Epson WorkForce Pro WF-3730 Wireless Color Printer

While I have a wired connection available I choose to set this printer up as wireless. It took some time to download the Mac drivers but the overall set up went very well. The printer will print from two computers and two iPads with no problem. The print quality is better than the older model Work Force that it replaced. The scanner has the ability to select the item to be copied even if the item is out of square which really speeds up scanning. I only loaded one tray but I expect to take advantage of the two paper trays.

How often and what you use a printer for is important when selecting one. For a home and home office situation I’ve used a number of different printers over the last decade. For quality color graphic printing options I tended to go with Epson, where when I went to Brother’s HL series – you can crank some serious printing for projects with those. But increasingly I found the costs of different printers fell down to one of three issues – Cartridge Costs, Print Quality, and Durability. Which meant I moved away from having ANY printing at home and instead moved my projects to print centers and my few personal printer needs – boarding passes, hotel reservations and other things where a print copy is a good idea – to local communal printing areas. This worked well enough – reduced costs, improved quality etc.- until two things happened, 1) A member of our household started college and 2) another member became busier working at home and the home office printing became necessary again. Which is why I chose the Work Force Pro. I needed wireless – no I was not excited about get two generations’ computers to all talk to the printer – I needed the capcity for quality color (College projects, client project, photos etc) and serious fast black and white. This unit’s price point was easy on the wallet and it delivers. In about 10 minutes I had it installed and about another 10 minutes per device and everyone could print. It is quiet, fast, and so far, is not burning through ink. Like the Brother HL it has clean lines, minimal footprint and durable construction. Like the Epson color printers it delivers clean color images with balanced brightness that reflects what you saw on screen. At this point I can highly recommend this for Home, Home Office and Wireless printing.

This printer replaces our old WF-545 which finally gave up the struggle. Set up on the WF-3730 was pretty easy, but the instructions are a bit of a muddle, however the touchscreen on the printer provides a good guide. Read the instructions, then use the touchscreen and it’s pretty easy. The problem I had is with the WiFi. Saying slow and unreliable is huge understatement, I was truly ready to send it back, then I found the magic solution. IMHO, forget trying to get the WiFi to work, there is something about Win10 and the Epson printer driver than does not compute via WiFi. But – after 2 days of piddling around, having to delete and re-add the printer multiple times (as in, every single time I tried to print!), I turned off the WiFi on the printer and instead used an ethernet cable. Almost instant connect, both our household computers could see and connect, and VIOLA, good solid printer connection from both pc’s to the printer. Now instead of guessing and hoping to get a print within 10 minutes or so, it becomes instant print, great quality, no problems. I do not know what the deal is with the WiFi, I’m pretty sure it is Epson’s fault, but my recommendation is save yourself the hassle, direct connection works, printer to router via ethernet cable, perfect. Now I suppose the ability to print from phones and tablets is lost, but I really don’t care. This would be a 5 star rating if the WiFi was usable, but it is not, and the tech support cannot help, hence, 4 stars.