Epson Stylus DX5050
Quick presentation and ergonomics
The DX5050 is Epson’s current economical product and, like all of this manufacturer’s printers, has separate cartridges.
On this DX5050, Epson promises « quality, flexibility, and an excellent quality/price ratio ». Add to this the claimed speeds of « up to 27 pages per minute for documents and from only 28 seconds for a 10 x 15 cm photo », and we ask ourselves why should we look any further. All the more so that Epson has traditionally integrated the best scanners. Separate cartridges, quality in print speed and scanning, the DX5050 seems like a potential winner for entry level printers.
Quality of printing and scanning
The DX series is directly descended from Epson office multi-functions. This can be easily identified by the very good and precise quality of text and graphics, and the poorer quality of photos. Ink drops are too big to allow real photo production, and this is easily detectable. At best this can be mistaken for photo noise. Just for casual use this could be largely enough, however, other manufacturers, starting with Canon, do better in this price range. Epson’s advantage here is that their photo paper is generally less expensive than the competition’s.
The quality of office prints is excellent! For its price, this printer will make you happy with its precision of text, homogeneity in blocks of color, and color fidelity.
As for the scanner, as usual it is quite nice. We appreciate Epson’s initiative of integrating quality components in this domain for the entry level.
Speed
As soon as it concerns speed, Epson systematically lacks modesty. It’s not outright lying and we can find the mode which produces the figures on the package. For example in this case, you will have to work in draft mode and accept inferior quality. This attitude is rather misleading and not consistent with this manufacturer’s reputation.
If we believe the characteristics, we read a photo print time of 28 seconds. However, this does not correspond to normal settings because it took us 1 minute 25 seconds for a 10x15 or triple the time in normal photo mode without margins.
Another example, is that the DX5050 is supposedly able to produce 27 pages per minute in black and 26 pages per minute in color. With our test pages, which are light in text and images are small, we obtained 3.5 and 3.4 ppm, respectively. These are the slowest speeds of this survey.
Actually, when you are in stores, there is only one indication of speed on the packaging, a big « 27 ppm » and a small asterisk. We examined the box, and there was no explanation except « For test conditions, check our website at www.epson-europe.com ». Right next to this, for those interested, you can read that the USB cable is not included.
Suppose you do have immediate internet access and wanted to check this information. You will find the product sheet, but this time, you only see the 27/26 ppm without an asterisk. In short, we didn’t look extensively. There was no readily available explanation for these claims nor any information on print speed for the various modes. For us, this means that Epson deliberately tries to mislead the consumer and here this merits a point against them.
Ink costs
Epson opted for separate cartridges for its entire product line including the entry level. This can be economical if you use one color more than others in photos or for office presentations. This necessitates, however, juggling four cartridges with different autonomies. For the ISO norm, the black is at 245 pages, versus 270 pages for magenta, 475 for yellow, and 485 for cyan. This equals an average office print cost with a 5% coverage of 12 cents...or 30% superior to what we find with the Canon MP160 equipped with long lasting mono-block cartridges.
Unfortunately, we did not have enough cartridges to measure photo autonomy, and Epson could not give us any figures here.
A serious defect?
The 5050 and 6050 are identical except for a few ergonomic details. For this reason, they share the same advantages and weaknesses, the biggest is in noise. Here it is in the below video clip. Everything is calm and then, the printer starts up...
Another problem is that the ink indicator is not entirely reliable. We went from having a third of a cartridge left to suddenly nothing.
At this point with Epson (and contrary to Canon) the machine is blocked. Printing can‘t be forced and the pilot won’t go any further as long as the cartridge has not been replaced. This is frustrating!
