The first thing you notice when you open the box is that the Epson Workforce 600 is a nice looking machine. The sleek looking printer will fit in with the decor of most offices or it might even improve the decor of your office space. The Epson Workforce 600 is a feature rich printer at a very affordable price ($199). It can Print / Copy / Scan / Photo / Fax plus it has WiFi . Consumers will find that the user interface on the Epson Workforce 600 is very user friendly thanks to the 2.5″ color LCD screen that tilts for easy viewing. I tested the printer on a Mac and on a Windows XP system and the workforce 600 came out shining like a star.
Print
The Printer is a pure speed demon without compromising any quality. Epson is trying to entice small business consumers that are looking into laser printers for the office and they will succeed based on speed, price and laser quality . Epson claims the Workforce 600 is twice as fast as their competition and I believe it. The print outs are not as fast as laser but pretty damn close. It can print out 27 ppm of text or 19 ppm of color. I asked my international panel of judges (aka. my family) to look at 2 documents, one printed on the Epson and another from HP LaserJet P3005 Printer and none of them could tell which document was the inkjet printer. Pictures came out perfect. It has built-in memory card slots for PC-free printing. You can even crop directly from the printer itself. Epson uses DuraBrite ink that is smudge, fade, water and highlighter resistant. The 4 printers cartridges are all individual and you have the option of using a standard ($12.35 for color, $17 for black) or high capacity ($17 for color, $20 for black ) for any of the colors and a extra high capacity cartridge for the black ($28.50). The paper is loaded from the back and no issues with any printer jams. Another plus for this printer, it uses up to 3x less power than a laser printer. One downside, the double sided printing feature is not available for the Mac (yet).
Scan
Scanning was the only minor hiccup I had with the testing of the printer. It gave me an error when a started the scanner, stating the scanner was not detected. I tried to scan again and it would work perfectly. It happened once on the Mac and twice in Windows XP. The OCR that comes with the unit (ABBYY Finereader5) is your average preloaded Optical Character Recognition software, it works but it doesn’t have any bells or whistles. If you plan on scanning and editing, I would recommend upgrading the software or searching for better software that will meet your specific needs.
With scanning you have 3 options : home, office or professional mode, each with a range of options to satisfy the user. I scanned images and documents with various outputs selected and they all looked great. I was really happy with image quality from scanned images. Having the power to scan directly to PDF is another nice feature.
Fax
Sending and receiving faxes is super easy thanks to the 2.5″ LCD screen. It can store 60 fax numbers on speed dial and it can receive up to 180 pages in memory.
Copy
You can copy in black and white or color and everything is straightforward due to the great user interface and the bright display. Just load the automatic document feeder, enter your settings, hit start and before you even turn around the copies are done.
WiFi
I remember years ago setting up my first printer to work wirelessly, it took a bit of skill and a lot of time to pull it off. Now with built in Wifi, it makes setting up the printer to work on your network wirelessly child’s play. Just follow the setup instructions on screen from the included setup disk and your wireless printer network will be up in running in minutes. You can also connect via Ethernet cable or USB.
For detailed specifications, click here
Pros
- Simple to use and setup
- Nice looking 2.5″ color display
- Fast printing and laser quality print outs
- Uses 3x less energy than a laser printer
- Built-in memory card slots for PC-free printing
Cons
- Scanning software is mediocre
- No double sided printing on the Mac
Summary
The Epson Workforce 600 is a perfect addition to any small or med-sized office. During this economic downturn where every dollar counts, you will be hard pressed to find a better printer for $200 that does everything this sleek looking printer can do.
For more information about the Epson WorkForce 600, please click here
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Tags: epson, printer, review
16 responses
Dec 13, 2008 at 8:47 am
This printer does not allow scan to email from a network environment. Nothing in the literature tells you that. I am a PC tech and spent two hours on the phone with tech support before I found out the job event functions only if it is hooked directly to a PC through USB.
Many of the functions desirabel in an office environment are better met by HP AIO printers.
Feb 27, 2009 at 10:02 pm
When you push the power button to turn it off, every single time it warns you that fax/data info will be deleted, and you have to scroll up to Yes to continue to shut it off and press enter! Drives me nuts!
Feb 27, 2009 at 10:31 pm
An interesting observation, thanks for your input.
Mar 25, 2009 at 10:30 pm
Just wonder if any of you know… I keep getting an error “escndv.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.” when I try to load epsonscan.
I cant seem to find a good answer to this problem anywhere although i see its common in past printers.
