Epson Expression XP-410 Wireless Color All-in-One Inkjet Printer
- The complete wireless solution; plus Wi-Fi Direct
- Easily print from tablets and smart phones
- Space-saving Small-in-One design
- 2.5″ LCD and touch panel
- Affordable individual ink cartridges – replace only the color you need
Small size without compromise. Print, copy, scan and more get all the performance you need from the sleek, quiet, easy-to-use Expression HomeXP-410. This versatile printer delivers the complete wireless solution1. Print from anywhere in your home with Wi-Fi certified n or you can even print from your iPad, iPhone, tablet or smartphone2. The XP-410 features the latest in wireless standards, plus Wi-Fi Direct1. And, it supports Apple Air Print and Google Cloud Print. Built-in card slots, a 2.5″ LCD and convenient touch panel make it easy to print borderless, customized photos in various layouts, PC-free. When you’re in a rush, you can grab your prints and go, thanks to DURA rite Ultra instant-dry ink. The Expression Home XP-410 even offers individual ink cartridges so you can replace only the color that you need.
List Price: $ 99.99
Price: [wpramaprice asin=”B00CBAPEYE”]
[wpramareviews asin=”B00CBAPEYE”]
Exactly What I Wanted (And Then Some)…Just Know What You’re Buying,
Now that that’s cleared up…
I absolutely love this printer. After owning a few Canons previously, I made the decision to switch back to Epson. I’m glad I did. I also knew exactly what I wanted: An inexpensive printer for light household/personal use that was wireless, and could also copy/scan. I rarely print photos on my printer, so photo quality was not a deciding factor.
PROS:
(1) This printer is extremely lightweight. Wow. Around 9 pounds.
(2) Four ink cartridges (your typical black, cyan, magenta, yellow). While many list ink pricing as a CON, I do NOT. Why? As often as I print, the price of ink means little to me. OEM cartridges run about $13 for black and $8 for each of the colors. Capacity for the T200 ink is about 140-50 pages. For T200X, you spend a little more on ink, but cost per page ends up a tad less. Regardless, ink price was not a turn off for me (and I research this before buying a printer).
(3) Extremely easy to set up. Providing you READ THE DIRECTIONS. There’s a quick-start sheet that’s insanely easy to follow. Follow it. Don’t think you know more than Epson.
(4) Print quality for text is amazing. No issues there. Basic graphics are fine, too. I haven’t printed any photos yet, but I’m not a huge fan of inkjet-printed photos anyway. That’s what Walgreens is for.
(5) You can set up without a USB cable — providing you have a wireless network. And most, do. Again, please make sure you follow the directions! I was a tad irritated by the process, but only because I typed my password incorrectly. Silly me!
(6) Epson has some of the best (at least in my opinion) wireless printing options available. All of their newer printers — even the budget ones (which is rare, apparently) — are assigned an “email” address. Using their Epson Connect service (it’s free), software, and apps (for Android, iPhone, and most tablets), I can send items I want to print to my printer’s “email.” Next time I turn my printer on, the items will automatically print. If you’re out of town, items are held for 72 hours (3 days). I can even print from cloud storage services like Dropbox. I absolutely love this feature! Especially in a printer that costs under $100.
(7) Intuitive 2.5″ color panel that lets you adjust settings, set up wi-fi, and scan/print/copy.
(8) SD card reader. Again, many label this a CON, as it only does SD cards, but who doesn’t have an SD adaptor for micro cards, etc? (Okay. I don’t. But I used to. And they’re cheap).
(9) Multiple paper-types accepted (though know the width is 8.5″ max), including “iron-on”. I frequently print on cardstock, so this is a good thing.
CONS (Well, maybe for some…):
(1) No USB reader/input. Not a huge deal for ME, but may be for others.
(2) Rear feed tray only. Again, I can work with this, but others may like the “tray” option.
(3) Goes through ink quickly (tanks are small). Again, I use my printer infrequently, so not a huge deal. And I think tank prices are okay (see above).
(4) No “document” feeder for multiple page copying or scanning; however, remember what I said above about this being a budget printer? If you want the fancy add-ons, you need to spend more. And get an “office quality” printer. Let’s be honest with ourselves, eh? 🙂
Overall opinion? I’m quickly becoming an Epson fan again. I only required the most basic features, and the XP-410 delivers. And then some, honestly. I did not know about the Epson Connect features when I purchased the printer, so that was a VERY pleasant “bonus” that Epson, honestly, did not need to include with a budget-level printer. But I’m glad they did.
So…
For the average HOME USE who requires the basic abilities to print, copy, and scan, this printer fits the bill. If you want to print high-quality photos, 200-page books in under 10 minutes, or frame-worthy photos, you may want to look elsewhere.
Note: The printer does not automatically ask you to “align” the print heads like many upper-end printers do. I recommend you do this (from either the printer menu or the computer software/maintenance).
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|Decent Value for the Money,
My first test was the scanner. I put a color magazine cover on the scanner’s platen and tried the fully-automatic scanning mode. Since the automatic mode did not recognize the magazine cover as a screened document, my results were not satisfactory. I tried scanning again using the “professional” mode and set the scanner to de-screen the scanned document. Results were dramatically better. I then printed the scanned magazine cover on plain bright white paper and was impressed that the results were almost indistinguishable from the original.
Next I made a high-resolution 4 X 6 borderless color print on premium glossy photo paper from my computer using the printer’s best-quality settings. It took nearly three minutes for the printer to do its job, but the results were as good as I would have received from a photo lab. Next I took a photograph of someone in a dimly-lighted room, knowing that the camera’s built-in flash would cause red-eye. Then I removed the SD card from the camera, inserted it into the printer’s card slot and made two prints; one with red-eye correction turned “off” and the other with red-eye correction turned “on”. The printer was able to recognize the subject and automatically correct the red-eye in the second print.
