Epson WorkForce WF-3640 Wireless Color All-in-One Inkjet Printer with Scanner and Copier
- Get Performance Beyond Laser with the WorkForce WF-3640, powered by PrecisionCore
- Save time – Professional-quality prints with speeds of 19 ISO ppm (black) and 10 ISO ppm (color)
- Save up to 40 percent lower printing cost vs. color laser
- Print anywhere, anytime – from iPad, iPhone, tablets and smartphones; includes wireless and Wi-Fi Direct
- Do more – auto 2-sided print, copy, scan and fax; plus 35-page Auto Document Feeder
Epson WorkForce WF-3640 Inkjet Multifunction Printer – Color – Photo Print – Desktop C11CD16201 74
List Price: $ 199.99
Price: [wpramaprice asin=”B00JXLGEUC”]
[wpramareviews asin=”B00JXLGEUC”]
Multiple functions done nicely enough…,
…with a few minor interface issues that keep this from hitting five stars. This is a solid 4.5 star device, and you can select it with confidence.
Users of early of “all-in-one” devices probably remember the one thing they had in common: each of their print/scan/fax copy functions tended to get done in a rather mediocre way. As a result, those needing higher quality copies, prints or scans went ahead and sucked up the expense (and the USB ports and counter space usage) for separate devices.
All-in-ones have evolved nicely since then. Today, most SOHO users without highly specialized printing/scanning/copying needs can be very well served by a capable all in one device. The WF-3640 is such a hardware, offering flexibility in connectivity and excellent overall performance in print, scan, copy and fax tasks.
Set-up was straightforward and without significant issues. I ran the set-up using both the USB (with a Windows 8 machine) and Ethernet options (with a Windows 7 machine). The WF-3640 has an excellent quick start guide followed by clear on-screen instructions that prompt you through its set-up routine. Once my data, power and phone cables were connected, total set-up time was about 20 minutes for printer initialization, software install, fax setup and self-test routines.
PROS:
-“Stand alone” fax and copy and photo printing capability. If your PC is off, you can still make copies (b-w and color), fax or print images from removable media using the integrated multi-media card reader or a USB device via ports on the lower left corner of the front panel.
-Two separate paper trays offer the flexibility keep both document and photo paper at the ready (up to 500 sheets of standard paper and presumably less for photo papers, which I do not print in great quantities). A single sheet rear feeder is also available for some specialized paper types and #10 envelopes.
-Auto-feed and two-sided scan/copy/fax options.
-Flexible connection options: wired (USB or ethernet) and wireless (WiFi).
-Programmable presets (via the touch screen) for different copy/fax/print settings.
-Scan output options to file, email or cloud storage (with some limitations described in the “cons” section below).
-Helpful indexing marks on paper tray join with easily adjustable guides for hassle-free paper loading.
-Excellent print quality on both documents (plain paper) and photos (on photo paper). My unscientific tests of “time to print” (from final print command to delivery in output tray: about 9.2 seconds for a single page business letter (via ethernet). This is identical to the time to delivery from an HP laser printer connected to same computer via USB 2. If you’re space constrained, you can dump your second printer (if the cost of consumables isn’t an issue for you).
-Excellent user documentation. A quick-start poster is included along with a more detailed “quick guide” booklet. In addition, the utility software installs a local web-based, highly detailed user guide.
-Remote printing ability via “Epson Connect”. Epson provides an email address that you can use to send print jobs to your printer (I don’t use this, as I have no use case for printing things in my house when I’m not there; your needs may be different).
-Many functions can be accessed directly via the front panel controls and touch screen (notably missing: a .tiff file format option in case you are interested in a non-lossy format for your scanning (.tiff option is available through the Epson Scan software).
CONS:
-Scan operation using Ethernet connectivity requires slightly more patience and a few user tweaks than using the USB option.
-The scanning interface software defaults to some options for file naming and storage locations that I didn’t find overly intuitive. These are correctable through the “Event Manager” and “Epson Scan” utilities.
-The scan to email (as an attachment) function only offers two mail client options: Outlook and Windows Live. Users of other clients (like Thunderbird) or web-based services, will have to navigate to the scanned file and attach it the old fashioned way.
-The touch-screen interface for saving and editing presets has some quirks; expect to go through the settings routine a few times before you get the process right.
