Epson Stylus SX405 – packs a punch

Epson have always offered good value multifunction inkjet printers and their new offering the Stylus SX405 seems to follow in the footsteps of its predecessors. It offers the functionality of three machines in one and with a very reasonable price tag too, costing just £70 from competitive retailers. Running costs for these types of printers is usually very high but the SX405 manages to reduce it running cost by using four individual printer ink cartridges. This is an advantage as is means that only the colors that get used need to be replaced therefore keeping the cost to a minimum. The cost of the Epson SX405 ink cartridges themselves is about average for a printer in this class, but if you want to save money there are compatible Epson inks available for half the price of the originals. It terms of functionality the SX405 has the edge on it competitors, it offers a wide range of features including photo quality printing as well as scanning photo copying and direct photo printing from memory cards an digital cameras thanks to its built in memory card reader and PictBridge connection. In terms of its performance it falls down slightly as its slower than a lot of the other printers in this class, although it makes up for this by producing superior print quality. The scanner and photo copier are good performers with the scanner producing sharp accurate results on a wide range of documents and images and the photo copier strikes a good balance between speed and quality. Overall the SX405 is a good performer and offers good value for money.

Testing the Epson Stylus S21

Epson budget inkjets from the past have always been good performs but lacked value for money in terms of running costs in the price of their printer ink cartridges. Being a budget printer many people will buy it thinking that Epson S21 ink cartridges with be cheaper than replacement printer cartridges for other more expensive printers, and then be shocked to find that they are the same cartridges that are used by a lot of the more expensive printers so therefore cost the same. The S21 is a budget printer so doesn’t has a huge array of features, it just prints. Easy to set up The S21 is plug and play compatible and connects using standard USB connection. Power to the printer is supplied via its own power cable and the installation using the step by step software instruction is simple enough. It is well built and the quality of the materials feel as though they should withstand frequent use with the exception of the paper feed which clips onto the back of the machine and feels a bit flimsy. The downsides of the S21 are the operating noise and the print in which it speeds. The noise is particularly bad when the printer loads a sheet of paper. The printing speed is very poor even for a budget printer, Epson state the S21 as being bale to produce 25 pages per minute, where they got that figure from because in the real world the S21 produces only 3 pages per minute in standard quality setting printing black text. Overall the Stylus S21 is not a bad printer is just not a very good one and it is well worth considering spending a little bit more money and getting a lot more fro your money.