Epson Stylus Photo RX520 review

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Verdict:

Review Date: 28 Apr 2006

Price when reviewed: (£93.60 ex VAT)

Reviewed By: Christopher Brennan

Our Rating 2 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

The RX520 from Epson is a hefty beast in comparison to the competition in this lower-priced category.

Although it's larger than the other machines, it boasts one feature the others can't match: a built-in film and slide scanner, which is a welcome addition on a low-end machine such as this. The device also features an LCD screen, a card reader for various digital camera media and PictBridge support. The 1.5in LCD is a little on the small side, but it's still welcome.

This design has been around for a few years now and it's fair to say it's beginning to show its age. However, the RX520 is solid and sturdy, with each door and hatch opening and closing with a healthy and reassuring clunk.

The straight-through paper path means that the machine takes up more space than the Brother and HP models in this Labs, but the output tray doesn't stick out too far.

The print quality wasn't as good as we expected, with two bad results ruining its chances of winning an award. First, it produced a very bad - and very slow - result in our draft text test: the blocky text looked more like the output from a dot-matrix printer than from an inkjet device. Second, the photo quality wasn't up to scratch, as unnatural colours made the final print look like the contrast had been set too high. Overall, a poor showing from the Epson RX520.

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