The Corona crisis has shown to workers, and especially to employers, that working from home is not a dirty word. A small virus, and some would say dangerous, caused many employees to upgrade their home printer, or more precisely, the same machine that combines a printer, scanner, copier and fax machine to make the home office a real office.
How to choose the right printer from the variety of models sold on the market, and what are the innovations in the proposed printers in recent years? We stayed in our home office, explored the Epson product line , and discovered that our work routine can be taken home, to the living room or to our favorite kitchen. Both employers and employees will find that the low ink costs, as well as the cost of purchasing the printer – are equal to each pocket.
3 years without replacing ink
Inkjet printers have been out there badly in recent years, due to the fact that the process of working with the ink cartridges has been cumbersome, and especially expensive. When one color in the ink cartridge was over, the entire cartridge had to be replaced, the cartridge installation process required non-trivial mechanical skills (and the requirement not to touch the cartridge’s electron plates) and printers that had not been used for a long time had to dry and replace them.
In recent years, Epson has found a solution to the distress and adopted EcoTank technology: The inkjet cartridges that fill the printer are filled with relatively inexpensive ink bottles, thus ensuring the company savings of up to 90% of the ink costs compared to consumable ink cartridges. According to the company’s tests, at a cost of one shekel you can print more than 65 color pages, and if you add another shekel you can print about 130 black and white pages.
For example, the EcoTank L3160, which we tested, contains a pair of black ink bottles and three color bottles (blue, yellow, and red), which should hold up to 8,100 black and up to 6,500 color pages – about 3 years or more based on an average monthly print volume of 225 Pages.
The fact that the ink cartridges appear unnecessary not only affects our pocket, but also keeps our ball. And when every year, about 375 million cartridges and toner are thrown in the trash, and every 1,000 cartridges or toner will take about 1,000 years to fully decompose – there is no doubt that this is a major environmental damage. Going beyond the Epson ink cartridges will prevent this huge damage.
Print from anywhere
Most of the printers offered in the market no longer have printing capabilities alone, and in fact the office tasks are more easily done since the printer is a copy machine, document scanner and some models also have a fax. For example, the L5190 model has copy, scan, fax, cost-effective printing and more. Another model considered the company’s flagship printer, the L6190, comes with the largest ink tanks, a 250-page paper tray and a touch screen.
All of these add-ons have made us think this is a complicated installation process, but we were surprised to find that apart from opening the packaging and refilling the ink, the simple setup process and most of it can be done remotely, even very far, through our smartphone.
Epson iPrint is a dedicated application tailored to Android and iOS devices and helps to set print settings remotely intuitively. Also through the app you can scan documents, print photos and documents, link the printer to the cloud and more. For example, you can easily scan a document and upload it to Dropbox or print a photo directly from Google Drive. So even cheaper Epson models, like the L3151 that comes without a monitor, can be controlled remotely.
As part of the app setup process, you can set a dedicated email address that is directly linked to the printer. A file sent to this email will be printed immediately. If you like, this is the perfect replacement for the network printer in your workplace. Give your colleagues the dedicated address and they’ll send direct prints to your printer from anywhere in the world. Also, of course you can control the licensed list to send you printouts remotely.
Pace and quality up to the house
Epson has been considered the leader in the industrial printing market for many years, and its range of products includes office printers for large departments, label printers and wide format printers. All the technological innovations that the company has introduced in printers designed for the business market – Epson also brings to the home printers. In addition, print speed and print speed are also basic features that characterize any model of the company.
A faster printer will be more efficient for you and Epson has often trialled in speed comparison tests. Test conducted by Keypoint Intelligence – Buyers Lab (BLI) tested models L4160 and L3150 Epson compared to similar models of competitors, and Epson models led to the fastest time of printing a single page.
In addition, the wide range of Epson EcoTank printer models allows each customer to choose the model that meets their needs and fits their budget size: The company markets 10 models for daily and home use, 11 business models that boast wider print output, and 6 quality print models. High. On the company’s website you will also find a calculator to help you calculate the printing costs compared to other printers on the market. This is how you can see for yourself that a printer is already a basic product in every home, certainly at a time when we are all a bit more.