Epson Workforce 633
Tuesday, 28 September 2010
The 633 is only a four-colour printer, not designed for brilliant photographic reproduction, but for graphs and newsletters. It’s designated a small business multifunction. With that in mind, it has scan (at 2400dpi), copy and fax capabilities built in, plus networking, including wi-fi.
The 633 has very fast printing – up to 38 pages per minutes – and handles duplex (printing both sides of a piece of paper). Other office features include quick-dry inks, with higher capacity individual cartridges available (just replace them as separate tanks run dry) and there’s a 30-page auto-feeder for faxing and scanning multipage documents. The paper tray holds a handy 250 pages.
Wireless: not exactly
The so-called ‘easy’ wireless connectivity would also be a handy feature – however, I’ve found wireless is often anything but easy. In the past I’ve found it easier just to forego third-party schemes and use Apple’s AirPort utility instead. We’ll see.
One of the things I appreciate with Epson printers is that they come with cables – there’s nothing worse than unpacking a new printer you want to get working for you right away, to realise there’s no connection cable. Grr. But that’s not the case with Seiko’s successful printer spin-off.
In this case, there’s the power cable (of course) and a USB cord, but also an ethernet cable. This really is designed to be networkable.
There’s also a DVD of drivers, a rather thick (for these times) Basic Operation Guide book and a more leaflet-like Wi-Fi setup, plus a Quick Start guide and a registration offer.
Setup was pretty easy – remove the protective tape and plastic, plug it in, install the *included software … and then choose how to connect.
My brother had an Epson wireless printer a year ago and he slaved and laboured trying to get it into his Apple wireless network using the Epson instructions. The payoff is a cable-free printer (apart from power) that everything in the house or office can print to.
In the end, after redoing it and swearing a lot, he threw it all out and configured it fast and efficiently just using Apple’s Airport Utility app in the Utilities folder (in the Applications folder).
In the end, perhaps I should have got him around, as I also failed to set it up wirelessly by any means at all.
First I decided (bravely) to see what would happen if I let Epson’s software do an auto configure.
I plugged in the USB cable as directed, checked my firewall was off (System Preferences>Security), and sure enough the Epson software ‘saw’ my home and guest networks. It prompted for my wireless password, which I entered, then it said it was confirming if the printer was properly connected to the network (which could take up to 5 minutes).
The process assigned a MAC address to the printer and tried to make it work. No luck. It suggested that a firewall or anti-spy software may have rejected the connection (I have neither running).
During this process I noticed an alert that said I didn’t have the latest scanner and printer drivers, so I installed them from Epson’s site, which may have helped things.
The alternative is to try and set it up on the printer itself. The printer tries to find your ‘SSID’ – the name of your printer network. I’d masked mine, so I had to type the damn thing in on the 633’s keypad. This is laborious using the many pressings of each key to cycle through the available characters routine that I used to have to do with cell phones (grrr!) before the iPhone came out, and the same for the password … but hey, it seemed to work. And the ‘Epson Install Navi’ – not some blue alien from James Cameron’s well-heeled if shallow imagination, but the name of the installation software – talks you through this. My advice is to be patient and do it carefully.
However, considering it looks like it worked (I printed the check report as offered on the Epson’s little LCD and ‘Pass’ was positively appended at the end of every check-line and the WiFi icon on the left of the 633 had a comforting green on light), I felt I could congratulate myself.
As a Mac user, I’d now like to see on my Mac that the printer is available on the network. It doesn’t appear in the AirPort menu, or in System Prefs>Network either, but it was already listed under the Print tab. Somewhat anxiously, I unplugged the USB cable … Nope, that broke the connection.
Epson’s Navi couldn’t find it, either, even though the WiFi light was still on and according to the printer, it was on my network.
But ...
Plugging the cable back in made it all good, and the printer then shared happily over my wireless network, which was cool.
Even easier and more effective was to plug it into my Time Capsule, and sharing it wirelessly via that. Using AirPort Utility, this setup took a few seconds. Once again, I could print immediately from my iPhone 4 and other Macs on the network ... but I could no longer scan with it. Bugger.The conclusion would be that if you plug it directly into your MAc, you can share both scanning and printing, but it seems you can only share printing around if you plug it into an AirPort serving device.
