Epson Workforce Pro WF-4820 Review

The Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4820 is a great all-around inkjet printer. With a fairly low initial purchase price and average operating costs, this printer is a great buy for those whose priority is budget and high quality. The WF-4820 pulls ahead of the pack with its stellar photo and graphic printing capabilities and fast print speeds. Where other printers might sacrifice performance or be strong in one metric, the WF-4820 is unwaveringly solid across the board.

Performance Comparison

Text Quality

We found the WF-4820 to print consistently good-quality monochrome text in our testing. We tested prints in various fonts, text sizes, and lighting conditions, and the WF-4820 had consistently good quality black and white quality and text resolution.

Thinner fonts did not display any noticeable fuzziness, as we saw with printers that did not perform well in this metric. Complex, shaded graphics maintained good grayscaling without striping or fade and had clearly delineated lines and edges.

Overall, the text quality performance of the WF-4820 was above average and was beaten only by a few of the best home printers in our lineup in this metric.

Operating Cost

The WF-4820 is unique in that while its initial purchase price and color cost per ream are relatively low, its black and white cost per ream is above average at about $28.56. This is an important consideration for this printer.

This means that if you're printing mostly black and white text, this printer will cost more over time than if you print predominantly color photos with some black and white text.

Keep in mind that while the black and white cost per ream isn't terrible, other printers in our lineup perform just as well or better for less. The key takeaway is that the WF-4820 is great at printing high-quality photos inexpensively, but if your priority is lots of black and white text and very few photo prints, this might not be the best choice for you.

Despite its slightly higher cost per black and white ream, estimated lifetime costs for the WF-4820 are among the lowest in our lineup, making it a great budget-friendly buy.

This means you can own and use this printer for a long time and rest easy knowing that you won't break the bank.

Ease of Use

Our testing of the WF-4820 was a mixed bag for this metric. Though, overall its cumulative score was solid. It scored highly with the initial setup because of its intuitive and easy-to-use display screen that guided us through the process. However, getting a WiFi connection up and running proved a little challenging.

Instead of pressing some buttons or using a mobile app, we had to install software from the printer's website and then navigate a somewhat opaque guide on how to get the software to create a WiFi connection. It wasn't terribly difficult, just a bit cumbersome compared to the other printers that we tested.

What we loved about this printer was its large, intuitive touch display. This feature made it a pleasure to navigate settings and adjust things as needed. There are helpful noises that indicate when ink is loaded correctly. The scanning lid can be propped open so that you can scan bulky items like textbooks. The WF-4820 has one of the most impressive monthly duty cycles of any printer we tested, making it a great choice if you have to print in large volumes — like thousands of pages per month.

Despite its less-than-ideal WiFi setup and some circuitous website navigation, we liked how easy it is to operate the WF-4820 for casual home printing and small business use alike.

Graphics/Photos

This is where the WF-4820 shines. We saw consistent, high-quality photo prints with great textural range and color display. Business graphics had crisp text and (mostly) accurate color. The resolution was great, with sharp and crisp images. Overall, the color quality was stellar; our only complaint was that some images were slightly less saturated than their source, but even that was subtle.

We think this is the WF-4820's sweet spot: great photo quality for an affordable price. You can buy much more expensive printers and experience similar photo quality, but for the price, the WF-4820 can't be beaten.

Only one other printer in our lineup could outclass the WF-4820 in this metric. But that printer also costs nearly double, and its operating cost insofar as color printing is concerned is slightly higher than the WF-4820. We think the WF-4820 is a great buy for the budget-conscious who want a good all-around printer with excellent photo printing capabilities.

Printing Speed

While not the absolute best, the WF-4820 can pump out a respectable ten duplex and simplex pages per minute. It was a little unique here in that most printers can finish duplex print jobs faster than simplex (essentially five pages instead of ten), but this shouldn't be an issue during real-world use cases.

Our mixed photo and text document test demonstrated how the WF-4820 could do it all--text was crisp, colors were vivid, and there was no noticeable striping anywhere. For an inkjet printer, those speeds are impressive, earning it a great score in this metric.

Photos are again where this printer shines, with full-page high-resolution color photo print speeds of up to 22 seconds per page. Although the WF-4820 isn't the fastest printer we tested, decent print speed and fantastic quality make this model a beast in this arena.

Should You Buy the Epson WF-4820?

The Epson Workforce Pro WF-4820 is a budget-friendly all-arounder that excels at high-quality photo printing. It is worth noting that this printer is heavy and has a large footprint, so if you're in a space-limited office, make sure that the dimensions of this machine will fit your requirements. So the WF-4820 is a great choice for a small office or studio that needs an affordable machine that is particularly adept at photo prints.

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