Epson Stylus Photo RX560
Quick presentation and ergonomics
Once again, Epson makes amazing claims. If we believe them, this is an AIO capable of 30 pages per minute, photos in 13 seconds, and images last – with proof – 200 years.
Obviously, the printer doesn’t keep any of these promises (except maybe for the duration of images, we’ll see you in 200 years). However, this time differences are more reasonable than with the DX series. This RX560 does print pages rather quickly and photos are done in 37 seconds. Yeah!
The control panel is also more intelligent than the DX6050‘s. Things are clearer and more intuitive. Finally, Epson especially remedied the biggest defect on entry level model and the RX560 is quiet.
Quality of printing and scanning
Results are almost opposite those of the DX6050. Photo prints are of high quality with no visible dots while office documents are a bit disappointing. By themselves, it could be satisfactory, however, side by side with Canon or HP, and you start to see that curves aren’t as clean and colors run into neighboring ones. This is too bad, and it seems Epson has specialized its printers to excel in one domain, here photos, while failing in multi-use tests. Or at least other products do better.
Speed
Forget Epson’s wild claims (when will there be a widespread ISO tests so that manufacturers stop announcing whatever they want?). The RX560 is fast and well in the average, which is already good. However, where they announce 30 pages per minute, we measured 5.5 ppm with our light test document and up to 6.3 ppm if it just black and white.
Its photo mode is also one of the quickest at 37 seconds for a 4x6 inch (10x15 cm) without borders and 2 minutes for an A4.
Still in the speed category, copying is at 2.3 ppm, which is still amongst the highest as well as its time of 36 seconds for a single page.
Ink costs
Epson has not yet adopted the ISO norm for this printer. At the same time, we found the ISO autonomy for the same cartridges but with another product. We could reasonably assume that results will be similar with the X560. In this case, you can print 400 pages with all of the cartridges and twice this amount with the cyan, described by Epson as the longest lasting. Based on this, we then arrive at a credible office print cost of 9 cents per page, which sounds normal and similar to what we find with Canon.
On the other hand, the photo mode seems to consume more ink than Canon, whose separate cartridges print 300 10x15 cm photos. In our tests, Epson was at 200, with the RX520 using up each one additional light magenta and light blue cartridge. This results in a higher final photo cost of 24 cents. Luckily, Epson offers inexpensive paper to back this up, because this is one of the highest ink costs.
A serious defect?
Less versatility compared to Canon is its first weakness, and the second is the high price of photos. And for those who like the simple life, managing 6 cartridges with variable autonomies could try your patience, especially when they run out so quickly in photo mode.
