The Epson Expression Premium XP-820 Small-in-One ($199.99) is a compact inkjet multifunction printer (MFP) with respectable speed and good graphics and photo quality. It has a wide range of features for both home and home-office use, though its modest paper capacity limits it to light-duty business use.

Design and Features
The XP-820 prints, copies, scans, and faxes, and can do so as a standalone device. It can print onto inkjet-printable DVDs or CDs and print from or scan to a USB flash drive or memory card. It can also scan to a computer or a network folder.

The XP-820 measures 5.4 by 15.4 by 13.4 inches (HWD) and weighs 21.5 pounds. It has a 100-sheet main tray and a 20-sheet photo-paper tray that can hold up to 5-by-7-inch paper, plus a one-sheet feeder for specialty paper. It has an auto-duplexer for two-sided printing. The modest capacity of the main tray is sufficient for a home printer, though it’s short of what we’d consider ideal for a unit to serve double-duty in a home and home office.

On top are a 30-page duplexing automatic document feeder (ADF) and a letter-size flatbed. The front panel houses a 4.3-inch touch-screen LCD. To the side of the trays are the memory-card slot (SD, MS Duo, and CF cards are supported), and a port for a USB thumb drive.

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Connectivity
The XP-820 offers both USB and Ethernet ports. Wireless connectivity includes Wi-Fi and Wireless Direct, which supports a direct peer-to-peer connection with a compatible device without the need for a network. The printer is compatible with Google Cloud Print, and lets users scan directly to Facebook. It supports Epson Connect solutions, such as the ability to access, print and scan documents, photos, emails and webpages from a tablet, smartphone or computer from anywhere in the world.

It is AirPrint compatible, and is also Mopria-certified. What AirPrint did for printing from iOS devices, the Mopria Alliance—a non-profit consortium that Epson belongs to—hopes to do for Android. The XP-820 will work seamlessly with the Mopria Print Service app and the built-in printing framework in Android v4.4 or later, allowing Android users to easily print documents, emails, photos or webpages.

I tested the XP-820 over an Ethernet connection with the drivers installed on a computer running Windows Vista. Setup was typical for an inkjet MFP.

Print Speed
The XP-820 printed out our business applications suite (as timed with QualityLogic’s(Opens in a new window) hardware and software) at 5.1 effective pages per minute (ppm), a respectable speed for its price. In comparison, we timed the Canon Pixma MG7120 BK Wireless Inkjet Photo All-In-One Printer ($415.60 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) at just 2.5ppm, while the Editors’ Choice Brother MFC-J4610W ($1,999.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) ran through our tests at 5.6ppm, and the Editors’ Choice Epson WorkForce 3640 ($480.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) tested at 5.4ppm. The XP-820 printed out 4-by-6-inch photos at an average of just 38 seconds, a very good speed.

Output Quality
The output quality, based on our testing, was a mixed bag, with subpar text and slightly above-par graphics and photos. Text quality is suitable for most any home use other than documents, such as resumes, with which you want to make a good visual impression, and most internal business uses, except formal reports and documents that use very small fonts.

Graphics quality is good enough for any home or internal business use, including PowerPoint handouts. Colors are bright and well saturated. Most images show dithering in the form of graininess and dot patterns. Some thin, colored lines against dark backgrounds are lost. I also saw mild banding, a regular pattern of faint striations, in several images with solid backgrounds.

Photos also are slightly above par for an inkjet. A monochrome photo showed some tinting, and a couple of prints showed some loss of detail in bright areas. With most prints, the quality is typical of what you’d expect from drugstore prints, though in a couple I looked at, it was somewhat better.

Ink and Running Costs
There are five ink cartridges, including a photo black. The running costs of 4.6 cents per monochrome page and 16.3 cents per color page, based on Epson’s figures for the prices and yields of its most economical ink cartridges, are higher than most inkjet MFPs of similar price. The only ones with comparable running costs that we’ve looked at lately are other photo-centric (yet still general-purpose) models such as the Canon Pixma MG7120, which came in at an identical 4.6 cents per monochrome page and a slightly lower 13.4 cents per color page.

In contrast, the more business-oriented Brother MFC-J4610DW has claimed running costs of just 2.3 cents per monochrome page and 8 cents per color page, while the Epson 3640, another business-centered MFP, has costs of 3.2 cents per monochrome page and 11.4 cents per color page. Thus, it’s not so much the extra ink tanks of some of the more photo-centric models—the XP-820 adds one tank, while the MG7120 tacks on two—that drives up the cost, but the relatively high cost per yield of the individual tanks. And you pay the premium whether you’re printing out photos for an album, coupons, webpages, or emails.

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Although it’s not guaranteed, in most cases you will get at least somewhat better-quality photos from consumer MFPs designed with an eye to photo quality than models geared more toward business. The XP-820’s photo quality was slightly above par in our testing, but the Canon MG7120’s was better. Whether improved photo quality is worth the higher per-page cost over, say, the Epson 3640—with its average photo quality and raft of features including a 500-sheet paper capacity—depends on your needs.

The Canon Pixma MG7120 had even better photo quality than the XP-820 in our testing, and slightly lower color costs, but took twice as long to print out our business applications suite and lacks features like fax, Ethernet, and an ADF. The Editors’ Choice Brother MFC-J4610DW showed slightly subpar photo quality, but its per-page costs are less than half of those of the XP-820, it has much greater paper capacity, and can print at up to tabloid (11-by-17-inch) size.

The Epson Expression Premium XP-820 Small-in-One Printer offers good photos and graphics (though at the expense of text quality) and a good set of features for home or home office. That may well be worth its relatively high running costs, especially if your printing needs are fairly light.