Review: Epson Stylus CX5400

Epson may have come to the multifunction printer (MFP) party a bit later than expected, but when it finally showed up, it brought along some nice goodies. The company has successfully revised the approach of what an MFP (or All-In-One, if you prefer) should be by creating the Epson Stylus CX5400, a unit which saves money where it can, and supplies quality where it should -- all for a price that lets it compete with low-end machines.

Installation

Unpacking and installing the CX5400 was easy and trouble-free. You’re largely dependent on one of those posters that shows you pictorial examples of what you need to do, with a minimum of text. When trying to figure out how some parts were intended to fit together, I would personally have preferred a bit more text explicitly telling me what to do and where to go.

Proceeding slowly and carefully through the physical setup and software installation took a little over an hour, all told. Not swift, but most importantly, trouble-free.

Once the process is done, you’ll find a plethora of new programs on your computer, including Epson Smart Panel and ArcSoft PhotoImpression. Thankfully, most of these are useful and work well – even the ‘light’ (less than full-featured) programs.

The single most important software is Smart Panel, which serves as a front end to almost any function you’ll need the device to do. Smart Panel is broken up into four sections: Photo, for reprints or saving photo scans; Document, for OCR scans, copying, or sending a copy/scan to your fax software; Photo Project, for saving scans to cataloging software or sending them directly to Word or another application; and Share Your Photo, for E-mailing your scan.

I was impressed at the quality of the bundled software for cataloging, OCR, and the like, and very pleased that it wasn’t all a come-on to buy more robust versions of the packages. Too often we have endured the experience of installing good hardware spoiled by being inundated with come-ons, ads, spyware, and useless tools.

The machine is Windows and Macintosh-compatible, and most functions can work under Linux using some third-party utilities.

Description

Over the last couple of years, MFPs have moved from being cool gimmicks to money and space-saving essentials for the user who needs it all – copying, scanning, and faxing. (Oh yes – they also print.) The biggest variables from one brand/model to another are whether or not the faxing is built in, and what support (if any) is provided for flash memory cards and/or digital photos. While the Stylus CX5400 doesn’t directly provide these features, Epson has taken them all into consideration in the design and bundled software to provide convenient solutions.

For example, while there is no standalone fax machine in this model, the software will nevertheless step you through the process of creating a fax from a scan and shipping it to your fax/modem. For photo bugs, there’s the CX6400 -- a slightly more upscale version of this unit which, for another $50, includes memory card slots and some minor niceties.

The Epson Stylus CX5400 is nicely designed, pleasing to the eye, and takes up a reasonable footprint amounting to 2 x 2 x 1 feet, fully spread out. The physical design is fairly standard for these devices. The machine is built around a flatbed scanner, which is limited to 8.5 x 11.7-inch documents – legal-sized documents cannot be scanned in one take. On the plus side, the cover can be completely removed, making it easy to scan/copy books and odd-shaped documents. The front panel features a simple design and easy-to-use interface. Since there’s no built-in fax, there’s also no keypad.

The front of the unit sports the output tray, which can be closed for space-saving or aesthetic reasons. Paper is fed from the back using an upright tray, which can comfortably hold 100 sheets of letter-sized paper. The USB port (cable included!) lives on the left-hand side. There’s no Automatic Document Feeder.

The unit opens from the front, revealing the paper path and print-head\ink cartridge assembly. As has become standard, there are three color cartridges and one black ink cartridge, which are easy to insert and click into place.