Epson, a market leader in printers internationally, came up with an amazing ink tank printer for small business. This is not one of those products which is usually sent out to me to review. I had specifically asked Epson to send it out to me because I wanted to check it out.
Epson L655 is an automatic duplex ink tank printer, scanner, copy and a fax machine. Kind of an all- in-one.
Starting with the form factor of the machine, it occupies as little space as possible. I was surprised with the amount of things this printer was capable of doing with the small form factor. You feed paper from the top and it spits out printed pages from the bottom. It has a 2.2 LCD screen on the front and a whole lot of buttons which can be intimidating at first next to it. But these buttons are good! You can use most of the functions without ever touching a computer.
Starting with the printer, it can print at speeds of up to 33 PPM at a very economic rates. It costs 12 paise for black prints and about 20 paise for composite which is less than 0.01$ each. It can print A4sheets at 4800 x 1200 DPI.
The Epson L655 is an automatic duplex printer which is impressive for its size. Meaning, it can automatically print on both sides of a page without you having to do anything.
Coming to the scanner part, the printer opens up right below the paper load bay to place pages you want to scan. It can also automatically take in up to 30 pages and scan them. The scans are at 1200 x 2400 DPI.
The printer has an on board copy functionality which will let you copy documents without having to use a computer or even save them to the printer’s on board memory. This copy happens at only 600 x 600 DPI. This is not ideal for photos, but is a lifesaver when you have documents to work with, which is what this feature is intended for.
The fax part of Epson L655 obviously seems important with it taking a large part front with a number pad. But it’s 2017 and I’m not sure how many people still use a fax machine and to be honest I’ve never used one. So this is one thing I did not get to try out. But I’m not sure why it should be any different from any other fax machine. Or epson could’ve just left it out for a much cleaner design and probably bring the cost down.
Coming to the software part, the Epson L655 is loaded with so many features. The printer can work without ever requiring a connection to the computer. You can connect the printer via wifi and add it to your network, making it accessible to all your computers. If for some reason you do not use wifi, the printer comes with an Ethernet port. The printer comes with an app for iOS and android which you can use for printing. But the best part is that it also supports Apple’s AirPrint which is super convenient to use if you’re having an Apple product and Google’s cloud print which lets you print from anywhere across the globe as long as both your printer and your device is connected to the internet.
Epson L655 costs about 30K in India and it solves an amazing untapped market: smalll businesses. The printer is a bit expensive for home use and does not have much for large businesses. But the place in between, that’s where L655 shines and I can’t think of any other alternatives for small businesses and home offices.
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