Epson Stylus Photo PX710W Cartridge Review

The newest in a long line of specialized photo printers, the PX710W employs Epson's newest generation of 'hummingbird' Claria dye based inks, and there are six separately replaceable cartridges in the typical photo-friendly line-up of cyan, magenta, yellow and black, plus light cyan and light magenta, meaning to increase the colour field for the purpose of increased photographic precision. All six of the PX710W's inks are dye-based, enabling a high quality finish upon glossy photo papers. With the deficiency of a pigment-based black ink, or even a resin-based DuraBrite black ink the production of high-quality mono text is a trial for the PX710W. Nevertheless black text is still reasonably highly detailed, suffering significantly less from a weak greyish result than with a number of Epson's earlier photo printers, making it much more viable as an all-rounder. Mono text pages are pretty economical to create also, in spite of the deficiency of a high-capacity mono cartridge.

There's certainly no lack of connection options, the PX710W featuring both Ethernet as well as Wi-Fi, together with USB 2.0, PictBridge along with a large selection of media card slots.

Epson's normal 5760 x 1440dpi print engine is combined with a high-resolution 2400 x 4800dpi scanner that has standalone capabilities like photocopying as well as direct printing from memory cards being brought together by a, frankly, massive control panel. It does not have the more ambitious touchscreen option included by some but the 6.3cm colour LCD is bright and clear, while the wide variety of buttons growing from the front panel keeps things pretty intuitive.

Switching between plain and photo paper is a bit of a chore and, whilst there's a supplementary input tray, this will only accommodate small-format photo paper instead of full A4 sheets. Automatic double-sided printing is also off the menu, unless of course you purchase Epson's optional Auto Duplex unit.

Photograph print speed is extremely quick within normal quality photo option, with 6 x 4-inch prints taking around 20 seconds to deliver.

Previous Epson products including the Stylus Photo P50 basic printer as well as the PX650 all-in-one were notorious for their tardiness in top quality photo print modes, causing you to wait around for approximately five minutes while they offered up a borderless A4 print. The PX710W was substantially swifter in the assessments, at merely below three minutes.

The bottom line for every dedicated photo printer is the actual quality of photograph prints. The PX710W is a little bit of a mixed bag in this aspect, because while pictures are generally extremely vivid as well as lively, contrast can end up being artificially high and a few of our test shots lost detail in shadowy parts of scenes as a result. Meanwhile, skin tones can be somewhat on the cool side while using the Epson Stylus Photo PX710W printer ink cartridges.

The PX710W is among Epson's most effective photo printers to date yet speed as well as quality could possibly be superior.

Epson Stylus Photo PX710W printer ink cartridges are available here.