Verdict

The Epson XP-7100 is a high-quality home office printer/copier/scanner which is fast and multifunctional. It’s not the cheapest all-in-one on the market, but you largely get what you pay for.

Pros

• Prints very quickly
• Text and photo quality is high
• Easy to set up and use

Cons

• Heavy and awkward to shift around
• Not expensive, but also not cheap

The Epson XP-7100 is an all-in-one colour inkjet printer/copier/scanner which handles print instructions over Wi-Fi from phones, tablets, and laptops, as well as from desktops and laptops via more traditional USB and Ethernet wired connections.

If that wasn’t enough, you can print photos directly via an SD card slot or USB stick instead.

Like a lot of home office all-in-ones, the Epson XP-7100 features an ADF (Automatic Document Feeder), and allows for double-sided printing, and the front paper tray even features two decks, so you can keep one loaded with plain A4 and another with glossy photo paper.

As well as boasting fast print speeds, Epson promises excellent print quality with the XP-7100, and it achieves this by using a five Claria Premium ink cartridge setup: two black ink cartridges and three colour. While the quality is indeed excellent, buyers on a budget will keep an eye on the bottom line. So just how thirsty is the Epson XP-7100?

Price and Availability

The Epson XP-7100 (or ‘Expression Premium XP-7100’ to give it its full name) is available to buy now. Epson lists £149.99/$199.99/€189,99 as the RRP of the XP-7100.

At the time of writing, most places are actually selling it for a bit more than that, with Cartridge People selling them for £179.90 and Photo Specialist selling them for £172.34. Amazon has it priced even higher at £196.99.

Design and features – Space-efficient mechanical animal

• Squat, compact and tidy, but heavy
• Setup and calibration can take a while
• Touchscreen menu and mobile apps are easy to navigate

Measuring a mere 183 x 390‎ x 339mm, the Epson XP-7100 is a very desk space-friendly printer, but it’s perhaps not a shocker to learn that this is a heavy old thing. This is despite most of the shiny plastic coating feeling thin and light to the touch.

Then again, you’ve got a colour printer, scanner, and copier in there, as well as several other moving parts like a mechanical out-tray and control panel. Much like the Canon PIXMA TS9550, it’s heavy for a reason.

As with a lot of all-in-ones, the ADF sits on the top deck. This can hold up to 30 sheets of A4 at once, useful if you’re copying multi-page documents. The ADF is accessed by pulling the middle section up and to the right. Everything folds over neatly, with the lid cleverly doubling as an in-tray.

The A4 1200 x 4800 DPI scanner sits underneath. There’s no slow close mechanism here mind, so you’ll need to push it all the way back.

In order for me to get at the hood to pop in a fresh ink cartridge, I needed to flip the entire top section open. This is made easy by recessed areas on either side for me to hook my fingers into and lift up, while a catch and a slow close mechanism means I have both hands free.

Beneath this sits a control panel with a 4.2-inch touchscreen. This swings out at 90 degrees, and can be easily adjusted to suit. Whenever I power the Epson XP-7100 on, this is pushed out automatically, in a way that’s oddly endearing. The out-tray lies directly underneath the control panel and extends out automatically whenever I queue a print job.

Below this lies the main paper tray, which features two decks, or ‘cassettes’. The top one can hold up to 20 sheets of glossy photo paper (up to 2L size), while the lower deck is designed to hold regular plain paper (up to A4 size). There’s also a rear paper feed, designed to allow for printing on single pieces of thicker media, like card, but there’s no big extendable tray here, just a small grey plastic tab that swings out.

Setting up the Epson XP-7100 can take a while, thanks in part to the calibration process, which demands a sacrifice of five sheets of A4 paper. Securely connecting the printer to your wireless network is made easier by virtue of that touchscreen panel, although once connected to the Internet, several firmware updates loudly made their presence known. Make sure you put the kettle on first.

Thankfully, once you are set up, using the Epson XP-7100 is a breeze. Windows drivers can be easily downloaded from Epson’s site, and Mac users don’t even have to bother, because the Epson XP-7100 is AirPrint compatible. Provided you’re on the same Wi-Fi network, you’re all set.

The Epson iPrint app (iOS, Android) is not especially flashy, but it is very easy to use, and gets the job done. You can send photos, selfies, screengrabs, whatever horrors are stored on your phone’s memory to the XP-7100. And if you need to print documents from the cloud, the app supports the likes of Box, Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive.

Print speed and quality – High speed, high detail

• Text, graphics, and photos all print quickly
• Quality is excellent too
• It’s pretty noisy though…

The Epson XP-7100 is one of the faster printers we’ve tested. Single pages of text are typically jettisoned in under three seconds. Printing off our five-page test document took 16.1 seconds (a rate of 18.73ppm) while the big 20 page test file took 1 minute 12 seconds (16.51ppm). Colour photos printed on plain A4 took between 8-9 seconds, while high quality prints on 10 x 15mm (4 x 6 inch) paper took just under a minute.

Quality is generally very high, although on the ‘Normal’ print setting there were instances of bleed that were noticeable on heavy fonts like Impact. Cranking things up to ‘Best’ improved this, so stick to that for important documents – and maybe don’t use Impact, aka the meme font.

Photos printed on plain paper look very good, which is not always the case for home office inkjet printers. Photos printed on glossy paper are very rich, accurate, and detailed. If you really want to see what the Epson XP-7100 can do, invest in some glossies – Epson sells packs of 20 (10 x 15 cm) sheets for £4.99 on its site.

On the subject of money, here’s how the prices of the cartridges on Epson’s site work out:

Editor’s note: All prices are taken from Epson’s site, and are correct and time of writing. Costs per page are rounded up. 

As always, the bigger cartridges are better value for money. Bought altogether, they’re still quite expensive, so if you’re able to get a bundle deal with all five XL carts for £85 on Amazon, that’d save you about £12.

While overheads for a full replacement are high, you can at least save money by only buying what you need. The Photo Black cartridges obviously won’t get hammered as hard if you’re mainly printing out documents, so you wouldn’t have to replace those ones as often.

Alternatively, you can also sign up for Epson’s ReadyPrint subscription, which starts at £1.29/month for 30 pages’ worth of ink, and goes up to £16.49/month for 500 pages.

The only negative is that the Epson XP-7100 is pretty loud when it gets going. Pro tip: go and make a cup of tea, and queue a print job from your phone so you don’t have to be around all that racket.

Epson XP-7100 conclusion

The Epson XP-7100 is a versatile all-in-one printer that’s ideal for a home office, offering high-quality and speedy printing. It’s overkill for those who just want a basic printer to churn out documents, and it maybe a little too large for some home office spaces, but it’s still a top-notch option for those who want a printer that can do it all.

You should buy the Epson XP-7100 if…

• Time is of the essence
  If you need to run off several copies of a contract in a hurry, the Epson XP-7100 has your back.

• You want to print high quality photos as well as text documents
  If you need passport-quality photos or want to print off holiday snaps as well as documents, you can do so with the Epson XP-7100.

• You need a versatile all-in-one
  Powerful, compact, capable, this does pretty much everything you’d want from a home office printer, with style.

You shouldn’t buy the Epson XP-7100 if…

• You’re on a tight budget
  While quality is high and you do largely get what you pay for, it’s not the cheapest option out there.

• You just need a colour printer
  If you just need a colour printer, and want to save some money, see what else is on offer in our best printers round up.

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