Epson WorkForce WF-2530WF review

PRINT QUALITY

Unlike the WorkForce Pro range of printers and MFPs, the ordinary WorkForce range, including the WF-2530WF, can print borderless photos. The quality of its photo prints is by no means the best we’ve ever encountered: images look a little flat and dull, and the reproduction of low-contrast and subtly shaded areas loses detail. They’re still a perfectly acceptable extra for an MFP, though.

The WF-2530WF’s draft-quality prints are certainly quick enough, at 16ppm, but their text also looks grey and jagged. Standard-quality text is dark and solid, although close examination revealed a couple of wobbly edges on the inside of circular letters. Our 25-page mono text document printed at a rate of 8.6ppm: not bad, but not conspicuously quick, either. Colour documents printed at 2.3ppm. Again, that’s decent for an inkjet but generally unremarkable.

Colour print quality is, similarly, usable but not outstanding: at standard quality, colours and shading were accurate, but large images exhibited visible lines left by the passage of the print head and 8pt fonts looked a little fuzzy round the edges. Both colour and mono copies, which took 39s for mono and 40s for colour from the platen, suffered from similar problems with print head marks and uneven edges.

CONCLUSION

At just £60, the WF-2530WF is gloriously cheap to buy, but it’s not as inexpensive to run as you might hope, given the WorkForce range’s reputation for thriftiness. A mono page costs 2.5p while a page of mixed colour and black printing comes in at 9.1p, neither of which is particularly cheap; there are at least individual ink cartridges, so you only have to replace the colours you’ve used up. The inclusion of Presto! PageManager is a nice extra for a budget MFP and mono print speeds are excellent, but if you’re after a low-cost multifunctional for the home office we prefer the friendly interface, lower colour costs and better print quality of the Canon MX525.