Epson WorkForce 840 Color Ink Jet Wireless All-in-One with Fax (C11CA97201)
Product Description
From the Manufacturer
WorkForce® 840 All-in-One
The World’s Fastest All-in-One¹
FUNCTIONS
What the press is saying:PERFORMANCE
QUALITY
†What is ISO ppm?
ISO ppm is based on the new international standard for measuring print speed. Black and color print speeds are determined in default, single-side mode in accordance with ISO/IEC 24734. Black and color two-sided print speeds are determined in two-sided mode in accordance with ISO/IEC 24734. Actual print times will vary based on system configuration, software, and page complexity. See www.epson.com/printspeed for details, including complete ISO reports.
ECO FEATURES- Uses up to 70% less power than laser printers8
- Save up to 50% on paper with automatic, two-sided printing/copying/faxing
- ENERGY STAR® qualified
- Designed to be recycled9
- Epson America, Inc. is a SmartWaySM Transport partner10
The world's fastest two-sided printing All-in-One packed with intelligent and resource-saving features such as two-sided printing, scanning, copying and faxing, 500-sheet paper capacity, and easy wireless network connectivity. When you're on the go, print directly from smartphones and other mobile devices.
Product Details
- Product Dimensions: 14.5 x 17.6 x 11.8 inches ; 22 pounds
- Shipping Weight: 27.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
- Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
- ASIN: B004H3XKR6
- Item model number: C11CA97201
You Save : $15.04 (5%)
Technical Details
- World's Fastest All-in-One - save time with the world's fastest two-sided print speeds
- Speed through critical documents - ISO print speeds of 15 ISO ppm (black) and 9.3 ISO ppm (color)
- High-speed faxing in black and color - as fast as 3 sec per page; speed dial storage up to 60 numbers; fax
- Latest generation Wi-Fi CERTIFIED built-in Easy Epson Wi-Fi makes wireless setup, networking and printing fast and easy
Costumer Reviews
For the sake of comparison, I have a Canon PIXMA MX870 multifunction inkjet with wireless connectivity that I'm using as a benchmark on the Epson WorkForce 840, since they're competitive products in the same segment.
While Epson touts how much space you save on your desk with the 840, the space hasn't disappeared, it's simply gone up. The 840 is surprisingly tall. So much so that using it in an enclosed space may be difficult. Out of the box, I noticed that the unit itself felt a bit flimsy. With the exception of the flatbed scanner, everything from the ADF tray down to the paper trays felt as though they'd snap without much force.
Setup was quite simple, and it's unlikely that experienced buyers would need to look at the setup poster to get started. Take the tape off, drop your cartridges in, and turn it on. The menu system is fairly logical, and getting the printer on my wireless network took about a minute. A minor quibble on this one: the 840 wants to spend upwards to five minutes calibrating itself when you first turn it on, and locks out the menu in the process.
The display panel was surprisingly crisp, though the touch-sensitive areas didn't consistently register input. On both sides of the color LCD, you have a series of touch-sensitive "buttons" that light up when they're relevant to the menu context. Although this was fine for most things, some of the icons were a bit cryptic in context. Overall, I found the interface to be a bit on the gimmicky side, and would have preferred a few softkeys instead.
Printing is everything you'd come to expect from Epson. Text was very sharp, bordering on "cheap laser" quality, and pictures looked almost impossibly good on "cheapest you can get me" copy paper. Without question, the 840 kicks out sharp black text faster than any printer I've used. But... mixed content isn't nearly as fast. A good example here is the built-in ability to print out ruled paper and graph paper. The function is kind of cool, but a single ruled page takes an excruciating amount of time.
One serious oddity is the way Epson chose to deal with paper. They tout the top cartridge being versatile enough to handle any paper or envelope smaller than 11 x 17 you can imagine, and that the bottom cartridge holds an entire ream of paper. That's great. Problem is, the 840 expects letter paper in the top cartridge, and there's no way to set it to use the bottom cartridge globally. Yes, you can set it to use Cartridge 2 in the driver... unless you're using a Mac. If you're using a Mac, some applications allow you to hit the Paper Handling settings (and pick Cartridge 2 every time), but some applications don't. On Windows, if you're using this in a workgroup, every computer has to have the driver configured to use the "big" cartridge.
If you've got a Mac, that's not where the pain ends. Scanning is reasonably fast for an all-in-one, and the quality's pretty average, too. Want to put a stack of paper in the document feeder and have them scanned to your computer? No problem. Hit "Scan", "Scan to PC", and pick your computer from the network. Unless you're using a Mac. While Canon multifunction printers have been able to do this for years, Epson can't seem to do network scanning to Macs running Snow Leopard. Just to be certain, I downloaded the latest drivers from Epson's site, to no avail.
For Windows users, the Workforce 840 is a solid multifunction inkjet. The materials are too flimsy for sustained workgroup use, but it's definitely nice for a hone office user who likes the distinct look of Epson printing. For Mac users though, I can't really recommend this. The drivers aren't good at all, and you're going to lose functionality out of the box.
Mac OS Lion Update - August 2011:
To anyone wondering, I've been using the printer on a clean Lion install for just over a week now, and basically, it's the same. I still can't scan to a Mac from the printer, and there's still no way to permanently set a specific tray.
One thing that is worth noting though: getting the printer going on my Mac took no effort at all. The Lion installer saw the Epson printer on the network, and added drivers. I have to say, I was relatively impressed.
I own this printer, i bought it from the manufacturer's site directly since it wasn't available at amazon at the time i wanted it.
This printer is awesome in every imaginable way you can think of. And it can help you save a lot of money of you really want the all in one capabilty. Read on and i'll explain how an why.
First things first, the printer is way smaller than the HP Laserjet 2840 i own too, it's not heavy at all, and it looks great. The text printing on this Epson truly looks like a laser printer. The color is fantastic to, i even print photos on glossy photo paper and they look amazing. The scanner is fast and very good too. It allows you to scan and print both sides of docs at once, no manual interference needed.
I was looking for a printer that would give me great photo printouts as well as it could be used as a work printer since i do print lots of documents as well. I also wanted to buy a Fujitsu Scansnap 1500 for fast double sided multisize document scanning capabilities, Well this epson gives me all that and much more, and for less than half what the scansnap costs. I use adobe acrobat pro to scan docs to PDF directly from the epson scanner(could not do this with the scansnap) and all that is done wirelessly, i can also fax any document right from my computer just like i print them.
Bottom line, for $200 you're getting a very fast high quality printer scanner fax and both-sides copy machine as well as the card readers and a lot more, the ink seems to last, and this printer comes with the highest capacity cartridges, which seem to yield a lot. So now i solved my scanning, pc faxing and photo printing needs all in one small very good a nice machine. And i saved whatever a photo printer costs, plus the $430 for the scansnap s1500, and i get laser quality text as well as (N) wireless conectivity from my printer. What else could i ask for?
Note: My comparison with the scansnap s1500 are not based on web reviews, i actually bought a scansnap which i later returned since i get the same if not better results with this printer.
Also, i've owned canon photo printers and i still have a huge HP color laserjet 2840. So my comparisons and references are based on actual usage of all equipment mentioned.
My recommendation, buy this one and you'll be very pleased.
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