Stories about: Epson

Our survey results show up-and-down results for many printer makers. Samsung received high marks for its printers’ reliability and copy speed, but poor ones for photo and graphics printing quality. Participating readers esteemed Xerox for its machines’ printing speed and network connectivity, but bashed it for their poor reliability. Only Canon, Brother, and Epson had especially strong showings in both reliability and feature satisfaction; and of those three, only Canon also graded high in service and support.

In a world filled with cheap but underpowered inkjet multifunction printers (MFPs), using the HP Officejet Pro 8600 Plus is a pleasant departure. One of the most competent MFPs for the price (US$300 as of 12/05/2011), it lacks nothing in its features, is solidly constructed, fully supports legal-size paper, is faster than everything else in its price range, and even offers dirt-cheap ink. There's not much more you could ask for.

PC World readers like their iPhones. More survey participants own this model than any other phone, and an unusually high proportion of them praised its durability, ease-of-use, design, and camera quality in our 2011 Reliability and Service survey.

Though a multitude of competing tablets have entered the marketplace, our results show that the iPad remains miles ahead of the pack in durability, ease of use, and features such as battery life, screen quality, and overall speed.

Despite its successful ranges of laser printer, Epson has spent plenty of time over the last few years trying to prove that an inkjet really can do the job of a laser.Inkjets are still generally considered to produce better colour images, but their fuzzy text quality, indecent running costs and lack of speed (once you get beyond the fast but deeply unsatisfactory draft mode) has made them a traditionally poor choice in offices. The Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4535 DW is one of the more expensive inkjets we’ve seen. But it might just prove a rather adept office all-rounder that can take the place of many a laser.

Epson has made a bold first move into the small-to-medium business and enterprise printing space, with the launch of two new inkjet multifunction printers under the WorkForce Pro moniker. The company is largely known for its consumer printers and projectors, but is aiming to break into the competitive business printing market.

Canon's PIXMA iX6550 inkjet printer doesn't have a scanner, copier, automatic document feeder, auto-duplex or any other complicated circuitry to confuse you — all it does is print documents and photos from the tiny 6x4in size all the way to A3+. It's compact — hardly wider than an A3 sheet of paper, and not especially tall or deep — and is able to produce high quality print-outs when using the right paper and settings. If you're printing documents it can be reasonably quick, although photos do take significantly longer and can chew through ink within just a few prints.

Panasonic, Samsung and Sony are collaborating on a universal standard for 3D TV glasses, working with XPAND 3D to bring out active-shutter glasses that will work on several kinds of 3D TVs from each of the brands. Production of the new all-in-one glasses, which will incorporate several radio frequency (RF) and infrared (IR) standards used in superseded and current 3D TVs, will begin in September this year. Universally compatible glasses should be available for consumers to purchase sometime in 2012.

The Epson Stylus Photo R2000 is an A3+ photo printer with integrated 802.11n Wi-Fi and roll media printing. It's a great choice if you're interested in printing panoramas, but it's also adept at A3 and A4 photo printing as well. Unless you're doing extensive greyscale printing where a larger variety of black inks is preferable, the Stylus Photo R2000 is more than capable for high quality prints with excellent colour accuracy and vibrancy.

The Dell V715w color inkjet multifunction printer (US$170 as of June 15, 2011) aims for the small office, offering good print quality and paper-handling features, as well as both fax and Wi-Fi capabilities. However, only the high-yield inks are reasonably priced.