Customer Reviews

Epson WorkForce 500 All-in-One Printer (Black) (C11CA40201)

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(16)
1 star:		(43)

 

 

I've never been a fan of All-in-One's because I always felt too much was compromised; I just wouldn't settle for a poor printer, or scanner, or copier or fax machine just for the convenience of having everything in one box. Epson has changed the playing field, however. I'm not saying Epson has merged the absolute best of each of those pieces of equipment, but they have produced a remarkably well designed and engineered product with minimal compromise. The printer is excellent, the text approaches laser quality and the copier and fax work fine, the 30 page automatic document feeder works without a hick-up -- and what a joy that is!. The scanner is fast, operates with very easy to use intuitive software and it produces excellent text and photo scans. Epson also includes OCR software with the unit.

Yes, you can buy a better printer... there certainly are printers that print faster and print photos better (I have a $1,000 photo printer that I use for the "serious" stuff) but this one works fine for the everyday tasks. And there are better scanners, this one won't do negatives or slides, for example, but for most everyday scanning tasks it's absolutely fine. And as far as fax and copy machines go, the fax and copies are first rate and better than every other "home office" machine I've tried.

All in all, Epson has a winner with the Workforce 500. I really only needed a new fax machine, but the price on this unit was so low I thought I might as well try it and at least I'd have a backup printer if I needed one. Despite my preconceived notions, besides being a great fax machine, it turned out to be a very good printer, scanner and copier. I guess you learn something everyday. Setup was quick and the startup guide takes you step-by-step through the process with easy to follow pictures and text. I had the unit up and running within 15 minutes on a computer using Vista Home Premium.

I'm delighted with my purchase and I use it frequently for my everyday printer and scanner needs. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

I don't often write product reviews, but I've been so happy with my Epson WorkForce 500 since I got it that I had to write in. I've always used Epson printers before because I think the print and photo quality is the highest I've seen. I suffered along without a feeder because Epson didn't offer an all-in-one with one, so I am thrilled with the Epson 500 because in addition to being much faster than my previous printer, it has the feeder and the fax incorporated into the printer. In the first week after getting the Epson 500, I was able to pack up the fax machine on my desk that took up lots of space and save myself a trip to Staples(and the associated expense)to have a 40-page document copied (something I never would have done on a flat-bed printer).

In terms of ease of use, I find it to be relatively intuitive. I did, however, have a little trouble on setup (I did not fully read the directions!) because the OK key was not always the default button to move on to the next step. Once I read the directions, though, it was extremely simple.

In summary, I couldn't be more thrilled with my purchase - it's a fabulous home office printer with every feature you could want.

Very nice All-In-One. It prints beautifully; crisp, clear, & bold. The photo printer works as well as my stylus photo printer. Great detail and color to the pictures. The fax works fine. I've faxed a couple of things. One had ten pages and I'm not sure if it was this fax or the fax on the other end, but while faxing the "transmission was interrupted" so I had to refax the last few pages. The scanner works OK. I've only used it twice to copy recipes from a book and they were clear. The print speed is good but not super speedy. It faxes a little slowly. It is also a little noisy but not obnoxiously so. The set up and connection to my Mac was easy. No tricky requirements. I've had it for about 10 days & so far it is working seamlessly. It has a relatively small footprint and looks very sleek. Ink is easy to load too but not cheap. I like the separate cartridges. You will need a USB cord though.

I purchased this product after my HP 5610 stopped working. I make heavy use of the ADF scanning and noticed the Epson Workforce 500 was billed as supported duplex printing. Both of these selling points failed to perform as expected and I returned the unit.

There is no duplex printing support on this device. Despite marketing speech to the contrary the only double sided printing support is that a window pops up on your screen requesting you to turn the sheet of paper around to print on the opposite side.

The scanner's document feeder did not perform at all. The construction made it relatively difficult to add standard 8.5 x 11 sheets of paper into the feeder without getting caught on a number of ledges and horizontal barriers meant to keep the paper in alignment. Once the sheet to be scanned was properly inserted the scanner was almost never able to scan a sheet of paper without "slipping" - when this occurred the drive motors continued to move and the scanner portion believe the sheet was sliding past it but in reality the paper was stuck midway thru the scanner.

I received this printer about a month ago. I plugged it in, printed about 3 pages from MapQuest just to verify it worked and about 10 or so pages since then. During those 30 days, I left it in standby. I did this because another user suggested not turning if off and on each day as it would purge the nozzles and consume too much ink. The other reviewer just recommended leaving it on all the time to save on ink.

For whatever reason, when I went to print my resume last night on nice paper, all the color inks only reads 2/3 full. I only printed about a dozen pages since I unpacked the printer, and the inks read full on day 1. I did not print photos or anything beyond standard quality, so I was very surprised to see the ink drain itself in standby mode to that extent.

What really upset me was when I took my two resumes to work for an interview later. When I looked at them, I realized they were very crooked with the paper being worn on the edge. I figure I either had the blue slider too tight (the slider is located where the paper goes in) or the paper was too thick.

I fortunately had my resume saved in my email, so I was able to reprint it at work on plain paper, a letdown. One of my co-workers agreed with me that the resume printed from the Epson 500 was not presentable.

When I got home, I carefully reloaded the printer with plain paper, carefully aligning it and I tried to slide the blue slider further over. I was unable to slide the blue slider further as it is designed to handle paper no wider than 8.5 inches. I printed several pages, got worn marks on some with crooked text. I re-inserted and tried again with the same problems.