-Most of the printer settings can be configured from the touch screen, but for ethernet and wireless users, it’s worth the extra effort to access the printer status and settings information via the its local web services. You’ll need to identify the printer’s local IP address from the network settings screen, then enter that address into a browser. Yes, you can ignore all the dire security warnings in Firefox, Chrome and proceed without worry; the only place you’re visiting is the inside of your Epson…
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|Excellent Features Are Overcome by Glitchy Software, Ghostly Printing,
As much as I want to love this EPSON WORKFORCE WF-3640 ALL-IN-ONE INKJET PRINTER, I simply cannot. It has many wonderful features–automatic two-sided printing, impressive speed, two paper trays (each tray with 250-sheet capacity, one tray that handles media of all sizes), a convenient rear feed for printing a single page or envelope, a 35-page automatic document feeder, energy-saving “sleep” and “power off” modes, and the ability to print directly from tablets and smartphones. The scanner is intuitive and easy to use; the copier is easy to use and makes excellent copies.
Unfortunately, so far in my experience, this machine has wireless communication problems. Something went seriously wrong with my original installation, which was done with a direct over-the-air wireless connection to my home network. The two biggest problems were an inability to print labels (though I practically stood on my head, trying to change the paper source settings from letter size to 4″ x 6″), and an inability to change the printer settings within the Firefox browser. Some of the printer setting options would cause Firefox to hang so badly that the whole Firefox process required restarting (using Task Manager).
After verifying that my truly excellent Epson WorkForce 645 Wireless All-in-One Color Inkjet Printer had no difficulty printing labels, I decided that the WF-3640 software must be corrupted. This time I installed the software using a USB printer cable connected directly to my PC. The reinstallation corrected the problem with label-printing (the printer recognized that the size of the paper in the top tray had changed). But the WF-3640 still doesn’t play well with Firefox, though Firefox hangs less often. (I have installed the latest WF-3640 firmware update–I hope that future updates will fix the browser issue).
The main reason that I’ve been changing printer settings in Firefox, is that the out-of-the-box “print density” settings for the WF-3640 are far too light for my taste. The default print density is -20, and I suppose that this saves ink, but I need the density at 0 (“text” setting) to get easily readable pages. On “draft” setting, the pages are pale and ghostly, sometimes almost white, and generally useless. What’s more, when I use a Kindle Fire wireless printing app–an app that works fine with the solidly reliable Epson WF-645 and the equally reliable, small-footprint Epson WorkForce WF-2530 Wireless All-in-One Color Inkjet Printer–the pages come out very light gray, which are nearly useless. With the Kindle app, I have to set the printer to “high” rather than “standard” color to get acceptable printing.
In time, with continued effort, I’ll probably figure out the best printer settings for all my devices (PC, Kindle Fire, iPad2). However, my experience with the WF-3640 so far is that it’s difficult to set up–even though the lovely touchscreen is more intuitive and easier to use than the touchscreens for the other two printers mentioned. The software just seems temperamental and glitchy.
Also, in addition to requiring regular ink replacement, this WF-3640 requires occasional replacement of a “maintenance box” (about $15 from the Epson store). The maintenance box collects excess ink when the ink nozzles require cleaning–I found out about it when cleaning my printer’s nozzles to make sure that clogged nozzles weren’t causing the too-light printing. Because of the many nice features coupled with difficult setup, I rate the WF-3640 at 3 stars (“It’s okay” on the official Amazon scale).
UPDATE, 9/10/14: After installation of a fourth new firmware update, wireless printing from an iPad2 is acceptable (barely), but wireless printing from a Kindle Fire HD is not. Printing from Firefox with settings at high quality is good.
When I contacted technical support by email to explain my problems with too-light printing, I was told to clean the nozzles, and also given a number to phone to arrange for a replacement product if that didn’t fix the problem. It didn’t, so I called the number. It connected me with a technician who told me to try all the things I’d already tried (including reinstalling the software with a USB cable connected directly to a PC). Clearly disappointed to hear that I’d been that route, the technician asked whether I was using Epson ink (yes) and paper (no, I was using HP multipurpose, a high-quality paper). Oh, said the technician, you must try Epson paper “to narrow down the…
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