The SureColor P400 ($599.99), the lowest priced of three Epson prosumer near-dedicated photo printers, produces gallery-worthy prints at sizes up to 13 by 19 inches, and at a good speed. It also supports printing larger prints, banners, and panoramas from roll paper. The P400 is replacing the Stylus Pro R2000 ($699.99 at Adorama) in Epson's line, and also replaces it as our Editors' Choice.

Design and Features

The 27-pound all-black P400 ($584.80 at Amazon) is a large printer, and it needs a fair amount of room around it when in use. When closed for storage, it measures 8.6 by 24.5 by 12.8 inches (HWD), and its depth expands to 31.4 inches when the front and rear trays are extended. The printer has no display, as it's meant to be controlled from a computer. A line of buttons on the front panel include On/Off, Resume, and Wi-Fi, and the roll-paper controls are there, too.

The top-loading feeder fits up to 120 sheets of plain or 30 sheets of photo paper up to 13 by 19, a rear feeder holds one sheet of fine-art paper, a front feeder also fits one sheet, and there's a holder for paper rolls up to 13 inches wide. Epson sells 8- and 13-inch-wide rolls, with a maximum panorama size of 13 by 129 inches.

For our testing, Epson provided us with a variety of photo and fine-art media up to 13 by 19, as well as both 8- and 13-inch-wide rolls. The roll paper proved easy enough to attach, feed, and remove. Feeding paper from the rear slot proved tricky, and I sometimes had to fiddle with the paper for a relatively long time to get it to feed properly.

The P400 can connect to a computer via a USB cable, or to a network via Ethernet or Wi-Fi. I tested it over a USB connection with drivers installed on a computer running Windows 10 Professional.

Printing Speed

Speed takes a backseat to print quality with near-dedicated photo printers, but faster is still better, and the P400 is relatively speedy for a photo printer. I timed it at the (high) Quality setting that is the default for the Epson glossy photo paper I was using. It averaged 1 minute, 13 seconds, for a 4-by-6 print, and 2:36 for an 8-by-10 print. This is considerably faster than the SureColor P600 ($719.00 at Amazon) , the next model up in Epson's line, which we tested (at its highest quality setting) at 2:05 per 4 by 6 and 4:10 for an 8 by 10. When printing on 13-by-19 Metallic Photo Paper Glossy at its default Speed setting, I timed it at a fast 1:23.

As a near-dedicated photo printer, the P400 can print text and photos as well as graphics. Using it for these tasks would be rather like using a Lamborghini to make trips to the grocery store, except that with text and graphics printing, the P400 is as slow as a Lamborghini is fast. Its time for printing our text (Word) document was 5:49—more than three times as long as on any other inkjet—and its timings for PowerPoint, PDF, and Excel files also lagged non-photo inkjets we've tested. You wouldn't want to use the P400 as an everyday document printer, but it will do in a pinch.

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Output Quality

Photo print quality in our testing was good to excellent, with most prints of gallery-worthy quality. I did notice a significant tint in one print. Although the P400 doesn't have the large number of black or near-black cartridges that models such as the Epson P600 and the Canon Pixma Pro-10 ($699.99 at Amazon) do, it still did well in printing images with black or very dark backgrounds.

Text quality was excellent for an inkjet, as good as a laser on our standard fonts and generally very good on the unusual fonts in our suite. Graphics quality was slightly above average for an inkjet, though worse than usual for a near-dedicated photo printer. Several backgrounds looked a bit faded, and I noticed mild banding in a few illustrations.

Ink Costs

There is no good way to calculate the cost per page for a prosumer photo printer. This type of printer generally employs eight or more ink tanks. (The P400 includes eight: matte black, photo black, yellow, cyan, magenta, red, and orange, plus a gloss optimizer to improve a print's finish.) It's easy enough, though, to figure out the cost per milliliter (mL) of ink. Each tank costs $17.99 when bought through Epson, and holds 14mL, for a cost of $1.28 per milliliter. This is very similar to both the Canon Pixma Pro-100 ($362.54 at Amazon) ($1.31) and the P400's predecessor, the Epson R2000 ($1.25). The Epson P600, the next model up in Epson's line, also has similar ink costs ($1.24) but employs larger tanks (each holds 25.5mL), so you won't have to replace them as often. The Epson SureColor P800 ($1,099.99 at Amazon) , our Editors' Choice C-size (17-inch-paper-width) photo printer, has 12 much larger (80mL) ink tanks at just 70 cents per milliliter.

Conclusion

The Epson SureColor P400 is fast for a prosumer photo printer. Most of our test images produced excellent-quality prints, with vivid colors and excellent detail. Like its more expensive cousin, the Epson P600, but unlike similar Canon printers, it can print from roll paper. It's a worthy replacement for the Epson Stylus Photo R2000 as our top pick for moderately priced near-dedicated photo printers.

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