Epson Stylus CX6400 All-in-One Multifunction

by Epson

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 23 x 17.8 x 12 inches ; 18.8 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 25 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B0000CD02S
• Item model number: C11C545001
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (81 customer reviews)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 30, 2003

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

The Epson Stylus CX6400 delivers up to 5,760 x 1,440 optimized dpi for Photo Quality printing. Exclusive Epson DURABrite ink ensure each photo offers vivid color that will last for years to come. For added flexibility, the all-in-one includes built-in card slots and a convenient photo proof sheet function for a quick, easy way to select and print special photos directly from popular memory cards.

With full-featured scanning, this versatile unit scans photos and documents directly to e-mail or for use in business or creative applications. Epson Easy Photo Fix technology makes it possible to restore faded color photos to their original brilliance. And, Epson's innovative scan-to-memory card technology provides a way to take those images on the road.

The Epson Stylus CX6400 also offers fast, one-touch color copying without using a computer! Whether it delivers enlargements or multiple copies on a page, each copy is as sharp as the original.

To save on ink, the convenient security lock function prevents unauthorized copying. The Epson Stylus CX6400 also comes with cost-saving individual ink cartridges plus convenient connectivity for both Windows and Macintosh systems, making it the ideal fit for any business.

Product Description

The idea here is to integrate 3 essential products into one relatively compact machine: 1)a computer printer; 2)a computer scanner; 3)a personal copier. It can even print high-resolution digital photos! It offers the additional convenience of reading directly from CompactFlash, MemoryStick, SD, MMC, and XD-PictureCard memory storage used by your Digital-Camera or MP3 player. Copier offers adjustable reduction and enlargement from 25% to 400%, multiple copies, at up to 15 copies per minute (to 8.5x11.7) 150-sheet Input Tray / 15 Envelopes Accepts up to 8.5x14 sheets of paper 10Hx17.8Lx17.1W; 19.8 pounds Epson 1-Year Limited Warranty in USA and Canada 100-120V AC 50/60Hz USB-2 Interface Actual print speed will vary according to use

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

113 of 119 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Just misses the mark, December 15, 2003

By 

Daniel Limbach "Reader, writer, gadget guy" (Algonquin, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Epson Stylus CX6400 All-in-One Multifunction (Office Product)

I was looking for a color printer, as I only had a b/w laser printer. Since I have owned digital cameras since 1999, it was time to get a photo quality printer.

Performed exhaustive reseasrch. Conclusion 1 - device must have separate ink cartridges to conserve ink and expenses. That ruled out anything by HP.

I really wanted an awesome photo printer to go with my Canon S400 Elph (4 megapixel) camera. There are dozens of great photo printers with separate ink cartridges. I was able to narrow my finalists to Canon and Epson.

I loved the Epson R300M, because it had a 6-ink system, and it could print directly on white CD-R discs with it's special tray. It also had phenomenal quality. Canon had a couple that competed nicely in quality and price, but in the end, the Epson had a slight edge.

Knowing I could get a great photo printer a a reasonable cost, I started looking for other nice features to narrow the field. The Epson R300M delivered awesome quality photo prints at the showroom, and it could print on printable CD/DVD media. Way cool. The 6-ink system was primo. You could also save $50 by getting the R300, which just doesn't have the color LCD screen (which I really don't need). The 300M was completely out of stock everywhere, and the 300 was in short supply.

I liked the idea of a multifunction device (MFD), so I could get rid of my UMAX scanner and replace it with something that could print and scan. Having a copier was also a huge plus in an MFD. I have a fax machine, so I don't need the device to do this, and I don't need an automatic document feeder for multiple pages. I don't scan multi-page documents.

Conclusion 2 - The device must have a flatbed scanner, not a sheet-fed scanner. I wanted to be able to scan unusual documents, such as paper that was not square on the edges (kid's artwork, etc.). A sheet-fed scanner also has trouble with different thicknesses. Some jam when feeding a thin magazine sheet, and others jam when the paper is too thick, like a post card.

The pool of candidates was manageable now. I read reviews in PC Magazine and PC World, as well as reviews on websites, and the manufacturer specs for each model.

The Epson CX6400 looked to be at the head of the pack. It was a 4-ink system (not 6), but the DuraBright inks were getting good reviews. I bought it, and stayed up until 1am playing with my new toy. On premium glossy paper, the prints were very good. However, they had a matte, or maybe a semi-gloss cast to them, event on the best glossy paper. Other printers delivered a glossier photo-processing feel to them. I could live with that for the price and features it had. The 6-ink system was not in the cards for me if I wanted a MFD flatbed device.

