Epson Stylus Office BX300FW review

Epson’s Stylus Office BX300F is a stylish inkjet MFP that has a built-in fax machine. The individual ink cartridges are also a luxury at this price, as most budget MFPs use combined tri-colour cartridges. Unfortunately, while individual ink cartridges usually save money, the BX300FW has relatively high print costs. We were impressed by the standard-quality mono test, which produced clear, well-defined lettering that rivalled that of the laser printers. Print speeds of 3.7ppm were less pleasing, as was draft-quality text, which was too pale. The BX300FW can produce stunning colour prints in its Text & Graphics mode. Our complex colour test document looked great, with rich areas of solid colour and fine shading. Unfortunately, high-quality document printing was slow, with our test print emerging at just 0.4ppm. Colour documents printed at Text quality were faster, but still printed at an unacceptably slow 0.7ppm and suffered from slight but visible streaks. Photo prints had smooth shading, sharp detail and vivid dark tones, but some bright colours looked muted. Scan quality was excellent on photos and documents, with smooth and accurate colour and shading in our photo scans and clear, legible lettering on 150dpi document scans. A 1,200dpi 6x4in scan took over two minutes, but scans at lower resolutions were fairly quick. The BX300FW has an ADF for multi-page scans and faxes, but it jammed constantly during our 10-page test, so we were unable to obtain either meaningful speed figures or correctly scanned samples.

We’d like to be able to recommend the BX300FW, but it’s undermined by relatively high print costs, a jam-prone ADF and slow colour print speeds. If you’re looking for a cheap MFP, Canon’s Pixma MP240 is better; if you’re going to do a lot of printing, the HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless’s low print costs will save you money in the long run.