Do you need a light-duty multifunction printer (MFP) for use in your home or home office? The Epson Expression Premium XP-830 Small-In-One ($199.99) is a good choice for either or both of those roles. This well-rounded, compact inkjet includes office-centric and photo-centric features, and a good range of connectivity choices. It delivers good speed and decent output quality, though it's better for photos than for text.

Design and Features
The XP-830($229.99 at Amazon) is a very minor update to the Epson Expression Premium XP-820 Small-In-One . Differences include a new ink formulation and a marginal decrease in the rated speed for color duplex printing, from 5.1 to 5 pages per minute (ppm). We don't test duplex printing speeds, except in cases where duplex printing is the default, but in our testing, the two models were essentially tied in simplex printing speeds.

As befitting its Small-In-One name, the XP-830 measures just 7.5 by 15.4 by 13.3 inches (HWD) when closed, and expands to 8.1 by 23.2 by 17.5 inches with the print tray open. It weighs 21.5 pounds. The printer sports 100-sheet main paper tray and a 20-sheet photo-paper tray that can hold up to 5-by-7-inch paper. There's also one-sheet feeder in back for specialty paper and an auto-duplexer. To make the XP-830 this compact, Epson sacrifices paper capacity. Although the 100-sheet main tray is sufficient for a home printer, it's meager for an MFP meant to double for home-office use, and for its price.

On top are a 30-page duplexing automatic document feeder (ADF)—which can scan two-sided documents by scanning one side, flipping the page over, and scanning the other side—and a letter-size flatbed. The front panel houses a 4.3-inch touch-screen LCD from which you can perform setup and maintenance tasks, scan and copy documents, send faxes, and print from a USB thumb drive or memory card. The memory card reader (which supports SD, SDHC, and SDXC formats) and the port for a USB thumb drive are to the left of the main tray.

The XP-830 has a similar feature set to the Editors' Choice Brother MFC-J870DW ($299.00 at Amazon) , including relatively sparse paper capacity. The XP-830's 30-sheet ADF does have a slightly greater capacity than the Brother MFC-J870DW's 20-sheet unit and can scan two-sided documents, a capability that the Brother printer lacks. Conversely, the MFC-J870DW offers near-field communication (NFC) connectivity, which the XP-830 doesn't have.

Connectivity
There's good set of both wired and wireless connection choices. The former include both USB and Ethernet. For wireless connectivity, the XP-830 has b/g/n Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi 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. The XP-830 also works with the Epson Creative Print app, which prints Facebook photos and creates custom cards, coloring books, stationery, and more.

It is AirPrint-compatible, and is also Mopria-certified. What AirPrint does for printing from iOS devices, the Mopria Alliance—a non-profit consortium that Epson belongs to—hopes to do for Android. The XP-830 is designed to work with the Mopria Print Service app and the built-in printing framework in Android v4.4 or later, allowing Android users to print documents, emails, photos, or webpages.

I tested the XP-830 over an Ethernet connection with the drivers installed on a computer running Windows Vista. Setup is typical for an inkjet MFP.

Print Speed, Output Quality, and Cost
I timed the Epson XP-830 on our business applications suite (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing), at 5.2ppm, essentially tied with the Epson XP-820 (5.1ppm), and a bit faster than the Brother MFC-J870DW (4.7ppm). The XP-830 averaged a somewhat sluggish 1 minute 54 seconds in printing out 4-by-6-inch photos.

See How We Test Printers

Overall output quality is average for an inkjet. Text quality is below par, though still good enough for typical home or business use. I'd avoid using the XP-830's text for documents like formal reports or resumés with which you are seeking to make a good visual impression. Graphics quality is typical of inkjets; some thin, colored lines were barely visible in our tests, and although colors were generally well saturated, a few backgrounds looked somewhat faded. Photos are above par; all of the test prints were at least the quality you'd expect from drugstore prints, and several were considerably better.

The XP-830's running costs, based on Epson's prices and yields of its most economical ink cartridges, are 5 cents per monochrome page and 13.8 cents per color page. This is a bit on the high side for an inkjet of its price.

Conclusion
The Epson Expression Premium XP-830 Small-In-One is a versatile and capable printer. It has all the features you look for in an inkjet for your home, and is up to light-duty business use as well, provided that text quality isn't critical and you don't mind frequently adding more paper to its input tray. It costs more than the Brother MFC-J870DW, our Editors' Choice dual-purpose home and home-office MFP, but is slightly faster with better photo quality, but its text quality falls well short of that of the Brother model.

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