Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4540 Wireless All-in-One Color Inkjet Printer, Copier, Scanner, Fax (C11CB33201)

I have worked with several different types and manufactures of printers over the years and every printer in which I have personally invested has been a home-use inkjet. Each of these printers has had its pros and cons, some distinguishing themselves as standouts for very poor performance while others have shown brightly. This is my first really in-depth exposure to a higher-grade printer outside of a busy office and so far it has been a positive experience.
First off, this is a large printer, a bit bigger than the average inkjet or even all-in-one printer. As it is targeted against color laser printers this should not come as a surprise. Weighing close to 50 lbs. (according to the shipping info) this printer has a lot of heft.
The printer itself comes partially assembled and it takes a little time to put everything right, from attaching the base to removing all of the tape that holds everything in place. The hard part is that this is such a bulky and heavy piece of equipment; there’s nothing difficult about assembly, it just requires either one strong person to do the lifting or two people working together.
Once assembled and plugged in I turned on the printer and let it initialize. This took somewhere around 10 minutes, during which time it made all manner of odd noises and sounds until it finally offered to print a test page. I touched a button and it quickly cranked out the test page and then said it was ready. After that first power on, time-to-ready has been less than a minute every time.
I had no trouble setting this printer up and connecting it to my wireless network. I did have to fumble my way through the menus on the display to enter in the network key so that it could interact but this was relatively minor. Everything else fell into place easily and I had a minimum of troubles.
This is a FAST printer! One thing Epson does very well is build inkjet printers with astounding print speed and this printer follows that pattern. I have not done an actual measurement on the PPM speed but it seems to be only slightly slower than a professional-grade laser printer.
Some inkjet printers sacrifice speed for quality – not this one. Everything I have printed so far has been clear, crisp and clean. This is important – it would be a failure in its target market if it failed to deliver premium output, but Epson has worked hard on this printer and it shows. So far I have not had any glitches. To be fair, I have not tried printing out photographs yet.
I put this printer in front of the most demanding user I know – my wife, the school teacher. She uses an all-in-one for all its worth, daily, particularly for its ability to make photocopies. I was able to explain to her how to use this printer’s copy functions and had her make some copies of papers she needed for a class she teaches. She quickly and easily figured out how to make two-sided copies and reduced the darkness level, as well as single-sided copies, collated copies and more. She was very impressed with this printer – high praise from her.
So far I cannot find too much to fault with this printer. In the testing I have done I have been very impressed with the speed, functionality and the ease of set-up and use. This kind of printer is a bit overkill for the average home user, but in a small office or even a classroom setting this is a phenomenal device that earns its keep. Time will tell if the ink usage is better than that of most other inkjet printers I have used but if Epson’s claims are true and it can average 1000+ pages color and 2000+ pages black-and-white, then this very well may be the printer to consider instead of a color laser printer. All indicators are solid – this is a good workhorse printer.

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