Epson Expression Photo XP-950 Pro Reviews

The Epson Expression Photo XP-950 Small-in-One Printer is a little weak on output quality, but it's fast, and it offers lots of features, including printing on tabloid-size paper.

The XP-050’s $350 price tag puts it above reach of a casual user – a bit of an overkill if you only print text-based documents – but it doesn’t make it a bad bargain either. Given the XP-950’s wide-format capability and excellent photo quality output (if you use photo paper, that is), it’s a perfect fit for someone who wants a bit more than the run-of-the-mill MFP.

Our initial attraction to the Small-in-One line was that these little machines did so much in so little space. They truly were remarkable feats of engineering. Granted, this Small-in-One does a lot, but frankly, it’s just not that small compared to other recent photo-centric models. In fact, the XP-950 actually takes up a little more desk space. Hence, you don’t really realize one of this line’s primary selling points—a diminutive size—with this particular model. Still, what you do get is a strong-performing printer that churns out great-looking documents and photographs. Epson’s six-ink system produces images on par with those we’ve seen from Canon’s six-ink Pixmas—colorful, detailed, and vibrant. The only real drawback is that six-ink printers typically cost more to use on a CPP basis than standard four-ink printers, and that holds true no matter what you print. Just as photographs cost more to print on these six-ink photo printers, so do business documents and presentations that utilize more than four inks to obtain the highest possible quality. As we see it, households that purchase photo-optimized printers like this one do so because they’re interested in printing superior-quality photographs, with cost per page and fast print times being secondary concerns. However, in this case, the printer price and the CPP are both a bit too high for our liking. This AIO’s closest competitor, the Pixma MG7120, is pegged at $199 list and often sells for significantly less than that on the street. We think that the XP-950 should sell for about the same price, or perhaps a touch more given the ledger-output support. Aside from that, though, this Small-in-One is one decent photo printer.

This is a very fully-featured device. However, it is pretty costly, and while the results are good for photo work, the model doesn't have the overall quality that we'd like to see on such an expensive MFD. Even with the addition of A3, this needs to be quite a bit cheaper before we could truly recommend it.