Epson - Stylus DX4400 review

With so many all-in-one printers awash on the market at the moment, it's becoming increasingly difficult to find one that stands out markedly from the rabble unless it has some unusual or extra features, or can keep the price down to rock bottom.

With the Stylus DX4400 Epson has clearly gone for the bargain price option, as there's a drab, pedestrian feel to the rest of it. For openers, the navy blue lid matched to the black body is unappealing, although the lightweight 5kg (without cartridges and power lead) makes it highly portable.

The controls are about as basic as they come for a scanner/printer/copier; On and Off buttons plus three more for colour prints, black text and colour text. One new addition is a ‘scanner support unit' which is an annoying bit of plastic that automatically clicks into place when you want to change cartridges and needs two stages to release. What happened to the spring-loaded versions?

If you're hunting for any other useful extras apart from the USB output and power lead, there ain't none. No LCD, no PictBridge, no memory card slots, nada. So ultimately it comes down to performance and the quality of the finished images. Epson claims fast print speeds of up to 25ppm and 89 seconds for a 10 x 15cm (4 x 6-inch) photo at the lowest setting, with the highest at 5,760 x 1,440 optimised dots per inch, which seems now to be the standard for the DX series.

In practice, it's best to go for the higher settings for all functions and make the most of the 600 x 1,200 dpi scanner, as the lower settings give significantly degraded results. If you're willing to wait the 85 seconds it took to produce a mixed colour and monochrome text document, you'll find the quality of the colour and sharpness of the results surprisingly good. The same goes for colour photos, whether scanned, printed or copied, but again you will have to wait for what seems an age.

This is also an exceedingly noisy printer with enough sound effects to populate the Starship Enterprise, so don't house it close to your work area. The four individual print cartridges use the regular Epson DURABrite Ultra Ink which is resistant to water, smudging and fading and relatively cheap to replace at £6.99 each. However, Epson printers have a habit of running through their cartridges pretty rapidly, so the saving may not be as great as it first appears.

If cost is the most important factor for you, then the overall price tag of £59.99 is attractive if you're on a low budget, and the Stylus DX4400 is Energy Star compliant so it will reduce energy wastage. You also receive Epson's excellent Creativity Suite software which will organise your printing needs and help you file everything into neat folders or export photos and documents via e-mail, etc.