SOHO Technology Podcast

Review of Epson CX9400Fax

Found at Epson.com: $99.99 – Direct Link

Found at Best Buy: $149.99 – Direct Link

Found at Circuit City: $119.99 – Direct Link

Found on Amazon.com: $139.99 – Direct Link

Found at Office Max: $144.99 – Direct Link

Found at NewEgg.com: $149.99 – Direct Link

(Prices and links as of 1/15/2008)

Process of Review

I was contacted to review the Epson CX9400Fax All-in-One Printer.  I received the printer and a demo kit that included extra ink, paper, photo paper and information about this printer.  I set up the printer and attached it to my production computer for testing.  Over the next two months, I ran a number of routine business documents through the printer along with a variety of test photos and documents.  What follows are my impressions and thoughts on this printer.

Initial Un-boxing

There were a number of things that impressed me taking the printer out of the box.  The first being the power cable is a standard computer power cable.  There are no wall warts, power converters, or special plugs as with other models similar to this one.  There is a nice sized LCD screen on the front of the printer and easy to find buttons for the different functions of the printer.

On the front of the printer are a number of card slots for your digital media.  This printer is lacking a Smart Media slot that my camera uses.  I do have a number of different media types so I was able to test using an SD card.

Installation

I would love to say that installation was a breeze but I had a few issues.  Most of the install used the up, down, right and left buttons, but when it came to setting the date and time, it required you to use the number key pad used for faxing.  My natural instinct was to use up and down to move from one setting to another and right and left to set the time and date.  When I pressed the right button, it moved to the next step in the setup and there was no way to go back.  It took a couple of restarts on the setup and a read through the directions to figure out how to set the clock.  OK, it’s a guy thing to not read the directions until I need them, but it’s also a good way to see if the interface is user friendly.  Installing the ink wells was easy and very clearly marked.  I did have a little problem loading paper into the back of this printer.  The paper guide that is used to hold the paper vertical in the paper tray was difficult to move left (open).  I still find it difficult to slide it open.  There is a little trick pinching in the right spot before trying to move it.  Once it was in the full open position, it did slide easily right (closed).

Installing the software went ok.  There were moments during the installation when nothing was happening.  There were no indications on the screen that the software was doing anything.  More then once, I thought the software was done installing and I started working only to be interrupted as another software package installed.  This software and driver are like most other printers, and needs to be installed before the printer is attached to the computer.  A USB cable was not included with the printer, but this is standard with printer companies now.

The test print after the installation printed perfect and shows off the color capabilities of this model.  Product registration was a little difficult.  It required the serial number that was located on the back of the printer.  Having cleared an area on my desk for this printer, it took moving the printer back out to find it.  It would have been nice to have that number included on some of the documentation that came with the printer.  But, this was just a minor annoyance.

The biggest annoyance in setting up this printer has to do with it taking over my default printer.  Because this is marketed to small businesses like mine, I have a laser printer that does the majority of my printing and I wan that to be my primary printer.  No where during the setup did it ask to become my default primary printer.  I find this to be very annoying and if I was purchasing this printer, I would consider boxing it back up and returning it to the store.  Yes it is easy to go into printers and reset the laser back as my primary printer, but I should not have to do that.

Printing Large Print Jobs

I printed a number of large print jobs with this printer.  The first was a tri-fold brochure with photos and clip art.  The printer handled the job great.  The printer was able to handle 40-50 sheets in its paper tray.  It printed each side with no paper jams and no miss-feed sheets.  I was getting about 3-4 pages per minute from a PDF document with text and images.  Less then the stated speeds, but as fast as expected for this class of printer.  What I was really impressed with was the ability to take the output from side one and placing it back into the printer and immediately printing side two without the pages sticking together as happens with many inkjet printers.

My next print job was to print business cards using perforated business cards.  The printer handled the heavier paper with easy.  I was able to print the business cards with a mix of text, images and graphics.  No paper jams, miss-feeds, or other problems I have had printing on heavier paper in the past. 

Photos

One of the highlights in the promotion of this printer is its ability to print photos.  The printer is a 4 ink CMYK printer (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black).  Most dedicated photo printers use a 6 ink process (CMYK + light Cyan and light Magenta).  I printed a number of photos using this printer and compared them to my 5 year old dedicated photo printer and found the photos from this printer lacking.  In testing this, I used the exact same image and the exact same paper.  The only difference was the printer.  The colors were not as crisp.  The black seemed to be a mix of all the colors instead of a dedicated black.  The final print was not as shiny on gloss paper as with my dedicated photo printer. 

I tried printing a photo from my SD card and it was ok.  The directions on the LCD were easy to understand.  I found that loading the pictures to the hard drive and using free software like Picasa from Google cleaned up the image and produced a better picture.  But if you want fast prints from your digital media, this is a good option. 

Ink

The printer monitors the ink levels in the ink wells and shows you this level each time you print.  This is a great way to monitor your usage and to be prepared with an extra cartridge when the time comes.  If I ran out of one of the color cartridges, the printer stopped printing and waited for me to replace the ink well before continuing on with the print job.  This is great if you have extras on hand, but could be a problem if you need to purchase additional ink and have other print jobs to complete.  Once the printer needed a new ink well, it would not accept additional print jobs even if that color was not needed.  When the black ran out, it asked if I wanted to finish the print job with a mixture of the other colors to produce a black.  This is a nice option if you are only printing black and white documents.

The steps for changing the ink well are clearly displayed on the LCD.  The only confusing part was for some problems you needed to push the OK button and other problems you pushed the START button to clear the issue.  Not completely intuitive why you would push OK or START for that particular problem.

Coping, Scanning, and Faxing

Scanning was very simple and straight forward.  Easy to understand software with a variety of options for your different scanning needs.

Coping was just as easy.  Put the page to be copied on the top and select the number of copies and start. 

Faxing was just as easy as any other fax machine.  Using either the document feeder or placing the page directly on the screen, faxing was easy.  I was unable to test faxing in color as the person that was testing with me only had a black and white fax machine.

Conclusion

I found the $150 Epson CX9400Fax to be a great All-in-One printer for the small office, home office.  It excelled at business documents and business related functions.  Although I was underwhelmed by the photos, printing documents with embedded photos was fast and of acceptable quality for most business applications.  I would recommend this printer to anyone looking for an all in one solution that did not need to rely on high quality photos for their business.  Crisp clear text and good quality photos with a minimum of difficulty make this printer one on my short list to recommend to clients.  Just keep a good supply of ink on hand and a variety of paper and you will be set for most projects your business needs.

If you have any questions or comments about this review, please direct them to SOHOTechPodcast@gmail.com or leave them as comments to this blog post.