Epson Expression Photo XP-750 review

Epson’s A4 photo printers and MFPs usually do well in our photo quality tests, and the Expression XP-750 MFP very much lives up to our expectations. It uses Epson’s Claria inks and has six dye-based cartridges: the usual cyan, magenta, yellow and black, plus light cyan and light magenta cartridges which increase the number of colours the printer can produce and so improve the subtlety of shading in photo prints.

The setup utility on the accompanying driver CD takes you through connecting the printer to your computer. You can do this either via a USB cable, by connecting the XP-750 to your local wireless network, or by using its Ethernet port for a wired network connection. We opted to make our test prints via USB to ensure that our speed test results were consistent with those of other photo printers we’ve reviewed. However, if you want to use Epson’s mobile phone and tablet printing apps, you’ll have to set the printer up on your local network before you’re able to do so.

The printer has two paper inputs at the bottom of the device, underneath the output tray. Because the output tray is automated and can’t be opened and closed by hand, this makes it inconvenient to access the input trays and refill them while the printer is in use. The bottom tray can take any paper size up to A4, while the tray above it is designed to take smaller paper sizes, such as 4x6in photo paper. This means that, conveniently, you can keep the printer loaded with two different sizes or types of paper at the same time. The small tray can take up to 20 sheets of photo paper, while the main one holds 100 pieces of A4.

As well as being a capable photo printer, the XP-750 is a fully-fledged photo MFP with a 2,400×1,200dpi flatbed CIS scanner which you can use to make photocopies and scan images to your PC or the MFP’s built-in memory card reader. The card reader supports formats including the ubiquitous SDXC cards used by most digital cameras, as well as Memory Stick Pro-HG Duo, Compact Flash, MMCplus and MicroDrive. There’s no support for xD cards, as used by older Olympus and Fujifilm cameras.

The MFP did well in our scan and copy tests, with an A4 scan speed of 32 seconds at 300dpi and 14 seconds at 150dpi. It also managed a 6x4in scan speed of 35 seconds at 600dpi and just over two minutes at 1,200dpi. A colour copy took 30 seconds and a mono one 13 seconds. Scan quality is better than we’ve come to expect from the CIS scanners built into most home MFPs, with accurate colours and good reproduction of fine detail.

A4 plain paper printing wasn’t the main focus of our tests, but the XP-750 did a reasonable job. Rather than having a dedicated pigmented ink cartridge for plain paper printing, it uses the same dye inks to print on paper that it uses for photos. Letter-quality prints were dark, but the edges of letters looked at little fuzzy and some lines of text wavered a little. At draft quality, text was grey and jagged-looking. Illustrated business documents printed in the driver’s text and graphics mode fared a little better: graphs and illustrations looked great, but text, particularly at small sizes, again looked a little fuzzy around the edges.

Where this MFP really excels is in photo printing. Image quality is outstanding, with great detail and particularly rich colour. This is most visible in dark areas, where black tones are deep with plenty of low-contrast detail. Some of our test images looked, if anything, a little too vivid, giving some pictures a slightly unnatural cast. Magenta tones dominate, with yellow sometimes looking a touch faded, but the overall quality of the photo prints is among the best we’ve seen from a standard desktop printer or MFP. It’s also worth noting that it’s easy to adjust the printer’s use of colour by tweaking the adjustment settings in the driver. The printer also supports ICC colour profiles, which you can use to ensure correct printing on third-party specialist media.

The printer is reasonably quick, printing six 6x4in photos in just over seven minutes and two 10x8in prints in around four and a half. However, it’s not particularly cheap to run, with a 6x4in photo costing 12.2p for just the ink or a total of 41.2p if you include the cost of Epson’s Premium Glossy paper. Similarly, an A4 print will cost you 48.6p in ink and £1.08 in total. Worse still, these prices are based on buying a multipack of six inks. If you buy them individually, you can expect your ink costs to be almost 14p at 6x4in and around 55p at A4. Cheaper photo papers are available both from Epson and from third-party stockists, but make sure you go for a good brand which has an appropriate ICC profile available for it.

If you make plain paper prints, you’ll pay 2.5p for a mono page and between 10p and 11p per colour page, depending on whether you use multipack ink or not. Bear in mind that, as not all inks are used at the same rate, you may have to buy individual cartridges from time to time in addition to multipack ones.

If you’re after a photo MFP, then this is a good buy, but we think the cheaper single-function Canon Pixma iP7250 just takes the edge with its more natural photographic colours, better plain paper print quality and lower print costs, so is a better buy if you don’t need a built-in scanner.