Epson Stylus Office TX610FW

 

The Epson Stylus Office TX610FW has a versatile mix of features such as an auto-document feeder on top of the printer for hands-free copying, scanning or faxing of up to 30 sheets of paper, wireless and wired networking, and a comprehensive control panel that offers one-touch access to some of the printer's most popular features. While we continue to applaud Epson for its consistently fast-paced output speeds and easy printer set up, we are disappointed that the TX610FW lacks an auto-duplexer, an extra hardware add-on that can print on both sides of a sheet of paper. The omission surely isn't a deal breaker, but it's something we expect to come included with an AU$250 printer.

Auto-duplexing aside, business and home offices alike can count on the Epson Stylus Office TX610FW to churn out high-quality black-and-white and colour documents thanks to a robust four-ink cartridge bay. The TX610FW earns our endorsement by making work life easier with plenty of customisable buttons to control, a convenient on-board memory card reader, and optional creative software to close the loop between work and play.

Design and features

A slightly mirrored finish surrounds the main control panel and wraps around to the side of the printer, while the rest of the unit flaunts a professional matte black. Space-savers beware: the 8.3kg Stylus Office TX610FW isn't for offices with limited space. It measures 23cm high by 46cm wide by 34cm deep, mostly because of the auto-document feeder that stands tall on top of the scanner. You'll also lose additional desk space once you extend the front-loading input tray.

The TX610FW has a 2.5-inch full colour LCD that shows print information, graphic representations of remaining ink levels, cartridge and wireless installation instructions, and more. Much of this information is replicated on-screen thanks to the Epson printer driver, but we're sure wireless users will appreciate the autonomy in seeing it displayed on the unit. The TX610FW's entire control panel also rotates to provide multiple viewing angles.

Panning from left to right on the control panel, you'll find a power button, a four-way shortcut pad, help and zoom buttons, a standard directional pad, and a collection of number keys and telephonic functions for the fax machine. We found the controls comprehensive and easy to use, although we hoped it would support user-customisable hot keys. The only other notable feature on the front panel is a media card reader that offers inputs for Compact Flash, MS, xD and SD memory cards. There's also a PictBridge USB port underneath for printing and save images directly from a PictBridge-compatible USB thumbdrive.

Just above the control panel, you'll find two hinged bays that expose the 1200x2400-dpi scanner glass and ink cartridge repository. Its scanning functions let you save an image in three ways: to a specific file folder, as a PDF document in a folder, or as an attachment in an outgoing email message. The included NewSoft Presto Page Manager software helps to organise your scanned images, but its Optical Character Recognition left us with numerous spelling mistakes and character confusions.

The Stylus Office TX610FW also benefits from a 30-sheet automatic document feeder on its top that automatically picks up individual sheets from a stack in the tray. Any multifunction or all-in-one printer for business use should include an ADF, but keep in mind that feeders always add significant bulk to the printer. When you're not copying or faxing stacks of paper, you can store up to 100 sheets of plain 20-pound white paper or 10 envelopes in the input tray that folds out of a rear panel. Finally, an extendable lip on the bottom of the printer corrals all outbound prints.

The Stylus Office TX610FW features a built-in 802.11 b/g wireless print server that took about five minutes for us to set up and start printing. Unlike other printers that require the user to set up a proxy network, the TX610FW prompts you to establish a direct wireless connection right out of the box, without the help of a USB or Ethernet cables to muck it up. There's also an Ethernet port on the side of the device for a wired connection to an office network.

The TX610FW printer ships with four separate ink cartridges for cyan, magenta, yellow and black. To factor the most cost-efficient price per page, we're using Epson's XL black and colour cartridges that cost approximately AU$28 and AU$20, respectively. Based on Epson's posted ink cartridge yields, we determine the cost of printing to be an affordable 3.5 cents per page of black ink and 3.7 cents per colour.

Performance

Although we're pleased with the components and the build of the TX610FW, we're even bigger fans of Epson's capability to inject a boost of speed into its inkjet printers. The Stylus Office TX610FW registered an impressive 7.31 pages of text per minute, but the TX610FW pushes even further with 13.24 pages per minute of plain black text. The graphics and presentation speed tests netted similar results, but we noticed a significant drop in photo output speed. However, when printing photos, its speed dipped to less than a page per minute, and the TX610FW barely makes it out of last place, edging out the HP Officejet J6480 by just 0.06 page per minute. Since the TX610FW falls under Epson's Office Stylus line, it isn't meant to produce lightning quick photo speeds; however, it's something you should know if your business happens to be printing photos.

 

Though we weren't as thrilled with the TX610FW's overall print quality, it's certainly better than what you'd get from a public photo kiosk. The internal driver settings let you choose between Photo or Best Photo mode, but keep in mind that you'll wait significantly longer for the finished product with Best Photo. Text quality offers a similar choice between simple Text and a more complex Text and Image mode. We noticed subtle differences between the two, but not nearly enough in our snapshot photos and graphics documents to warrant the use of extra ink.

We're satisfied with the printer's capability to reproduce colours and fine text lines, but many of the colour blends in our snapshots obviously suffer from colour blocks and an under-saturated haze. Bright colours in prints don't seem to pop as much as they should, which is usually the case with business-oriented printers.

Service and support

Epson backs the Stylus Office TX610FW with a limited one-year warranty.

Specifications

Scanner
Sample max grey depth	48
Scanner type	Flatbed, Document feeder
Sample max colour depth	16
Scanning resolution (native)	2400 x 2400 dpi
Scanning resolution (interpolated)	2400 x 2400 dpi
Scan speed (Colour)	1200 dpi
General
Functions	Printer, Copier, Scanner, Fax
Dimensions (H x W x D)	23.6 x 46.1 x 34.6 cm
Weight	8.3 kg
Printer engine	Inkjet
Software	Epson Event Manager (with Scan 2.0, Email 1.1) Epson Easy Photo Print Epson Web-To-Page Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Online Guide PC FAX
Other media	Photo paper
LCD display	2.5 inch
Connections	USB
Print features
Print resolution (B&W)	5760 x 1440 dpi
Print resolution (Colour)	5760 x 1440 dpi
Print speed (B&W)	38 ppm
Print Speed (Colour)	38 ppm
Paper features
Paper input	120
Paper sizes	A4, A5, A6, C6, DL
Paper trays	1
Paper handling	Friction feed with paper feeder and automatic document feeder
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