Epson is known for making printers that perform well and give you a lot of value for the investment you make in them. We spent some time with the Epson L6555 which is an interesting device that can print in duplex mode and comes with a creative ink tank system. Here is our review of this device
This one is an all-in-one ink tank system printer, it comes with fax and duplex functionalities as well as a suite of connectivity features, helping you to achieve cost-effective speed and quality. It comes Automatic Duplex printing support, which is very useful when there is quite a lot to print and you have to save paper, or you are printing the draft of a book.It gives you a print speed of up to 33ppm (13.7ipm). It also has Fax and ADF capability. In terms of connectivity, it supports Ethernet & Wi-Fi Direct. Epson gives you a warranty of 2 years or 50,000 pages, whichever comes first. This is very handy and augurs well with the other features of the printer.
The initial setup instructions are very easy to follow, but then, it eventually asks you to read the printed setup instructions. And we did only to see that all the printed instructions say is to press the OK button for over 3 seconds. We did that, and then there was something new: the ink needs to be charged into the printer and that the charging process takes roughly 20 minutes.It took us a tad bit more than that. So the lesson there is that you can’t be in a hurry to start printing with your brand new ink tank system printer. And one more thing, the ink bottles and the tank charging need a bit of getting used to, initially we made a teeny mess, but then eventually got used to it.
We were very impressed by reliable and consistent quality with which we were getting 4800 dpi high resolution output. The L655 prints black and white documents with practically razor sharp text that are water and smudge-resistant. We were able to print lab-quality glossy photos on photo media paper. The L655 also allows you to print on automatic duplex. Each set of inks yields up to 6,000 pages for black and 6,500 pages for color, offering one of the lowest cost of printing duplex. Epson claims their new L655 All-in-one ink-tank printer can print A4 size monochrome prints at 12 paise/page and colored prints at 20 paise/page, which is very effective and affordable. And this is one feature that makes this printer stand clearly out from others. It is nothing short of a printing powerhouse.
The printer has a set of buttons and a 2.2-inch monochrome LCD backlit display. A home, back, color/B&W, stop and redial key for fax are present with a contacts button placed below it. There is a paper cartridge that can hold A4 size sheets to 3.5×5-inch photo papers and all other relevant sizes of paper. The paper size adjustment is done using the clips that are available inside the tray that can also be detached from the printer.
The printer produces good quality crisp documents. When we tried printing PDF and Word files, we got strong blacks and precise colors. When we tried photos on glossy paper, it gave us arguably the best of colors any printer could offer in this price range. We were very impressed with the quality of the printouts from the device and these came out at an excellent speed of printing as we mentioned earlier. This is due to the PrecisionCore Technology print head from Epson resulting in printouts that are of a higher “resolution”. This is achieved by creating smaller ink dots for finer precision without affecting the speed of printing.
There is support for Google Cloud Printing and Apple AirPrint built-in and we tested the Google Cloud Print, works like a charm. One issue we have is the fact that setting up was a strenuous and time intensive process, you can’t power on, connect and go with it in one shot. It would have been a great plus to have duplex scanning too. But given the overall printing power and options that this brilliant device packs in for the price that it retails at, we really are not complaining at all.
Verdict
Given the really nifty the ink tank technology that the printer comes with, the printing costs are really very low and make sense for small and medium businesses that need printers that perform consistently. At a price tag of between INR 22000 and INR 24000 based on where you buy it from, it is an affordable and completely value for money device. In the long run, the ink bottles also earn their due and offset the initial investment in the printer. This is a must buy that you will thank us later for.
