What kind of all-in-one printer can you get for under £50 ? We take a look at the Epson sx215, which looks like a great little machine , but with some shortcomings. At this price point , we are looking at the home user who wants to print, scan and copy .
The printer is a conventional black box design, and has a control panel mounted on the left hand side. It’s good to see a full-colour LCD display set into the middle of the controls . Small and neat, it is ideal for viewing photos and choosing from the various menu options .
The machine has four control buttons behind the LCD, including specific options to print photos and to print an index sheet from a memory card. A memory card slot is also provided and takes SD, XD and memory stick cards . In front of the LCD is a convenient button to switch between A4 and 15 x 10cm paper.
Both paper types feed from a angled, telescopic paper tray at the back to a horizontal, tray at the front. There’s only a single USB socket at the back , there is no wireless capacity with this printer and to be honest we wouldn’t expect to see one at this price point .
One thing missing from the control panel is a maintenance button for running print checks or changing ink cartridges, and you need to know the magic shortcut of pressing the Index Sheet and Scan buttons together to reach the maintenance menu – a nice touch would be to have it added to the control panel .
Fitting and replacing epson ink cartridges is easy, as the four cartridges plug directly into their places in the head carrier. The cartridges are numbered T0711 TO T0714 inclusive.
Epson quote the Stylus SX215 can reach 32ppm printing black and 15ppm printing colour, in draft mode. We think England would have more chance of winning the World cup than this prediction coming true. Sure enough we were right particularly as the machine could only manage 3.5ppm on our five-page black text print and 1.2ppm on the black text and colour graphics test.
The result of the 20-page test was faster , but in this case only by 0.5ppm, giving a top speed of 4ppm. This is slow and the 20-page document took over five minutes to complete.
A single page colour A4 copy took 1min 11secs and a 15 x 10cm photo took 3mins 20secs printing in best mode from a PC. This is slow!
Actually, best to leave it overnight working in the garage, as we measured a maximum noise level of 77dBA at half a metre, when feeding paper. This is very loud and would be distracting if, for example, you were trying to take a phone call while printing a multi-page document on your desk.
Given this is a budget printer, the print quality is average at best. It’s nowhere near as clean as even cheap Canon or HP machines, as there’s jaggedness to curves and diagonals and some bleeding of ink into the paper .
Graphic images are good, with bright colours and little dithering. Photo prints are also very good with clean lines, bright colours and smooth transitions .
The Stylus SX215 can take the Epson cheetah T0715 multipack of cartridges, which retail for around £30. Or compatible ink cartridges are also available at a fraction of the price.
Verdict
For its price, there’s plenty to like about the Epson Stylus SX215, such as its LCD display, simple operation and excellent photo prints. There are a few things to weigh against these, though, with its very noisy paper feed, universally slow print .