The SX600FW brings two new features to Epson's SX range of multifunction printers, these two new features are a built in wireless adapter and fax machine. These two features are useful for the home user under certain circumstances especially the wireless adapter. But I suspect this model is trying to break into the hoe office and even the small office market.

With every progression of printer Epson pay more attention to the style of the printer. It may not have any effect on the performance of the printer, the running costs or the quality of the output, but there is always something to be said for aesthetics and Epson is working towards that end with printers that flow. Curves replace the flat surfaces and even the paper feeder follows the same curve.

Almost not worth noting these days but the SX600FW does come with the separate ink system to save on running costs. This however is a very standard feature these days. The Epson stylus SX600FW is designed to use Epson DuraBright Ultra inks. Each ink droplet is coated in resin to allow fade resistant smudge proof prints every time. If your looking to save on costs however compatible inks are available for this printer at the Ink Factory.

You may find your first ink cartridge supplied runs out quicker than any other you may buy. The Epson print heads in these models take a lot of ink in the first run but running costs afterwards will not be as high. Also for the best results in terms of cost per page we recommend using the high yield cartridges. While they are more expensive to buy, the overall cost in the long term is reduced.

Connection on the SX600FW are in abundance. Available are PictBridge direct photo printing from a compatible digital camera, USB port, wired and wireless networking is available to use. Also a vast selection of memory cards are available to print directly from. See below for a full list of compatible memory cards for the SX600FW multifunction printer.

As always Epson includes a good software package with the SX600FW. The drivers obviously are all there and in addition you receive a rather useful application called web-to-print. This piece of software achieves a task that is at best an annoyance and that is to print web pages the correct size on standard paper. If you have ever tried to print straight from the web you will know what a task that is.

Other software with the SX60FW is the Event Manager which allows you to assign applications to the start, copy, e-mail and PDF buttons. And finally you receive a copy of Abbyy Finereader OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software which can scan printed documents and turn them into editable text documents.

Tests on the SX600FW have shown that this printer is better suited to photo's than text. Not that the text performance is bad, but the photo performance stands out as real quality while the text prints are adequate for the price range of the printer.

The Epson SX600FW has the following reported print speeds. Real world use may vary from these manufacturers quoted speeds.

Black text - 38ppm
Colour Text - 38ppm
15x10 photo - 20 seconds approx (fastest speed)

Features

• High quality, low cost printing with individual ink cartridges
• DURABrite Ultra® pigment ink system for market leading flexibility and quality
• 4 colour for lab quality photo prints
• Preview your photos on a 2.5" (6.3cm) LCD preview monitor
• Print photos direct from memory cards and PictBridge enabled cameras
• Wireless printing and scanning from around the home

Manufacturers Description

The Epson Stylus SX600FW is a compact, stylish, Four-in-One printer. It offers a complete printing, copying and fax solution, and with the addition of a 30 page Automatic Document Feeder, it is ideal for home and small office use. The SX600FW also has an integrated Wi-Fi and Ethernet connection for shared printing and true working freedom. 

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, xD-Picture card, xD-Picture card Type-M, xD-Picture card Type-H

*adaptor required (not supplied in the box)

Ink Cartridges

Colour	Cartridge Number	Part Number
Black	T0711	C13T07114010
Cyan	T0712	C13T07124010
Magenta	T0713	C13T07134010
Yellow	T0714	C13T07144010
Multi-Pack (3 colours + black)	T0715	C13T07154010