Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4540 Pro Reviews

The Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4540 is a dependable office inkjet with a ton of features. It has speedy simplex (one-sided) and duplex printing, and Epson even heralded it as having the "world's fastest auto two-sided print speeds" when it was introduced a few months back. We found that it does indeed have very speedy printing. We were able to print a black text page in about three seconds. It can also hold an insane amount of paper--580 sheets in total, to be precise. You won't have to load it up with paper very often unless you print in high volumes. Speaking of printing, we tested how long the XL inks lasted...and even though they're more costly than standard inks, they also yield over 200 more pages than the average standard inkjet cartridges. We printed 659 quality pages before we were forced to change the magenta ink and could have printed even more with the other inks after changing it.

The WorkForce Pro WP-4540 gets the job done quickly and cheaply, and it has the largest standard capacity in the field. That said, the equally fast and inexpensive-to-operate HP Officejet Pro 8600 Plus e-All-in-One Printer is $100 cheaper and supports legal-size documents, though it’s less capacious (250 sheets). The like-priced ($399) Lexmark OfficeEdge Pro5500 is another viable legal-size contender, but it too holds less paper (300 sheets).

Of course, there's always the price to consider. The first thing that might stand out to you about the WorkForce Pro WP-4540 is Epson's seemingly high $399 list price. Keep in mind, though, that if you were to equip the competing HP OfficeJet Pro 8600 with its optional second paper tray (which costs $80), these two models would cost about the same on a list-price basis. And that's not the whole price story. At the time we wrote this on Leap Day 2012, we were seeing this model discounted by quite a bit off the list price. (We even saw it as low as $279 from Amazon.com.) If you shop around, you might find it for the same or less than the OfficeJet Pro 8600. So, assuming this grade of robust all-in-one printer is what your home office or small business needs, which one of these winning models to choose?

Focused primarily on business needs, the Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4540 delivers laser-class speed, a low claimed cost per page, and surprisingly good paper handling.