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Meant to go head to head with laser printers, the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-6090 ($349.99) inkjet printer delivers faster speed than color lasers in its price range, better paper handling than most, and a lower cost per page. It falls short of being our preferred pick for a heavy-duty small-office color printer only because the current choice offers slightly better text quality and a lower price. But if you print enough for the WF-6090’s ($879.98 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) lower cost per page to make up for its higher initial price, it’s a highly attractive alternative for a small office or workgroup.
Our Editors’ Choice in this category is Epson’s own WorkForce Pro WF-5190 ($1,099.99 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) . Both it and the WF-6090 take advantage of Epson’s PrecisionCore technology, which can combine more than one print chip in a single print head for faster printing. Both also use four chips, which gives them a fast enough print speed to leave lasers in the same price class looking slow. Between them, the WF-6090 is the faster of the two, and also offers a higher paper capacity.
Heavy Duty Design
The WF-6090 is designed for heavy-duty use by small office or workgroup standards and unusually heavy-duty use for a micro office. The maximum monthly duty cycle is 75,000 pages, with a 5,000-page recommended maximum. In comparison, the Epson WF-5190’s recommended maximum is only 2,500 pages.
The heavy-duty design also shows in the option to use higher-yield cartridges than Epson offers for the Epson WF-5190, with rated yields of 10,000 pages for the black cartridge and 7,000 pages for each of the color cartridges. The cost per page—based on cartridge yields and prices—works out to 1.6 cents for a monochrome page and 6.7 cents for a color page. The savings of 0.025 cents per monochrome page and 0.4 cents per color page compared with the Epson WF-5190 isn’t much per page. But if you print enough over the lifetime of the printer—say, 20,000 color pages—you can save enough in ink costs to pay for the difference in initial price.
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Basics and Beyond
Paper handling is another strong point, with a 500-sheet front drawer, an 80-sheet rear tray, and a duplexer standard. That by itself is suitable for reasonably heavy-duty printing. If you need more, you can boost the capacity to as much as 1,580 sheets by adding two optional 500-sheet drawers ($199.99 each).
The WF-6090 also offers mobile printing support. If you connect it to a network using either Ethernet or Wi-Fi, you can print though a Wi-Fi access point from iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Kindle Fire, and chromebook devices. Assuming the network is connected to the Internet, you can also print through the cloud.
If you choose to connect the printer to a single PC via USB cable instead of connecting it to a network, you’ll lose the ability to print through the cloud, but you can still print from a phone, tablet, or another PC by taking advantage of the printer’s built-in Wi-Fi Direct to connect directly. And if your mobile device supports NFC, you can also establish a Wi-Fi Direct connection just by tapping the device to the NFC logo on the top left of the printer.
There’s also support for the two most widely used printer languages, PostScript and Printer Command Language (better known as PCL), which you won’t find in many inkjets or even many lasers at this price.
Setup and Speed
The WF-6090 weighs a hefty 50 pounds 11 ounces and is big enough, at 15.9 by 18.8 by 20.6 inches (HWD), that you won’t want to share a desk with it. Assuming you have room for it in your office, however, physical setup is standard fare. Installing the driver is a little unusual however. Instead of having it available on a disc that comes with the printer, you have to go to a webpage, where you have the choice of downloading the Epson Standard driver, a PCL driver, or a PostScript driver. For my tests, I chose the Standard driver.
I timed the WF-6090 on our business applications suite (using QualityLogic’s(Opens in a new window) hardware and software for timing) at 12.3 pages per minute (ppm). That makes it the fastest inkjet we’ve tested to date, and faster than most color lasers. In comparison, the Epson WF-5190’s speed was 10.3ppm, a speed that only a few other inkjets—including the highly similar Epson WorkForce Pro WF-5110 ( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) —can match.
As another point of comparison, color laser printers in this price range are even slower than competing inkjets. The HP Color LaserJet Pro M252dw ( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) —our Editors’ Choice light-duty laser printer for a micro office or personal use—managed only 8.3ppm on our tests.
Output Quality
The WF-6090’s output quality is best described as good enough for almost any business use, with text and photo quality a little lower than the Epson WF-5190 delivers and graphics quality a little higher.
See How We Test Printers
Text is in the middle of a relatively large range for inkjets, but closer to the top of that range. As long as you don’t have an unusual need for small fonts, you shouldn’t have a problem with it. Graphics output is a match for the vast majority of inkjets, which makes it easily good enough for PowerPoint handouts or the like. It may be good enough for marketing materials like one-page handouts or trifold brochures, unless you have a very critical eye.
Photo quality is roughly equivalent to the low end of what you’d expect with drug store prints, at least with Epson’s Premium Presentation Paper Matte that the company recommends using. If you expect photos to have a glossy finish, you may not like the matte look, but it’s certainly appropriate for most business use.
Conclusion
Unless you print enough pages to have an obvious need for the kind of heavy-duty printing the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-6090 offers, you’re probably better off with the Epson WF-5190, or—if your office doesn’t require printers to support either PostScript or PCL—the Epson WF-5110. If your office can benefit from the WF-6090’s level of speed and paper handling, however, put it high on your list, particularly if you print enough for the low cost per page to add up to a significant savings over the printer’s lifetime.
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The Epson WorkForce Pro WF-6090 is pricey for an inkjet printer, but it delivers faster speed than comparably priced color lasers, better paper handling, and a lower cost per page.
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Source link : https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/epson-workforce-pro-wf-6090