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Having recently made deceased her previous two printers, both the free with computer, generic kind where the ink costs more than sense, my girlfriend came to me for a bit of advice on which printer she should buy.

Generally when someone asks me which printer they should buy, I ask them some questions:

1. What will you be using the printer for?
2. Does it need to have a scanner/copier functionality
3. How much are you wanting to spend?
4. Any other special functions it must have (screen, CD printing capabilities)?

Having answered these questions: she was only wanting to use it for University work; Scanner/Copier would be handy; roughly £50 and no other special functions I fired up Amazon.co.uk and searched for Epson printers to see which matched the specification.

First printer I came across that matched was an Epson Stylus DX5050, which had all the required functionality and was on special offer £60 from £70. Great but she needed it now. So we took a trip down to the local Comet and they had it for £70, but they had the cheaper Epson Stylus DX4000 for £50, the only difference being the DX5050 has a photo color ink cartridge, the DX4000 does not. But thats good new as it’s one less ink cartridge to replace so I suggested she bought the DX4000.

So we get it home and unpack (Remember if your buying an Epson printer you must buy a separate USB cable, as there won’t be one in the box) and it looks good. Nice shiny black cover and the grays not too bad either. The scanner/copier can do up to A4, which is all my girl needs and the paper holding bit has a good cover for when it’s not being used to stop objects falling in a jamming the mechanism (you’d be surprised how often I’ve seen that happening) and the scanner lid felt pretty solid. The overall build quality is extremely good.

After unpacking we get to the instructions, which were clearly laid out in numbered steps with guided pictures. They were clear and easy to follow. They basically consist of:

• Unpacking.
• Removing various pieces of sellotape.
• Power cable in (not the USB cable yet.)
• Press the on button then the ink button.
• Insert ink cartridges (shake them well first and remove the yellow tabs.)
• Press ink button again.
• Wait.
• Install driver software (Guided install, click next etc. Extremely simple and well put together.)
• Connect USB cable.
• Print something!

The print quality is extremely good, black and color. A bit on the slow side for the color prints, but black prints out fine. Scanner/Copier quality is good and doesn’t take too long to copy. Overall a pleasant install experience with no hassle or problems.

Definitely recommended, although my girlfriend wouldn’t let me install in to my Ubuntu laptop so no idea if it work’s well in Linux. Ink cartridges are pretty cheap too (about £3-6 depending on where you get them and if they are genuine or compatibles) and since there are 4 separate colors you shouldn’t have to replace them all at once (in theory).