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Epson Expression Home XP-412 review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £60
inc VAT

This budget MFP is a little expensive to run, but its massive range of features and good scan and print quality make it a worthwhile buy

The Epson Expression Home XP-412 is a budget MFP, but it’s equipped with an up-to-date user interface including a 6.4in colour screen, memory card reader and touch buttons that make it easy to use for direct printing and, in common with most of Epson’s current models, it has built-in wireless networking to make it easier to use for mobile and remote printing.

Epson Expression Home XP-412

The printer supports Google Cloud Print and Epson’s own cloud services, but you’ll need to have it connected to your network, rather than directly via USB. Type the printer’s IP address into your web browser; if you have trouble finding this, you can have the printer display it on its built-in screen by going to the Confirm Wi-Fi Settings option in the Setup menu.

The web interface’s options include a simple registration process for Google Cloud Print, and a similar set of screens that allow you to configure Epson Connect Services. This registers your printer to your Epson account, which you can then use with the company’s mobile printing app, email printing service and scan to cloud feature. The latter is a characteristic of the XP-41x range that isn’t shared by its XP-21x and XP-31x sister models, and is particularly handy if you want to easily save copies of invoices and receipts to the cloud.

Epson Expression Home XP-412

Although it has a nice big screen and a couple of extra connectivity options, the XP-412’s performance is near identical to the cheaper Epson Expression Home XP-312. It has middling mono print speeds of 8.6ppm at standard quality, which printed our 12pt letter with dark, solid characters. Close examination revealed uneven edges on curved letters, but the quality is fine for formal correspondence.

If speed is of the essence, then draft mode is almost twice as fast, at 16.5ppm. The resulting text is pale and a little jagged, but entirely legible, making it worth using if print quality isn’t important.

The all-in-one uses four separate dye-based cyan, magenta, yellow and pigmented black ink cartridges, which is useful if you do a lot of colour printing, as you won’t have to change all your inks when you run out of just a single colour. The pigmented black ink is designed for sharp text, while the dye-based colour cartridges are optimised for photo printing. If you use the largest available ink cartridges, the XP-412 is still a little expensive to run, though. A page of mixed black and colour printing costs 11.5p, while even a simple mono page is 3p.

Epson Expression Home XP-412 Print Quality

At least you can see where the money’s going. Standard quality colour prints on plain paper look good, even on 80gsm and 75gsm paper, although we always recommend using 100gsm paper for optimal inkjet quality. Our shaded charts were smoothly coloured and, although we noticed a couple of print head marks on solid areas of dark colour, reproduction of illustrations was generally good. The small 8pt serif and san serif fonts used in our illustrated business documents were a little fuzzy in places, but everything from 10pt and up was gratifyingly sharp. The XP-412’s colour print speed of 2.3ppm is none too fast, but it’s by no means the worst we’ve seen from a budget inkjet, and you can always load up the MFP’s 100-sheet paper tray and leave it to do its thing.

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Basic Specifications

Rating****
Maximum native print resolution5,760×1,440dpi
Max optical resolution1,200×2,400dpi
Output bit depth24-bit

Quoted Speeds

Quoted speed, mono A49ppm
Quoted speed, colour A45ppm

Tested Print Speeds

Time for two 10x8in photos 1.010m 6s
Time for six 6x4in photos 1.017m 35s

Physical and Environmental

Standard printer interfacesUSB, 802.11n wireless
Optional printer interfacesnone
Size145x390x300mm
Weight4.3kg
Noise (in normal use)52dB(A)

Paper Handling

Maximum paper sizeup to A4
Maximum paper weight255gsm
Standard paper inputs1
Standard paper input capacity100
Maximum paper inputs1
Maximum paper input capacity100
Duplex (code, cost if option)No

General

Printer technologypiezo inkjet
Supported operating systemsWindows XP/Vista/7/8, Mac OS X 10.5.8+, Android, iOS
Other inkjet features6.4cm LCD screen, cloud printing
Other inkjet optionsnone

Buying Information

Price£60
Consumable parts and prices£13 each
Price per colour A4 page8.5p
Quoted life of supplied black cartridge180 pages (ISO/IEC 24711)
Quoted life of supplied colour cartridge(s)175 pages (ISO/IEC 24711)
Quoted life of supplied photo cartridge(s)N/A
Warrantyone year RTB
Supplierhttp://www.box.co.uk
Detailswww.epson.co.uk

Print Quality

Number of ink colours4
Number of ink cartridges4
Maximum number of ink colours4
Maximum number of cartridges4
Quoted photo durability98 years
Quoted photo durability sourceEpson

Tested Scan Speeds

Full scan area preview9s
A4 document at 150dpi14s
A4 document at 300dpi35s
6x4in photo at 600dpi35s
6x4in photo at 1200dpi2m 7s

Tested Copy Speeds

Time for single A4 mono copy 1.018s
Time for single A4 colour copy 1.033s
Time for 10 A4 copies using feeder 2.0N/A

Photo Features

PictBridge supportNo
Borderless printingup to A4
Direct (PC-less) printingYes
Supported memory cardsnone
CD printingNo

Copy Features

Maximum number of copies99
Max mono copy resolution1,200dpi
Max colour copy resolution1,200dpi

Fax Features

Max mono fax resolutionN/A
Fax memory (maximum mono pages)N/A