When it comes to connecting the printer, you have several options: USB 2.0, Wi-Fi (with WPS support), or wired Ethernet.
While this is going on you can download the print driver from Epson’s website, as well as any additional software or firmware updates. Before you can use it, the P400 goes through a priming process that takes 6-10 minutes. Setup is easy: Plug it in, power it on, and load the ink cartridges. This is true with just about every prosumer-class wide-format photo printer, not just Epson’s. Depending on the size and quality of the prints you generate, figure at least several dollars per print – $1-2 for a 8 x 10 print, $3 and up for a 13 x 17 print – when the cost of the paper is figured in. Epson does not provide yields for the cartridges, and the rating would be useless in most cases anyway since yields are completely dependent on what you print and what colors appear in most of your print. Pricing on the ink cartridges runs about $18 each. These provide the P400 with a wide color gamut.
Ink colors consist of two blacks (Matte and Photo Black), Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Red, and Orange. The seven colors and Gloss Optimizer cartridges (Epson describes the P400 as an eight-color printer, although that includes the Gloss Optimizer) have a bit less capacity than the more expensive SureColor models – 17ml versus 25.9ml in the P600, for example. Similar to the other printers in the SureColor family, the P400 uses Epson’s pigment-based UltraChrome HD inks. This is also where you feed the tray used to print on printable optical disc media. This input is used for feeding poster board or very heavy fine-art paper.
Also located at the rear panel is a place to attach the manual feed tray, used for fine art papers that are too heavy for the standard feed.įinally, another feed is behind a pull-down panel on the front of the printer, located over the output tray. Another feed located on the printer’s rear panel can support 13-inch-wide roll paper. It can accommodate paper up to 13 inches wide and 19 inches long. The paper feed has a capacity for 120 sheets of plain paper, or 30 sheets of photo paper. The P400’s paper handling is also similar to the P600’s. There are also indicator lights for power and ink status. The SC controls run along a strip across the top of the front panel, and include (from left to right) a network status indicator, power button, Wi-Fi connect button, paper feed/cancel button, ink button (which moves the printhead to the “replace ink cartridge” position), and roll paper button for loading and unloading roll paper. Physically, it looks almost identical to its P600 big brother, but the P400 lacks a color touchscreen.
It will not fit on a desk, especially when the paper input and output trays are extended, so consider getting a small table or stand for it. The printer itself is rather nondescript: With the top-rear paper feed and the front output tray folded, it’s simply a large, black rectangular box measuring 31.4 x 24.5 x 16.5 inches. It weighs 27 pounds – not so heavy that you can’t unpack it from its ginormous box, but it is bulky. In fact, the two are very similar, except the P400 is less expensive because, mainly, it has one fewer ink tank.Īnd like the P600 (or any wide-format photo printer, really), the P400 is large. Think of it as the baby brother to the P600, one of our favorite photo printers. The P400 is at the very low end, but that placement on the totem pole doesn’t mean it’s inferior. The P400 is at the very low end of the SureColor series, but that doesn’t mean it’s inferior.
The SureColor series is where you’ll find Epson’s high-quality photo printers, ranging from models that can output advertisement posters to smaller 8 x 10s. With seven ink colors – including two blacks – and a Gloss Optimizer that smoothes out the flat spots in the print, you can produce near-gallery-quality photo prints with excellent color accuracy and saturation, and without completely breaking the bank Features and designįrom the low-end consumer all-in-ones to industrial machines, Epson makes a lot of photo printers or printers that are capable of printing photos. The Epson SureColor P400 ($600) is the company’s latest entry-level wide-format photo printer that brings down the price barrier to entry. But many of these units are on the pricier side. What you want is a wide-format photo printer that’s designed for such a task (think, multiple color ink tanks). Of course, you’ll need an inkjet printer that can handle more than letter or legal-sized paper. Why buy art when you can print your masterpieces yourself, and hang them on the wall? With more and more reasonably priced DSLR and mirrorless (and even some smartphone) cameras capable of capturing high-resolution images these days, it opens up the opportunity for high-quality outputs.