Epson WorkForce Pro WF-C8190 A3 Color Printer With PCL/PostScript - Review 2022

The Epson WorkForce Pro WF-C8190 ($799.99) is a wide-format printer that can support up to super-tabloid (13-past-xix-inch) media. It's an update to the WorkForce Pro WF-8090, merely boasts an all-new classier design, a friendlier control panel, and much-improved print quality. It likewise has a reasonable toll, low running costs, and loftier duty cycle, making information technology our height choice for midrange wide-format printers.

Taming the Wide-Format Beast

A printer that churns out pages more than twice equally wide as conventional letter-size media requires a significant delivery in counter top space. At 22.5 past 24.1 by 29.7 inches (HWD) and weighing 77.8 pounds, the WF-C8190'due south size and girth calls for a sturdy, dedicated infinite to roost. At an inch or two smaller in all directions (still weighing 33.viii pounds more than) the HP PageWide Pro 750dw is also a animate being, while Epson'due south more consumer-grade Epson WorkForce WF-7210 Wide-Format is several inches shorter than the WF-C8190 and weighs 35 pounds less.

Out-of-the-box, the WF-C8190'due south paper-input capacity is a meager 330 sheets, split between a 250-sheet primary paper drawer and an 80-sheet multipurpose tray that extends up from the rear of the chassis. If that'due south not plenty paper (or input sources), you lot can aggrandize it upwardly to one,830 sheets from four sources, with up to ii 500-sheet add-on drawers (a steep $425 each). Epson also offers a combination cabinet/printer stand for $250.

The rear tray supports paper sizes ranging from 3.5 by five inches upwards to 13 by 19 inches, and banners up to 13 inches wide by 45 inches long. The primary 250-canvas paper drawer and the two 500-sheet add-ons support media from three.5 past 5 inches up to xi by 17 inches. All that potential capacity is a darned good thing, besides; with the WF-C8190'due south 75,000-page maximum monthly duty cycle (7,000 pages recommended), you and your squad members will be so decorated keeping that 250-sheet paper drawer full that yous may non get any work done.

Due primarily to its high cost, big newspaper capacity, and fast impress speed, the HP 750dw appears to exist a much more powerful and robust printer than the WF-C8190, and from those three perspectives, it is. The default newspaper input capacity is 650 sheets, expandable to 4,650 sheets (with ii 2,000-sheet trays), and it lists for close to three times more than the WorkForce Pro model. Simply this seemingly overpowering brute-force, for the most part, stops hither. The HP 750dw printer, for example, comes with the same maximum monthly duty wheel every bit the WF-C8190 (though the recommended volume is more than twice every bit much).

The WF-C8190 does go far a few licks of its own, though, including the ability to print super-tabloid-size pages. That size makes not bad signs and posters, for example.

Epson'south WF-7210 is, on the other manus, a different animal. Its paper capacity of 250 sheets is respectable, but it's not expandable, and its monthly duty wheel is almost 75 pct lower than the WF-C8190's. You won't get nearly the same volume out of it, and its running costs, if you program to print more than a few hundred pages per month, are a serious concern.

It'south too important to note that, every bit indicated in the printer's name, the WF-C8190 emulates Adobe PostScript and HP PCL (Printer Command Language) folio description languages (PDLs). These, especially PostScript, increment compatibility with several graphic pattern and desktop publishing applications and environments, and both PDLs are preferred for prepress applications. These PDLs increment the WF-C8190's bag of tricks—such as, say, printing prepress composites—but if you don't know what these PDLs practise, you probably don't need them.

Finally, y'all can manage all this from the WF-C8190's control panel, which consists of about a dozen navigation and role buttons, and a few status LEDs—all anchored past a two.4-inch not-bear upon color graphics display. As with most business concern printers, you lot tin also make changes, set security options, monitor consumables, and more than from the WF-C8190's built in web server past simply typing the printer'southward IP address into your browser. You tin also utilize the control panel for setting upwardly and connecting to various cloud and social media sites.

Epson WorkForce Pro WF-C8190 control panel

Connecting and Securing the WF-C8190

Except for its USB 3.0 port, a connexion type you seldom see on a printer (USB 2.0 is the norm), connectivity is basic. Standard connections consist of Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Directly, and connecting to a single PC via USB. All only that concluding one, the defended USB connection, allow the printer admission to the internet, which in turn lets you lot use the Epson Connect characteristic for printing from deject and social media sites. Wi-Fi Direct is a peer-to-peer networking protocol that lets you connect your mobile devices straight to the printer without them or it being on a local area network (LAN). You lot won't find, however, a USB port for printing from USB memory sticks.

In improver to the standard networking security protocols that come with most network-ready printers, the WF-C8190 lets you lot secure impress jobs with PINs to continue them abroad from prying optics. A user command access feature lets you define who can apply the printer and what features they can access. Limiting certain users to printing only in monochrome, for example, could save you significantly on ink costs.

Fast Enough

High-volume printers need to exist fast. Epson rates the WF-C8190 at 25 pages per minute (ppm), which is, for this grade of machine, about where fast begins. The HP 750dw, for example, is rated at 35ppm, and there are several printers bachelor, such equally HP's Color LaserJet Enterprise M653x, with much higher ratings.

