Epson Expression Photo XP-15000

Is the Epson Expression Photo XP-15000 worth buying?

The Epson Expression Photo XP-15000 is worth buying at £263.99 if your A3+ output is photographs, and 172 owners rate it 4.1 for exactly that job. It reaches 5,760 x 1,440 dpi with a 24 bpp colour depth, and the Claria Photo HD set carries red and grey alongside the usual colours, which is what gives skin tones and monochrome prints their range. If your A3 work is invoices and spreadsheets, this is the wrong machine and you should be looking at 30 ppm document printers instead.

What you are paying for is image control rather than throughput. Mono and colour both run at 29 ppm on plain paper, front and rear paper trays let you keep photo stock loaded while plain A4 sits in the other, and A4 duplex printing is automatic. The wider trade is that six inks need funding, and photo stock slows the whole process down to one print at a time.

What do 5,760 dpi and 29 ppm mean in practice?

The 5,760 x 1,440 dpi resolution and 24 bpp colour depth decide how much detail survives enlargement on to an A3+ sheet. At that density, a fabric texture, a leaf or a fine line in a building stays readable when the print is four times the area of A4. It is the reason this machine sits in a photographer's studio rather than in a general office.

Divide the price by the speed and the value picture appears: £263.99 across 29 ppm works out at £9.10 per page per minute. That is less than the £11.80 of the Canon PIXMA TS9550a and more than the £6.64 of the Brother MFC-J5340DW, which is a fair trade for photo inks with red and grey. Running costs are modest too, because it draws 21 watts while printing, low enough that a long A3 session costs pence of electricity.

How big is the Epson Expression Photo XP-15000 and what comes with it?

It weighs 8.5 kg, light enough to lift on to a shelf single-handed when the desk needs rearranging, and the body stands 18.9 cm across, 14.6 cm deep and 6.3 cm tall. Paper loads at the front, with a rear speciality feed behind for thick media, and a second front path takes photo paper. That means you can leave glossy stock loaded and still push a plain A4 document through without touching the trays.

Inside the box you get the printer, Epson 235 cartridges and software covering Epson Easy Photo Print and Epson Print CD. Connection runs over USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g/n) or Wi-Fi Direct for printing without a router, and the Epson app drives setup and everyday jobs from a phone. Amazon Dash Replenishment can reorder ink automatically when the printer notices it is low, and there is no subscription fee to register for it.

What are the downsides of the Epson Expression Photo XP-15000?

Automatic duplex printing covers A4 plain paper, so long A3 documents come out one sheet at a time and a 200-page A3 run stays a manual job. Six individual inks keep colour accurate, but they also mean six cartridges to buy, and photo inks sit at the expensive end of the Epson range. At £263.99 it costs £109.80 more than the Epson WF-7310DTW, which prints at 32 ppm.

Scanning and copying are not part of the package, so a proof or a plan that arrives on paper has to be handled elsewhere. The 29 ppm figure also belongs to plain paper: switch to glossy A3+ stock and the pace changes to one print at a time, which is fine for a studio and awkward for a deadline-driven office.

How does the Epson Expression Photo XP-15000 compare with the XP-980 and the PIXMA IX6850?

The Epson Expression Photo XP-980 costs £44.00 less at £219.99 and brings a 10.9 cm touchscreen plus a six-ink Claria Photo HD system of its own, but it prints at 8.5 ppm, so it is far slower on documents. Choose the XP-15000 when pace and CD/DVD printing matter; choose the XP-980 when the large touchscreen and the £44.00 matter more than throughput.

The Canon PIXMA IX6850 is £85.01 cheaper at £178.98 and prints at 14.5 ppm, which works out at £12.34 per page per minute against £9.10 here. Its draw is the evidence behind it: 1,521 owners rate it 4.2, against 172 rating this one 4.1. Buy the Canon for A3+ posters on a budget, and this Epson when the photo inks with red and grey are the whole point.