Customer Ratings & Reviews

Brought back -was not user friendly at all. Was a good deal , just not for me

Set up was a little harder than most. Ink wells are small and

It’s good but when I scan several pages it tends to jam in the paper feed.

Excellent Epson printer. Very fast, excellent printing quality.

With 4x6 premium photo paper this printer does a fantastic job .

broke after 2 years of use. for the price it definitley should have lasted longer than that. now i have to go out and buy another printer because this one is junk. $150 for just 2 years of use? shows me its not a great printer.

The Epson WorkForce 4820 is marketed as a business-suited printer. That might be pushing it a little, unless it is being used by an office of 5 people, or one employee's dedicated printer. This might be a more suitable home printer for families who print a lot, or individuals working from home that need a printer for their job. QUICK SUMMARY PROS: - Fast printing, and automatic duplex printing - Print quality is excellent - even does well for photos. - Has a quiet mode that is actually quiet. - Large touchscreen that is VERY sensitive and therefore responds well. - Intuitive interface makes operating from the touchscreen easy. - Can scan a large number of pages in a single scan job. - SmartScan application has a lot of features, including a preview option that lets you make some modifications before saving the document. Can also scan to various cloud services via the computer and mobile. - Setup is easy, in part because you don't get to make a lot of choices. CONS: - Initial setup involved several steps that just froze. - Lacks duplex scanning. - A bit bulky. - Slow to initiate a print job if in sleep mode. - If paper type set in printer properties does not match the paper type set at the printer, it requires interaction with the printer via the touchscreen (making it bad for office environments where multiple people may share the printer and use different paper types). - Getting the scanning function to work with my computer took technical expertise. SETUP Setup of the WF-4820 was actually simple and rather quick. It took me about 20 minutes to unpack, remove all of the tape, load cartridges, and get through most of the installation. I used the enclosed CD (I have a drive connected to my computer via USB), and the setup software actually downloaded the drivers and printer software from the internet (meaning you will need a connection to install it). The setup requires little interaction, but also means it installs everything whether you want it or not. I don't need the faxing feature, but oh well. It gives the ability to try to connect the device to your network without having to put in the network password, but this did not work for me (probably because I have uPNP disabled on my router). Therefore, I had to connect the printer to the network from the device's touchscreen. At the end of the installation, it recommended I take the firmware upgrade that was available, which I did. The printer completed the upgrade and rebooted, but the software did not recognize it, and I could not close out of it without involving task manager. Later, I had to turn the printer off, and it froze in the "shutdown" process. It had a spinning wheel on the display for over 2 minutes, and I finally had to unplug it to get it to turn off. It's not cold where I live. What's with all the freezing??? PRINTING This printer is fast when it comes to normal printing. I was easily able to print a two-sided document in under 10 seconds (yes this printer can print on both sides automatically). It also has a 250-sheet paper tray, so unlike a lot of small home inkjet printers, you won't have to reload the paper tray constantly. I printed documents from my Windows computer and using the Epson iPrint app on my iPhone, and both printed quickly. It used in a high-volume printing environment, this printer will definitely meet the demand. Print quality is excellent. Text is crisp with no "fuzz" around the edge of the letters, basic pictures, graphs, etc, look clean. This is not a photo printer, but I gave it a try anyway and printed 4 pictures on photo paper. I made sure to use the best settings for this (tell the printer that it was loaded with glossy photo paper, use high settings in the properties, etc). The photos actually looked fantastic! The colors were bold (not washed out) and mostly accurate (teal colors seemed to favor blue). While this is not a photo printer, you could use it as a family's main printer to print schoolwork, office work, and pictures without sacrificing quality. PREFIX TO SCANNING I will prefix the next few paragraphs by stating that I am not a fan of most manufacturer's printing/scanning software. It is easily intimidating for many users, as the error messages that display when something doesn't work properly are either extremely vague, very technical, or just don't actually explain what the problem is. Even worse is the support that goes with these errors, as it is limited and often gives solutions that don't apply or are not applicable to your problem. SCANNING ISSUES Scanning was another matter, and this is where this device presented some problems. After completing the setup of the printer, I tested out the mobile app almost immediately, and scanning was relatively simple. The only hiccup I ran into is the scanner does not sense the location of the scan - you must go into the settings under the scan function and tell it whether you are scanning from the ADF (automatic document feeder) or the glass. I have used scanners in another popular brands that automatically check for this - first it checks the ADF, and if it senses there is no document, it assumes the glass. Several times in testing this feature, I forgot to change the document source first and either got an error (no document in ADF), or got a blank scan (nothing on glass). Scanning from my Windows computer presented problems almost immediately. Scanning is performed using the Epson ScanSmart application. I pressed "Scan" and immediately got an error stating that the scanner was in use by another computer and to wait until it finished, and then gave me the IP address of the device (which was the computer from which I was trying to initiate the scan). It was followed by another error that set that SmartScan was unable to communicate with the scanner. Then I tried to scan directly from the scanner to my computer using the device's touchscreen, and that same error popped up on my computer, and about 20 seconds later, the device dinged with an on-screen message saying it could not communicate with the printer. Researching this problem online yielded few answers. Of course, if you are not technical, or don't happen to know what device corospondes to the IP address the error is providing, it's of little use and adds to the confusion (see my prefix above) Even Epson's "Support" would only take me to the device's download page, but did not have any support articles at all, let alone specific to this issue. I finally found an article online with a suggestion to add the device in the Epson Scanner Settings application, which has to be done by IP address. Knowing that the WF-4820 was currently connected by Wi-Fi to my network via DHCP, I decided that for this solution to work, it would be best if the device had a static IP. I rarely set a static IP on a device, but rather set a reservation in my router for the device by MAC address. Weirdly, after I set the IP reservation and rebooted the printer, the SmartScan application started working! I never had to make changes in the Scan Settings program. If you are reading this and do not understand what I explained in the previous paragraph, you would be stuck at this point and unable to scan to your computer. And Epson's website won't be of much help. CONCLUSION Overall, this is great "workhorse" printer for home, or perhaps very small office environments, or a fantastic option for a single employee's desk. It will meet the demands that many smaller inkjets just won't, between speed, capacity, and features. If you are lucky enough to have a clean install process and none of the issues I had, this will be a quick and easy process to add this printer to your environment. If you are not so lucky, it will be helpful to have someone around (if not yourself) that is comfortable with troubleshooting technical issues. I personally would really like to see Epson do more to assist it's users when things go wrong, because they always do.

