Epson Stylus SX405 – middle of the road

Epson are no strangers to the multifunction inkjet printer market, so they should know how to make a good one by now. There latest offering the Stylus SX405 promises to be three machines in one, a printer, scanner and photo copier. Most of the machines in this category use a black and a tri-colour printer ink cartridge and with the colour cartridge if only one of the three colours runs out that whole cartridge needs to be changed and the remaining ink is wasted. The SX405 uses a different ink system, each colour ink has its own separate cartridge so if one colour runs out you only need to change one colour cartridge, which is far more economical than the system used by its competitors. Although economical the Epson SX405 ink cartridges are still not cheap and full set of genuine Epson inks will set you back over £30 in most cases. Luckily there are compatible ink cartridges available for the SX405 which cost half the price of the original Epson inks and print the same amount. In terms of performance the SX405 is on a par with it competitors and in some areas surpasses them. One area which it falls down in however is printing speed which is probably its weakest point. Print quality however is the SX405’s strongest point with its 5760dpi x 1440dpi producing pin sharp results for a wide range of documents and images from text to high resolution photo prints. The SX405 scanner and photo copier shares the slimline A4 flatbed scanner in producing great results for all types of documents and images. The Photo copier also work without the need for a PC which is a convenient feature. The SX405 on the whole is a good device and represents good value for money.