PRINTING. The Epson Expression Home XP-200 prints using inkjet technology, which sprays liquid ink onto the paper from a moving head. Its text printing is good, though not as good as most inkjets. Text printing was reasonably fast, 7.9 pages per minute, costing 4.1 cents per page. Its color graphics printing is very good for reports, newsletters and web pages, at 0.4 pages per minute, costing 27.1 cents per page.
SCANNING and COPYING. Scanning performance was very good, fine for general-purpose scanning. It can scan or copy an area up to 11.9 x 8.6 inches (letter size). Copying performance was good, but had a few noticeable flaws. Includes OCR (optical character recognition) software, useful for making scanned documents editable in a word processor program.
CONTROLS and DISPLAY. The printer has no display screen.
CONNECTIVITY and NETWORKING. It lacks USB PictBridge for direct printing from cameras. You can connect directly to a PC with a USB cable, or to your network router wirelessly with WiFi. There's a WiFi Auto-connect feature that makes it easy to link to your wireless router. You can also install Epson's app on your smart phone or tablet, as another option for printing over your WiFi network. You can also print an email remotely by forwarding it directly to this printer.
COST OF OWNERSHIP. The purchase price for this printer is about $90, which is cheap for an all-in-one inkjet printer. But printing uses up ink. Over time, as you print, the costs add up. After 2 years of use, we estimate the total cost to be $430, which is typical for an inkjet. The estimated yearly cost is $170 -- that's also typical for this printer type. So the 3-, 4- and 5-year estimates are about $600, $770 and $940 respectively.
