Epson Expression Premium XP-6100 Wireless Color Photo Printer with Scanner and Copier, Black, Medium

An excellent choice I think for light duty, occasional print jobs, so it gets five stars for that use case. But this printer is not for frequent jobs or big jobs, mostly due to the tiny ink cartridges that will suck you into ink extortion hell.Basically, when you buy a printer, the big consideration is whether you pay more up-front for large ink capacity--so called eco tank printers--or pay for ink over time with small ink capacity printers such as this one. Low cost printers are subsidized by the recurring sale of consumable ink; that's how printer manufacturers make their money. For my light duty use case, I have chosen the latter option. If you have a heavier demand for output, you might want to choose the first option.But aside from this one negative, this is a moderately price printer with a lot of exceptional features for occasional light duty print jobs: it features a motorized automatic slide out paper output tray that stays out of the way when you're not printing; a true duplex (double-sided) scanner; a single sheet rear paper feeder; and a modest desktop footprint: And on mine, a automatic sheet feeder that keeps the paper square and does not skew it–perhaps I got lucky there. It even has a template for printing on recordable CD/DVDs, if you still use those.Note: the UX is not great; the touch screen easily mistakes a swipe for a tap, which is annoying, and the navigation system is a bit awkward. But such issues are rather par for the course; electronics manufacturers in general do a rather poor job at UX, so I don't fault the manufacturer too much there. Navigation is, however, fairly responsive, and this tend to be rather sluggish in general for electronic equipment, so a minor prop there.

I just happened to stumble across the Epson XP-7100 while looking for a small photo printer capable of using Letter size paper. The store did not have print samples and I knew nothing about it so I put off the purchase to do some more research. I came across a PC Magazine article titled The Best Photo Printers for 2019. The XP-7100 was listed a one of seven listed as an Editors' Choice, but the 7100 was the only Legal size printer with 2 others not fitting the bill and the remaining 4 being large formats costing 2-10 times as much. With a price of $129, I decided to take a chance.The XP-7100 arrived well packaged and heavier than expected (usually a good sign). It is a elegant contemporary design which takes up very little space and looks good anywhere. No ADF or trays sticking out. Setup was easy and straight forward with the quick setup sheet. The 4.3 inch control screen is a delight with its intuitive interface and bright touch screen. Once the ink cartridges are installed, just push the power button (the only button) and the control panels automatically tilts outward for a better viewing angle. After printing a few test sheets for printer head alignment, it was time to set up WiFi (unless you go with USB). WiFi setup was easy. Just select your network and enter its password (if secured). Last step is to install the software and driver on the computer. The CD did not auto run as it was supposed to so I manually opened the CD in File Explorer. At the root level are two app files. EPWizard.exe and Setup.exe. I ran the EPWizard.exe and everything installed fine. WiFi tried to locate the printer and it failed. This was resolved with a simple Restart of the computer.My first few prints were to test different papers and quality setting. The printer has 2 trays supporting cards, photos, envelops and basically anything A4 or Letter size and smaller. It even includes a CD tray to print on CDs. A motorized output tray retracts back into the printer (along with the control panel) when you power off. As far as construction, the port for the power cable is a little wobbly. I do not know what that is about. Some reviewers wrote the printer is flimsy. The trays do not have rollers or bearing, so yes they are a little flimsy to reduce friction, but tighten into place once fully extended. This is common among printers and helps keep cost down. As for the body, it does have thin panels (available in different colors) which are simply not acceptable for a laptop. Oh wait, this is a non-portable printer meant to, at most, be moved from place to place a few times. Remove from box and place on desk.I purchased the printer mainly for its photographic printing abilities. My first real print was a Student of the Month article (about my daughter) from the website of the local newspaper. The photo and text would be a great test of the printers capabilities so I imported the article at 300 dpi with vector text. I printed it with high quality settings and used Epson Ultra-Premium Glossy Photo Paper. The results were phenomenal. The color photo was vibrant and the blending of the 4 photo colors was seamless. Text (some of it 5pt in size) was very crisp and could rival laser printers. The printer is fast for an inkjet on high settings. I estimate around 35 seconds for the 8.5 x 11 print.I’ll add a follow up on the scanner, ADF, and media ports but for now the 7100 is a very impressive photo printer which can be had as low as $99. Of course they will make up for the losses, and then some, with ink and paper sales.

I have to say that, at least so far, I'm pretty pleased with this new printer. I'm probably not the best judge because I made my last printer last for a LOOOOOONG time - like, at least 15 years. Seriously. So, there's a lot about this new printer that is probably blasé to most people, but it's a lot of fun for me. First off, the size really is great. My last printer was a wide-format printer that could print up to 11x17, and this one obviously can't do that, but I became like most people - almost all the printing I do now is Letter or 4x6. And this little guy does a great job. It's also much faster than my old printer, and I'm stunned how easy setting it up is and getting it to work with Apple products. The print quality is good, to my eye, though I did have one occasion where there was some streaking and I had to do a print head test and cleaning. It seemed early on in my ownership of this printer to have needed that, but it's behaved well since. Now, I have NOT owned it long enough to evaluate ink capacity, but for what little work I've given it, it seems to be doing pretty well.

The printer was acceptable to use, but Epson support is horrible. When you get the dreaded “ink pad error”, even if you replace the ink pad yourself, Epson demands you take it to an authorized service center to do a WIC reset of the counters. The closest one in Arizona is in Tucson, about 100 miles away. So drive this 100 miles for a common printer? Nah. This lack of supportability for their product is astounding. BTW, you can “buy” a reset key and do it yourself, if you’re willing to (after replacing the ink pads).