Epson Expression Home XP-5200  Printer Review

The Epson Expression Home XP-5200's plastic build feels relatively sturdy, with no flimsy parts or obvious gaps in the construction. The input ports feel solid, and the power cord is removable, so it's easy to replace if it gets damaged. However, there are some downsides to its design. The scanner's background is only a thin piece of plastic, and the lid hinges don't extend, making it hard to scan thicker items like textbooks. Although there's a good damper to hold the printer open for maintenance, accessing the ink cartridges and dealing with paper jams is hard because the printer only opens partially, leaving little space to maneuver. You can also access the sheet rollers through the back panel, but again, there isn't much space.

There was a cracking sound coming from the printer early on in our testing. Nothing broke, but the photo we were printing at the time had shifted slightly to the right and was stuck midway in the sheet rollers, even though the rollers were still turning. It's unclear what caused the issue, and it never happened again.

The Epson XP-5200's display is okay. It has good vertical viewing angles, so it's easy to see from above and below, and you can tilt the whole front panel to improve visibility. As for the horizontal viewing angles, it's good from the left but poor from the right. It has a newly revamped user interface with more rounded corners and colors, but the menu is the same as other Epson home printers and is just as user-friendly. The display isn't touch-sensitive, so you'll have to rely on the physical buttons around it to navigate. On the upside, the buttons are clicky and responsive.

The Epson Expression Home XP-5200 yields a low number of black prints, so you'll have to replace the black ink cartridge often. Its color page yield is better, but still not that great. A message pops up when the ink cartridges are running low or empty. If a color cartridge runs out, you can continue printing in black temporarily, although it's unclear how long this temporary status lasts. For black-and-white printing, if the black ink level is low, you can continue printing using the color inks to produce a composite black. However, if the black ink cartridge is completely empty, the printer will stop printing. In regards to high-yield cartridges, there's only an Epson 222XL Black ink cartridge. There aren't any high-yield cartridges for the other colors.

The Epson Expression XP-5200 requires a lot of maintenance. Like most inkjet printers, the printheads can clog if you don't use the printer for an extended period. There are built-in functions to resolve clogging issues, like Printhead Cleaning and Printhead Nozzle Check. There are also other functions to resolve any print issues you might encounter, like Printhead Alignment, Power Cleaning, and Paper Guide Cleaning. You'll likely need to replace the ink cartridges often, as they run out fairly quickly. To replace them, you have to lift the printer's top and select the Ink Cartridge Replacement function from the menu. The printer runs a 4-minute initialization process after installing new cartridges. The input tray holds 150 sheets of paper, so depending on how much you print, you may need to refill it regularly. You can access paper jams through the back panel or by lifting the printer's top, but, as mentioned in the build section, there isn't much space to maneuver.

We had some print quality issues out of the box, as there were large dark bands when printing color documents. We aren't sure what caused it, and the issue resolved itself after leaving the printer idle for a few days. We also observed signs of clogged nozzles during the Black and White document test, as shown in the Printing Speed test video. However, the issue resolved itself after leaving the printer idle for a few days.

You can see the user manual here.

This is an inkjet printer, which means it can clog if left unused for an extended period. Inkjet printers use liquid ink that flows through extremely fine printhead nozzles. During extended periods of inactivity, this ink can evaporate, thicken, or dry out, potentially blocking the ink flow. Environmental factors such as dry air, dust, temperature fluctuations, or direct sunlight can accelerate clog formation. Clogs may cause missing lines, faded colors, or complete print failures. To reduce the risk, we recommend printing periodically and storing the printer in a cool, stable environment. If clogs occur, most inkjet printers include built-in maintenance routines to help clear the printheads, which are detailed in the Expected Maintenance test box of this review.

If you don't want to deal with unclogging, laser printers use a different system with dry toner and a drum instead of ink and printheads, which avoids this issue.

