Oohhh, got the keys to my new house, the place is a complete tip but hey, it's MY tip. The big move...
Oohhh, got the keys to my new house, the place is a complete tip but hey, it's MY tip. The big move is on Sunday. Okay... "big shout out to Arcuntil42". BTW, could lazy tweens who don't bother to return rates please stop slating those who do?
Member since:08.10.2005
Reviews:93
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I'm surprised to note that there are a couple of bad reviews for this product given that I've enjoyed extremely good value for money from this myself.
I purchased this all-in-oneprinter and scanner whilst shopping in Tesco as it was on offer for just £39.97. At the time I was using an older version of this, the CX38000, but it had been playing up and needed a whole new set of ink cartridges besides not offering scanning capabilities. Given that this new DX4000all-in-one scanner and printer came with genuine Epson ink cartridges, I thought I might as well buy it rather than bother trying to fix and re-ink the CX38000.
Set up was easy and simply a case of connecting the power plug
to the back of the printer and plugging it in. I used the USB lead off my old printer to connect the new printer to my computer (printers rarely come with a USB lead - that's a whole other story) then I switched it on. There was a disc included containing software to install the printer driver to my PC but I found that my operating system (Windows Basic Home Vista) installed it by itself with no need to use the disc. I then inserted the set of four individual ink cartridges that came in the box when prompted to and was ready to print a few minutes ink loading time.
The specifications of this item are perfectly reasonable with this printer claiming to offer the print resolution of 5760 x 1440 dpi. It can allegedly produce 23 pages of black text in one minute and 12 colour pages though I'm afraid I would argue that this is not the case unless you're producing basic, draft quality documents! I tend to find that photographs need to be printed with the printer properties set to "photo" or "best photo" and that this takes a minute for a 4" x 6" photograph or 2 - 3 minutes for an A4 sheet. Black text prints best with the properties set to "text and image" (this will produce decent pictures too if needed) and I find two or three sheets a minute is normal.
My only big criticism of the print capabilities is that the nozzles tend to block every few months - especially around the time you either need to or have just changed the ink cartridges. As with most Epson printers, you can access the "print properties" from you PC and select "clean nozzles" to get this issue speedily resolved but it's annoying nonetheless. Minor criticisms of the print capabilities are that I get a bit annoyed waiting so long when I'm printing a lot of photos and the photo quality isn't in the same league as if you'd bought Kodak printed snaps from the chemist. For most people I don't suppose they'd be too bothered as long as the photo shows what it is supposed to show but as an avid scrapbooker, I find the marginally below average photo print quality disappointing because I'm so critical of it.
The scanning function is installed onto your PC at the same time as the printer driver and you should find this is accessible via a desktop icon that appears following installation. Lift the lid of your scanner, place your photo or document onto the class (up to just over A4 size) and click the "scan" icon. It should only take a couple of minutes for the picture or document to be reproduced on screen. I've always felt the scanning quality is particular good - better than the printer capabilities in fact. I regularly scan in old birth, marriage and death certificates to sent to other family historians and find that you can very clearly read the spidery writing on screen when viewing the scanned images.
As far as durability goes, it's been almost a year since I bought this printer and it's still going strong. I've had problems here and there with glogged ink nozzles yes but on the whole this has been worth every penny of my £40! If I find I can afford it in the future I would love to pay out for a printer that can produce shop quality photographs but for the time being I appreciate that I enjoy very good quality for the price I paid.
Beyond electricity, the running costs for this item consists of cartridges only though they're pretty expensive at £6.99 each or £21.96 for a quad pack. Fortunately however, despite it not being recommended by Epson, you can use one of the many fake brands around or refill the original cartridges a few times over. If you choose to refill the cartridges you need to purchase a chip re-setter at the same time which you simply hold against the chip on the side of the ink cartridges to reset them and convince them they are in fact new not all used up. If you don't do this, the smart technology means they'll tell the computer they're used up thus refusing to print anything. Epson copycat cartridges will say on them "suitable for DX4000" amongst a few others and ebay is a good place to look for them. As a general rule, I pay £12 for four cartridges and the quality is no different to when I used the original Epson cartridges that came with the printer.
My recommendation has to be that this is an all-in-one you'd be hard put to beat on quality for price. You could easily hand over £80 for a similar model and get no better results. For printing general use photographs, a few letters and the odd colouring sheet for the kiddies, this is probably the best bargain you could hope to find.
The RRP for this item is £59.99 but you can currently purchase it from Amazon.co.uk for £48.
You certainly got a bargain with this one, I've had Epson printers before and had some serious problems looks like they're getting better
scuba_angel 24.03.2008 18:00
I almost bought one of these not so long ago but then remembered I have a printer somewhere at home, although in general I tend to print from the house pc but the print quality on the one we have isnt great its good enough since I always get photos printed at photo kiosks if I plan to display them.
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: 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
Feb 28th, 2008
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