Epson

Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4820

Inkjet all-in-oneIndividual cartridgesEpson ReadyPrint

Speed is what the WorkForce Pro line sells, and 25 ISO pages a minute in black is genuinely quick for an inkjet — quicker than several of the laser printers in this catalogue. It comes with the office furniture to match: a 250-sheet cassette, a 35-sheet feeder, fax, Ethernet, automatic duplex and a 4.3-inch touchscreen, all for under two hundred dollars. The catch is the business model. This is a cartridge printer, and the purchase price is low because Epson expects to sell you DURABrite cartridges or a ReadyPrint subscription for years. Epson rates the 822XL set at 1,100 ISO pages a cartridge, black or colour, which works out a shade over four cents a mono page — decent for a cartridge machine, and still roughly ten times what the tank printers here charge for the same sheet.

Approx. price: ~$199
Cost per mono page: 4.4¢
Cost per colour page: 14¢
Cost to own, 5,000 pages: ~$518
Print speed, mono: 25 ISO ppm

Best for

Speed and a full feature set now, with the cartridge bill accepted as the price of it.

marks an estimate. Computed from the consumable's ISO page yield and its list price. An estimate. Purchase price plus ink or toner over the pages shown, assuming four mono pages for every colour page. Price is an approximate snapshot from our last catalogue update.

What it costs to own

Black consumable: Epson 822XL black cartridge · 1,100 ISO pages · ~$47.99
Colour consumable: Epson 822XL colour cartridges · 1,100 ISO pages · ~$36.99 each
Cost per mono page: 4.4¢
Cost per colour page: 14¢
Cost to own, 5,000 pages: ~$518
Cost to own, 200 pages/month for 3 years: ~$658 (7,200 pages)

Computed from the consumable's ISO page yield and its list price. An estimate. How this is worked out

Cost to own · 5,000 pages

Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4820~$518
~$199 printer + ~$319 supplies
Epson WorkForce WF-2950~$815
~$129 printer + ~$686 supplies
Canon PIXMA TR8620a~$691
~$199 printer + ~$492 supplies

purchase priceink or toner. An estimate: purchase price plus 5,000 pages at each printer’s computed cost per page, assuming 4 mono pages for every colour page. Printers whose consumable price we could not source are left out.

Specifications

Manufacturer-published figures. Cost lines are computed from the consumable figures above and are estimates.

Approx. price: ~$199
Cost per mono page: 4.4¢
Cost per colour page: 14¢
Cost to own, 5,000 pages: ~$518
Cost to own, 3 years: ~$658
Technology: Piezo inkjet
Ink system: Individual cartridges
Inks: 4
Black consumable: Epson 822XL black cartridge · 1,100 pages
Colour consumable: Epson 822XL colour cartridges · 1,100 pages
Third-party ink lock: No
Ink subscription: Epson ReadyPrint
Print speed, mono: 25 ISO ppm
Print speed, colour: 12 ISO ppm
Functions: Print · Copy · Scan · Fax
Two-sided printing: Auto
Document feeder: 35 sheets
Two-sided scanning: No
Paper capacity: 250 sheets
Max paper size: Legal
Borderless photo: Yes
Resolution: 4800 × 2400 dpi
Connectivity: Wi-Fi · Ethernet
Mobile printing: AirPrint · Mopria
Display: 4.3" colour touchscreen
Dimensions: 16.7 × 16.7 × 13.7 in
Weight: 21.2 lb
Released: 2020

Features

25 ISO ppm black, faster than most home laser printers
250-sheet cassette with a 35-sheet document feeder
Automatic two-sided printing
Fax, Ethernet and dual-band Wi-Fi
4.3-inch colour touchscreen
Pigment DURABrite ink that resists water and highlighter smearing

Document feeder Auto duplex No ink lock Borderless photo Ethernet Fax

In its favour

The fastest inkjet in this catalogue, and faster than several lasers
A complete office machine — cassette, ADF, fax, Ethernet, duplex — under $200
Pigment ink does not smear under a highlighter, unlike most dye inkjets
Large touchscreen makes walk-up copying and scanning straightforward

Against it

A full set of 822XL cartridges costs about eighty per cent of what the printer costs
Cartridges, not tanks: the long-run cost is structurally higher than any EcoTank here
Epson pushes a subscription, which is convenient until you stop printing and keep paying
The ADF scans one side only
Bulky for the size of paper it handles

What owners say

Distilled from owner discussions and long-term published reviews

The WorkForce Pro line sells speed, and 25 ISO pages a minute is faster than several lasers in this catalogue — owners upgrading from a budget all-in-one consistently mention it. The pigment ink is the other real advantage: output that survives a highlighter and a damp envelope, which dye inkjets do not.

The pattern in owner discussion is familiar and predictable. People buy it because it is cheap and well-specified, then discover what the cartridges cost, then start looking at tank printers. It is the exact arc that sells EcoTanks, and Epson sells both. If your printing is light, the low purchase price is real value; if it is not, the arithmetic turns against it quickly.

What owners like

Genuinely fast for an inkjet — owners moving from a cheap all-in-one describe the speed difference as the thing they notice first
Pigment DURABrite ink does not smear under a highlighter or run when damp, which owners printing forms and labels care about
A full office feature set — cassette, feeder, fax, Ethernet, duplex, big touchscreen — for well under two hundred dollars
The 4.3-inch touchscreen makes walk-up copying and scanning straightforward

Common complaints

It is a cartridge printer, and owners who bought it for the low purchase price describe the ink bill arriving as a shock
Epson pushes its subscription hard, which owners find as irritating here as HP's equivalent
The feeder scans one side only
Large for the paper size it handles

Questions that keep coming up

Why is there no cost per page shown for this printer?

No OEM cartridge price and ISO yield for this set is published anywhere that can be checked; every listing that turns up is a compatible-cartridge seller. Rather than publish a guess, the figure is left blank. On a cartridge printer that is the number that decides whether the low purchase price was a bargain, so it is worth pricing the cartridges yourself before buying.

Is the pigment ink actually different?

Yes, and it is the WorkForce line's real advantage. Pigment sits on the paper rather than soaking in, so text stays sharp on ordinary copy paper and does not smear under a highlighter or run if the page gets damp. Owners printing shipping labels, forms and anything that gets handled specifically mention it.

Should I buy this or an EcoTank instead?

It depends entirely on volume. This is faster and much cheaper to buy; an EcoTank is far cheaper to feed. The crossover arrives sooner than people expect — at a few hundred pages a month it is well inside the first year. The cost-to-own comparison on this site is built to answer exactly that question.

Computed from the consumable's ISO page yield and its list price. An estimate. Owner notes are a summary of what people who own the machine report, not a test result — there is no lab behind this site.