Epson Stylus CX5500 Review

Shiny surfaces on computer peripherals are usually synonymous with an incredible amount of fingerprint smudges just waiting to happen. But surprisingly, the piano finish on the Epson Stylus CX5500 all-in-one printer was a lot more-smudge resistant than we expected.

The CX5500 comes in a smart sturdy body with an elegant black finish that would suit just about any desktop out there. The whole look of the unit is very minimalist, with just the essential buttons on the left side for functions such as Power, Stop, Color Photo, Color Text and B&W photocopy.

There's no support for memory cards here or any kind of a display, like some of the newer models available these days, but that's kind of justified at its price point... kind of! Still, the printer looks sleek and the build quality will not give you any reason to complain.

The CX5500 uses four ink cartridges (CMYK), wherein lies its biggest selling point — the ability to use normal capacity ink cartridges along with budget ones. In other words, while the normal capacity ink cartridges come for around Rs. 460, in case you figure that you don't use a particular color, like say, yellow as much as you use the other colors, you have the option of buying the lower capacity ink cartridge of that color, which would cost you only Rs. 250.

It's a pretty good feature to have. I can imagine many home users opting for the cheaper color cartridges, and going for the regular capacity black ink cartridge, which would better suit their requirements. Our tests, however, were all done using the regular capacity cartridges.