Epson BX305FW Ink Review

Inkjet printers have got a disappointing reputation for business printing. Dash a highlighter pen over a significant phrase of text, and you are likely to end up having a smudgy mess. A few raindrops often make ink-printed envelopes practically unintelligible. Colour laser printers make a worthwhile alternative, but they are usually large, hefty, and costly, therefore what is the solution? Epson bridges the gap between typical inkjet and laser printing using its resin-based DURABrite Ultra inks, which are virtually dry by the time they hit the paper, and they are incredibly resistant to water, smudging as well as fading.

As an all-in-one printer aimed at small or home offices, the BX305FW has business-like capabilities. In standalone mode, it can deal with mono or color photocopying at the touch of a button yet, in contrast to many multi-function printers, it brings faxing to its arsenal. Better still, scanning, photocopying, and faxing all reap the benefits of a 30-sheet ADF (Auto Document Feeder) to help make light of multi-sheet documents. There is additionally a neat and tidy row of assignable speed-dial buttons for up to five telephone numbers. You don’t have to be linked to the unit either, as the Epson is completely Wi-Fi certified along with having a typical USB 2.0 port. An additional nice touch is that you can fire off faxes through the BX305FW straight out of your computer system, without needing to print hard copies of any documents first of all. While the onboard control interface is rather elegant and tidy, making use of the Epson is not all plain sailing. There is merely a solitary, rear-mounted paper input tray, and this sits vertically and will cater to about 100 sheets of standard 80gsm paper. This means that if you wish to print on headed paper or perhaps envelopes, you must swap the paper around every time, and the same is true of picture printing. Yet another letdown is there is no USB port for the purpose of direct document printing from flash drives, and there are no memory card readers either. An auto-duplex ability might have been useful as well because the quickly dry resin-based inks are ideal for double-sided printing; however, regrettably, you need to switch every sheet over by hand.

Print rates of speed undoubtedly are a tad slow for document printing, taking 14 seconds with a mono text page in addition to 58 seconds for a mixed text and color graphics DTP page in the testing. On the plus side, the model does not have to have to wait for sheets to dry when outputting multi-sheet documents, which in turn speeds things up in actual terms. Picture printing is extremely slow, taking two minutes and 21 seconds for one 6 x 4-inch print in standard photo quality mode and over 12 minutes concerning an A4 photograph print at the top quality configuration. As a four-ink printer, the picture quality sacrificed; however, even taking into consideration the absence of color space, it is especially below average on glossy photo paper, although quite acceptable on plain paper.

As a combined printer, photocopier, and fax machine, the machine tends to make sense, and the four Epson BX305FW ink cartridge DURABrite Ultra system makes for durable prints, which are water, smudge and also fade-resistant on plain paper. It’s pleasant to know for sure it is possible to print out crucial business documents, and they are going to keep looking top quality.

The BX305FW operates quite well when it comes to simple printing, scanning, photocopying as well as faxing and the ULTRABrite Ultra inks make for remarkably smudge-resistant prints. Nevertheless, it is deficient in a variety of areas, and a handful of extra features would’ve made it much more useful around the office.