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Epson Stylus Office B40W review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £93
inc VAT

A simple, well-built network inkjet that performs well and is inexpensive to run. It loses out only to the better-value HP Officejet 6000.

Specifications

piezo inkjet, 38ppm print speed, USB, 10/100 Ethernet, 802.11b/g wireless, 161x435x250mm

http://www.oyyy.co.uk

Epson’s no-frills Stylus Office B40W is a sleek, simple and compact business inkjet.

You can install high-yield ink cartridges that will print 995 black and 815 colour pages. The black T1001 cartridge costs around £17, meaning a mono print costs just 1.7p. That’s cheaper than many mono laser printers that cost under £100. The B40W has great networking capabilities, too, with WiFi and Ethernet in addition to the usual USB port.

The printer has only a few buttons: one to load paper, another to cancel print jobs, a third to change the ink and another to enable or disable the wireless radio. Unlike many recent single-function inkjets, the Stylus Office B40W has a fixed print head built into the printer. This is inconvenient if nozzles get clogged, as it will require time and ink to clean. However, this is unlikely if you use your printer regularly.

This is a business printer, so Epson doesn’t expect it to be used much for printing 6x4in holiday snaps. This doesn’t excuse the B40W’s poor loading of 6x4in paper, as it claims to be able to print borderless images up to A4. It took quite a bit of trial and error to position our 6x4in sheets so they could be loaded without either slipping out of position or being trapped by the adjustable paper support. Once we’d resolved this, photo quality was good. Even drab brown and grey shades were richly reproduced, but solid areas of dark colour had a slight reddish tint and some 10x8in prints were fuzzy around the edges. Photos printed slowly, at around three minutes per 6x4in print, but a typical photo costs just 20p including paper.

A4 plain paper prints were blisteringly fast. At 13.6ppm for standard-quality mono text, the B40W rivals some personal laser printers. The sharp lettering is similarly impressive. Draft prints are even faster at 16.1ppm, but suffer from jagged, pixelated text. Smooth, solid colour documents printed at standard quality emerged at a respectable 4ppm.

The B40W is capable and inexpensive to run, but it can’t quite rival HP’s Officejet 6000, which cost even less to buy and run.

Basic Specifications

Rating ****
Maximum native print resolution 5,760×1,440dpi

Quoted Speeds

Quoted speed, mono A4 38ppm
Quoted speed, colour A4 38ppm

Tested Speeds

Time for two 10x8in photos 1.0 9m 7s
Time for six 6x4in photos 1.0 18m 24s

Print Quality

Number of ink colours 4
Number of ink cartridges 4
Maximum number of ink colours 4
Maximum number of cartridges 4

Physical and Environmental

Standard printer interfaces USB, 10/100 Ethernet, 802.11b/g wireless
Optional printer interfaces none
Size 161x435x250mm
Weight 4.0kg
Noise (in normal use) 41dB(A)
Power consumption standby 3W
Power consumption idle 4W
Power consumption active 18W

Paper Handling

Maximum paper size A4/legal
Maximum paper weight 251gsm
Standard paper inputs 1
Standard paper input capacity 120
Maximum paper inputs 1
Maximum paper input capacity 120
Duplex (code, cost if option) No

Photo Features

PictBridge support No
Borderless printing up to A4
Direct (PC-less) printing No
Supported memory cards none
CD printing No

General

Printer technology piezo inkjet
Supported operating systems Windows 2000/XP/XP-64/Vista, Mac OS X 10.3.9-10.5+
Other inkjet features none
Other inkjet options Warranty extension to three years, £29

Buying Information

Price £93
Consumable parts and prices 995 page black T1001, £19; 815 page cyan T1002, £11, 815 page magenta T1003, £12, 815 page yellow T1004, £11
Quoted life of supplied black cartridge 230 (ISO/IEC 24712)
Quoted life of supplied colour cartridge(s) 310 (ISO/IEC 24712)
Quoted life of supplied photo cartridge(s) N/A
Price per colour A4 page 3.9p
Price per mono A4 page 1.6p
Warranty one year RTB
Supplier http://www.oyyy.co.uk
Details www.epson.co.uk

Tested Print Speeds

Time for two 10x8in photos 1.0 9m 7s
Time for six 6x4in photos 1.0 18m 24s