Epson Stylus CX6400 review

Dan Littman CNET

Published: 23 Dec 2003

Considering its £152.34 (ex. VAT) price tag, the Epson Stylus CX6400 multifunction printer offers an impressive depth of features for storing, printing and editing digital images. It also prints and copies faster than similar systems we have tested, although it scans somewhat slowly. The CX6400 delivers attractive print, scan and copy quality across the board. If digital photography has crept into your life, the CX6400 can move it from an afterthought to an integral part of your daily computing.

Design

The silver-and-grey Epson Stylus CX6400 bulges slightly at the sides and measures 45cm wide by 42.9cm deep by 21.8cm high. The output tray slides under the base when not in use, freeing up some room on your desk; the input support flops over the scanner bed but doesn't lie completely flat, which looks plain silly. Both paper supports are sturdy enough for a home or a home office, but we're not sure why the input paper support comes off. The scanner lid comes off, too, which is a good thing because it lets you arrange objects on the A4-size glass that would otherwise be too large to fit. The scanner bed also opens wide, creating plenty of room for your hands to reach in and replace the ink cartridges. The USB cable feeds are located deep inside the underside of the scanner bed so that the cables won't come loose.

The CX6400's two key features are plain to see. Under a small plastic flap above the output tray are five flash-memory slots that support most common digital camera memory-card formats, including Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro and MagicGate Memory Stick; CompactFlash (I and II); IBM Microdrive; SmartMedia; Secure Digital (SD); MultiMediaCard (MMC); and xD Picture Card. And along the strip between the memory-card module and the scanner glass is a control panel with an LCD and logically grouped, clearly labelled buttons for each set of functions. The LCD, alas, is not backlit, which makes it tough to use the control panel in poor lighting.

Features

The Epson Stylus CX6400 offers an impressive depth of features for its price. Like other multifunction printers we've seen, it lets you print a sheet showing thumbnails of all the images on a memory card, mark the sheet to indicate which images to print and the size and quality you want, then slap the sheet on the scanner glass to execute your instructions. The CX6400 offers one unique feature: you can also scan directly to a memory card.

The CX6400 makes black or colour copies without a computer. You can tell it to reduce the image and print it multiple times on the same sheet, print two or four different scans on the same sheet, or blow up the image onto several sheets that tape together into a poster. If you don't want anyone else using your CX6400 or changing your settings, you can lock it with a password.

With the CX6400 attached to your computer, a shell application called Epson Smart Panel displays logically grouped buttons that initiate discrete tasks, such as scanning an image into Photoshop or scanning a text page to convert to live text with the bundled Abbyy FineReader Sprint. Epson's Scan application lets you tweak colour-channel settings, rearrange the image's histogram, correct colour tone, and so on. The package also includes ArcSoft's PhotoImpression, a tool for editing and manipulating photos and arranging them in a wide range of templates. While not as thorough as HP's printer software, Epson covers the basics well.

Performance

The Epson Stylus CX6400 makes prints and copies at a reasonable speed. It spits out plain text at 4.2 pages per minute (ppm), delivers photos at 3 minutes per page (mpp) and produces monochrome copies at 3.2ppm.

The CX6400 delivers good-quality, but not excellent, text and photos. Instead of the four-plus-two photo inks found on other Epson photo printers, the CX6400 uses only a four-ink engine. Thus, the CX6400's text output on coated inkjet paper shows some rough edges, especially on diagonal strokes, and the ink weighting looks a tad uneven. Colour prints on coated inkjet paper show some dithering, but they have good detail and accurate colours. Photos on glossy photo paper have lifelike texture and shading, though colour has a slightly reddish cast. However, the CX6400 preserved the subtlest shades of grey in our greyscale scanning test and captured fine detail, despite a slightly soft-focus look. In fact, the CX6400 is one of the best greyscale scanners we’ve seen, multifunction or standalone. On colour scans, it captures detail well and renders shading and gradations cleanly, while its colours are accurate despite a lack of saturation.

Service & support

Epson provides fairly generous support for the Stylus CX6400. The company covers the CX6400 with a one-year warranty that includes access to Epson’s Express Service Centres (you can find your nearest one by typing in your postcode here), where a faulty product will be investigated and either repaired or replaced. The one-year standard warranty is optionally extendable to three years for £59 (ex. VAT).

Telephone support is available (at BT national rate) from 9am to 5.30pm Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm Saturday and 10am to 5pm Sunday. You can also chat directly to a support technician online, get support via email or use Epson’s Web-based e-support tool.

The printer ships with a well-illustrated setup poster and a concisely printed manual describing the capabilities that don't depend on a computer, such as printing from memory cards and copying. The computer-enabled features, such as OCR and photo editing, have their own on-screen documentation.

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