Ink runs out very fast…installation is difficult….

Works just great! Scans and copies like I want it to.

I had no real issue with this all-in-one printer. I bought it for home office use knowing that it didn't do double-side scanning. However, the copying and scanning functions stopped working after 3 months.

My old Epson workforce printer was better than this one.

Nope. I was so excited about this printer. There is a paper feed issue. It feeds multiple sheets of paper at once. Called Epson, they sent another one. The new one DOES THE SAME THING!!! Pain in the a....

This printer has given me headaches for the past year. It stays connected to the wifi but I have to reset the printer, computer and wifi frequently because the computer is rarely able to find the printer and vice versa. I have to add and delete the printer at least twice a month. I spend hours on the phone with Epson - they no longer allow you to chat...it's a mess

This is junk but couldn't find anything any better. Can't use scan from device, have to go into my computer and scan from there. This from their customer support who wanted me to connect with a cable to my modem. NOT Doing That, what is this 1999.

Prints too slow, color printing is slow as well. But not too bad

I am so disappointed with this printer. I have had several Epsons before and they were excellent. This printer loses it's internet connection frequently. It will work for a while and then I will get the message, "Looking for the printer" and then "Printer is not connected." It is not a trivial matter to go through the entire installation process again, hoping not to make a mistake somewhere and have to start over. Unless you are really tech-savvy and love a challenge, think twice before you buy it.

The printer is not very user friendly when it comes to printing envelopes. I wasted an entire morning trying to get it to print a standard number 10 envelope that I had saved was able to print on my old printer.

Used lots of ink, cant fax many pages, paper always jams when you want to make copies or fax something.

I wanted to love this printer, but it's been trying me these past 2 weeks. It refuses to print. I have waited more than two hours in total, with Epson technical support, to address the printing and scanning problem with this printer. It's exhausting to say the least. I will have to return and search for something else.

Good functionality - UNTIL you run out of ink (which is very fast). And Epson updates the device firmware to make it non-compatible with 3rd part ink cartridges. The result: you will pay dearly for official Epson brand ink cartridges, which will likely to be more than the cost of the printer after 1yr of use. There is a class action lawsuit filed against them for this practice... its a mess. AVOID EPSON.