Epson WorkForce Pro WF-5620

If you need an inkjet multifunction printer (MFP) suitable for moderate-duty print needs by small-office standards or heavy-duty use by micro-office standards, the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-5620 ($269.99) is a prime candidate. Faster than color laser MFPs that cost two and three times as much, and with a lower running cost than most lasers as well, the WF-5620 is one of a growing number of inkjets that are challenging the supremacy of lasers in the office. It's also our Editors' Choice color MFP for heavy-duty printing in a micro office or moderate-duty use in a small office.

The WF-5620 shares most of its features with the Editors' Choice Epson WorkForce Pro WF-5690. According to Epson, the only difference between the two is that the Epson WF-5690 adds support for HP's Printer Command Language (PCL) and for PostScript—two widely used printer languages—which some applications require. That makes it our preferred pick for moderate-duty use in a small office that needs PCL or PostScript support. However, the WF-5620 is our new pick for offices that don't need PCL or PostScript. It's also a big step up from the Epson WorkForce WF-3640, which it replaces as Editors' Choice.

Basics

Like other recent WorkForce models, including the Epson WF-5690,the WF-5620 is built around Epson's PrecisionCore technology. PrecisionCore printers aren't necessarily fast, but they can be. The technology allows multiple print chips in a single print head. The more chips there are, the more ink the printer can put on paper at once. The four chips in the WF-5620s print head deliver impressively fast speed.

Even better, the printer offers sufficient paper handling to take advantage of the speed. It comes with a 250-sheet front drawer, an 80-sheet rear tray, and a built-in duplexer (for two-sided printing). If you need more, you can boost the capacity to 580 sheets with a second 250-sheet tray ($99.99).

MFP features include the ability to fax from and scan to a computer over a USB connection or network, work as a standalone copier and fax machine, and both print from and scan to a USB memory key. A 3.5-inch color touch screen on the front panel, paired with a well-designed menu, makes it easy to give commands.

Paper handling for scanning is another plus. In addition to a letter-size flatbed, the WF-5620 offers a 35-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) that can handle legal-size paper and can also duplex, turning each page over to scan the second side. For copying, the duplex scanning works along with duplex printing to let you copy both single and double-sided originals to your choice of single or double-sided copies.

See How We Test Printers

Like more and more recent MFPs, the WF-5620 supports mobile printing, including both printing from and scanning to the cloud. Connect it to a network, using either Ethernet or Wi-Fi, and you can connect to it and print through a Wi-Fi access point from iOS, Android, Windows, and Kindle Fire devices. If the network is connected to the Internet, you can also print through the cloud and you can scan directly from the WF-5620 to several cloud services (SugarSync, Evernote, and Google Drive), as well as to specific folders on your drive, which lets various other cloud-service apps monitor and upload the files.

If you connect the printer to a single PC by USB cable instead of connecting it to a network, you won't be able to use the cloud-based features. However, you can still take advantage of the printer's Wi-Fi Direct to connect directly to it from a mobile device and print.

Setup, Speed, and Output Quality

For my tests, I connected the WF-5620 to a wired network and installed the drivers and software on a Windows Vista system. Setup was standard fare.

On our business applications suite, I timed the printer (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing), at 10.3 pages per minute (ppm). That makes it essentially tied with the Epson WF-5690 and significantly faster than the Epson WF-3640, at 5.4ppm. It's also faster than the 5.9ppm for the HP Officejet Pro 276dw MFP.

Output quality is also good enough overall to count as a plus. Text in my tests was top tier for an inkjet. Characters aren't quite as crisp as with a laser, and the ink can smudge just a bit if it gets wet, but the text is highly readable even at small font sizes, making it easily good enough for most business needs.

Graphics output was a touch below par on our tests, with some banding showing in large areas of dark colors. It's certainly good enough for internal use, but depending on how critical an eye you have, you may or may not consider the quality good enough for PowerPoint handouts or the like. You can eliminate the banding by setting the driver to print at higher quality, but that will also slow down print speed.

For photos, using the matte paper that Epson recommends, the printer delivered better photo quality than typical drugstore prints. The one potential issue is that if you prefer glossy photos, you may not like the matte look.

Also very much a plus is the WF-5620's low running cost. Based on Epson's claimed yields and ink prices, the cost per page works out to just 1.6 cents for a black and white page and 7.2 cents for a color page.

If you need PCL or PostScript, the Epson WF-5690 is still the obvious choice. In every other way, however, the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-5620 gives you the same capability for a much lower price. For micro and small offices with no need for PCL or PostScript, that's more than enough to make the WF-5620 our Editors' Choice inkjet MFP for moderate to heavy-duty use.