Pros
- Consistent, laser-speed print
- No duplex drying time pauses
- Good quality photo prints
Cons
- Noisy when feeding paper
- No wireless connection
- Flimsy output tray
Key Features
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Review Price: £110.00
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Duplex print
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Fast print for class
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High capacity ink cartridges
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Dual paper trays
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Robust enough for office duties
Epson is moving into the office inkjet market with a whole range of new machines. This is the entry level model, but still boasts fast print, high capacity consumables and duplex print as standard.
The all-white case while large, even for a personal laser printer, is no bigger than a small office photocopier and can still sit happily on a desktop. Its lines are simple, with a well ordered control panel set into its sloping front lip. There’s no LCD display on this panel, just eight LEDs and six buttons.

At the bottom of the front panel is a pull-out paper cassette, which can take up to 250 sheets of plain paper and you can see how much is left by peering through a rectangular porthole in its front edge. Directly above this is a three stage, telescopic output tray with a flip-up paper stop. This is perhaps the weakest element of the printer’s design, as it’s flimsy and protrudes enough to be knocked as you pass by the machine.
At the back is a separate, 80-sheet tray which can be used for photo paper or special media, such as letterheads. This means you can have two separate types of paper set up simultaneously.
At the back are sockets for USB and 10/100 Ethernet, though there’s no wireless connection on this machine. Software is minimal but adequate, with a driver and network setup utility.

As with all Epson inkjets, the only consumable is ink, but in this case it’s in large cartridges which slot in from the front, once you’ve folded down the printer’s front panel. The four cartridges are available in three different capacities, which is unusual, with the highest capacity version good for 3,400 pages between changes – well into laser capacity levels.
Epson rates the Workforce Pro WP-4015DN at 26ppm for black pages and 24ppm for colour, but from our tests these are as fanciful as most Epson speed specs. That’s not to say this isn’t a quick printer, particularly for an inkjet, as we saw 10.7ppm on our 5-page black text test and this rose to 13.5ppm on the 20-page document. Our five-page black text and colour graphics document gave 6.0ppm.
These black text speeds are higher than from many more expensive, colour laser devices. For example, the £227 Dell 1350CNW managed a top black text speed of 10.0ppm, though it was a third faster, at 7.5ppm, when printing colour.

Where the Dell and virtually any low-cost colour laser can’t compete is in offering duplex print. The Workforce Pro WP-4015DN can print duplex pages at up to 8.5 sides per minute, not far off the single-sided speed. This is quicker than any other ink-jet we’ve tested, thanks to the complete lack of drying time between printing first and second sides of each page. The formulation of Epson’s pigmented inks must be the main factor in this.
A 15 x 10cm photo, printed on Epson’s own glossy photo paper, took 1:04 when printed at Best quality and a mere 50s at High quality. We could see very little difference between the two prints, so for speed we’d recommend using High quality for most purposes.
In fact, photo prints were very good, with none of the unnatural tones often produced by colour lasers, due to the smaller colour gamut they can produce. The detail is fine and even the darker colours show enough variation to pick out the content of the image.
Colour graphics on plain paper are bright and clear, with minimal sign of visible dither patterns and good registration of black text over colour. Reverse text is still very readable, though some elements of characters in fonts like Times Roman can be very thin.
This isn’t true of regular black text, which is clean and near laser quality. There’s little of the spikiness sometimes seen in Epson prints, though its economy mode shows the occasional faded line of text.

Using the highest capacity cartridges Epson sells, the ‘Pyramid’ series, gives running costs for ISO black pages of 1.8p, with 5.0p for ISO colour pages. This is pretty much the lowest cost we’ve seen for black print from an inkjet in this price range, and that includes anything from Kodak. Colour print is only marginally higher than from Kodak’s hero range.
Verdict
This is a pretty exceptional colour inkjet printer, offering near laser speeds, fast, uninterrupted duplex print, excellent print quality and running costs that will give any inkjet and certainly any laser a run for its money. At the price, it’s a real bargain.


Features
Networking | Yes |
Card slot | None |
Connection Type | Ethernet USB |
Extra Features | Duplex print, high yield cartridges |
Physical Specifications
Height (Millimeter) | 284mm |
Width (Millimeter) | 460mm |
Depth (Millimeter) | 420mm |
Weight (Gram) | 10.9g |
Printing
Type | Inkjet |
Duplex | Yes |
Paper Size | A4 |
Colour | Yes |
Number of Catridges | 4 |
Sheet Capacity | 250 sheet cassette + 80 sheet tray |
Print Resolution (Dots per inch) | 4800 x 1200dpi |
Rated Black Speed (Images per minute) | 26ipm |
Rated Colour Speed (Images per minute) | 24ipm |
Max Paper Weight | 256g/sm |
Print Without PC | No |
Functions
Scanner | No |
Copier | No |
Fax | No |
Scanning
Scan Resolution (Dots per inch) | N/Adpi |
Trusted Score
Score in detail
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Print speed 10
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Features 8
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Value 10
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Print Quality 9