Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4530 Color Inkjet Wireless All-In-One Printer with Fax (C11CB33201)
Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4530 Color Inkjet Wireless All-In-One Printer with Fax (C11CB33201)
- World’s fastest auto two-sided printing
- 50% lower printing cost than color laser
- Automatic two-sided copy/scan/fax
- Extra large cartridges available
- Up to 20,000 page duty cycle
Epson C11CB33201 WorkForce Pro WP-4530 Color Inkjet Wireless All-In-One Printer with Fax features the world’s fastest auto two-sided print speeds, plus automatic two-sided copying / scanning / faxing, the WorkForce Pro WP-4530 delivers professional quality output while getting up to 50% less cost per page than color laser. Boasting two-sided print speeds of 9.2 ISO ppm (black) and 7.1 ISO ppm (color). Offering remarkable productivity, it features a 330-sheet paper capacity and a 20,000-page duty
List Price: $ 299.99
Price: $ 229.99
Great “all in one” printer. Bit large, but does the job well.,
This printer arrived a few days ago, and it was like Christmas Morning. What tech guy doesn’t like playing with new tech stuff? There was so much to play with on this device, that setting it up was just FUN. That’s not really an issue with the printer itself, more my perceptions and experiences with it, but I wanted to say it anyway. NOTE: I am using Windows 7 64bit Home Premium.
First off, the thing is BIG. Now I wasn’t expecting a tiny little compact thing, mind you. You don’t get a full function device like this and expect it to be small. But it was way bigger than I anticipated. It’s roughly 18 inches wide by 17 inches deep and 14 inches tall. It didn’t fit where my old printer was – the table the old one sat on is JUST too small for this, which made for some shuffling of furniture and whatnot. Additionally, anything other than your default paper gets loaded via a backside paper loader. Your primary paper (for me, 8.5×11) is loaded in a tray that disappears completely inside the printer. But anything else (manual feed, envelopes) go in via the back paper loader, and it extends out the already large footprint of the thing. It’s not much, just an inch or two, but you will need some sort of extra space in the back, you can’t just push it against a wall, and expect to be able to use the back paper loader. Additionally, anything the device outputs comes out the front. Which also has an extender to cradle the printed papers. Which extends the front of the thing out about another eight inches when fully extended. If you don’t do that, the paper will NOT stay in the printer and falls on the floor. Additionally, the box it shipped in is itself even larger. It’s all protective foam and whatnot inside there, but the box the UPS guy delivered was quite large.
Once you take it out of the box, you’ll find a ton of little bits of blue tape all over the outside (and inside). This is pretty much to keep all the sensitive bits from sliding around and getting damaged. You need to pull all the blue tape off first, and once you get the ones off that let you access the inside of the printer, there’s some on the inside two, and two bits to remove from in there that were protecting the scanner guts. There’s a piece of paper taped to the outside of the printer showing you what to remove from the inside. There is an instruction sheet showing the order of getting stuff set up. I followed it, as since this is a brand new printer (as of the time of my writing), I assumed Windows wouldn’t have proper drivers for it, and let the ESPON install disk do it’s thing. Normally I just hook up a device and let Windows find the drivers, to bypass all the crapware that most install discs put on there, but this one wasn’t bad. Installed the printer, got it setup on my network and all that. The four ink cartridges come in vacuum packed seals, and you’re recommended not to open them until you’re putting them in the printer. You’re supposed to shake them before putting them in the printer, but I missed that instruction. It didn’t seem to affect anything though. During setup, you’re asked if you want to set up the printer wirelessly or via a “temporary USB connection”, that is labeled as “recommended”. Yet they don’t include a USB cable for you to use. Odd, that.
