had phenomenal quality. Canon had a couple that competed nicely in quality and price, but in the end, the Epson had a slight edge.

Knowing I could get a great photo printer a a reasonable cost, I started looking for other nice features to narrow the field. The Epson R300M delivered awesome quality photo prints at the showroom, and it could print on printable CD/DVD media. Way cool. The 6-ink system was primo. You could also save $50 by getting the R300, which just doesn''t have the color LCD screen (which I really don''t need). The 300M was completely out of stock everywhere, and the 300 was in short supply.

I liked the idea of a multifunction device (MFD), so I could get rid of my UMAX scanner and replace it with something that could print and scan. Having a copier was also a huge plus in an MFD. I have a fax machine, so I don''t need the device to do this, and I don''t need an automatic document feeder for multiple pages. I don''t scan multi-page documents.

Conclusion 2 The device must have a flatbed scanner, not a sheet-fed scanner. I wanted to be able to scan unusual documents, such as paper that was not square on the edges (kid''s artwork, etc.). A sheet-fed scanner also has trouble with different thicknesses. Some jam when feeding a thin magazine sheet, and others jam when the paper is too thick, like a post card.

The pool of candidates was manageable now. I read reviews in PC Magazine and PC World, as well as reviews on websites, and the manufacturer specs for each model.

The Epson CX6400 looked to be at the head of the pack. It was a 4-ink system (not 6), but the DuraBright inks were getting good reviews. I bought it, and stayed up until 1am playing with my new toy. On premium glossy paper, the prints were very good. However, they had a matte, or maybe a semi-gloss cast to them, event on the best glossy paper. Other printers delivered a glossier photo-processing feel to them. I could live with that for the price and features it had. The 6-ink system was not in the cards for me if I wanted a MFD flatbed device.

The next morning, while reading the Sunday paper, I saw an ad for a brand new MFD by Epson. It was the RX500. Here''s the bottom line. It has the same 6-ink system as the R300/M, and it is a flatbed MFD. Nirvana!

I exchanged the units the next morning. Wow! The printouts are just like a photo lab with my 4 megapixel shots. Even my older 2 megapixel shots looked great.

You can do almost everything on the device without a computer, as it has card slots for almost every media type. When you print from the computer, the software lets you tweak the quality even higher.

Liked the Epson CX6400. Love the RX500. The RX500 is the best of both worlds. For $50 more, get the RX500.

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For those who can''t afford the table space for separate machines for scanning, copying, and printing, this item is a very good solution, if not perhaps quite as small as a pin-head. Though considerably larger than a standard ink-jet printer, it''s still small enough to fit on most computer tables, and considerably smaller than what three separate machines would occupy.

The assembly and installation instructions were adequate to the task, much better than most instruction books that are poor translations of Japanese or Chinese. Assembly itself took about five minutes, consisting of mounting a couple of page guides/holders, removing some shipping tape, and installing the ink cartridges. The included software installation went without any hitches on my XP machine, and the operating system recognized the new USB device as soon as it was plugged in (NOTE: don''t plug in the USB cable till told to do so in the installation instructions). Having the printer connected via USB is quite an advantage no big bulky cable, and transfer speeds are much higher, significant when dealing large high resolution scanned images.

Of course, the real test is making it do some useful work! My first test was a five page Word document with embedded italics, super and sub-scripts. This printed in about thirty seconds, about 5 seconds of which was the XP operating system setting up to send the document. Print quality was excellent using the default printer settings, barely distinguishable from a laser printer output.

Next up was scanning in a glossy 3x5 photograph. At the default settings, this scanned in as a 1440 x 1000 pixel JPEG image (about 300dpi). Looking at the resulting file with Olympus Camedia software at 400% image size, some small graininess can be detected, and there were some small spots that were apparently dust specs picked up by the scanner so a must is keeping the scanner bed and the item to be scanned absolutely clean. Taking this same image without alteration and printing it back out on CX6400 using high quality glossy paper and printer default settings, and comparing to the original, some slight loss of definition and brightness was noticed, but there was no banding, blotching, or significant color alteration. Using this same photo, scanned in using higher resolution, ''fixed'' using the supplied software, and printed at the printer''s best settings produced a print almost indistinguishable from the original, though it did take a significant amount of time to print at these settings, about six minutes.

Copying text pages produced good copies, but it took an inordinate amount of time to start printing, over six minutes with image enhancement turned on, and about two minutes with it turned off, set for text, black and white only. The provided software control panel for this looks very much like a standard office copier display, so finding your way around the various options is pretty easy. The supplied OCR software (ABBYY Fine Reader 5.0 Sprint Plus) worked very well on a standard text page, but it did eliminate the spacing between paragraphs.

The provided image enhancement software is fairly basic. If you need to do serious work with photos, I''d recommend using Adobe Photoshop rather than this, but if most of your work is cropping, eliminating red-eye, hue/saturation/contrast adjustments, this software will be quite adequate.

