Epson DX6000 All In One Printer Scanner and Copier review

Can Epson's latest be the solution for the small office?

14 February 2007 11:00 GMT / By Doug Harman

The DX6000 provides some great improvements over its predecessor, the DX4800 including better styling and it has a smaller, more desk friendly footprint. It has front loading memory card slots built-in that cater to CompactFlash Type I/II, Memory Stick, SD/MMC and xD-Picture Card, so most of the main current digital camera storage cards. It is also PictBridge and USB DirectPrint compatible for cameras with those features (which is actually most today) and that can plug in directly to the DX6000’s dedicated USB port.

The DX6000 uses the newly developed instant-dry DURAbrite Ultra inks that also produce prints that are smudge and water resistant with a (claimed) print longevity of 100-years.

There are four separate colour cartridges that cost around £7 each and provide cyan, magenta, black and yellow inks that are fired onto the paper with a minimum droplet size of just three picolitres (3pl), so small enough to define fine detail and produce nicely rendered areas of low colour cover such as clear skies for example.

Using the printer is great, particularly thanks to the new 2-inch colour screen that allows both neat menu control of the device as a standalone or when viewing images on memory cards for example.

The A4 flatbed scanner allows you to scan documents or photos up to 1200ppi and it doubles as a photocopier too, and because it can be used as a standalone device, it makes it very versatile indeed.

The screen is also used for set when copying (print sizes etc.) and checking things such as ink levels or when aligning and cleaning print heads. And talking of printing, the DX6000 provides an optimised output dot resolution of 5760 x 1440dpi, more than ample for most purposes including great photo output. Print speeds are improved of the DX4800 with a (claimed) 27-pager per minute or around 28-seconds for a single 6 x 4-inch borderless print, although in reality the speeds achieved depend on your systems and PC set up.

Print output colours are vibrant and prints are very sharp too, from any source be it card or direct from a scanned image or from PC. However, printing using the optimised output setting used more ink than I’d have expected, having said that, switching to the Best setting provided output almost as good and without sucking so much in out of the system. So if that super-fine detail is not required (say in smaller prints) then you can easily get away without using the DX6000 optimised print setting.

The bundled software is also excellent and includes Epson’s Creativity Suit and ABBEY FineReader (it’s OCR software) and connectivity is good with swift, USB2.0 compatibility.

Verdict

Apart from the high ink use in the top optimised print mode, the DX6000 is an excellent piece of kit that comes in at a very reasonable price. Ink tanks are a good price too and so overall, I can heartily recommend the DX6000 for any none looking for an all-in-one package that won’t break the bank or the desk it sits on.

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Review Recap

Made by: Epson
Price as reviewed: £89.99
Latest price: Compare prices
The good: Design, simple to use and set up, price, LCD, print quality
The bad: Limited ink tank yield
Quick verdict: Epson’s updated and redesigned DX6000 AiO is great to use, offers great borderless print quality up to A4 and has a nice screen
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