Epson Stylus Sx535Wd All-In-One Printer with Wifi and Double Side Printing (Print, Copy and Scan)

Well, just bought this SX535WD and here's what I think:
This was bought to replace my previously excellent SX425 (which was given to my granddaughter for school work). The software installed and the printer worked straight out of the box - but not for long.....
Started having a persistent problem with my Laptop not being able to see the printer via my BT HomeHub 2. Of course assumed this was a firewall problem, although during installation an option is given (and must be taken) to allow the Epson programs through. To cut a long story short the fault was mine and mine alone....
I hadn't completely removed and uninstalled all drivers, printers and software from my previous SX425. So I performed a system-restore (Windows 7) to before installation of the 535 and set about it. Removed all traces of Epson from my Laptop - reinstalled the 535 and have had perfect performance thus far.

The points below are from the perspective of a former owner (me) of an Epson SX425.

Likes:
*Paper tray means reduced 'headroom' needed for the printer (I just slip it forward a touch when scanning).
*New shape (no sloping panels - all under scanner-lid's footprint) greatly reduces how much dust this printer catches.
*Screen/control 'flap' opens nicely and seems sturdy enough.
*Installation very quick and easy (my above mistakes notwithstanding of course!).
*WiFi range and connection works perfectly all over my house and connects in about 10 seconds.
*It's considerably faster AND quieter than the SX425. (especially the paper transport).
*Scanner works perfectly and quickly (at least as fast as SX425 but haven't really compared this).
******* The double-sided printing works like a dream, is fast and very useful indeed - no more waiting for the first sides, turning the paper, putting it back into the (upright) paper-rack (of the SX425) and waiting all over again with seriously crossed fingers. This feature works perfectly and is definately worth buying this model for.

Reservations (couldn't really call them dislikes):
*The scanner 'lid' is a bit flimsy and flexes a little too much I think, although so far this hasn't affected any scans in any way - just a personal feeling really.
*The paper tray has sliders that position the sheets centrally in the tray and they seem a bit flimsy. They look like they may be a little awkward when using smaller papers than A4 (envelopes for example) - but I haven't tried this yet.

The above is only my experience after light use of this printer but should hold true if my previous SX425 is anything to judge by.

Oh yes - put an SD card from my camera into the slot (front bottom left) and the printer 'loaded the photos' immediately. The SD appears as a network drive on my PC and can be written-to and read-from with no problems - worked fine.

John B

The front loading paper feed tray might be a distinct advantage if the printer is on a low shelf and you cannot easily get to a rear loading paper tray. But I find it EXTREMELY fiddly compared to the simple, top/rear paper feed on all my previous (single function) Epson printers, where you just drop the paper in to the rear paper holder. This is because the paper feed tray on the Epson SX535WD is situated beneath the paper output tray and you have to push the output tray in fully, in order to be able to pull the paper feed tray out far enough to load the paper. You then have to push the feed tray back in slowly and pull the paper output tray out again. Now this might not be too much of a problem if you only or usually print text documents. But if you ever or regularly wish to alternate between photo printing (on photo papers) and text printing (on plain paper) as I did yesterday, this routine quickly becomes irritating and very time consuming!

When I first tried to print out a plain, black and white text document, I was so horrified by the fact that it was so faint that you could hardly read it and also by the truly deafening noise the printer made whilst printing it, that I initially thought I had made a HUGE mistake in buying this Epson SX535WD! But after a quick look at the print settings, I discovered that the default print setting was Fast print with the quality set as economy. And once I had changed that to Fine, documents then printed out nice and clear with excellent contrast between the black of the text and the white of the paper :-)

Next I tried using the Epson Easy Photo Print facility and on the whole I was very impressed with the amount of adjustments you could make, just with the Epson interface! These include

1) Selecting or changing the paper size
2) how many borderless prints you want on each page
3) adjusting the printer's print quality settings
4) choosing the "scene" ie: standard, people, landscape and night scene
5) Digital camera correction
6) Fixing Red eye, either automatic or manually
7) Portrait Enhance, with which you can increase face definition and skin vibrancy - and even apply a slimming effect!

And every adjustment you make in the Easy Photo Print interface can be applied to the currently displayed image or to ALL the images you are about to print :-) All this makes photo printing very easy. But know that if you choose Best Quality, photos will take AGES to print out :-(

In scanning mode the interface can either be used in Fully Automatic mode, which will rapidly scan the whole document or photo to your pre-selected Save location. OR it can be used in Home, Office, which allows the user to lighten/darken and crop images or Professional Mode which allows the user to change the overall hue of the document and make many other adjustments. Excellent :-)

The front panel displays helpful information about the current printing job etc and can be used to scan X number of copies of a photo or document, which if you choose Copy, are then sent directly to the printer! And copying and printing out scanned documents onto plain paper is very fast indeed :-) Alternatively, you can choose Scan to have them sent to the default Save Location. Excellent.

The only big drawback with Epson printers is that the printheads are on the printer itself and these can and DO get blocked very quickly if you do not use your printer to print out full colour documents regularly :-( The up-side of having the printhead on the printer is that you can get cheap, compatible ink cartridges for all Epson printers :-) Whereas because the printheads are on Canon and HP ink cartridges rather than on their printers, compatible cartridges are more expensive. The upside of having the printheads on the cartridges is that if they do get blocked due to infrequent use, you can just buy a new set of cartridges complete with their brand new, free-flowing printheads!

I wanted a basic colour printer for light home use on which I could also print the odd photo. This was in addition to my main B&W laser. I also wanted the printer to be networkable as I have a variety of devices at home which I wanted to use with this printer (Win/Mac/IOS). To have that much for this money (£67+free delivery) is great. As a bonus it has wifi and can scan, copy, and duplex! This is a refined product which was easy to set up with good print quality too. I am a light user however so for heavy use I would have got something more expensive. The software experience is also better than most. No addon programs you wont need, a concise and well designed web installer, top notch scanning utility too.