The second most expensive printer to purchase, Epson’s C900 outlay cost is quite high given its fairly low quality results; as a consequence, this printer’s value rating suffers. Saving face, it managed to finish fourth overall for the speed portion of our testing.
Surprisingly, for a printer of this cost, it is another unit to lack integrated network connectivity, although it is available as an expansion option.
Despite the now mainstream usage of Linux as a desktop and server OS within the SOHO and corporate environment, to its credit, this was one of only two printers in our roundup that featured native driver support for the operating system.
Our TCO predictions show the low monthly duty cycle of 1,200 or less turns out to be quite economical, although pushing the cycle up the OKI C5100 moves in and dramatically reduces printing costs.
Print quality was reasonable with very good text reproduction even down to small scaled fonts, remaining sharp and readable. Very minor dithering occurred on our colour torture test around three dimensional text, although this was hardly noticeable. One colour test revealed dithering and banding through gradients despite the image remaining sharp. Blacks were a little muddied; whites were not true white, slightly saturated green. Overall not bad, but below average for the colour units.
The printer ships supplied with 80MB of SDRAM, enough for standard office usage, although if you require more the unit will support up to a maximum amount of 144MB.
Lacking any physical buttons on the chassis, this printer is structurally similar to the Minolta 2300W, with a front opening hinged door displaying the toner rolls. At surface level on the side of the unit we find the paper housing with capacity for 200 sheets of A4, an additional capacity paper cassette is also available for those who find 200 sheets isn’t enough.
With fast colour printing and economical running costs for low volume printing and only slightly higher costs on high volume printing, this unit is best suited for SMB’s looking for a fairly cheap, speedy printer with expansion routes, although the OKI comes more recommended.