Epson Expression Home XP-5200 All-in-One Printer Review - PCMag

A speedy glimpse astatine the Epson Expression Home XP-5200 All-in-One Printer's sanction suggests it's aimed squarely astatine location users. But a generous 150-sheet insubstantial capableness makes it perchance suitable for a location bureau arsenic well, arsenic agelong arsenic you don't caput that its copying and scanning is constricted to 1 leafage astatine a clip connected a letter-size flatbed. It delivers accelerated velocity and impressively bully output prime for its $129.99 database price, and its features see the quality to nonstop scans to the cloud, people from mobile devices, and adjacent people remotely implicit the internet. All this isn't rather capable for it to regenerate the Brother MFC-J4335DW as our apical prime for light-duty inkjet all-in-one printers for a location office. But the XP-5200's somewhat amended photograph quality, and immoderate features that spell beyond the basics, volition beryllium capable for immoderate to similar it.

Just Right When Space Is Tight

The XP-5200 weighs conscionable 11.9 pounds and is easy tiny capable to stock a table with. It measures conscionable 7.4 by 14.8 by 13.7 inches (HWD) with the output tray closed, adding 6.1 inches to the extent with it open. Physical setup is simple. Remove the packing materials, past travel the instructions to instal the ink cartridges and align the printhead. The manual alignment is simply a small tedious compared with AIOs that fto you people an alignment leafage and past scan it for automatic alignment, but it's emblematic for Epson's inkjet AIOs.

The driver, scan app, and different bundle indispensable beryllium downloaded from Epson's website, pursuing the steps successful the included Quick Start guide. The usher besides covers downloading the Epson Smart Panel app to a mobile device, which volition fto you some people from and scan to your telephone oregon tablet via Wi-Fi Direct oregon a Wi-Fi network. In my tests, it worked arsenic promised utilizing Wi-Fi Direct.

(Credit: Epson)

The XP-5200 supports Epson Connect, arsenic well, which works with astir existent Epson printers. Once acceptable up, Epson Connect volition fto you some people via the net and scan to respective unreality sites—including Google Drive, Dropbox, Evernote, and Box—directly from the printer's power panel. The sheet comprises a 2.4-inch LCD readout and buttons, alternatively than a interaction screen. You tin besides nonstop scans to the unreality from your PC, utilizing Epson's ScanSmart app.

In summation to the 150-sheet capableness for up to legal-size sheets, insubstantial handling for printing includes car duplexing (two-sided printing). However, the deficiency of a 2nd tray, oregon adjacent a single-sheet bypass, limits the printer to light-duty usage successful astir homes oregon location offices, since you person to swap retired the insubstantial whenever you request to alteration from 1 benignant of insubstantial to another.

On the positive side, the 150-sheet capableness means you shouldn't request to refill the tray often. Printing adjacent arsenic overmuch arsenic 600 pages per period would support the chore down to astir erstwhile a week, portion printing to the bounds of Epson's 800-page maximum recommended monthly work rhythm would mandate refills lone somewhat much often. For scanning, the printer is constricted to 1 leafage astatine a clip connected an 8.5-by-11.7-inch flatbed, truthful though you tin people astatine ineligible size, you can't scan legal-size originals.

(Credit: Epson)

The moving outgo is connected the precocious side, arsenic is emblematic for cartridge-based inkjets. Based connected the outgo and output for the high-capacity achromatic and modular cyan, yellow, and magenta cartridges (the lone prime for colour inks), the ink outgo is 6.4 cents per mono leafage and 21.7 cents per colour page. Keep successful caput that moving costs thin to beryllium higher for less-expensive printers than for more-expensive models with akin features. As ever erstwhile comparing printers, absorption connected the full outgo of ownership to see which 1 volition outgo less successful the agelong run, alternatively than focusing connected either moving outgo oregon archetypal outgo alone.

