EPSON WORKFORCE 1100 BLACK OEM INK CARTRIDGE

Epson WorkForce 1100 Review

Overview:

There comes a time when you need to print something big, but you don’t want to use a large plotter just to print it.  That’s where the Epson WorkForce 1100 Inkjet printer comes in.  Able to print sheets up to 13” x 19”, the 4-color printer has dual black ink tanks and the same Epson laser-like print quality that everybody loves.

Pros:

The first thing to remember is the WorkForce 1100 is a color printer for publishing, not for printing photographs. It uses the industry standard 4-color CMYK system instead of the 6-color ink used by “photo-printers”. While it does a good job with enlargements, it will not give the same color saturation and quality a photo-printer can give.

You don’t want to share your desk with the WorkForce. With a footprint of 24.3 inches wide and 12.7 inches deep (almost 31 ½ inches deep fully extended), this 26.3 pound top-feed printer needs plenty of elbow room.

The WorkForce has no paper cassette tray; instead, up to 100 sheets of 20# bond paper can be loaded from the top of the printer. Media sizes can be as small as 3½” x 5” up to 13” x 19”. The 13” x 19” print area allows for making full-bleed Tabloid or Ledger-size prints. Because it’s a top-feed, there is no duplexer, so any two-sided printing will have to be done manually.

The inkjet nozzles can deliver the color to paper in 5 different droplet sizes. Maximum print resolutions are digitally optimized to produce 5760 x 1440 dpi.  For laser-quality printing, the WorkForce 1100’s print speeds are comparable to an actual multi-pass color laser printer: 13 ppm for black prints, 5½ ppm in color. Otherwise, letter-sized print speeds go as fast as 30 ppm in B&W, 17 ppm in color.

Cons:

OS X users will have to go online to download the drivers to get their Macs to recognize the WF1100, but that’s relatively simple. The extra utilities included in the CD are for Windows computers.

If you want to just print out a letter and you figure you can save on ink by just printing in black, the WorkForce has other ideas. While the printer software does offer a selection to choose to conserve the black ink by using all four colors to make a composite black, Epson has a footnote stating “All inks are used for both black and color printing.”  And speaking of inks, while Epson has said the microchip they have on their ink cartridges will not prevent you from using non-Epson brands for their printer, there have been complaints about not only the printer not accepting generic ink, but sometimes rejecting Epson’s own cartridges.

No Ethernet interface. Considering this printer to be marketed to the business sector, the word “Work” in the WorkForce name should have been replaced with “Personal”.  Having only a USB 2.0 interface, the only way to network this printer is to “share” it through a computer, which is not a very reliable method for a classroom or a department. The best workaround is to buy a USB printer server adapter to get network connectivity without slaving a computer.