Although the Epson Premium Expression XP-630 Small-in-One ($149.99) is geared primarily toward home use, with a low paper capacity and a dedicated tray for photo paper, this inkjet multifunction printer (MFP) offers some welcome features for office use, including duplexing, scanning to a USB memory key, and support for mobile printing. The extras make the XP-630 a better-than-typical choice among home printers since it can also serve as a light-duty personal printer, particularly in a home office. Even better, its Wi-Fi support makes it easy to share in the dual role of home and home office MFP.
Unlike the Canon Pixma MX922 Wireless Office All-In-One Printer or the Brother MFC-J870DW, two Editors' Choice home/home-office MFPs, the XP-630 doesn't offer faxing, Ethernet, or an automatic document feeder (ADF) for scanning.
Basics
The XP-630's basic MFP features are limited to printing from and scanning to a PC, as well as working as a standalone copier. It can also print from and scan to a memory card, and it offers several choices for printing on a printable optical disc, letting you print from a supplied program running on your PC, copy an image from its scanner directly to a disc, or print directly from a memory card or USB key.You can also preview images on a memory card or a USB key on the 2.7-inch front-panel color LCD before printing. Epson refers to the LCD as a touch panel, which translates to the controls being touch-sensitive buttons near to the screen. Touching the screen itself doesn't do anything except get smudges on it.
Paper Handling, Mobile Printing, and Scanning to the Cloud
Paper handling is acceptable for a home printer or a light-duty personal printer, but with some unexpected limitations, as well as welcome extras. The main tray holds only 100 sheets and is limited to a maximum size of 8.5-by-11-inch paper instead of legal size, which the vast majority of printers can handle.
Balancing that limitation is a built-in duplexer (for two-sided printing) and a second tray for up to 20 sheets of 5-by-7-inch photo paper. The dedicated photo tray isn't as useful as a second tray for up to letter-size paper, but it will save you from having to swap out paper in the main tray every time you switch between printing documents and photos.
If you connect the printer to a network via Wi-Fi, you can also take advantage of its support for printing through the cloud, as well as printing from and scanning to a phone or tablet through an access point on your network. If you connect it to a single PC via USB cable instead, you lose the ability to print though the cloud. However, thanks to built-in Wi-Fi Direct, you can still connect directly to the printer to print from or scan to a mobile device.
One other useful feature—which the XP-630 shares with other Expression models, including the Expression Photo XP-960 Small-in-One—is the ability to send scanned files to an assortment of websites, including Facebook. However, the XP-630 doesn't offer the same built-in features as the Epson XP-960 to scan and send files to at least some websites using front-panel commands. Both scanning and uploading the files is handled exclusively on your PC using a supplied scan utility.
Setup, Speed, and Output Quality
The XP-630 measures 5.4 by 15.4 by 13.4 inches (HWD) with the trays closed, and it weighs 15 pounds 11 ounces. Setup is standard. For my tests, I connected it to a Windows system via USB cable.
On our business applications suite, I timed the printer (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing) at 4.7 pages per minute (ppm). That makes it faster on our tests than most printers in its price range, notably the Canon MX922 at 2.4ppm, and it tied with the Brother MFC-J870DW. Photo speed was acceptably fast for an inkjet on our tests, averaging 1 minute 6 seconds for a 4-by-6-inch print.
Output quality in our tests was a touch below par overall, strictly because of low text quality. Fortunately, even though the text quality is near the bottom of the range we've seen on our tests for inkjet MFPs, it's good enough for most home use. As long as you don't use fonts much smaller than 10 points, you shouldn't have a problem with it.
Graphics were at the high end of the range that includes the vast majority of inkjet MFPs. Our test output for graphics on plain paper was easily suitable for home use and most business use, including PowerPoint handouts and the like. Photo quality on photo paper was a match for the high end of what you'd expect from drugstore prints.
Conclusion
The Epson Expression Premium XP-630 Small-in-One is worth a look for its combination of speed, strong graphics and photo quality, and extras like support for mobile printing. If you need Ethernet, an ADF for scanning, or the ability to print on up to legal-size paper, however, you're better off with the Brother MFC-J870DW, which also offers great speed in printing from business applications, or the Canon MX922, which also produces high-quality photos.This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.
