Design and features
When we reviewed the Stylus Photo TX700W at the beginning of the year, it was its design that stood out to us the most. Hand-crafted (or at least sketched out) in the Castiglione Morelli studios in Milan, it was one of the only stylish multifunction printers on the market. Its successor of sorts, the TX710W, is no longer the best looking kid in the class thanks to the efforts of a number of other printer manufacturers — it has to contend with other sleekly designed printers like HP's Photosmart Premium C309g.
Sporting a remarkably similar chassis to the TX700W (in fact we can hardly spot the difference), the TX710W takes the black plastic pastiche to a new level. This multifunction can print, scan and copy, and thanks to the "Photo" tag, is somewhat of a photo-horse, using six ink cartridges. In terms of size, it's exactly the same as the TX700W as well — 44cm across and 38cm deep, weighing 9kg. The only difference we can see is that the TX710W comes with an automatic duplexer included in the box, rather than as a separate purchase.
At the front is a 2.5-inch screen attached to a panel that pivots out from the printer body. The panel houses all the central commands like the power button and the home menu navigation buttons — they're a little overwhelming at first given the sheer number present on the front fascia. PictBridge is supported, with a range of support for memory cards, including Compact Flash, Memory Stick, SD, MMC and xD. CD and DVD printing is also provided.
Connectivity is taken care of thanks to Ethernet and wireless (802.11b/g), and the printer can also be tethered to a computer with a USB cable, which is provided in the box. An optional Bluetooth adapter can be purchased separately.
Included in the box is the printer itself, documentation, a CD with software and drivers, USB cable, six ink cartridges, a power cable and an automatic duplexer.
Performance
The first step after installing the printer drivers is to fill the unit with its consumables — ink and paper. The former is relatively straightforward, but the paper trays are very fiddly. There are two trays, one nestled inside the other, which cater for different sized paper. The top one can be adjusted using the sliders to take 10x15cm and 13x18cm photo paper, or paper that's in the 16:9 aspect ratio. Underneath, it's A4, letter or a user-defined size. In theory, having both trays in one is a good idea but they're both so flimsy that it becomes a struggle just to load them.
Print quality for text was not as good as the recently tested HP Photosmart Premium C309g — the text was definitely not as smooth, crisp or as black as the HP's pages. The C309g's looked almost laser-quality when put side by side with the TX710W's. In our tests the TX710W managed 8.1 pages per minute on standard quality.
For photo quality, the TX710W excelled just like its older cousin, the TX700W. A 10x15cm borderless photo print on standard quality took anywhere from 22 to 29 seconds to emerge from the printer, which is a very speedy time for a multifunction photo print. The quality was very good (we used Epson's Premium Glossy photo paper) with excellent rendition of blacks and a natural, true-to-life feel to the prints.
Cost and consumables
The TX710W uses either standard Epson Claria ink cartridges (82N) or high yield (81N). At the time of writing, the 81N cartridges were available for around AU$24 online and the stated page yield is 855 pages, which equates to a cost per page for a colour print of 16¢. All up, you'll be paying around AU$144 to replace all six cartridges in one go.
Service and support
The TX710W comes with a one-year back-to-base warranty, with the option of purchasing an additional two-year warranty. As for platform compatibility, there's no documentation that state that there is Windows 7 support, and at the time of writing a search on Epson's website for Windows 7 compatible drivers turns up no results.
Conclusion
The TX710W is almost identical to the TX700W, so without a considered update or improvement on its core features, we're hard pressed to recommend one over the other. As they're both the same price you might as well get the TX710W as it includes an automatic duplexer.
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