Epson advertises on-line features that allow printing directly from smartphones, tablets and from remote locations via the cloud and/or by assigning a unique email address to the printer and simply emailing photos and documents to the printer. After writing this review, I installed one of these printers for friends who had two Windows notebook computers but also wanted to print from an iPad. Although I am not an iPad user, I quickly found a link on Epson’s Website that pointed me to an Epson Print application which we downloaded and installed. The app identified this printer on their network and printed flawlessly. My friends were so delighted that they bought another one of these printers for their vacation home. This device comes with a decent software bundle for scanning and printing and will make Acrobat PDF files directly.
For Epson to be able to pack so many quality features into such a small package for less than $100, there were inevitably some sacrifices. The printer works fine on a modern wireless network or with a direct connection to a Windows or Macintosh computer with a USB cable (not included) but the printer has no CAT-5 network connection nor does it support Bluetooth. Whether printing photos from a computer or directly from an SD camera card, it takes about three minutes to produce a 4 X 6 borderless print at the highest quality setting. The memory card slot accommodates ONLY SD memory cards and has no direct connection for a memory card adapter or direct-print camera, so if your camera uses another type of memory card you’ll need to load the files onto a computer first before printing them. There is no document feeder on the scanner, so scanning or copying multiple page documents would be an arduous process. Some small printer/scanner/copiers also have FAX capabilities, but this one does not. None of my photo or PDF editing programs can recognize and scan directly from this device.
In summary, this printer/scanner/copier should work fine in a home setting where compactness, quality and low cost are more important than speed. Some users complain that the standard ink cartridges don’t last very long but each color can be replaced separately when a cartridge is empty. High-capacity cartridges are also available.
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|Versatile printer with a very good scanner,
The Epson XP-410 does more things than any printer I have owned. You get more ways to connect to more devices, including ones that were difficult or impossible to print from with older printers.
This printer can print photos directly from an SD card. That’s nothing new and printers have been doing that for years. But this one does it well. Its display shows a bright clear image of what you are going to print and makes it easy to crop them. It also gives you a number of adjustments, but not as many as if you use the drivers or utilities on a PC.
Of course, you can also print from a PC. The printer comes with a driver disk, and unlike other similar disks that often contain out of date software, this disk downloads the latest drivers directly making the process very smooth. The only part that wasn’t smooth for me was the registration, and that’s because they never tested it on PCs with larger font settings. So there was no way to see the right side of the fields or a button to submit things.
You can hook this to a computer with a USB 2.0 cable (not included) or have a number of choices using WiFi. I tried WPS, which meant I merely had to press a button on my wireless device (typically a router or wireless access point) and the printer connected itself. I also tried the old fashioned way of finding my network on a list (SSID) and selecting it and giving it a key. That went smoothly too.
Another feature this offers is WiFi Direct. That allows you to print from your computer using WiFi even when you don’t have a network. There are reasons you might want to print from a computer, phone or other device without using a network. You might be in a hotel room or dorm room where you aren’t allowed to add the printer to their network. Typically you’d need to disconnect from any other WiFi network to use this that way. Getting WiFi direct set up was relatively easy, but the instructions in the manual only worked if I removed the printer from existing networks first.
Perhaps Google has offered you Cloud printing and you didn’t know what it was, or you tried to set it up and found that it wouldn’t work with your printer. With this printer, it’s easy. Equally easy, or perhaps easier, is printing from an iPad or iPhone using Airprint. I started reading Apple’s explanation of how it works, but I found that it’s easier to accept that it just works. From an iPad, when you go to any application that has an icon for printing, selecting it will show this on the list of printers (possibly the only one on the list since most printers aren’t compatible) and you’re on your way.
If that’s not enough ways to print, you can send a document to an email address that’s set up just for your printer. So printing from anywhere with that or Google are real options. There’s also a remote print driver for the PC that essentially uses that email address behind the scenes, but you merely see the printer on your list of devices as with any other printer. But you can use it anywhere there is Internet connectivity. The only problem with the email address itself is that it has fourteen seemingly random characters before the “at” sign and isn’t something practical to remember. So the driver is the best way to use it.
There’s also an app for iPad/iPhone or Android that lets you print or scan, and send any scanned files to a printer, save them on your local device, save them in Google Drive, and more. The apps look very similar on both platforms and work about the same.
Of course getting things to the printer is important but more important is how well it prints. I started off printing a photo using an SD card. It produced a smooth detailed photo that appeared to be of high quality, but the colors were a bit lackluster. When I went to print test pages (text) after trying each of the above connectivity options, I found the printing very streaky. The printer’s test pattern showed that the heads needed cleaning, and I had to go through two rounds before it showed that it was correct. I posted a side by side comparison of the next photo I printed, and it’s clear that it still had problems with the print heads. At that point, I noticed that the half dozen pages and two photos I printed used about 1/3 of the black ink and about 20% of each other color. Either that, or the levels displayed were inaccurate but that would still be Epson’s fault.
I could have spent a lot more time trying to resolve this, and don’t doubt that the print quality will improve, but it still means that the starter cartridges serve little practical purpose beyond setting up the machine. Epson prices replacement cartridges at $38, or $81 for a set of high yield ones. So I had to consider that part of the purchase price, because you will really need to buy a set right away. At $138, the printer is far less of a bargain, so I had to deduct a star for that 40% immediate add on.
I…
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