Epson Expression Photo XP-980

Is the Epson Expression Photo XP-980 worth buying?

Yes, the Epson Expression Photo XP-980 is worth buying at £219.99 in a household where the A3 work is photographs rather than paperwork, and it holds the highest rating on the shortlist at 4.6. Six Claria Photo HD inks, a 10.9 cm touchscreen and a memory card slot let you print a poster-sized photo straight from a camera card without waking a computer. Buy it for the image, not for a print room.

Office work is where the case weakens. At 8 ppm colour and 8.5 ppm mono it is the slowest machine on the shortlist, so a 50-page document job runs about six minutes before you have looked at a single sheet. If documents outnumber photos in your week, the Brother MFC-J5340DW prints A3 at 28 ppm for £185.90, which is £34.09 less.

What does 5,760 x 1,440 dpi buy you on the Epson Expression Photo XP-980?

5,760 x 1,440 dpi is the resolution this printer lays down through six Claria Photo HD inks, and it is what holds detail in foliage, fabric and skin at A3 size. Epson rates those inks for up to 300 years of album life, so a framed print or a wedding album is not going to fade inside a decade. Card stock, envelopes, glossy photo paper and plain paper all feed through it.

That same speed figure sets the cost of the machine per unit of throughput. £219.99 divided by 8.5 ppm comes to £25.88 per page per minute, the highest of the ten printers on the shortlist and close to four times the £6.64 of the Brother MFC-J5340DW. A 100-page run takes roughly 12 minutes at that rate, comfortable for an album and tedious for a report.

What comes in the box with the Epson Expression Photo XP-980?

A power cable comes in the box, so price a set of six inks alongside the printer. The machine measures 47.9 cm wide, 35.6 cm deep and 14.8 cm tall and weighs 10.4 kg, which one person can lift on to a desk. Three paper paths do the work: two front-loading trays for A4 and photo-sized sheets, plus a rear specialty feed that takes thicker media up to A3. Capacity is 100 sheets in and 100 sheets out.

Connection is Wi-Fi with a single USB 2.0 port, and the Epson Smart Panel app plus email print cover phones, tablets and jobs sent from elsewhere. The 10.9 cm touchscreen drives the menus and reads a memory card without a computer, and two-sided printing is automatic. Day to day it is copy, scan and print work, with the photo settings selected from the panel.

Where does the Epson Expression Photo XP-980 fall short?

Speed is the first compromise. Mono output runs at 8.5 ppm with the first page out in about 8.5 seconds, and colour falls to 8 ppm, so a 30-page colour document takes roughly four minutes. Both figures sit far below the 22 ppm to 32 ppm of the office machines on the shortlist.

Paper handling and the evidence base set the other limits. 100 sheets is modest once A3 jobs lengthen, and the 4.6 rating rests on nine buyers, so there is less feedback to lean on than the 4.2 from 1,521 owners of the Canon PIXMA IX6850. There is also no Ethernet port, only Wi-Fi and one USB 2.0 socket, so a wired office network needs a bridge.

How does the Epson Expression Photo XP-980 compare with the XP-15000 and the Brother MFC-J5340DW?

The Epson Expression Photo XP-15000 costs £44 more at £263.99 and prints at 29 ppm, which is more than three times the throughput of the XP-980 for anyone producing A3+ photos in volume. It prints and nothing else, so a form or a drawing that needs copying is out of reach. Choose the XP-15000 for speed, and the XP-980 when scanning and copying have to live in the same box.

Against the Brother MFC-J5340DW at £185.90, the XP-980 costs £34.09 more and gives away almost all of its document pace, 8 ppm against 28 ppm. The Brother prints A3 and scans and copies at A4, so it wins a working office every time. Buy the XP-980 only when the prints on the wall matter more than the sheets in the tray.