Epson Stylus SX415 review

Epson's Stylus SX415 is an inoffensive, though not massively stylish, inkjet MFP.

It has a fairly well-rounded set of features, with a colour screen, a PictBridge USB port for printing directly from digital cameras, and slots that can handle CompactFlash, SDHC, MMC, Memory Stick Pro and xD memory cards. Its maximum print resolution is 5,760x1,440dpi and it has a 1,200x2,400dpi scanner. This is what you'd expect for an MFP at this price, though, so the real deciding factors are print quality, speed and running costs.

As we'd expect from an Epson inkjet, photo quality is excellent. Light and dark tones were accurately rendered and subtle areas of shading were smooth. A few very light tones looked slightly overexposed against their white background, but photo quality is generally excellent for a four-colour MFP. Fine detail was sharp and clear. Photo printing is slow, and we had to wait over 22 minutes for six borderless 6x4in prints. A 6x4in print costs around 24p on Epson's Premium Glossy photo paper.

At normal quality, our text was dark and easy to read, though there were a few imperfections on the rounded edges of some characters. However, print speeds of just 4.5ppm are slow compared with those of similarly priced Canon and HP MFPs. Draft text printed at a fast 13.6ppm but was so pale as to be virtually useless. Our mixed-colour documents were richly coloured and emerged at a reasonable 2.7ppm, although shading and detail weren't entirely accurate. Copy quality was less impressive, with some banding on both colour and mono copies. Both took around half a minute.

The 1,200x2,400dpi scanner was excellent, reproducing the colour and shading of our documents and photos perfectly. The accuracy of our 1,200dpi scans was also brilliant, preserving fine detail.

Home inkjet print costs tend to be high, but 9.7p for a mixed colour and black A4 page is steep by any standard. The SX415 costs more to run than cheaper MFPs that use combined tri-colour cartridges, such as Canon's Pixma MP240 (see Editor's Choice), which has a mixed-colour cost of just 7.3p per page. Even a mono page on the SX415 costs 3p.

Although its photo printing and scan quality are both excellent, the SX415 struggles to justify its price. The screen and card reader are handy if you want to print photos without switching on your PC. However, most homes print more documents than photos, and it's here that the SX415 falls down, with unremarkable print quality and high costs. If documents are your priority, Canon's MP240 costs less to buy and run, while most photographers are better off with a single-function device such as Canon's Pixma iP4600.

Author: Kat Orphanides