Epson WorkForce WF

The Epson WorkForce WF-2960 Wireless All-in-One is surprisingly similar to the Epson Home Expression XP-5200 we recently reviewed. We say "surprisingly" because Epson's WorkForce-family printers usually aim more at office, instead of home, use. But this one uses the same ink cartridges as its home-oriented cousin, and the two match in speed, output quality, paper capacity, running cost, and more. The three key differences, other than a $30 step up in list price (to $159.99), are the addition of fax capability, an Ethernet interface, and an automatic document feeder (ADF) for scanning, copying, and faxing. Those upgrades effectively make the WF-2960 an XP-5200 with a business-oriented makeover. They also make it a solid choice for light-duty use in a home or micro office, or as a personal AIO in a larger office.

At 14.1 pounds, the WF-2960 is easy for one person to unpack and move into place, and at 9.1 by 16.4 by 13.7 inches (HWD) with the trays closed, or about an inch taller and 6 inches deeper with them open, it's compact enough to keep on your desktop. Physical setup requires little more than installing the ink cartridges. As with other Epson AIOs, the printhead requires manual alignment, which takes more work, and a little more time, than with AIOs that let you print an alignment page and then scan it for automatic alignment.

The steps for downloading and installing the drivers and software are clearly spelled out in Epson's provided Quick Start guide. The process went smoothly in my tests, including the automatic setup for an Ethernet connection after choosing it from a list that included USB and Wi-Fi. (The latter allows for either a Wi-Fi or Wi-Fi Direct connection.) Epson also offers the Epson Smart Panel app for mobile devices, to let you print from and scan to your phone or tablet via Wi-Fi Direct or though a network.

As with most current Epson printers, the WF-2960 supports Epson Connect. Setting up the printer for Connect adds a voice-activated printing feature, the ability to print over the internet from any location, and the ability to scan to cloud sites directly from the printer's 2.4-inch touch-screen panel. You can also scan to Google Drive, Dropbox, Evernote, and OneDrive from Epson's ScanSmart scan utility.

For printing, the WF-2960 supports auto duplexing (two-sided printing), and it offers a single paper tray that holds 150 sheets of paper up to legal size. The low capacity limits it to light-duty use by personal-printer or micro-office standards. Also, the lack of even a single-sheet bypass tray means you have to swap out the paper in the tray—or at least pull out the tray to put a sheet or two on top of the stack—whenever you need to switch the size or type of paper. Epson's recommended maximum monthly duty cycle is 800 pages, which (if you were to print to that limit) would require refills only slightly more often than once a week.

For scanning, the ADF can hold 30 sheets of up to legal-size paper. However it's limited strictly to single-sided (simplex) scans. The only way to scan, copy, or fax multipage duplex documents and keep the pages in order is by placing each side of each page on the flatbed one side at a time. For copying, you can choose to copy a simplex original to either a simplex or duplex copy.

As with most cartridge-based inkjets, running cost is on the high side. Based on the cost and yield for the high-capacity black cartridge and standard cyan, yellow, and magenta cartridges (the only choice for color inks), the ink cost is 6.4 cents per mono page and 21.7 cents per color page. Keep in mind that for printers with comparable capabilities, lower running costs go hand in hand with higher initial prices. So when comparing printers, it's important to look at the total cost of ownership (as discussed in How to Save Money on Your Next Printer) and see which one will cost less in the long run, rather than looking at either running cost or initial cost only.

The WF-2960 delivered suitably fast speed for its class in our tests, using an Ethernet connection for both the printer and our standard testbed. I timed it on pages 2 through 12 of our 12-page Word file, at 15.3ppm (43 seconds), essentially tied with the Epson XP-5200 (15ppm, or 44 seconds) and a touch faster than its rated 14ppm. Both are just a touch slower than our top pick in its category, the Brother MFC-J4335DW (16.1ppm, or 41 seconds), but faster than the Canon Pixma G7020, a more expensive tank-based printer with otherwise similar features (12.7ppm, or 51 seconds).

The Epson and Brother printers also delivered faster first page out (FPO) times than the Canon model, which translated to all four printers finishing in the same order when including the first page. The MFC-J4335DW was fastest (14.7ppm, or 49 seconds), the WF-2960 and XP-5200 were tied for a close second (13.8ppm, or 52 seconds), and the Pixma G7020 came in slightly slower and in last place (11.4ppm, or 1 minute and 3 seconds).

Relative speeds were the same for our business applications suite, which adds files that include graphics and color, but the differences were more significant. They ranged from a top speed of 2:23 (10.5ppm) for the MFC-J4335DW to a noticeably slower 5:38 (4.4ppm) for the Pixma G7020. The WF-2960 (at 3:17, or 7.6ppm) and XP-5200 (at 3:15, or 7.7ppm) tied for second place, within the error range for the test.

Output was short of boardroom quality, but more than acceptable for most business use. Every font in our tests that you'd likely to use in a business document was easily readable at 5 points, though a loupe revealed ragged edges and other minor issues at 6 points in most fonts and 8 points in some. The two heavily stylized fonts in our suite with thick strokes were both easily readable at 8 points, which is a smaller size than typical for inkjets.

Using default settings and plain paper for graphics delivered somewhat pastel, but reasonably saturated, bright color. I saw some slight posterization (color changing suddenly where it should change gradually) on one particularly hard-to-reproduce gradient, and some minor banding on graphics with backgrounds using dark colors or black. But most fills and gradients were smooth, and a single-pixel-wide line on a black background held nicely. Photos printed using the High quality setting and Epson's recommended Premium Photo Paper Glossy showed some loss of shadow detail, but the prints were easily at the high end of drugstore quality, otherwise.

On our ink-smudging tests using plain paper, black text smudged slightly from lightly wiping off a few drops of water sprinkled on the page, but it stood up to strokes of a highlighter. Color inks resisted smudging from water but showed water stains afterwards.

Much like the XP-5200, the WF-2960 gets high scores for speed and output quality for the price. But if you're considering it, the smart move is to look at each of the printers mentioned here, both for features and for which ones will give you the lowest total cost of ownership.

The MFC-J4335DW remains our Editors' Choice pick for a light-duty micro office or personal printer, in large part for its combination of low price and a reasonably low cost per page. It also delivered slightly faster speed on our tests than the WF-2960 and output quality that was nearly as good. The Pixma G7020, meanwhile, is the slowest in the group and substantially more expensive than the others, but it also has the lowest running cost, by far. Print enough pages, and the savings on ink can more than pay for the higher initial price.

If you won't be printing enough for running costs to matter, the XP-5200 lacks a few features the WF-2960 offers, most notably an ADF, fax capability, and an Ethernet port, but it delivers essentially the same performance and output quality at a lower price. On the other hand, if you need any of those features that are missing from the XP-5200, the WorkForce WF-2960 is the obvious choice between the two.

The Epson WF-2960 delivers good-quality text and graphics at default settings, making it an easy light-printing solution for homes and micro offices that need everything that an all-in-one can do: print, fax, scan, and copy.

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