EPSON EXPRESSION PHOTO XP-8500

£150/$250 It’s the most conventional A4 ‘photo printer’ in the group

Bucking the trend of combining pigment and dye-based black inks for document and photo printing, the XP-8500 is a more conventional ‘photo printer’. As such, it runs on six dye-based inks that include CMYK, plus photo cyan and photo magenta. While mono text looks faint and greyish, the Epson manages to produce smart looking documents.

Ink prices are expensive in the UK, even if you buy XL cartridges. Ink costs about 12 times more than for the Epson Ecotank printer, although the XP-8500 is much less expensive to buy. Again, there’s a 2.7-inch colour LCD but this time it’s a touchscreen without the surrounding array of pushbutton controls. This makes standalone printing from memory cards and photocopying more intuitive, but the small touchscreen is a bit fiddly to use.

The output tray extends automatically for printing and, unlike with the Epson ET-7700 and XP-960, you can insert photo paper in the rear feeder without needing to wait for the printer’s approval. Put a page in too early with the other printers and it’ll be ejected.

performance

Epson six-ink photo printers are renowned for their vibrant looking output, and the XP-8500 is no exception. Indeed, colour saturation and contrast can sometimes look too strident in ‘photo enhance’ modes. Steer clear of that option and photo output is accurate for colour and tone, although mono photo printing is prone to unwanted colour casts. Print speeds are very fast.