Testing the XP-5200: Mostly Solid Output Quality

The XP-5200 turned successful immoderate impressively accelerated speeds for its terms successful our show tests, utilizing a USB transportation to our modular testbed PC. For text, it printed our 12-page Word file, not including the archetypal page, astatine 15ppm (44 seconds), a interaction faster than its rated 14ppm, conscionable down the MFC-J4335DW's 16.1ppm (41 seconds), and noticeably faster successful real-world usage than the third-place Canon Pixma G3260 (11.4ppm, oregon 58 seconds) oregon last-place Canon Pixma TR4720 (9ppm, oregon 1 infinitesimal and 12 seconds).

The Epson and Brother printers besides delivered faster archetypal leafage retired (FPO) times than the 2 Canon models, which translated to finishing successful the aforesaid bid erstwhile including the archetypal page. Here again, the MFC-J4335DW was successful archetypal spot astatine 14.7ppm (49 seconds), the XP-5200 each but tied astatine 13.8ppm (52 seconds), the G3260 successful 3rd spot astatine 10ppm (1:12), and the TR4720 trailing astatine 8.3ppm (1:27).

(Credit: Epson)

The printers finished successful a antithetic bid for the concern applications suite, which adds files that see graphics and color. The MFC-J4335DW managed a convincing archetypal place, astatine 2:23 (10.5ppm). followed by the XP-5200 (3:15, oregon 7.7ppm), the TR4720 (4:48, oregon 4.9ppm), and the G3260 (7:30, oregon 3.9ppm). For 4-by-6-inch photos, the XP-5200 averaged 1:20 each.

The printer's output prime was awesome arsenic well. Every font successful our tests that you'd apt usage successful a concern papers oregon schoolwork was easy readable astatine 5 points, though looking done a loupe showed ragged edges and immoderate tiny gaps successful lines astatine 6 points successful astir fonts and 8 points successful some. The 2 heavy stylized fonts successful our suite with heavy strokes were besides much readable astatine tiny sizes than emblematic for inkjets, with 1 easy readable astatine 8 points and the different easy readable astatine 6 points.

(Credit: PCMag)

Color for graphics connected plain insubstantial utilizing default settings was nicely saturated, though amended described arsenic pastel than vibrant. I saw immoderate flimsy posterization (color changing suddenly, wherever it should alteration gradually) connected 1 peculiarly hard-to-reproduce gradient, flimsy banding successful a acheronian greenish background, and much evident banding successful a coagulated achromatic background. But astir fills and gradients were smooth, and adjacent a single-pixel-wide enactment connected a achromatic inheritance was crisp and clean. Photos connected Epson's recommended Premium Photo Paper Glossy utilizing the High Quality mounting showed immoderate flimsy nonaccomplishment of shadiness detail, but were astatine the precocious extremity of drugstore prime overall.

On our ink smudge tests connected plain paper, achromatic substance smudged somewhat from water, but stood up to a highlighter with nary smudges astatine all. Color inks resisted smudging from water, but the pages were near with h2o stains.

Verdict: A Fine AIO for Your Home Office

The XP-5200 scores nicely connected velocity and output prime for the price, but you'll privation to comparison it with each of the different printers mentioned here. In summation to faster velocity and little moving cost, for example, the MFC-J4335DW besides offers a 20-sheet ADF for scanning and a one-sheet bypass tray truthful you tin people connected antithetic types of insubstantial without having to swap retired insubstantial successful the tray. However, it doesn't lucifer the XP-5200 for photograph quality. It besides costs more, truthful portion its extras support it firmly successful spot arsenic our Editors' Choice prime for the category, its little moving outgo whitethorn oregon whitethorn not mean a little full outgo of ownership, depending connected however overmuch you print.

The TR4720 costs little than the XP-5200, portion adding a 20-sheet ADF. But speech from being a slower printer than the XP-5200, with little insubstantial capacity, it uses a tri-color cartridge, which tin thrust up moving costs by forcing you to propulsion retired unused ink each clip you tally retired of 1 color. The G3260, meanwhile, has the lowest moving outgo successful this group, and it delivers bully photograph quality. But it's besides the slowest and the astir costly of the four, truthful you'll person to people a batch of pages for its full outgo of ownership to beryllium little than for the XP-5200. All that said, if you don't request an ADF oregon apical photograph quality, and privation accelerated printing, good-quality substance and graphics, and features similar distant printing, the Epson Expression Home XP-5200 is simply a coagulated light-duty AIO.