Epson's Stylus CX6400 all-in-one device is aimed squarely at the home office and SME sectors of the market, as a convenient printer, scanner and copier. It adds to this the extra convenience of memory card readers to upload pictures and offload scanned images. The machine's neatly rounded lines disguise the fact that it is comparatively bulky for a device of this type, but it's still no larger than a typical desktop photocopier.

The angled front panel is set out with mode selection buttons on the left of a two-line, 16-character LCD display in the centre. This is ringed by function buttons and a numeric pad to the right and is completed by large 'Black-and-white', 'Colour' and 'Stop' buttons for copying and scanning. The LCD display has poor contrast and unless you have direct overhead lighting you may find it difficult to view. How much would it have cost to provide a backlight, we wonder?

Slung underneath the control panel, protected by a spring-loaded acrylic cover, is a seven-way memory card reader. This offers a direct interface for CompactFlash, SmartMedia, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, Secure Digital, MultiMedia Card and Fujifilm's new xD-Picture card formats.

In a novel extension of the function of a card reader, the CX6400 can read images from the cards and print them out, or scan from its flatbed onto them. Exporting files like this is yet another function that can be performed without connecting the device to a PC.

Setting up the four-colour printer involves inserting the DURABrite ink cartridges and printing head-alignment pages. These are not as simple to use as some others, as the marks they produce - which you're meant to assess - are very difficult to differentiate from each other.

Paper feeds from a hopper at the rear to a telescopic support tray, which pulls out from the device's front. You can produce copies simply by loading a page onto the scanner glass and pressing the monochrome or colour copy buttons.

Once connected to a PC, you can of course scan to it and print from it using the Stylus CX6400. The device comes with plenty of support software, including Arc PhotoImpression, Abbyy FineReader OCR software and Epson's own PhotoQuicker image manager.

The print quality of text pages is fair but not wonderful, as there's a surprising degree of bleed into the knap of regular photocopy paper. A typical five-page document took four minutes and forty-one seconds to produce. When it came to photographic images, a 7 by 5-inch colour print took just over four minutes to print and again the image was no better than average.

Verdict
This is a well designed all-in-one device which can scan, print and copy quickly and efficiently. The built-in memory card readers can be used to print digital images or to save scanned ones - a novel extension. Although its print quality isn't the highest, it's good enough not to detract from the value and effectiveness of this multi-purpose machine.

Company: Epson

Contact: 0800 220546

Tags: seiko epson printers smartmedia compactflash xd-picture card liquid crystal display memory stick multimediacard