Epson WorkForce Pro WF-C5790DWF
Colour prints are a little drab, but this speedy inkjet has great cloud support and laser-beating running costs
SCORE PRICE £219 exc VAT from printerbase.co.uk
The received wisdom has it that inkjet printers are slower and more expensive to run than lasers – but Epson’s WorkForce Pro range of MFPs turns that on its head, with low consumable costs and print speeds that give mid-range lasers a run for their money. That’s especially true of the top-dog WF-C5790DWF, which combines print, copy, fax and scan functions, supports both wired and wireless operations, and churns out A4 pages at a swift 24ppm.
Costs are kept low by Epson’s replaceable ink pack system (RIPS), which ditches clunky cartridges in favour of simple bags that slot into receptacles in the printer’s base. The high-capacity bags deliver a mono page for 1.1p and colour one for 4.9p - easily half the price of comparable lasers. Even if you choose a lowercapacity refill, you don’t get stiffed, as the 3,000, 5,000 and 10,000-page ink packs all work out to roughly the same price per page, so you can simply buy whichever is most convenient. As a bonus, the WF-C5790DWF is easy on the electrical bill too: we measured a peak power consumption of just 22W when printing, while a laser can easily suck up more than 500W.
Getting set up is straightforward – but you have to start by picking between wired or wireless mode, as they can’t both be active at once. Once we’d connected the printer to our Wi-Fi network (using the generously sized touchscreen), Epson’s Windows-based installation software immediately spotted it and installed the appropriate drivers, along with desktop fax and scan utilities and a browser plugin.
You’re not limited to desktop clients, of course. We had no issues printing from our iPad over AirPrint and Wi-Fi Direct, and Epson’s iPrint iOS app worked perfectly to pull in scans and print files and photos. It even gave us a handy view of ink levels, and let us print files straight from Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive.
For those located further afield, Epson’s Connect service lets remote workers print to the MFP by simply emailing documents to a preset address. Via the Connect portal you can optionally limit which senders are allowed to print, as well as restricting specific operations such as printing onto photo paper.
Speed-wise, the MFP lives up to Epson’s claims. Our sample Word document emerged from the printer at precisely 24ppm in both draft and standard driver modes, although switching to high-quality mode saw speeds fall drastically to 6.2ppm. Likewise, our DTP-style colour document flew out at 24ppm in standard mode, but only 6ppm at the highest quality. Inevitably, switching to duplex mode saw speeds drop, but our Word document still emerged at 16ppm in standard mode. It’s a noisy affair, though, with the SPLnFFT iOS app measuring a peak of 69dB from 1m away.
“Epson’s iPrint iOS app worked perfectly to pull in scans and print files and photos, and even gave us a handy view of ink levels”
Quality is more than acceptable for everyday office documents; text as small as 6pt came out looking clean and sharp with no hint of dusting around characters. Photos also exhibited plenty of detail, even in darker areas, although for the best results you’ll need heavier (and more expensive) 100gsm paper. The only disappointment was that colour photos lacked the vibrancy you might expect from an inkjet; solid colour blocks of pure cyan, magenta and yellow looked slightly pallid, even on semi-gloss photo paper.
Finally, the integrated scanner delivers great output quality, and it’s no slouch either – our document was sucked through the 50-page ADF and scanned at just under 15ppm. Note that switching to duplex mode slowed things down to a more pedestrian 5ppm, even though both sides are scanned in a single pass.
The WF-C5790DWF might not be our first choice for eye-catching colour photo prints, but overall it’s a great general-purpose MFP for any small business. It’s easy to deploy and use, cloud support is top-notch, print quality is great – and it costs a lot less to run than a laser.
SPECIFICATIONS 4,800 x 1,200dpi A4 inkjet MFP 1,200 x 2,400dpi colour flatbed A4 scanner 24ppm mono/colour 10.9cm colour touchscreen 2 x USB 2 Gigabit Ethernet 802.11n wireless NFC 33.6Kbits/sec fax/modem 2 x RJ-11 duplex 250-sheet input tray 80-sheet MPT 50-sheet ADF rec monthly duty cycle, 2,500 pages 425 x 535 x 357mm (WDH) 18.4kg 1yr on-site service warranty. Options: 500-sheet paper tray, £118 exc VAT