To sum up from our award from last year, the WorkForce WP-4520 is a compact, fast, durable, and inexpensive printer.
It is relatively silent, and consumables are also decently priced.
Moreover, the past year has seen Epson improve on its cloud services, and add more partners and platforms to its printer line.
Resultantly, the Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4540 is again our choice, and the SmallBizWindows Printer of the Year 2014.
Based on my hands-on time with it, and information, I had thought that the new HP Officejet Pro X series would be our award winner for this year.
However, despite the incredible speeds it offers, the cost of ownership of the Officejet Pro X, as measured in replacement inks, is quite unreasonable.
How unreasonable?
A brand new Officejet Pro X 576dw can be purchased for about $589.00. a set of all four colored inks for the device cost around $100 less than that, at $489.
I just can’t grok why.
Going forward
For 2015, we will be introducing a high-end printer award to segment the departmental printers from the deskside devices.
For high end printing, we are currently using two MFC devices: the HP LaserJet Enterprise 700 color MFP M775dn and the HP LaserJet Enterprise M4555f MFP devices. They are being tested against a leased Kyocera-Mita MFC device.
Due to the very short period of time we have had with these printers, we will not make any decisions on awards in the high-end category this year.
Websites
Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4540
HP OfficeJet Pro X
HP LaserJet Enterprise
