Epson CX5400 review

Who wants to go to a library to get a colour photocopy?

Epson's new CX5400 will get the job done at home. The unit combines a photo printer and a high-resolution scanner - the two functions together let you produce copies from the comfort of the spare room.

And that's not the end of the CX5400's talents. The device uses Epson's DuraBRITE ink, which the company claims will produce great results without specialist papers. According to Epson, DuraBRITE ink is better than conventional inks because it sits on the surface of the paper, rather than spreading out into the paper fibres. Epson says images printed with DuraBRITE ink are much clearer than those printed with normal inks. In practice, images printed by the CX5400 on plain paper were slightly grainy, and not sharp at all.

Things improved somewhat when we used special DuraBRITE paper, but the problem didn't disappear. That aside, results were passable, and we were more than happy with the accuracy of colours - even on tricky areas like graduations and flesh tones. It wasn't particularly speedy, though, taking nearly seven-and-a-half minutes to print an A4 photo.

We were much more impressed by the quality of printed text. Characters were dark and well-defined down to four-point text. Although Epson says the CX5400 will print 11 text-only pages a minute (ppm), but the fastest it managed in our tests was 9ppm - and that was in Draft mode. At Normal quality, the rate was more like 4ppm. We were fairly happy with the quality of graphs and charts printed in our business report test - but there was still a grainy quality to the images.

The good news continued in our scanning tests. Scans suffered very little coloured speckling, known as digital 'noise', even on dark and difficult patterns. The rich purple and gold in our test pictures were picked up with commendable accuracy, and detail was well resolved, even at lower resolutions.

The CX5400 is also quick. A preview scan at 300dpi took only seven seconds, and a full scan 37 seconds. Like prints, colour copies of photographs also exhibited a lack of sharpness, but text and graphics were passable. At just 7ppm, copying speed wasn't great.

It's not that the CX5400 is a bad machine. It produces decent scans and is very easy to use. Its print output, though, isn't as good as that of our current Top 50, the HP PSC-2210. Admittedly, the HP is 30 quid more expensive - but the extra outlay is worth it.

ROSS BURRIDGE