I tested the WF-C8190 over Ethernet from our standard Intel Cadre i5 PC running Windows 10 Professional. Note too that the speeds reported hither were obtained from printing letter-size pages, not wide-format media. Tabloid pages, which are exactly twice letter-size, should, with roughly the same percentage of coverage, take about twice as long to print, and super-tabloid a petty longer.

The WF-C8190 printed the start function of my exam regimen, a 12-page monochrome Microsoft Word text certificate, at 27.3ppm, surpassing its rating handily. Meanwhile, the LaserJet 750dw printed the same document viii.2ppm faster, and the WF-7210 managed a meager 15ppm.

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When I combined the results from press several colorful PDF, Excel, and PowerPoint documents containing embedded charts, graphs, various other business graphics, and photos with the results from printing the 12-page text certificate, the WF-C8190's score plummeted to 15.1ppm. That may sound tedious, but very few of the machines we've tested over the past couple years (due to the complexity of our examination document'due south layouts and content) take scored this high.

The LaserJet 750dw, at one.1ppm faster, however, is one of them. But, given its toll and speed rating, I'd wait more of a speed deviation between these two wide-format printers. The WF-7210, on the other hand, managed about half of the WF-C8190'south showing.

Moving on to the adjacent test, I printed ii colorful and detailed four-past-vi-inch snapshots several times and averaged the results. The WF-C8190 averaged 19 seconds, or about 6 seconds faster than the WF-7210 and eleven seconds slower than the 750dw. Less than 30 seconds is the norm for near business-centered inkjet printers.

PrecisionCore Print Quality

All of Epson's WorkForce and WorkForce Pro models use the company's PrecisionCore printheads, which information technology also uses in its several-thousand-dollar, 100ppm-plus big enterprise and printing press machines. 1 of the key features of PrecisionCore is, besides being a little faster than traditional printheads, that the print chips contain a much higher number of smaller and tightly full-bodied ink nozzles, resulting in a more than precise distribution of ink.

I didn't discover much to dislike about the WF-C8190's print quality. Text looks close to laser-quality; graphics output is costless of streaking and other ink distribution flaws that often show up in dark fills and backgrounds. Gradients didn't comprise obvious stepping from i colour to the side by side

Though they're non photo printers, the WorkForce printers I've tested over the years, especially since the deployment of PrecisionCore, churn out more-than-respectable, vibrantly colored and detailed images. The WF-C8190 should be more adequate for well-nigh business applications, and information technology has a distinct reward over the HP 750dw: the ability to print borderless photos and documents up to letter of the alphabet-size. Photographs, and many business brochures, flyers, and and then on, look much more refined with borderless finishing.

HP's PageWide models and all laser printers are incapable of borderless output. Each page must contain white (or the paper color) margins of just less than a quarter-inch on all four sides of the page. Here, the sub-$200 WF-7210 gets the last laugh. It supports borderless pages up to 13 by 19 inches, though press borderless super-tabloid photos (or any big photos, for that affair), given the WF-7210's per-page ink cost, sucks upward a lot of expensive ink.

Sensible Running Costs

When you use the highest capacity ink cartridges (11,500 black and 8,000 color page yields), the WF-C8190's running costs are 1.6 cents for monochrome pages and 6.7 cents for color. To be very competitive, I would like that blackness cost per page (CPP) to be a little lower, perhaps even less than a penny, but these numbers are adequate. The HP 750dw's CPPs are, at 1.one cents per black page and five.6 cents for colour, significantly lower, though. (That's non a surprise, being that a college purchase price oftentimes equates to a lower CPP.) If you lot print thousands of pages each month, that 0.5 black and 0.ix cent colour per-page departure will, over time, literally add up to hundreds, even thousands of dollars.

Given the huge price arrears betwixt these two machines, information technology will take a while to make up that difference and start saving money on ink. Meanwhile, the Epson WF-7210's running costs are iii.2 cents for monochrome pages and xi.4 cents for color.

The costs quoted hither are for printing letter-size pages. Only every bit tabloid-size pages have near twice equally long every bit letter-size pages to print, they should also (assuming a similar percentage of coverage) cost almost twice as much to impress. Super-tabloid pages, which contain 2 additional inches of surface area in both directions, should price a bit more.

A Petty Less Bang for a Lot Fewer Bucks

Overall, I found little to complain about with the Epson WF-C8190. It does a huge percentage of the HP 750dw's duty for a lot lower cost. It prints the larger, super-tabloid-size pages and supports borderless finishing. That last one would be a lot more impressive, though, if information technology included borderless wide-format pages. The Epson WF-7210 will give you borderless pages all the mode up to super-tabloid-size, which is quite bonny, but, frankly, if your print volume is loftier plenty to consider the WF-C8190, the trivial low-volume consumer-grade WF-7210 shouldn't even be on your short list. Considering its reasonable price, wider media choices, low running costs, and good print quality, the WF-C8190 has earned the Editors' Selection slot for midrange wide-format printers.