Epson WorkForce 635 All-in-One Printer

Performance Testing

Most manufacturers claim very high print speeds on the box, but these numbers are usually generated by in-house testing or methods that are designed to specifically improve the speed of a a specific printer under testing. The Epson WorkForce 635 was testing in accordance with ISO/IEC 24734 Office Category Test.  This test is a set of office documents created by and agreed upon by international standards groups ‘International Organization for Standardization’ and ‘International Electrotechnical Commission’ with the sole purpose of providing a  ‘method for measuring digital printing productivity’. By using a standardized document set the print speed tests should be readily comparable to any other printer using the same set of documents. The WorkForce 635 averaged 7.2 color pages per minute   and 15 black & white pages per minute. These numbers are impressive for a consumer/small business all-in-one printer.  The Full Epson ISO/IEC 24734 Office Category Test Report can be found here

Printing

The printer of any all-in-one device is probably the most used out of any of the functions, so I wanted to measure a real life print experience with the WorkForce 635. I created 9 sample pages compiled of 3 Microsoft Word 2010 documents, 3 Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, and 3 Adobe PDF documents, a set of various type pages to test the real life print speed.  The documents/spreadsheets contained a combination of  text, line, pictures, artwork and symbols both color and black & white. The Epson printer settings were left at the defaults as set by the installation.

With the printer on and ready, all nine pages were sent to the print queue on a Windows 7 Ultimate x64 laptop connected to the same wireless N network as the Epson WorkForce 635 printer. Both printer and laptop displayed full signal strength on the display and wireless network status window respectively. Using a standard stopwatch I recorded how long it took from time of clicking print for all nine pages to print and land in the output bin of the printer.

My numbers are slightly slower than the ISO reported print speeds because I have simply divided the total time by the number of pages, then found the number of pages per  minute possible. This test also takes into account the time from clicking print to job complete which the ISO test did not. This test method is not so easily comparable to other printers, but I have the printer setup as would the typical user. My setup consisted of an 2.4Ghz N-router, the Epson WorkForce connected via wireless about 40 ft away through 2 walls and a floor, and a average spec laptop connected to the same wireless network (2.2Ghz Core 2 Duo processor T7500, 4GB RAM, Windows 7 x64, 2.4Ghz Wireless N-adapter).  Overall the printer is very quick and certainly one of the fastest ink-jets I have ever encountered. Using the ISO 24734 Office Category Test documents any performing the ISO specified testing using just print times and ignoring the first round, I did achieve the reported ISO print speeds for both black and color all using the same wireless setup. The colors are vivid, blacks are crisp and most importantly the DURABrite ink does not smudge with touching freshly printed pages.  Laser quality printing from an inkjet – YES! Overall everything Epson advertises about this printer, it delivers very well.

Copying

I believe the second most used feature of any all-in-one device is the copy function. Copying the printouts I made during the print speed tests was very quick and easy. I loaded 20 pages on the ADF, Automatic Document Feeder and pressed the color copy button. The unit quickly starting scanning the first page and began printing immediately. The copies look identical to the originals printed by the unit. The copier includes all the basic reduce/enlarge, up to 99 copies, and page fit adjustments functions of printers in its class. It did include some extra features such as 1 to 2 sided, 2 sided copying, auto background removal for text, and standalone copy/scan to memory card or USB flash drive (no PC needed).  The unit even features a ‘copy wizard’ to assist with the correct usage of settings to achieve the desired copy. These extra features are great to have in the home environment and very useful in a small business setup.

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