Epson HD XP-15000
Improved color printing for wide-format prints
$349.99 From Epson America, epson.com/usa Features Wide-format, wireless printing, holds up to 200 sheets Needs OS X 10.6.8 or higher
For printing photos at home, Epson has long been a favorite... at least if your ambitions go no further than standard 8.5x11-inch pages. That’s no longer a limitation: The Expression Photo HD XP-15000 can produce gloriously vibrant, wide-format borderless prints up to 13x19 inches in size. With the accompanying app, you can print wirelessly from mobile devices as easily as from the Mac and even convert images into coloring book pages, although it hasn’t yet been updated for page sizes larger than A4.
Equally impressive is that Epson has kept the price reasonable without stripping the XP-15000 of features like printing CD/DVD labels, stickers, and iron-on transfers. The 2.4-inch color LCD makes it easy to set up and use, although the traditional (nontouchscreen) display can feel unintuitive. The biggest disappointment is that, unlike Epson’s other recent models, the XP-15000 has no EcoTank support to eliminate costly ink cartridge replacements. Instead, it needs six individual Claria Photo HD ink cartridges. The trade-off is, prints have improved color gamut, with color reproduction and clarity noticeably better than earlier models’ — and prints are certainly higher quality than you’d get by spending more to print at retail stores.
The XP-15000 can print full-color 12x12 pages in about two minutes flat; standard documents average nine pages per minute in mono or color, while 4x6 borderless photos take as little as 27 seconds. However, there’s no scanner or document feeder, and the printer is louder in use than earlier models (although there is a slower “quiet mode”).
The bottom line. For high-quality wideformat prints, this is a compact, reasonablypriced option.