Fortunately, I am on my last 30 days with Amazon so I was able to get a return label. I suspect a replacement printer would not have the issue with the slanted text. However, this printer also has a thirst for ink in standby mode, so I have decided not to replace it.

I have been more frustrated with this printer purchase than any other purchase I can remember. This printer seems to have been designed to make Epson money. The original Epson-manufactured printer cartridges cost almost as much as the printer to replace, and Epson has changed the chips on their cartridges which inhibits the easy use of more reasonably priced non-manufacturer replacements. It also seems programmed to run out of ink - as the non-OEM printer cartridges have more than HALF of the ink in them when my printer refuses to recognize them anymore. Ridiculous! And these cartridges drain ink amazingly quickly. I was printing our Christmas letter in color on plain paper with a handful of tiny pictures and two pictures only about 2 X 2.5 inches in size. The original cartridges included with the printer lasted for only about 50 pages before one of the cartridges ran out. The others soon followed - leaving me scrambling to find more ink in order to get ANY of my functionality of my printer back.

This printer does print nicely, if the image happens to be on the page and not crooked. And if you are out of any of the ink cartridges - forget about printing or copying in black and white OR even scanning or faxing. The whole machine shuts down - flashing a ink out message - until you replace the cartridge. Ridiculous, again.

Also, I frequently printed photos before on glossy paper. The Epson no-smear ink is great on regular paper (if it isn't already out!?!) However, while the glossy photo paper has a sheen to it, the Epson ink does not, creating a very unsatisfactory picture.

Please look elsewhere on this model!!!

I bought this a few weeks ago for $99 and think it's excellent. The print quality is as good as I've seen in a regular printer, and with the scanner/fax/copier thrown in it becomes quite a deal.

The printer driver lets you set up shortcuts to common print settings, and offers a lot of customization. It has a quiet mode, and the printer is reasonably quiet and fast. It was easy to remove the taskbar icon and hide the print status popups, low ink reminders, and internet update reminders.

The inks give a more matte finish than usual in inkjets I think. The scanner is as good as my old Canon $60 scanner. It's best to leave these printers on all the time as otherwise they use up a noticeable amount of ink when initializing.

There aren't many negatives. I think the difference between it and more expensive printers is in how accurately it aligns the printing area on the page. The printing area can be slanted or off center. The printer is quite slow when printing in highest quality, it's fast in other settings. When you're printing big photos, the ink smells pretty bad. It would be nice to have a driver setting to turn off the printer's LCD control panel, or at least to set how long it remains on after printing.

Have had this Printer and the CX9400Fax which is the same as the WorkForce, just upgraded, for a long time, both are excellent!

1st Buy your Ink from B&B Inks on Ebay a set of 4 is $14.00 with shipping.

2nd This is a 95.00 printer not a 300.00 office machine, quit griping when you try to run 200 pages a day thru it.

3rd Mine works perfect, the only time I have ever had a problem is when I run Laser Copies thru the ADF, the slick laser print sometimes causes the pages to pull two at a time or not at all.

4th I have run 62 pages thru the ADF to fax and not had a problem. I average about 40 pages a day of scans, faxes and printing, works 99.99% of the time perfect!

5th Ink seems to average about 350-500 pages, I do not print pictures.

6th Yes, leaving it on all the time makes the Ink last longer, it does have a hibernation mode to make it Green.

7th It is well worth the money, I have a friends Office who converted all their HP's to Epsons and never regretted it! I think they bought 9 of them.

STAY FAR-FAR AWAY FROM EPSON AND THIS ITEM!!!
Horrible product and horrible customer service.

Was impossible to set up with my Dell desktop as driver kept being rejected. After two days of futility, I contacted Epson for help. It took them 3 days to get back to me with an absolutely worthless comment, asking me to resubmit the request if I wasn't happy with their response. Meanwhile I formatted my computer and reloaded all drivers, just in case the problem was on my end. Still nothing. It worked with my laptop, but nothing I could do would make it work with the desktop. Epson must let the consumer know if the printer is not compatible with certain computers. Next, the ink is ridiculously expensive. Testing the printer while tryng to set it up, cost me more than half of the ink in the ink cartridges. So by the time I set it up with my laptop, I had to get replacement ink. Don't want to buy the same cheap cartridges that are now half empty, so I look at the "High Capacity" cartridges. I found that these could only be purchased from Epson!!! Three separate ink cartridges (required) cost $52.00!!!!!!!! Another $20.00 for black ink. Epson has the nerve to charge $72.00 for replacement ink.

STAY FAR-FAR AWAY FROM EPSON AND THIS ITEM!!!

This product arrived free shipping in record time from Amazon. After opening the box I was impressed with the quality and light weight of the machine. During set up I discovered no cartridges were included as promised in the box so I called the Epson 800 number. A helpful agent answered within reasonable time (less than 2 minutes) and promised to send missing items in 3 business days maximum to our house. Cartridges did arrive within three days and set up was a breeze. But the cartridges did not have much ink. You will need to supply a USB cord. Print quality is superior to any I've seen in this price category. New cartridges will cost you $53.00-63.00 a set (4 minimum/5 maximum). Highly recommended.
Update one year later: Ink supply in cartridges depletes quickly so will cost you to use this printer.