The PX800FW is the first printer in a long time that we we can actually say has offered us something new to have a look at. Its not about the print quality or new printing techniques or connectivity features, but a new intuitive control system. The control buttons on the front of the PX800FW are all touch sensitive, a nice new touch to a printer. But not only that the LCD viewer is also touch sensitive to allow for fine tuning of your photo's along with the available image editing tools.

As you can see from the diagram above the basic controls are to the left and right of the LCD viewer which leaves the less used controls to be used on the viewer itself via digital menus. The panel can tilt at several different levels in order to get the most comfortable angle to use wherever in the home you place the PX800FW. The Touch panel is dark until in use when any buttons that are available light up in orange while options that are currently unavailable stay darkened out.

Epson's PX800W is definitely one of the most stylish multifunction printers around fitting seamlessly anywhere in your home. The wireless connection makes this even easier by allowing the PX800FW to be placed anywhere in the house where power is available. We should point out however that as the PX800FW has wi-fi technology for a wireless connection you will require to have a home network and wireless router in the home already in order to get the wireless connection to work. If you haven't you may still need to purchase a Bluetooth adapter kit to obtain a wireless connection via the USB port.

The Epson Stylus PX800FW is not just all about style, it has a fair amount of substance in terms of what this multifunction machine can do. the definition of a multifunction printer is that it can print, copy and scan documents. The PX800FW can do these but it has more, we have already mention the wireless capability, add to that an in built fax machine for the business user and CD/DVD printing on compatible media and an Automatic Document Feeder (ADF) for copying several documents in one go. All of this contained in a very compact casing with nothing sticking out causing an eye-sore.

Most of the printers which offer printing directly onto CD's or DVD's have an attachment that connects to the printer, something which has to be kept separate and can be easily lost. The PX800FW has a dedicated CD / DVD tray which is not visible until you press the CD tray button to the left of the touch screen panel. The CD tray is then presented, it takes a fair few seconds to get into position but its easier and neater than the attachment options of other printers.

Like the previous offering the PX700W, the PX800FW uses the same 6 separate ink system for professional quality prints. As you would expect at the top end of the market, this printer is aimed at the photo enthusiast. print quality of photos is very good producing photo lab results at a good speed. General purpose printing quality seems to be debatable reading articles across the internet but if your spending enough for a top end photo printer then I would suggest that photos will be its primary purpose.

The paper feeder at the back of the printer has been replaced with a paper cartridge holding 120 sheets of A4. Being a cartridge system its another part of the printer than doesn't stick out in an ugly manner. Coupled with the standard paper cartridge is a second tray which can be pulled out of the PX800FW for use with glossy paper to print your photo's to. A range of media can also be used as well as a range of paper sizes making for a true multi-purpose printer.

As always with Epson printers the software suite is a useful tool to have, nothing special but the photo suite allows you to control the printers touch up features such as red-eye removal and colour correction with ease. A neat little application that is installed allows you to print photos directly from windows explorer folders. You will also receive OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software to convert printed documents into editable text.

The scanner on the PX800FW has been improved also. The scanner is capable of a resolution of 4800 x 4800 dpi making it twice as detailed as the previous PX700W.

Speeds as you can see below are as per usual greatly exaggerated, the printer manufacturers claim that there test speeds are in lab conditions with no time taken into account for processing or any other real world impacts. The real speeds obviously depend on the amount of text on the page and the quality. we have found that the real speed of the PX800W is between 7 and 9 pages per minute for mono which is not bad at all in real terms and about 7 pages per minute for colour which is also at the top end for speeds.

Overall Epson has done a good job with making a multifunction printer that can sit anywhere in your home and not look out of place. This is especially useful when the PX800W is used in stand-alone mode and you can print photo's, copy or fax from the comfort of your living room. Print quality is high at the photo end but may suffer slightly at the low quality text end with slight blurring making it a good choice for photo's but there are cheaper options if you are looking general purpose printing.

Black text - up to 40ppm*
Colour Text - up to 40ppm*
15x10 photo - 10 seconds approx*

* Speeds taken from manufacturers website, taken at lowest quality under test lab conditions

Features

• Stylish and contemporary design
• Integrated automatic document feeder for multiple-page faxing, copying and scanning
• Intuitive 19.8 cm touch panel viewer
• Wi-Fi and Ethernet connectivity
• High-speed printing
• Integrated twin paper trays
• Print on a variety of media from plain paper to high gloss photo paper and even suitable CD’s and DVD’s
• Turn scanned documents in to editable text thanks to Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software
• High-resolution 4800 dpi scanner
• Optional automatic duplexer for double-sided printing
• Individual ink cartridges - save money, only replace the colour used

Manufacturers Description

This feature-rich Epson Stylus Photo PX800FW is a Hi-Definition All-in-One with fax, auto document feeder and Wi-fi. Its stylish good looks and touch-panel viewer won’t fail to impress, whilst also producing better-than-lab-quality photos.

Supported Memory Cards

Compact Flash (Memory card only), MicroDrive, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Duo*, MagicGate Memory Stick, MagicGate Memory Stick Duo*, Memory Stick PRO, Memory Stick PRO Duo*, SD, SDHC, MiniSD*,MiniSDHC*, MicroSD*, MicroSDHC*, Multi Media Card, MMCplus, MMCmobile*, MMCmicro*, xD-Picture card, xD-Picture card Type-M, xD-Picture card Type-H.

*adaptor required (not supplied in the box)

Ink Cartridges