Epson Stylus SX600FW - DigitalVersus

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Epson Stylus SX600FW


Amazon Marketplace UK	128.00
John Lewis	139.95
Printerland	142.35
Epson UK	146.80
Amazon.co.uk	149.99

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Resolution	5 760 x 1 440 ppp
Speed B&W / color	38 ppm / 38 ppm ppm
Ink drop size	2 picolitres
Number of cartridges	4
Number of base colors	4
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Scanner / Copier / Fax	oui / oui / oui
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Nilofar Hadjanadjiboudine
Updated: April 15, 2009 - Test date: April 14, 2009

Copier and scanner

The scanner is fast, probably one of the fastest. 8 seconds only for document preview and a little over 5 seconds for digitalisation of a 10x15 colour photo.
As is often the case with Epson, scanner quality is excellent. It is precise, with faithful colours and no excessive accentuation (unlike HP).

The copier has the same qualities: 11 seconds to complete a black and white copy and 18 seconds for colour.

The Stylus SX600FW is a pro printer that prioritises speed, with built-in fax and document loader. All default modes are set to “Text” both for office documents and photos. Great if you just want to get on with your scanning or printing without wasting time – and very nice quality too.

The printer has an Ethernet port as well as Wi-Fi and uses four separate cartridges – which doesn’t work out to be as economic as all that when you calculate the cost of 1 page. There're a lot of buttons on the interface as well as a large 6.3 cm screen. Navigation is however very simple and you’re guided pretty well.

Office docs : very good speeds as well as good quality;

In default mode (text), the prints are very fast and of nice quality: 17.3 pages per minute (ppm) for black and white prints and 11.8 ppm for colour (general consumer printers – ie not “pro” – hit a ceiling at 7 ppm on the same test). Draft mode is even faster: 24.7 ppm in black and white (only useful to check page layout however). Using the Text mode as default is a good move: it’s the best compromise between quality and speed on this printer. In text and graphic mode quality is a little (just a little) better but you lose out on speed.

default mode on the left and text and graphics mode on the right

Photos: nice quality, even in text mode

Once again, speeds were measured in default mode; ie text mode. A 10x15 print without borders takes 22 seconds after print validation as against 1 minute 20 in photo mode. An A4 print takes almost 55 seconds (in text mode).

What changes are there in terms of quality? To our great surprise, nothing much. So you may as well use the much faster text mode. Overall, photo quality is good and the colours faithful. At least, no dominant colour is visible.

Default mode on the left and photo mode on the right

Something that may be of interest: the machine is noisy during prints. There is however a quiet mode that improves things a lot.

Cartridges

Cartridge		Lifespan (ISO)
T0711 (black)		230
T1001 (black)		995
T0712 (cyan)		345
T1002 (cyan)		815
T0713 (magenta)		250
T1003 (magenta)		815
T0714 (yellow)		370
T1004 (yellow)		815

When you do the maths, you'll see that this printer is expensive for office documents – higher than average and much higher than HP on the (OfficeJet 6500)! Go for black and white prints when you can.

The SX600FW does however have high capacity cartridges – something that is offered by more and more printer manufacturers. With these, cost per page is much more reasonable.

Fast

Good quality for both photos and office docs

Wi-Fi and ethernet connection

Cost per page is good with high capacity cartridges

High cost of prints with standard cartridges

Noisy in default mode

Fast, nice quality prints… The Epson Stylus SX600 FW delivers. Nevertheless cost per page is a good deal higher than average with standard cartridges.