TechRadar Verdict
A great printer for the more photo or budget-focused among you
Pros
- +
Impressive software package
- +
Great photo printing
- +
Tempting price
Cons
- -
Dull design
- -
Sluggish printing
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Although the Epson Stylus DX9400F has a SRP of £130, you'll find it on sale for £100, which seems very reasonable for a printer and scanner that includes a fax.
No doubt Epson saved some money on the styling, as it is incredibly industrial in appearance.
Underwhelming styling
The casing is matt grey plastic with the odd bit of gloss-black to relieve the boredom. However, it feels solid enough and won't cause any offence sat in the corner of your office.
Epson's dimensions of 435 x 219 x 165mm bear no relation to the printer, so we ran our own measure over them and even that was a bit misleading, as the paper tray stands vertically at the rear, so the DX9400F is 233mm tall without paper and 330mm tall when it is loaded.
You get a huge bundle of Epson software on the CD that matches the Canon package. In addition to drivers, there are EasyPrintModule, Easy Photo Print, Copy Utility, Creativity Suite and ABBYY FineREader 6.0 Sprint Plus.
Slow printer
The DX9400F uses four cartridges for CMYK that cost £6.50 each to replace.
The Epson is considerably slower than the Canon in every area of printing and scanning, but on the bright side it produces decent prints and excellent photos. The shock will come when we see an Epson that can't print top notch photos, but we're none too sure this is an essential feature for an office printer.
During every print job a dialogue box pops up to show your progress. As the Epson is so slow, this isn't such a bad idea; however, it pushes a 'buy Epson ink' button at you everytime.
It's easy to use the DX9400F for a wide range of tasks and the low price is certainly tempting, but the slow print speed may well try your patience and the emphasis on photo printing makes it more relevant to the home user than the true professional.
