As a student, printing is a necessity for assignments and research. Going into University just to print off work or photocopy a page out of a book was becoming a chore of unnecessary proportions that pushed me to go out and get a printer for myself.
With tasks such as photocopying, scanning and most notably printing, it was pretty certain I would be needing an 'all-in-one' solution to meet the crushing demands of a university education. From looking at the range available, the Epsom DX4000 stood out the most for me, mainly due to the ink system that it adopts. Instead of purchasing one printer cartridge for colour and one for black, you buy each one separately, meaning you need Black, Yellow, Cyan and Magenta for the printer to be full of ink.
The advantage of this is if you need to replace a cartridge, instead of replacing the lot of them, you can just replace the colour in question. The software that comes with the printer informs you of the ink levels so you can make a decision when to change. With cartridges coming in at around £6 each, it's perfect for people like me on a tight budget.
Installing the printer was incredibly simple, the instructions included are diagram based so you can follow them easily without having to overcome the ambiguity of badly worded English. Installing the supplied software took it's time though, so I'd suggest putting aside at least 30 minutes to get the printer ready and working.
Printing is relatively simple and there is a whole breadth of options available that I probably have yet to touch. One of the greatest things I have found is a "double sided" printing option that saves on paper. You can even lay the sheets out like a book so you can staple them together for later!
Another feature that makes my life one heck of a lot easier is the printers ability to photocopy at the press of a button. Place the item in question on the scanner glass, close the lid and press either "colour photocopy" or "black and white" which are located on the printer. The machine will do it's work and immediately print a copy straight out of the printer. In my opinion this makes things such as the scanner feature redundant, for me anyway. However I have used it to scan some things in for slide shows and so forth.
My only gripe with it is the fact that Epsom have failed to include a USB cable in the box. This has happened to me with printers in the past. I'm not sure why companies insist on doing this, it's a vital aspect of operating the printer and it was incredibly frustrating finding there wasn't one in the box when I got home. Luckily I had one from a previous printer, but it's beside the point. You wouldn't buy a phone with the charger not included, Or a car without an engine!
Overall an excellent printer and brilliant value for money. Easy to use with economical ink and a whole breadth of features. Highly recommended.
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Great review. I bought this last night and was VERY annoyed when I realised there was no printer-pc cable with it! This resulted in a 10pm trip to tesco!
askamsandrat 13.03.2007 23:40
thanks for a good review it helped me choose my first printer. £55 delivered, on ebay with set of inc, software and a cable so im happy.
cheers..........Andy
djohan 14.01.2007 18:03
It sounds like a nice multifunction printer. A nice recommendation!
Advantages: Good quality for a cheaper printer, fairly compact, combined printer & scan, quick Disadvantages: none, except got to buy the cable to hook it up to your PC seperately.
duck1979 16.03.2007 (16.03.2007)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Epson Stylus DX 4000
Advantages: Outstanding picture quality, good software and a scanner. Disadvantages: Start up head cleaning cycle uses a lot of ink. Tied to using Epson cartridges
Advantages: Good quality for a cheaper printer, fairly compact, combined printer & scan, quick Disadvantages: none, except got to buy the cable to hook it up to your PC seperately.
duck1979 16.03.2007 (16.03.2007)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Epson Stylus DX 4000
Jan 14th, 2007
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