WF-3620DWF
If you’re not worried about printing photos, this is the perfect home or small-office all-in-one
We’re not fans of throwaway printers at PC Pro: rather than be lured in by the false promise of £50 inkjet multifunction printers (MFPs) that plague supermarket shelves, we think it’s better to invest in a high-quality printer with affordable ink cartridges.
The Epson WorkForce WF3620DWF is exactly such a printer. It’s equally well suited to a home office as it is a demanding household, to support a mixed output of photos, letters and homework.
It’s also one of Epson’s best-value inkjet MFPs. It’s already cheap at £95 inc VAT, but until at least the end of March 2017 it comes with a free threeyear warranty and a £20 cashback offer, which transforms it into something of a bargain.
That’s perhaps a reflection of this product’s age because – unusually for something we review - it’s been around for a couple of years. This is our first opportunity to test the WF-3620DWF, though, and we were pleasantly surprised by what we saw.
First, you’ll be immensely relieved to hear it includes a fax modem, because you just never know when the 1980s might get in touch. It’s also equipped with wired and wireless networking, plus duplex print, scan, copy and faxing. There’s a 35-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF), and USB, SD and Memory Stick slots, so you can scan to or print from an inserted device – the only obvious omission is direct PDF printing.
Epson claims a 20,000-page-permonth duty cycle, which is reflected in the sturdy 250-sheet input and 125-sheet output trays, while the scanner lid sits on beefy hinges that extend to cope with thicker books or stacks of documents. The design isn’t perfect, however: opening the WF-3620DWF’s scanner lid flips open the dust cover on the single-sheet special media slot at the rear.
The WF-3620DWF uses a combination of touchscreen and physical buttons, but it’s not entirely idiot-proof. The screen can take time to register touches, and the layout of the top level of the menu baffled me for a minute. There is one very welcome addition, however: unlike its predecessor, the WF-3620DWF supports multitasking, so you can scan a document while it’s busy printing or vice versa.
I wouldn’t expect blistering speed at this price, but the WF-3620DWF is fairly quick. Tested over a wired network connection, it reached 17.4 pages per minute (ppm) when printing black text, and almost 5.4ppm on our far more complex colour graphics test. Photographs aren’t this printer’s forte, though: it delivered one 6 x 4in print every two-and-a-half minutes, and quality isn’t up there with HP’s similarly priced OfficeJet Pro 6960.
Photocopies are quick: a single mono copy took 13 seconds, while using the ADF to copy ten pages took less than a minute and a half. In colour, the equivalent tests took 17 seconds and two-and-a-half minutes. Scans were fast, too, with a 300 dots-per-inch (dpi) capture of an A4 sheet needing only nine seconds, and a 1,200dpi scan of a 6x4in photo taking 33 seconds.
The quality of those scans is impressive, even by Epson’s high standards; the results are
“You’ll be relieved to hear that the WF-3620DWF has a fax modem, because you never know when the 1980s might get in touch”
unusually sharp and display an excellent dynamic range. Prints and photocopies are also very good, if not perfect: colours lack saturation, and draft-quality text was very faint.
The WF-3620DWF takes XL-rated colour inks, which last for 1,100 pages each, and an XXL black cartridge that’s rated for 2,200 pages. Using these, running costs work out at a competitive 6.1p per A4 page of mixed text and graphics. Epson has stopped estimating the page life of the additional maintenance box that catches waste ink in WorkForce printers, but based on earlier models it’s likely to be tens of thousands of pages, and costs less than £20 to replace.
The WF-3620DWF performs well, has some great features, and is reasonably cheap to buy and run. It’s not ideal for photographers, and the interface takes a little getting used to, but it’s a near-perfect MFP for home or small-office use, and a cut above the cheap MFPs you’ll find on the supermarket shelves. In particular, it has an edge over its closest OfficeJet rival from HP thanks to its longerlasting cartridges and that attractive
cashback offer.
SPECIFICATIONS 4,800 x 2,400dpi A4 inkjet 2,400 x 1,200dpi colour scanner claimed 33/20ppm mono/colour printing 6.8cm touchscreen 802.11n Wi-Fi 10/100 Ethernet USB 2 fax modem SD card slot 250-sheet input tray 35-sheet ADF duplex Epson Connect software 1yr RTB warranty 449 x 417 x 243mm (WDH) 9.7kg