Reviews for Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4530 All-in-One

I have my WorkForce Pro since about 5 months and I must say it is the worst printer I ever bought. I'm a graphic design professional and I can judge more or less what to expect from a printer like this one - and i planned it to use it for fax reception and printing letters or invoices. It replaced a similar model from HP. This product is by far inferior to the HP.

The hardware seems ok, except that the output tray is really fragile and badly designed - it also looks quite bad when it's pulled out. (you have to have it pulled out, otherwise the sheets are flying through the room). If you want to put the tray back in, it won't go back easily and you need to fiddle around to get it back inside. The display is of bad quality, the design of the interface looks like it's been made in the mid 90ies.

Epson clearly doesn't keep its promise. The print quality, specially for black text is far below a Laserprinter, even in "quality" mode the text just isn't sharp. Epson also promises the prints are immediately dry, which just isn't true. I print invoices on the machine and fold them after printing, the ink just smears even if i try to fold them very carefully, and i don't have wet hands.

The worst part of the machine is the software. Most of the functions just won't work on a Mac. There's not one central App that lets you manage all of the functions but there are plenty of little apps making it very confusing and time intensive to get the thing working. Some features as Fax reception to the Mac, or sending Faxes from the Mac just won't work. I tried using the machine over WiFi and it's not stable at all, after a software update from Epson the WiFi connection is just going to work for a few minutes after a restart, then it's lost again.

Another bad point are the initialising cartridges, filled with "air" instead of ink.

Finally it's really hard to reach the Epson support, and it's really unhelpful and very badly organised. After replacing the yellow cartridge, there's no more yellow ink coming out of the printhead. I've spend hours trying to contact Epson on this, with the only result that they recommend me getting back in contact with the store where i bought it.

I've lost days to get the thing working, now after a few months it's already broken.

Actually the whole package is just so bad I'm going to leave it at my local recycling center and get some product that works. I'll try to sell the replacement cartrides I still have in stock on ebay.

135 of 165 people found this useful

The complaint is not with the device itself. It is well built, and looks like it will last. Prints quickly and copies are sharp and clear.
Into my third hour of trying to get this remarkable printer to function as a scanner with a Mac. Epson's scan program was never upgraded for Mountain Lion and it crashes constantly. The alternative is to use Image Capture which as we all know is very feature limited. I will probably have to spend another $20 to $50 to get a third party scan program so that this relatively high end device will scan as well as the $90 Canon it replaced. Shame on Apple for selling this as a Mac compatible device. Incredible!

22 of 25 people found this useful

I just bought this product, but was quite nervous due to some of the reviews here. I was very careful unwrapping it in case I would need to return it immediately. No worries, it works fine in Mtn Lion (OSX 10.8) and iOS 6.

The longest part of the installation was removing all the tape and assorted plastic/foam packing materials. I went through the setup instructions included with the printer, but skipped the software installation step and went to the network setup. The printer found my local WIFI network, I selected it from a list of networks, entered the password and it immediately connected.

The first thing I did was print from my iPhone, no setup, just clicked on Print, selected the printer and it printed. Bang, first time, no questions, no issues.

On my Mac I went to System Preferences > Print & Scan, clicked on the "+" and it found the printer. Actually the printer was in a little drop down, it had already found it, didn't even need to go to a dialog box.

On the Mac I could immediately print, then tried double sided which also worked fine. I scanned using Preview (File > Import From Scanner) from the flatbed, haven't yet tried the document feeder, but the option was active.

Bottom line, installation was very simple and I can print from my Mac and iPhone, as well as scan from my Mac. It works, no fuss, no hassles. I'm not sure why other people had problems, but it was totally hassle free for me.

7 of 7 people found this useful