I have not tried the memory card reader functions, as my camera automatically interfaces to my computer as a USB drive. For those who need such a reader, though, the CX6400 provides interface ports for just about all types of memory cards.

Price wise, this machine is quite competitive with other multi-function printers on the market. It''s best feature is its high resolution for scanning and printing photos, which few other machines match, and it works quite well as an everyday text printer.

--Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)

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The quality of printing is quite good at least I didn''t have any problem. The delay before it starts to print is a few seconds but I can live with it. It has four separate cartridges (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) and it''s supposed to help to preserve the ink. I thought that my old HP laser color printer with one cartridge has actually lasted a little longer. This printer has interface for all major memory cards and allows to print directly from them without PC involved which could come very handy. The buttons and menus on the printer itself could be more straightforward though. I was very impressed with the software that comes with this device. It really does a great job of self diagnostic and eliminating a problem. I had one of cartridges dirty (I didn''t know about this at the time). The software not only found the problem but also cleaned the head. All this without me even opening the cover. All in all, it''s a very good printer and copier for the price with the bonus of having a mediocre scanner but even this is quite adequate for my moderate scanning needs.

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This is an excellent piece of equipment. The 6400 is everything you will want for quality, dependability, and all around perfection in an all-in-one. I researched many different items, and found this to be the best of all. After looking at, researching, reviewing, and testing many different models, brands, and manufacturers, the CX6400 was the top of them all. As far as the review on the RX500 all I can say is this too is a good unit, but leans more to printing your pictures from your digital cam. For all around, every need, use.....the 6400 definitly outshines the RX500. In addition, when we all are aware of the costs of cartridges now days, they are all quite costly when it comes to the more quality machines. When you are focusing on that, you need to keep in mind, the more cartridges you have, the more cartridges you will need to replace. The CX6400 does have four cartridges and that is enough. The print quality is superb. The clarity and crispness of the copy is excellent. I needed to take a copy of the label off of the box that the machine was packaged in, so I could submit the $60.00 rebate. When the copy was coming out, it looked so close to the real thing, I at first thought the original cardboard had somehow been pushed out. It was so real, and perfect looking, you couldn''t tell the difference from the real thing. You will definitly be pleased if you pick this item. You will not be sorry, or wish you had gotten something else. In fact, once you get it home and use it, you will find you stop looking for anything else, or wanting to possibly see if there is something else out there. That is unless you are wanting to use it only for pictures and in that case, save the time and focus on buying a unit that specializes only in that.

The scanner is a flatbed, that not only lifts up, but the lid will actually lift off. If you have an oversized item, or awkward piece, to copy or scan, this is a wonderful plus.

There are three (3) card slots that will accomodate any digital camera you may have.

The front receiving tray is designed nicely, so your copy will come directly out to you, from the paper loading dock in the rear. I love the fact that it is a stationary unit and does not have the top that glides from side to side, to operate.

The ability to make changes on the cartridges is very easy with the lift top that opens wide enough that you are not subjected to a small, dark area to try and replace them. A simple flip out and slip in and you are ready to go.

The paper tray holds plenty of pper and has an easy drop in tray. The envelopes fit in nicely and print out perfect each time.

Set up is easy and a snap. Plug your cable in follow a few simple instructions, and you''re ready to go. The light up touch keys, and the lcd are easy to read and perfectly located on the front of the unit. Right where they should be when you are using a piece of equipment.

Buy it! You will be glad you did.

Pros

Speed, features, print index, software, word recognition, ease of use, reliability.

Cons

Lack of performence in copies sometimes.

I replaced my old, defective printer (Epson Photo Stylus R300) and got this one on 11-16 (My birthday too, he he), and I have to say that I am overall pretty satisfied.

The Dura Brite Ink cartridges (4) are pretty good, yet the oversized black cartridge is $35 to replace. It has a built in indicator to tell you how much ink you have left in increments of 10%. Right now I have 80% in the colors and 70% in the black one after many, many copies black and white, some photo printing, and lots of internet page printing in the past 2 weeks.

The flatbed scanner/copier is 1200x2400 DPI which is acceptable for an "all-in-one". I can copy magazine pages, regular documents, pictures, even objects flawlessly.

On the topic of speed, I must say it has done well in that category. It is much more swift than my ''00 HP T65 all-in-one. It copies black and white text in less than 20 seconds I''d say.

In the Features category it has also done well. The card slots have greatly helped me print photo indexes to scan and then print automatically. You can scan something and then directly without a computer save the picture to a card.

This product bundled pretty good software. My favorite is the word-recognition software. You can scan basically any typed document and then it will recognize, rotate, and crop the document so it is almost flawless which comes in handy if you need to update something but have lost the computer documentation of it.

Well, that pretty much sums it all up about the things I can think of that I like with this product. I''d recommend it to a friend just basically because it works and is worth the $180 price tag.

Recommended

Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 179.99

The Bottom Line

I recommend this product because it functions great and has a lot of fun features and options with the software and just the product alone.