The Epson Workforce 840 is literally the 4th printer we've had this year. Yes, we print alot, but not so much that we go through an inkjet printer every month!
Our journey to find a printer that works actually started after our Canon bit the dust. It wasn't a terrible printer, but it was old and hogged ink like no one's business (before you ask, we bought it before we started this blog - or yes, we would have reviewed it too). So, we headed to Costco and picked up an HP, and another, and another (damn, that thing was a piece of crap!) and finally when we were at our wits end, the nice people at Epson sent us their Workforce 840 to review.
Queue angels singing in harmony...
And it worked!
We've given it a pretty thorough test now (6+ months) and after printing mass quantities of stuff on both Mac and PC's we are happy to report that -- it still works! There are some things I've found are really cool about this all-in-one printer and only a couple of "iffy" things. Standouts that are make this my favorite inkjet so far are ease of networking setup, print quality and ease of installation.
Setting the printer up was actually pretty easy. Most of the printer is one piece and anything needing to be installed is clearly marked. I don't do instruction manuals... well, unless I absolutely have to. I get something home and I just want to take it of the box and make it work - reading is too time consuming 
The Epson Workforce 840 fit within my hopes for an easy setup. It was literally 10 minutes and I had it plugged in with ink installed. Going through the on screen setup prompts took roughly 10 more minutes, but I was multi-tasking while setting it up, so if that says anything about the on-screen prompts - you can safely assume they are pretty easy to get through without a single cuss-word.
The Workforce 840 has been the most straight-forward scanner/printer in our home office to date with regard to networking. Anyone with a networked printer can probably tell you that it's not the easiest task on earth to get a printer working on a network with both Macs and PCs. Epson's drivers were setup on the PCs straight off the disk and worked immediately. The Macs needed an update that was detected by OSX Lion, which once installed worked correctly without troubleshooting (A first!!).
Lastly, the print quality doesn't disappoint. We've run an entire paper ream's worth of flyers, printed photos and even some of those pre-fab perforated tickets with great results. I'm no printer connoisseur, so I won't go into major comparison here - I'll just tell you that everything so far has printed beautifully. There's not been any of those pesky "print head misalignment's" or any of the other anomaly's we have grown used to with the other printers we've owned. It's been pretty fricken nice to have a printer that "just works" without having to Google for support or rip out any hair during the installation process.
With all of that glowing good-stuff we've experienced with the Workforce 840, I have only one complaint: The paper trays feel super flimsy. Nothing has broken, but I feel like I have to be extra careful with them because they are very light weight. The parts that slide out for paper insertion don't fit together nicely, so your paper is somewhat loosely inserted into the printer. Although it hasn't caused any paper jams or anything so far, I could see how it would be easy to place the paper in the tray off center and cause a jam.
Overall we are very happy to have gotten this printer. It's actually become the go-to printer in our home office over our the laser printer because it's just easy to run off a copy here and there without the need to warm-up or clean heads or whatever else printers do that waste a ton of ink doing just to make one stinkin' print.
Epson Workforce 840 Benefits:
- Ease of networking capabilities with both Mac and PC
- Prints everything from photos to flyers beautifully
Epson Workforce 840 Drawbacks:
- Paper trays seem flimsy
The Mrs. gives Epson's Workforce 840 a 4/5
I really like this printer alot. Not because it was given to us to review either. I like a printer that just. plain. works. I don't need to micro-examine how every single pixel prints - I've always just needed a printer to do its job and PRINT. Network printing in a PC / Mac environment is extremely important to me and this is seriously the first printer I've had that's worked great with both right out of the box without Google'ing drivers and tech support - that to me is priceless.