This printer features non-replaceable printheads paired with a low ink volume, which can become quite costly to upkeep if you frequently need to manage clogs. The flushing volume on hand can help clear many issues, but it may not be enough for more stubborn blockages, which may then require multiple cartridges. You also can't simply replace the printheads as a fallback option if severe clogs develop. Careful operation and consistent printing become essential to avoid problems.

• Epson 222 starter ink cartridges:
• 1x Black
• 1x Cyan
• 1x Magenta
• 1x Yellow
• Power cord
• User guide

The Epson XP-5200 has a good cost-per-print. Although the ink cartridges don't last very long and need regular replacement, they're relatively cheap, which helps keep maintenance costs low.

The Epson Expression Home XP-5200 prints black documents decently fast, but it's slow at printing color documents and photos. It also takes a while to initialize and get a single page out. There isn't a manual feeder; it only has one input tray. The tray holds 150 sheets of regular paper, 50 sheets of plain legal paper, 20 sheets of photo paper, 10 envelopes, or 1 sheet of plain custom-size paper.

The Epson Expression Home XP-5200's print quality for black-and-white documents is outstanding. The text looks sharp, and all the fine elements are present. There's a slight alignment issue on the second page where the 'Year 2' text is, but it's very hard to spot, and it isn't an issue when printing in the High-Quality mode. As mentioned in the cartridge section, you can temporarily continue printing in black if a color cartridge runs out. However, this temporary status only applies to printing on plain paper or envelopes. It doesn't work for borderless printing. As such, we consider color ink necessary for black-and-white printing.

The Epson Expression XP-5200 prints color documents well. The text looks sharp, and most of the fine elements are visible. However, the colors look slightly faded, and there are very minor alignment issues, as shown in the table on the second page.

Epson doesn't advertise the maximum paper weight. The posted 297 g/m² is the weight of the thickest compatible paper, the Epson Ultra Premium Photo Paper Glossy. You can set custom paper sizes from 3.5" x 5" to 8.5" x 47.2" (89mm x 127mm to 215.9mm x 1,200 mm).

The Epson Expression Home XP-5200 has mediocre scanner features. It only has a flatbed scanner, so scanning long, multi-page documents can be very time-consuming. Also, the hinges don't extend, making it difficult to close the lid over thicker items like textbooks. To use the optical character recognition feature (OCR), you need to scan the documents through the Epson Scan 2 software and save the scan as a 'Searchable PDF.' It works well most of the time; it mainly makes mistakes when there are special characters. Check out the HP OfficeJet 8015e if you need a printer with an automatic document feeder.

The Epson Expression Home XP-5200's scan quality is outstanding. The scanner seems to slightly boost contrast and color saturation. Aside from the white text on a red background, the rest of the text in the document looks clear, and finer details, like the lines in the graph, are present.

The Epson Expression Home XP-5200 has a decent color gamut. It mainly struggles with bright saturated tones like purple, green, and yellow. It also has trouble with darker shades of green. There isn't much banding, but the color transitions look grainy.

The Epson Expression Home XP-5200's color accuracy is sub-par. The colors look slightly oversaturated, and the whole image has a warm tone. The pictures are still visually pleasing, just not very accurate.

The Epson Expression Home XP-5200 is excellent at printing small, fine details. You can easily see the general structure of the Tokyo Tower and the individual balconies at the bottom of the sample photo. The main issue is that the halftoning (dots) causes some loss of details; it's very noticeable when you compare it to a better photo printer like the Epson EcoTank Photo ET-8550.

The Epson Expression XP-5200 has an outstanding mobile companion app. You can use it to print, scan (with your smartphone's camera), copy, and perform maintenance tasks, like checking the ink level and cleaning the printheads. You can copy both sides of an ID card onto a single page, create a QR code to let guests connect to the printer, access the user manual, and watch how-to videos. It integrates with Google Classroom, so you can quickly print your assignments. It includes links to the Epson Creative Print app and the Epson Gallery website. The former lets you create collages with your photos, and the latter contains patterns you can use for various crafts, like decorations, Christmas cards, and book covers.

You don't need to install any drivers to use the printer on macOS and Chrome OS, but you do on Windows. You can find the Windows drivers here.