There are two parts where the initial set up really slows down. One is the priming of the ink cartridges. You follow the instructions on the little screen on the printer, and once you get the cartridges in there, it has to initialize them (whatever that means). This does mean a 12 minute delay (felt longer, but I didn’t time it) while it gets itself ready. They tell you not to interrupt it, or open any doors while it’s going on or it will “waste ink”. While I did as I was told, it did bog down. Additionally, I updated the firmware during the install as well, and that was another 10 minute or so “twiddle my thumbs watching not much of anything” moment. Necessary I suppose, but don’t expect to be printing five minutes after you get the thing out of the box. I set up wirelessly. I do wonder if the speed of setup was slowed down because I did it via wireless.
The printer works either via a hardwired connection or wireless. There’s a hardwired network jack on the back, or it works over your local network via 802.11/b/g/n connections. The printer didn’t see my “N” connection, so it connected to my “G” one. Not a huge deal really, just odd that it didn’t see the “N”. The wireless is nice because the printer can more easily work over your network as opposed to the older fashioned “shared printer” concept.
I’m also an iPad owner, and earlier this year when Apple introduced the concept of AirPrint, I thought it was gonna be cool to print from my iPad. Then I discovered the number of printers that worked with that was limited to a handful of HP units, and nothing else worked (easily, anyway). There was a…
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|It survived me printing 5,000 pages in two days,
Customer Video Review Length:: 2:04 Mins
See video for the review. I really put the printer through a tough test: I made it print over 5,000 black-text filled pages.
Only a couple of paper jams, which weren’t really true jams, but rather miss-feeds. To fix it, all I had to do was pull out the paper tray and put it back in (there was jammed paper to remove).
So that’s less than one in 1000 pages that had a problem.
The only thing I didn’t thoroughly test was the fax machine. Scanning, copying, and color printing was good.
One black ink cartridge costs about $38. It lasts 1000-1500 pages of normal text (no graphics).
EDIT: In my video review, I credit the “special software” for allowing me to print my book in a format that Kinko’s likes (they just have to cut it in half and bind it). Instead of “software” I probably should have said “driver.” The printer’s driver gives options that I didn’t have in my previous HP printer.
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|Excellent All-in-One,
The Epson WP-4530 replaces an older, simpler Epson all-in-one (sans fax machine) that I bought on clearance years ago. If you have a cheap all-in-one as I did, you will likely fall in love with the upgrades this provides.
My favorite features thus far:
No-fail wireless printing from multiple computers & operating systems.
Duplex! On a non-laser printer!
Large paper drawer.
Manual feed for specialty paper feeds properly.
Snappy built-in software.
Wireless scanning.
My least favorite features:
Flimsy output tray – same slide-out that I had on my cheapo all-in-one.
Lengthy set-up (others have not had this experience – I had several misfires, but now it works seamlessly).
No automatic “sleep” option.
Unintuitive on-screen menus (but you rarely use those).
By feature:
Printing
We print to this printer wirelessly from multiple Windows and Apple devices without a problem.
Duplex works perfectly (and we’re so happy to have it!).
Printing is clear and quick in both black and white and color.
Fax
The built-in fax software is wonderful – no printing or scanning, just set up the cover sheet and additions from the included software. I don’t fax often, so everything we tried was just for experimentation, but when I need to, never having to print anything out is a bonus.
Copying
Like printing, easy, clear, fast. Love that I can choose to copy in B&W or color!
Scanning
Probably my favorite feature. Speedy, great quality, wireless. WIRELESS! So awesome. Included software is nothing fancy, but it works just fine, and is better than the default Windows Fax & Scan utility. Both bed and feeder scanning worked great.
(Notes on setup: Two things that helped: (1) use the included disk – don’t download the drivers and (2) install wirelessly – the USB connection was hinky, wireless worked fine. Hope that helps!)
One of the major flaws of my previous Epson all-in-one was its insistence that every ink cartridge had to be full in order to print. So even if you were printing something in black and white, the yellow cartridge couldn’t be out. For that reason, I’m feeling hesitant about embracing this entirely until I see how it manages ink and how long the cartridges last. However, it’s otherwise a solid machine and we’re quite happy with it.
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