Reviews

Epson MX20DN review

Epson's latest mono MFP is certainly compact but is it good enough and cheap enough to earn a place in your office? Kat Orphanides finds out in our review.

5 May 2011

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Price

£315

The AcuLaser MX20DN is the latest addition to Epson's ever-popular range of mono laser multi function printers (MFPs) for small-to-medium sized workgroups. It has the obligatory USB and 10/100 Ethernet ports, a web interface for remote administration and the ability to scan to shared folders on network servers or a USB stick. A version with an integrated fax machine - the MX20DNF - is also available.

The MX20DN has a pretty standard set of features but a few stand out from the rest. The most notable of these is its 1,200x1,200dpi print resolution - twice that of many similarly priced MFPs, although most can manage quality that's roughly equivalent to a 1,200dpi resolution through driver-based enhancement. You can also make up to 999 copies of a page and there's both duplex printing and scanning, which makes it simple to copy double-sided documents.

If fully upgraded with two optional 250 sheet paper trays, the printer can handle a maximum of 800 pages, including the 50-page capacity of the special media tray. The latter is of more use for printing on envelopes and card stock, though, and can take a maximum paper weight of 220gsm. We were pleased to find that it printed our envelopes without creasing them or causing a paper jam.

The Automatic Document Feeder (ADF) worked a little less smoothly. It's brilliantly useful, making short work of scanning large numbers of both single- and double-sided documents. However, the MFP sometimes failed to notice that we'd inserted a page into the ADF and instead attempted to scan from the flatbed platen. It's a minor annoyance, which mostly occurred when we tried to use the ADF to scan or copy just one page.