Review On the ‘looks the business’ scales, this machine will take quite a counterweight. Big and glossy black, it has a wavy top concealing its 30-sheet ADF. Open the input tray and the output tray drops away – very neat.

The front control panel, which can be swung out to several different angles, holds a bright, 63mm LCD and large, easy-to-use navigation and number pads. Set into the front-left face are memory card slots for most types, including CompactFlash.

Paper feeds in from a 120-sheet paper tray at the back, where it can get dusty, to a telescopic tray at the front, which increases the footprint considerably when open. The four ink cartridges snap into the head carrier easily enough and software support includes ABBYY Finereader 6 Sprint, as well as various utilities.

Epson quotes draft print speeds of 38ppm for black and colour and although these are wishful, as always, the Epson machine was a good way ahead of any of the other machines in the group, achieving 5.4ppm in colour and an impressive 14.2ppm in black. You pay for this extra speed in noise, with one of the noisiest paper feeds in the group.

Plain paper print quality is fair, while not up to Canon or HP standards. Text is a little more uneven and colour graphics are a bit over-bright, but photos are excellent, with smooth colour textures and accurate tones.

The Stylus SX610FW can take Epson’s larger capacity 'rhino' - the animal printed on the pack - ink cartridges, as well as the normal 'cheetah' ones, giving average economy of 2.2p for black and 6.7p for colour.

Verdict

A capable, fast machine, with a good feature set, though text print can be jagged. ®

Next: HP Officejet 6500