Epson WorkForce 845 Wireless Color Inkjet Printer (C11CB92201)

Purchased this 2011 Christmas, have been a Canon fan for a long period of time, do not like HP ink jets. Heard on a podcast I listen to about Epson’s Workforce printers so I thought I would check it out. When I research a printer I look for features I want and then I look at the ink costs, which is where the real cost of a printer is, and the hassle. If your lucky you can run across a few reviews that have the estimated cost per page, if not then find out how many pages the ink is rated for to give you an idea. This has an excellent cost per page with their extra high capacity ink tanks (I am not a fan of the naming either). Then I saw it had Black and 3 colors which was great only 4 inks to keep track of. The Canon as much as I like it has an extra black so you have 5 to keep track of and that extra black is usually not bundled which is a pain. I don’t use my printer very often for printing photos usually cheaper ordering them online. The cost per page is one of the best for an inkjet printer. Also keep in mind a $20 ink that gives you 300 prints and a $30 ink that gives you 600 prints you save money getting the printer with the $30 ink. Normally the high capacity more expensive inks save you money. By the way the extra high ink 127 black is rated at 945 pages the high ink 126 is at 385 so make sure to always get the extra high 127 inks. Color 127 inks are rated at 755 and 126 is 470. A ream of paper is 500 sheets so you can print close to 2 reams of paper before replacing ink. Epson gives yield information on the specification of the printer specs at their site which is nice. Most others it is hard to find if you can find it at all. If you can’t I would assume low yield per ink cartridge.

OK it was easy to setup, and an excellent feature is it will automatically update the firmware of the printer which non geek types would seldom do or even know to do. Works with Macs and PCs wireless printing directly to the printer so it doesn’t need to be hooked up to a computer to be shared that has worked seamless so far. Actually push scans over the network to the computer used it only once and it worked which surprised me because it was my work laptop which is on a domain at work, though I do have local Admin rights so that may make difference. Fast it is quite fast also like that it prints duplex (both sides of the paper).

This next feature is the one that I have really liked it sets up a unique email address that allows you to email attachments to and they print out on you printer no matter where you are, as long as the printer is not off and on your network with internet access. So I have printed out items for my wife at the house from work, or a Starbucks. Which also means I can print items from my BlackBerry or any other smartphone that has email. This is my new favorite ink jet printer for home office. I was between this and the Canon Pixma MX882 because I have used Canon for so long and overall happy with their products. The funny thing is the item that made me take a chance on the Epson was going from 5 inks to 4 inks, I knew I hated remembering to get that extra little black ink. I don’t print photos and to me I just need one black and 3 colors. Hope this review helps someone make a decision.

I LOVE this printer! So much in fact that I was compelled to leave a review. It’s incredibly easy to set up and to use and in a matter of minutes I had it unpacked and operating perfectly in my home office network. As it’s still new to me and I’m only writing this review after 2 weeks of usage, I cannot yet give an accurate assessment of how it is with ink consumption or reliability…but so far so good!

I will point out just the things I’ve noticed that could affect prospective buyers.

Printing:

– fantastic quality colour jobs for an inkjet printer – it is easily the best I’ve owned to date.
– The OEM ink cartridges seem a little pricey and this unit holds 4 cartridges but I easily found non-OEM cartridges for a fraction of the cost.
– AirPrint works as expected and it’s very easy to print from any of my iOS devices with no problems to report as of yet.
– I don’t really have a need for this but I experimented with it and it works as described. I believe it’s called Epson Connect and basically the unit is assigned an email address and no matter where you are, anything you send to that address will be printed!
– I love that this unit holds up to 500 pages!

Scanning:

– I use both Macs and Windows machines and they both do the job when it comes to scanning but Windows definitely works better for scanning documents into PDF’s. I could not get the included software (Abby FineReader) that installed on my Windows machines to install on my Mac. If scanning the same document, my Windows machine will index all of the text using OCR and produce a searchable PDF whereas my Mac seemingly treats the document as an image before creating the PDF. The final result looks the same, but one comprehends all of the text in the document where the other does not.
– I find the automatic document feeder for scanning works fantastically and it’s incredibly fast and easy to scan one sided or two sided documents this way. I’ve yet to have a paper jam.

There is definitely a lot more to this unit but what I’ve listed are the things that stood out for me. I bought this Epson to replace my Canon Pixma and couldn’t be happier with my decision!

I have a small office which has 3 Epson 845’s in it. They are reliable and feature rich. I have a few small gripes with the printer and its software, like the difficulty setting up a tray to default to print envelopes (I finally found a solution by going into the web interface of the printer and setting the default settings there), the inability (actually possible but really difficult) to print black and white if you are out of any color ink, and the scanner adding an arbitrary postfix on every document. Overall through the printer/scanner exceeds my needs and expectations.
Big gripe came today when I received a new printer I ordered from Amazon. I paid extra to get one fulfilled by amazon so I qualified for 2 day shipping and would have it before my new staff member started today.
When the printer arrived and I powered it up, it made a horrendous noise and threw an error code. Upon opening the printer, I noticed a piece of plastic that was clearly out of place/broken. My heart sunk knowing my next step was to call Epson support. I have called them a few times over the years and despite a couple good experiences, I have been overwhelmingly frustrated with their support staff. Today was the most frustrating of all. What should have been a 10 minute conversation took 1 hour and 6 minutes. It started pleasant enough “All customer service representatives are busy right now, your estimated wait time is 5 minutes.” It was 25 minutes before someone answered. The woman on the other end was Indian, but had impecable pronunciation to the point that I thought I may have been routed to a US based call center for the first time. I was wrong, and quickly learned that though her pronunciation was great, her vocabulary and understanding was awful. Adding to the language barrier was the VoIP line to India was significantly degraded, causing long periods of silence, and many missing syllables. It took 6 tries to get my email address correct and nearly 10 minutes to get all my contact info logged into the computer, despite having called and done this no less than 10 times over the years. With contact info given, I began what I assumed would be a very easy warrantee claim. I was wrong. Despite visible broken plastic and the printer not turning on, I was asked to run a number of diagnostic tests, none of which worked because the printer locked up before it turned on. It was like talking to an auto prompter for an hour, the woman would pick a single word in my response and apparently only listen to that. E.G.
Me: “It wont turn on but maybe if I can manually push the ink carriage over I can reattach the plastic piece and temporarily fix the printer.”
Her: “Ok, to replace the ink cartridges, go to settings…”
After an hour she finally decided my printer was “having a hardware failure” and should be replaced with “what should be a new printer” I tried to confirm that it would be a new printer I would be exchanging for my new printer, but I was never able to frame my question in a way that was understood. I hope its new or I just lost another $100 in addition to the hour I spent on the phone, and the week I now have to wait to get my new printer.
Recap: great printer, great features, easy to network, works reliably for years, Epson Customer Service is a maddening experience that causes my blood to boil and my fingers to write reviews.