Recently Epson has clearly defined their printer ranges into different categories. Home printers are intended for home users. Workforce printers for office users. Expression Premium printers for a variety of printing activities. Finally their Expression Photo printers for printing photographs, which now feature high quality scanners!
Epson Expression Home XP entry level printers (XP-235, XP-245, XP-247, XP-332, XP-335, XP-342, XP-345, XP-432, XP-435, XP-442, XP-445) cost around £50. They are the lighter, and most cheaply constructed machines in the Epson range. Intended for home use only, they have a much lower duty cycle than the Workforce printers.
The current Expression Home printers use the Strawberry 29xl ink cartridges. As we have previously written before, refillable cartridges are not yet available, more than a year after the 29 series inks were first released. So budget conscious printer users can only use compatible generic Strawberry 29 xl replacements which remain more expensive than previous models. Because of this, we do not recommend Expression Home XP printers for refilling purposes. They are fine printers for infrequent home users who might buy a set of cartridges every 6 months or so. Otherwise we would recommend the Workforce printer range instead if you are looking to refill.
Our favorite Epson Workforce printer is the WF-2510WF. We have sold many units of this model, including a few to our regular customers over the last two years. We have found the printer to be reliable and cheap to run using the Epson 16 series ink cartridges. Refillable 16 xl empty ink cartridges with auto reset chips and cheap compatible T1631-4 cartridges are available. The only problem we have discovered with the machine is, if left unused for a while, they are prone to getting blocked print heads. This is a common problem with inkjet printers, so to unclog the print head nozzles we sell 16xl compatible head cleaning cartridges.
Another favorite Workforce model, and popular for Sublimation printing, is the WF-2010W. This is a dedicated printer with WiFi, and does not have a scanner. We have found this model to offer reasonable durability and decent print quality. The WF-2010W also used Epson 16 series ink cartridges, so printing costs can be very low.
The new Epson Expression Premium range of printers (XP-530, XP-540, XP-630, XP-635, XP-640, XP-645, XP-830, XP-900) use the 33 /33xl Orange cartridges. Unfortunately refillable cartridges are still not available, and compatible cartridges to replace 33 series remain a little expensive. The older series Premium printers (XP510, XP520, XP600, XP605, XP610, XP615, XP620, XP625, XP700, XP710, XP720, XP800, XP810, XP820) which use 26 xl series refillable cartridges and T2631-4 / T2621 compatible cartridges have become difficult to find as they have been discontinued. So at the moment we do not recommend Epson Expression Premium printers for refilling purposes.
Fortunately refillable cartridges to replace Epson 24 xl are available, and so are the compatible T2431-6 ink cartridge versions for use in the Epson Expression Photo 760, and 960 printers. They use six ink tanks (black, cyan, magenta, yellow, photo cyan, and photo magenta). A Photo XP760 can currently be purchased for around £100, and typically scores 8.5 out of 10. Surprisingly for a photo printer it has a high quality scanner and copying facility. The more expensive A3 Expression Photo XP960 currently sells for £200 and also gets a high 8.5 out of 10 review score. Both machines attract very positive comments regarding the excellent print quality and multiple features on offer. We think the Expression Photo XP-760 is worth serious consideration now that the prices has been slashed to just £100!
The Epson Expression Photo XP-760 is an exceptional printer.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 6
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