Epson Stylus PX650 ink cartridges

The Epson Stylus PX650 photo printer uses six individual ink cartridges to produce superior prints. Best value is obtained by purchasing the T0807 multipack with one of each colour included. We also offer a range of top quality compatible cartridges suitable for use in this printer and these offer a great value for money option without sacraficing output.

Epson PX650 Review

Epson currently has a wide range of large, black all-in-ones and the Stylus Photo PX650, as the name indicates, is aimed at home photo lovers, whilst it can turn its heads to basic document print, as well.

This model is a curious mixture of conventional along with more resourceful design. The paper path is typical Epson which has a 120-sheet feed tray at the rear supplying paper to the six-colour print heads and hence to a telescopic output tray, which moves out from the front when you have folded down a full-width front cover. The flatbed scanner is suitably built in to the top of the device. There is a substantial power button on the left end, and progressing right there are three illuminated function buttons. A 63mm Liquid crystal display is placed near to the centre of the control panel, along with a square of nine navigation buttons to the right. Lastly, there are two buttons in order to start and stop scan and copy work. A little unexpectedly, considering the increasing level of popularity of small networks at home, the only connection at the back is USB - absolutely no cabled and / or wireless Ethernet.

Setup is simple, simply because the sole physical installation is plugging the six ink tanks in to the print head. The additional two inks are light cyan and light magenta. Drivers are supplied for Windows as well as OS X and there is a good variety of Epson utilities, like Easy Photo Print.

It is definitely about time Epson cited somewhat more credible speeds for its printers. It is difficult to think that there are many customers that purchase a six-colour photo all-in-one and then commonly make use of it to print text in draft mode. In normal print mode, we registered a best black text speed of 4.5ppm, against the promoted top draft mode speed of 37ppm. Colour print, which Epson quotes at 38ppm, is definitely more prone to furnish the 3.3ppm we got.

Switching to photo print, 15 x 10cm photos finished in periods covering anything from 31s to 47s, according to source, and that is very swift. We were delighted by the lucidity of the images together with the healthy colours generated, despite the fact they were pretty dark by default, thus sacrificing a little bit of depth in the more dark shades. You can easily make amends for this, for sure, yet it does mean extra fiddling, and with the inclusion of the two lighter inks, it's really a shame photographs might require more work than with a four-colour machine.

Black text print is alright, nevertheless less densely black as quite a few and suffers here and there from a bit of ink spread, therefore characters may get a minimal fuzz to them. Solid colours are generally very well produced, though we did find the odd, narrow colour band in our test prints.

A colour photocopy showed considerable colour displacement, with many shades clearly lighter compared to the originals and yellows, in particular, coming out with an orange cast. This may be a problem with our particular review sample, though, since various other Epson all-in-ones we've evaluated haven't displayed as many issues.

The only running costs are the inks and a couple of sets are readily available for this specific machine. Epson suggests the lower-capacity set, yet the higher-yield parts give much better economy.

At £100 from various online retailers, the Epson Stylus Photo PX650 delivers solid value for money for a product providing six-colour print plus convenient accessories including PictBridge/USB print and also CD/DVD label printing. All the same, although it's rapid on images, it's slow printing plain paper documents and print quality is, at best, variable. Put it on your shortlist, by all means, yet probably not near to the top.