All-in-ones (AIOs) that could serve in the dual role as home and home office printer were once rare. Now they're more the rule than the exception—at least at the Epson Artisan 800's price level ($299.99 direct). The key question is no longer whether they fit in both roles, but how well they fit in each. The Artisan 800 is weighted more toward home use but can also be a good fit for a home office with light duty needs.

Like a growing number of AIOs designed for home and home office, the Artisan 800 includes both Ethernet and Wi-Fi support, so it's easy to share. Photo-centric features start first and foremost with high-quality photo output and include the ability to print directly from PictBridge cameras, memory cards, and USB keys. A 3.5-inch color LCD lets you preview the photos before printing.

Other features targeted for home use include built-in menu choices for printing your own graph paper (with horizontal and vertical cyan lines running edge to edge on the page) and notebook paper (with horizontal cyan lines and one vertical red line about an inch in from the left-hand side of the page). Printing your own is probably more expensive than buying these papers, but being able to print a sheet when it's too late at night to buy any could be invaluable for the students in your house.

Another neat trick is a coloring-book feature. The Artisan 800 can scan and analyze a photo for shapes, and then print just the outlines of those shapes—buildings, people, or whatever. If you have any younger children living in your house—or visiting—I strongly suspect you can keep them happily occupied coloring in outlines of themselves taken from photos.

One last feature aimed primarily at the home, but also useful for the office, is the ability to print directly on printable discs, for labeling that's much neater than handwriting without your having to deal with physical labels.

On the office-centric side, the AIO works as a standalone copier and fax machine, and it includes a 30-page automatic document feeder (ADF) for scanning and faxing multipage documents as well as legal-size pages. You can also give scan commands from the front panel, including a scan to e-mail command that launches your PC's e-mail program and adds the scanned document as an attachment. Unfortunately, the feature works only over a USB connection. If you connect through a network, you have to scan the document to a file, manually start an e-mail message, and then attach the file.

Setting up the Artisan 800 on a network is straightforward. The printer measures 7.8 by 18.4 by 15.2 inches (HWD). Find a spot for it, remove the packing materials, load paper, and install the six ink cartridges (one for each ink color: cyan, yellow, magenta, black, light cyan, and light magenta). Then connect the power cord and cables and run the automated installation routine. I installed the software under Windows XP, but according to Epson, the printer also ships with drivers and a full set of software for Vista, Windows 2000, XP x64, and Mac OS 10.3.9 through 10.5.x.

One of the more pleasant surprises with the Artisan 800 was its speed. I timed it on our business applications suite (timed with QualityLogic's hardware and software, www.qualitylogic.com) at a total of 8 minutes 10 seconds, making it the fastest inkjet AIO at anything like its price. It's actually significantly faster than the similarly priced Editors' Choice HP Officejet Pro L7590 All-In-One Printer, which is (still) one of the fastest inkjet AIOs in this price range, at 9:14. It's more than twice as fast as the more directly competitive Kodak ESP 9 All-In-One Printer, which took 18:44. The photo print speed is also impressive, averaging 59 seconds for a 4-by-6 and 2:08 for an 8-by-10.

Output quality in my tests was below par for text, typical for graphics, and above par for photos. More than half the fonts on our text test were easily readable at 8 points, but fewer than half qualified also as well formed, and none passed either threshold at smaller sizes. The text also had a grayish look that would make long documents hard to read. I'd call the text good enough for schoolwork, personal correspondence, and possibly internal business use like memos, but I wouldn't use it for business correspondence.

The graphics quality is much better, with no serious flaws. I saw a slight tendency to lose thin lines, but that's a common problem, and less of an issue for the Artisan 800 than for many printers. The output is certainly good enough for schoolwork or internal business use—for PowerPoint handouts, for example. One potential issue is that full-page graphics tended to make the paper we use curl, so you might want to invest in a heavier-weight paper.

Photos were almost uniformly superb. One photo even showed details in a light area that almost every other printer I've ever tested missed. The only flaw worth mentioning was a slight tint in monochrome output, which obviously would matter only if you print monochrome photos. For color photos, the output is better than you would expect from your local drugstore.

The Artisan 800's front-panel controls deserve special mention, because they are all part of a single touch-sensitive panel that includes the LCD preview screen. The panel is well designed both in the sense of looking good and being easy to use. Epson deserves kudos for doing it right, and I wouldn't be surprised if the panel wins the company an industrial design award.

Paper handling is a mixed bag. The Artisan 800's 120-sheet capacity is part of what makes the printer suitable for light-duty use only. On the other hand, you can add an automatic duplexer ($29.99 direct), which is a nice touch for any office. And a separate photo tray, for up to 20 sheets of 4-by-6 or 5-by-7 photo paper, lets you switch between printing documents and photos without having to change the paper in the tray.

The low paper capacity and subpar text quality keep the Artisan 800 from being an ideal choice for a home office—and they also keep it from being an Editors' Choice. But what really makes it worth considering is its high-quality photos, photocentric features like direct printing from cameras and memory cards, and extras focused on home use—from printing on discs to printing out coloring-book pages. If you're looking for a home AIO that's also suitable for light-duty home office use, the Artisan 800 deserves a place on your short list.

Check out the Epson Artisan 800's performance test results.

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