Epson Stylus Office BX320FW

The Epson Stylus Office BX320FW is a four-in-one multifunction printer that's designed for small businesses.  It offers printing, scanning, copying and faxes, all over WiFi and/or Ethernet.


Hardware

This isn't the sleekest printer we've ever seen.  The five programmable hotkeys and general design both look like they come from a previous generation of products, and at just 1.5 x 6 cm, the LCD screen is tiny.  It shows black and white text on two lines.  The five buttons that you can see to the right of this photo can be programmed with speed-dial numbers for the fax.

For a printer that's aimed at business users, the absence of double-sided printing is unforgivable.  The automatic document loader has a decent capacity of 120 pages.

The printer has five separate cartridges: the traditional trio of cyan, magenta and yellow, plus two different blacks.  Two sizes of cartridge available, normal and extra large.




Speeds: good at office printing, but bad at photos

The printer's spec claims printing speeds of 5.5 pages per minute in colour, but we found it did even better, reaching 7 ppm in the fast mode, which is turned on by default.  Compare that to the Canon Pixma MG5250, which scored five stars for its printing speeds, managing 10 ppm in place of Epson's 7 ppm.  But the BX320FW takes the upper hand in black and white, in both normal and draft modes, reaching speeds of 17 ppm (Canon: 13 ppm) in the former and 24 ppm (Canon: 17 ppm) in the latter.


Given that it's aimed at small business users, the BX 320FW isn't likely to be used for printing photos very often, except the occasional illustration perhaps.  But it's still worth knowing that it's very slow with photos, taking up to 3 minutes 50 seconds to produce an A4 photo and 1 minute 3 seconds for a 4 x 6'' print.  And as you'll see below, the quality is somewhat disappointing.  


Quality: uneven

For office printing, the quality of test graphic, below, was definitely worth four stars.  The text is clear, the colours are spot on, and in general, the printer does the job.

There's less contrast in black and white, and the text is less legible.  The red gradients tend to disappear into the background.


Scanner & Copier

The CIS scanner is quite fast.

Our stopwatch recorded some impressive times: eight seconds for a pre-scan, six seconds for the whole job at 75 dpi and nine seconds for 300 dpi.

The scanner's native resolution, 2400 dpi, ensures you get average results.  The discrepancy between the colours in the original and the scanned version is just 5.4% and the results remain fairly acceptable.  Colours are reproduced pretty accurately.  However, some details are lost and some blurriness creeps in, giving a washed-out result.  The loss of details is easy to spot.

Copies take 17 seconds for black and white or 28 seconds in colour.  That's average.

Energy Consumption & Noise Levels

This printer uses 3.4 W on standby and 12 W when it's working.  That's not very much, and is actually about average compared to some of the others we've tested.  However, we'd much rather see the consumption in standby fall to below 1 W.  It is possible, but very few people have managed it.  Manufacturers, we're talking to you: a little more effort please!

Our noise measurements were a little more alarming.  The average value of 60 dB when printing office documents is pretty high, although the printer is quieter when printing photos.


Cost per page: very low

The cost per page is very low: 9 p.  The real surprise is that the difference in price between the normal cartridges and the extra large versions comes down to just a few pounds on Epson's official site.  The cost per page is well under the average we found when comparing the running costs of 120 different printers.
XL

Cartridge	Price	ISO Lifespan	Cost per page
T1291 (black)	2 x £9	805	2.2 p
T1302 (cyan)	£22	880	2.5 p
T1303 (magenta)	£10	580	1.7 p
T1304 (yellow)	£22	855	2.6 p