Mar 25, 2009 at 10:40 pm
Hi VP,
Vic’s got the Workforce 600 not me, but I have a newer Epson AIO so I may be able to be of some assistance. Can you give me some details about your setup - What version of Windows are you running? Is your system 32 bit or 64 bit? Have you tried a reinstall? Are you running a firewall?
Mar 25, 2009 at 10:45 pm
WOW! very fast reponse. Thanks.
I am on Windows XP sp3 32 bit - there is no firewall running and I did try a reinstall of both the entire setup after a clean system restore and then also tried a driver update. Epson rep was of no help… I see tons of people resolving this issue with a deletion of a “broken preview image file” but I see no such thing in my folder. “http://www.howtomendit.com/answers.php?id=64090″
hope this is a bit more info for your to go off of… thanks again
Mar 25, 2009 at 11:01 pm
Also feel the need to mention… the printer hooks up to my router and from there it goes into two pcs - one of which the scanner option works. I noticed on that PC.
Mar 26, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Hi VP
I have not had any issues with the printer thankfully. In fact, It still works great and I still recommend it to others. I wish I could be of more help, I know when I get errors like that with other items it drives me crazy. If you do fix the problem can you please visit back and tell others how you fixed the problem. Thanks and good luck.
Mar 26, 2009 at 9:35 pm
Actually I did fix it and sorry for the last post I hit submit and I was finished typing and didnt want to blow up the post board with another message yet… as for the fix.. I had a previous AIO installed but it was no longer connected & was uninstalled but it left behind a dell folder located in C:\Windows\twain_32 .. it was just one .ds file (dlcitwds.ds) and because of that one file it wouldn’t let me use the current one, but i deleted it & it finally working and happy! Thanks for trying to help and the quick responses are appreciated.
May 12, 2009 at 3:06 pm
I just bought this AIO. I’m having trouble with it specifically with faxing. For some reason, I cannot figure out how to fax from Windows Vista (or any version of Windows). The option is just not there. So if I want to fax a 10 page document, I have to print it out first, then fax it manually from the AIO. That’s disappointing.
Also, the box says double-sided printing. I thought this was duplex, but the catch is that it’s not automatic duplex. In other words, if you select double-sided printing for a 10 page document, it will print 5 pages, then it will stop and tell you to take those 5 pages and refeed them into the input tray and then proceed to print on the other side… huh?
Anyway, has anyone successfully faxed from Windows to this AIO?
May 15, 2009 at 8:42 pm
Chris,
Sorry I can’t help you help out. I use the printer on a Mac. The double sided feature may seem odd to you but at least on Windows the option is available, where on the Mac the option does not exist.
Jun 9, 2009 at 11:00 am
Could you please let me know where can I find the PIN to Set up the blue tooth connection ? The printer is asking for it … Thanks JJC
Jun 10, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Vic. Thanks for the reply. I had a choice between an HP AIO and this one. I chose this one because it has better quality photo prints. However, it came at some compromise. The HP AIO had auto duplex built-in and can also fax direct from the computer.
Although I don’t do much faxing nor do I print massive amounts of documents, in this day and age, these features should be standard if Epson wants to call it an AIO for the SOHO.
Jun 10, 2009 at 1:04 pm
JJC,
I happened to have a bluetooth dongle lying around and decided to plug it in. The Epson recognized it and at first I didn’t know what the PIN was too. So I tried 0000. It worked for me.
Don’t get your hopes up. The only thing you can print via bluetooth are JPG image files. I will not accept any type of document that is not an image. I tried to print DOC, TXT, and PDF files and none of them printed. the printer came back with an error message saying invalid document type.
Also, when printing an image via bluetooth, it will print it out right away. You will not have an option to correct it or add graphics via the LCD like you can when you plug in a memory card.
Jun 10, 2009 at 1:05 pm
In my previous post, the PIN looks like 4 letter O’s. It is actually 4 zeros.
Jun 16, 2009 at 11:35 am
PAPER JAM!!
That’s right - another paper jam issue. This is the 2nd time my wf600 has had this problem. I tried emailing the “help desk” & received the “take the paper out- clear the jam” - duh…. I’m guessing if you’re not smart enough to figure that out, you’re probably not smart enough to email the help desk either. Then I called the non-toll-free # (even though my printer is under “warranty”), got a non-English-speaking “tech” who basically read from a script - didn’t actually answer any questions I asked. Then, asked me for my credit card # before he would send a replacement - in 5-7 days! So…. I think not! And no, I wasn’t using hole-punched paper.
Sorry to rant & rave, but really so frustrated!
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