Epson Expression Home XP-432 Review

Epson Expression Home XP-432 Review – A small all-in-one printer

From a distance, the XP-432 looks much like any other inkjet printer/scanner/copier. Then you realise you’re not seeing it from a distance – it’s just very small. That makes it an attractive option for a crowded desk. As with Epson’s other budget printers, the color screen is tiny – even smaller than the one on the back of your average digital camera – which makes it less useful than it should be for previewing photos from the SD card slot.

Still, it’s handy that you can tilt the control panel up to make the LCD and its associated buttons (it’s not a touchscreen) easier to see. Unfortunately, it’s just as easy to accidentally knock it down again, and the buttons didn’t work every time we pressed them, so a bit of jabbing and hoping is involved in operating the numerous functions. Wi-Fi is built in, and Epson’s apps provide a flexible range of options for printing from and scanning to your PC, Mac, phone or tablet, while Apple’s AirPrint is also supported for iPhone and iPad apps.

The claimed nine pages per minute (ppm) is not especially fast for text printing, and although the Epson Expression Home XP-432 Review did achieve it in our tests, it only managed 2.4ppm in color. Basic scanning was speedy at 10 seconds for an A4 page at 150 dots per inch (dpi), but upping this to a full-quality 300dpi tripled the time taken. A 6x4in colour photo took 35 seconds to scan at an enlargeable 600dpi; similarly sized colour pictures took a painful three minutes each to print.

Photocopies, available with a few button presses, weren’t very fast either, at 14 seconds for black-and-white or 34 seconds in color, and the absence of an automatic feeder made multi-page documents hard work. The XP-432 can neither scan nor print both sides of the paper (duplex) without manual assistance. Our prints, scans and copies all looked very good, but at around 9.3p per color page, running costs work out slightly higher than average.

VERDICT of Epson Expression Home XP-432 Review

There’s nothing seriously wrong with this printer and it’s cheap to buy, but neither its speed nor its running costs impressed us.

SPECIFICATIONS of Epson Expression Home XP-432 Review

5670x1440dpi max print resolution • 9ppm quoted speed (mono) • 4.5ppm quoted speed (colour) • 1200x2400dpi maximum scan resolution • SD card slot • USB • 802.11n Wi-Fi • 145x390x300mm (HxWxD) • 4.2kg • One-year warranty.