Epson Stylus Photo PX650 put to the test
pEpson has a great reputation as a manufacturer of inkjet printers for serious photography enthusiasts . Despite its nbsp;reasonablynbsp; low price, the Stylus Photo PX650 nbsp;all-in-onenbsp; is extremely well equipped, with six separate a title=printer ink cartridges href=http://www.firstinkjets.co.uk target=_blankprinter ink cartridges/a supplying dye-based black, cyan, magenta, yellow, light cyan and light magenta ink. Its easy to set up and has plenty of useful features, including a 2.5in colour LCD screen, which makes it easy to print photos directly from your digital cameras memory card ./p
pThe six-ink system makes the PX650 more expensive to run than a typical four-colour inkjet . An A4 page of mixed black and colour costs 13.1p, while a 6x4in photo on nbsp;Epson glossynbsp; Photo Paper will cost nbsp;aboutnbsp; 31p. This compares well to most other photo inkjets in the market. A page of mono text isnt too nbsp;bad at 2.5p per pagenbsp; . a title=cheap printer ink cartridges href=http://www.firstinkjets.co.uk target=_blankCheap printer ink cartridges/a are available in the form of compatible third party cartridges, but for the purposes of testing we used oem a title=epson ink cartridges href=http://www.firstinkjets.co.uk target=_blankepson ink cartridges/a./p
pThe PX650 isnt a great choice if you want to print lots of documents on plain paper . At standard quality, even plain mono text prints at a sluggish 4.8ppm ndash; significantly slower than most current inkjets . A mixed-colour print speed of 3.1ppm doesnt compare too badly with the rest of the market, though. If you need to print something in a real hurry, the PX650s draft mode managed a very respectable 10.3ppm. nbsp;However, as with most Epson printers, the draft mode is poor. Text is pale and often streaky, its readable but only just, so best left alonenbsp; ./p
pEven at standard quality, lettering was sometimes poorly defined or broken, while large areas of solid colour showed bands caused by the passage of the print head. Its not unusable, but document printing isnt the PX650s strongest suit. It only really excels at photo printing, producing stunning images with rich dark tones, vivid highlights, smooth shading and outstanding contrast . A range of colour management options make it easy to ensure that your printed photo matches the image on your nbsp;PCs screennbsp; . Its not nbsp;the quickestnbsp; , at almost two minutes for a 6x4in photo, but the end results are worth the wait ./p
pnbsp;The built in scanner is easy to use and produced good enough results for every day usenbsp; . We liked the realistic, slightly muted, colours of our scans and the accurate reproduction of fine detail and smooth shading. Sadly, copy quality proved to be much less impressive. Its fast enough, at 21 seconds for a mono copy and 31 seconds for colour, but this speed is part of the problem. At the default settings, both colour and mono copies were streaky and banded ./p
pThe PX650 is rather a mixed bag , with a decent scanner and excellent photo printing but poor performance on plain-paper text and graphical documents.nbsp;/p
