The Epson NX420: A Revolution in Low-Cost Wireless-N Printing
Epson is known for their role in providing households, home offices, and everyone with printing needs with the latest and greatest at an affordable price. Coming in at an ultra-affordable price, the Epson Stylus NX420 offers quite a few features. This model is aimed at household users who need an all-in-one photo printer with advanced image enhancement tools within a wireless network.
The unit itself has a smaller 1.5 inch LCD screen than many others, but in this price range, it does the trick. NX420 offers a reasonably small footprint, weighing less than 17 pounds, and has built-in memory card slots to allow you to print your photos without even booting up your computer. The wireless-N networking means if you have a wireless network, the only thing you need to provide is power. Of course, you might not gain much from the N capability (over 802.11b or g), but it’s there if you need it! Welcome to technology today! Our only major complaint was the lack of fax capability and ethernet port, and some general sluggishness in both printing and scanning.
We were able to reduce or enlarge documents as well as archive and the 2-sided printing option helped us save paper. As someone with light colored eyes, “red eye” is always an issue in pictures that include me. Luckily, the NX420 has Auto Photo Correction and Advanced Face Detention- a one-touch fix with no additional software needed. We were surprised at the difference it made as sometimes.
The NX420 uses DURABrite cartridges, and we’re a big fan of Epson inks and papers, all of which form a pretty good ecosystem for printing photographs and images. The printer offers ISO print speeds of ~6 pages per minute (black) and about half that in color- not too speedy, but quick enough. These inks dry fast; colors are bright and don’t smudge, and a little spill or moisture won’t harm the print. As usual, the worst problem with inkjet printers is always the ink, and usage here can be heavy. Refills are competitively priced, but we always encourage potential consumers to consider the lifetime of a printer when buying, regardless of the low initial cost.
We were able to purchase from Amazon for around $65! If you are looking for a more expensive and all-inclusive printer check out the Epson Artisan 710, a printer that comes with a great feature set and a particular emphasis on photo quality and the handy CD/DVD printing capability.