The next morning, while reading the Sunday paper, I saw an ad for a brand new MFD by Epson. It was the RX500. Here's the bottom line. It has the same 6-ink system as the R300/M, and it is a flatbed MFD. Nirvana!

I exchanged the units the next morning. Wow! The printouts are just like a photo lab with my 4 megapixel shots. Even my older 2 megapixel shots looked great.

You can do almost everything on the device without a computer, as it has card slots for almost every media type. When you print from the computer, the software lets you tweak the quality even higher.

Liked the Epson CX6400. Love the RX500. The RX500 is the best of both worlds. For $50 more, get the RX500.

52 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Cramming it all on the Head of a Pin, December 1, 2003

By 

Patrick Shepherd "hyperpat" (San Jose, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Epson Stylus CX6400 All-in-One Multifunction (Office Product)

For those who can't afford the table space for separate machines for scanning, copying, and printing, this item is a very good solution, if not perhaps quite as small as a pin-head. Though considerably larger than a standard ink-jet printer, it's still small enough to fit on most computer tables, and considerably smaller than what three separate machines would occupy.

The assembly and installation instructions were adequate to the task, much better than most instruction books that are poor translations of Japanese or Chinese. Assembly itself took about five minutes, consisting of mounting a couple of page guides/holders, removing some shipping tape, and installing the ink cartridges. The included software installation went without any hitches on my XP machine, and the operating system recognized the new USB device as soon as it was plugged in (NOTE: don't plug in the USB cable till told to do so in the installation instructions). Having the printer connected via USB is quite an advantage - no big bulky cable, and transfer speeds are much higher, significant when dealing large high resolution scanned images.

Of course, the real test is making it do some useful work! My first test was a five page Word document with embedded italics, super and sub-scripts. This printed in about thirty seconds, about 5 seconds of which was the XP operating system setting up to send the document. Print quality was excellent using the default printer settings, barely distinguishable from a laser printer output.

Next up was scanning in a glossy 3x5 photograph. At the default settings, this scanned in as a 1440 x 1000 pixel JPEG image (about 300dpi). Looking at the resulting file with Olympus Camedia software at 400% image size, some small graininess can be detected, and there were some small spots that were apparently dust specs picked up by the scanner - so a must is keeping the scanner bed and the item to be scanned absolutely clean. Taking this same image without alteration and printing it back out on CX6400 using high quality glossy paper and printer default settings, and comparing to the original, some slight loss of definition and brightness was noticed, but there was no banding, blotching, or significant color alteration. Using this same photo, scanned in using higher resolution, 'fixed' using the supplied software, and printed at the printer's best settings produced a print almost indistinguishable from the original, though it did take a significant amount of time to print at these settings, about six minutes.

Copying text pages produced good copies, but it took an inordinate amount of time to start printing, over six minutes with image enhancement turned on, and about two minutes with it turned off, set for text, black and white only. The provided software control panel for this looks very much like a standard office copier display, so finding your way around the various options is pretty easy. The supplied OCR software (ABBYY Fine Reader 5.0 Sprint Plus) worked very well on a standard text page, but it did eliminate the spacing between paragraphs.

The provided image enhancement software is fairly basic. If you need to do serious work with photos, I'd recommend using Adobe Photoshop rather than this, but if most of your work is cropping, eliminating red-eye, hue/saturation/contrast adjustments, this software will be quite adequate.

I have not tried the memory card reader functions, as my camera automatically interfaces to my computer as a USB drive. For those who need such a reader, though, the CX6400 provides interface ports for just about all types of memory cards.

Price wise, this machine is quite competitive with other multi-function printers on the market. It's best feature is its high resolution for scanning and printing photos, which few other machines match, and it works quite well as an everyday text printer.

--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)

36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars good printer and copier, average scanner, February 28, 2004

By 

Vahania63 (Michigan United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Epson Stylus CX6400 All-in-One Multifunction (Office Product)

The quality of printing is quite good - at least I didn't have any problem. The delay before it starts to print is a few seconds but I can live with it. It has four separate cartridges (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) and it's supposed to help to preserve the ink. I thought that my old HP laser color printer with one cartridge has actually lasted a little longer. This printer has interface for all major memory cards and allows to print directly from them without PC involved - which could come very handy. The buttons and menus on the printer itself could be more straightforward though. I was very impressed with the software that comes with this device. It really does a great job of self diagnostic and eliminating a problem. I had one of cartridges dirty (I didn't know about this at the time). The software not only found the problem but also cleaned the head. All this without me even opening the cover. All in all, it's a very good printer and copier for the price with the bonus of having a mediocre scanner - but even this is quite adequate for my moderate scanning needs.