Home > Consumer Reviews > Epson Stylus Office BX300F All-in-One Printer with Fax

First and foremost, this is a brilliant printer and the sheet feed scanner has transformed the way I now store letters that I get through the post.

For storing letters, it is now a simple matter of feeding them into the scanner and then keeping the PDFs on my PC (suitably backed up I hasten to add).

However, this isn't the main reason for writing this review nor, if you've read the title, for you reading it.

Now onto cartridges... Yes, the price of almost all ink jet printers is artificially low to get you to buy them and the manufacturer makes his profit on the cartridges (everyone must know that by now). The set of cartridges that come with it aren't the full capacity, but that's what everyone expects.

I have seen many reviews where people have complained about getting as little as 17 pages from a set of cartridges. Having used Epson printers for quite few years now, I can honestly say that the cartridges do last well if you follow five simple rules.

1. The first is bit obviously really, but printing photographs does take a lot of ink. Cutting back in this area is one thing you might consider - don't give me any credit for this one, it really just plain common sense, the rest are better...

2. Leave your printer switched on the whole time. If you switch your printer off, you will waste loads of ink. As part of the power on sequence, Epson printers clean the print heads. This uses a lot of ink. Indeed it would even be possible, just by switching off and on, to use a complete set of ink cartridges without printing a single page! But, I hear you say, what about the environment? Well, this printer is "Energy Star". This means it has its own energy saving mechanisms built into it to help reduce the power consumption when it is not in use. At least this quells my conscience.

3. Do not replace the ink cartridges when the printer tells that they are low. Epson printers are very pessimistic about the state of ink in the cartridges. Indeed, my prompt today to write this review is that I have just replaced a cartridge; nearly a month after I was first warned about the ink being low. I've printed close on 200 pages of mixed text and graphics in that time with it telling me that the Cyan needed replacement...

4. This is linked to (3) above. Only replace the ink cartridge when the printer refuses to print. You won't lose any quality as you get near to the end of the ink. The printer will not compromise on print quality. The main point to note here is that you should order spare ink when you're warned that it is low, but only replace when the printer actually stops.

5. Finally, this one saves you both ink and makes printing faster. Change the default print quality to text for most of your usage. Unless you are printing photographs, this is probably perfectly acceptable quality for the vast majority of your usage. You can always change the print quality on an as-needed basis when you do want really top quality. The added bonus is that printing is also faster.

(To change the default quality, go into , and then right click on the printer icon. Then select and you can then change the printing preferences - I suggest is a good option. When you come to print, you can always change the setting for that job only by clicking on the tab as part of the print dialogue.)

I hope you find this useful.

This is a good machine, it took me half an hour to install from opening the box, there are seperate ink cartridges for each colour too which is great for maintenance ... i have had a blank and 'coloured' cartridge before and the colour ones are so expensive, even if you have only used 1 colour ... a really good idea ... you cant beat this for a deal ... multi-functional devices like this in the main stores start at £50 and dont have a multi-feed device on them which means feeding in large documents one by one ... pain ... i would certainly recommend this printer ...

This is an excellent all purpose printer. I bought it for uni and it seems to be doing its job. You can buy cheap inks for £10 a set approx.

Amazon did great again with delivery, ordered with super saver but delivered 3 days after purchase.

I would reccomend this to anyone.

I recently purchased an Epson BX300f all in one printer, I was so surprised the item came so quickly, and at an economical price. Both black and coloured print quality is superb. I am happy with my purchase and I'll recommend this machine to anyone. Good value for money and thanks Amazon keep up the good work.

For the price you can't beat it, I have used it for a few weeks now, scanning is a doddle, I use it with Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Professional in conjunction with my work and it's proved to be a god send in reproducing documents. Files can be kept to a reasonable size so not taking up vast amounts of room on your hard drive and without sacrificing quality.
Printing is to Epson's usual high quality using generic photo paper, standard printing on laser A4 paper is good with no evidence of bleeding and the copier although it takes quite a while it reproduces documents to a reasonably good quality. As for the fax I haven't yet tried, although that is still to happen.
All in all a good 4 in 1 printer with the added advantage of separate cartridges per color, so cutting down on costs.