*Congrats on the installer The firm listened to advice, including in my own reviews, about the pain of having to separately authorise every single component of the installers. The latest is much improved – agree to the terms and conditions, select your options, put in your password once, and it goes through and does the whole lot. Yay! |
Printing from iDevices
Even better, the iPrint app (an Epson freebie in the App Store) worked really well. Boot the app and it accesses the images stored on your phone and appends a Print button underneath each picture, on an iPhone (and, I assume, iPad). Press Print, choose the printer and bam, out it comes. You can change settings too – choose from paper sizes and portrait or landscape.
The only thing I don’t like about it is the fact that you can not swipe side to side to go through your photo collection. You have to hit the Camera Roll button every time to see the thumbnails and so choose another. In fact, you can touch the picture and move it around for rudimentary positioning on the page.
Still, that’s a minor inconvenience compared to the nirvana of being able to print pretty effortlessly, and from an iDevice!
Prints
Boasting “up to 38ppm printing”, in my tests a single A4 page of black text printed in 15 seconds. Subsequent prints on the same spool-up are faster; the second page came out 6 seconds later. That is quick.
An A4 glossy photo print came out in 24 seconds. That’s pretty fast too, but that was on the standard setting, which produces noticeable banding and grainyness (above – the left image is the high-quality example). Turn on quality over speed and set it to the right paper source, and it’s 10 minutes for the same job – however, quality is noticeably better (as above), even though the 633 is not a photo-specialist printer as such. It’s certainly passable.
The 4 Individual Ink Cartridges are Epson DURABrite Ultra Resin–Coated Pigment Ink, which are quick drying and non-smudge.
Up to 2400dpi scanning is also offered, in 24-bit colour. Preview scans take about 6 seconds to preview the whole platen. In Professional mode (I like Epson’s scan software – you get Auto, Office and Pro modes) at 300dpi, Auto exposure set to Photo and all the adjustments turned off, an A5 100% scan took just 15 seconds. The full A4 at 100% took 20 seconds.
That’s very fast scanning, and quality was fine to excellent with good image resolution, although mine showed a slight green cast I could easily tweak out.
The fact there are memory card slots means you can preview images on the 2.5" LCD (at the end of the article is a list of supported cards).
Office workerIntegrated fax may seem like an anachronism these days (although that old recidivist Hollywood still heavily uses faxes!). But it’s associated automatic document feeder is excellent for putting a multipage document in then pressing Copy. However, for serious copying, you’d soon resent the ink expense – a laser printer is better if you’re a heavy copier. It’s there as a handy feature rather than a sell point.
But 2-sided printing is a definite bonus.
Conclusion — jack of all trades: the 633 may not quite be a master, but it’s a very good jack, especially for the price.
Wireless might work on PC networks but I got nowhere setting this as a standalone wireless device with my Mac, apart from via the Apple AirPort system (which is really easy to configure).
8/10
What’s great — compact and competent. Printing from iDevices works as advertised if you get the free iPrint app. The installers are greatly improved.
What’s not — Wireless is, as formerly perceived, difficult and I did not successfully configure it, but the natural printer sharing under OS X’s System Preferences works fine with the 633 plugged into one Mac via USB, and so does Ethernet, and so does sharing it via Time Capsule (so I assume AirPort Express and Extreme), as long as you plug it directly into the Apple wireless device directly with USB. This isn't always the case; I'm glad it works with this new printer.
Having the paper tray set close under the output tray makes it fiddly to change paper stocks.
Needs — a small office
What — Epson Workforce 633, $299
System — Mac OS 10.4.11 or later with USB (and Windows® 7/7x64/Vista/Vista64/XP/XPx64)
Card slots support — Compact Flash (Memory card only), MicroDrive,
Memory Stick, Memory Stick Duo (With Apapter),
MagicGate Memory Stick, MagicGate Memory Stick Duo (With Apapter),
Memory Stick PRO, Memory Stick PRO Duo (With Apapter),
Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo (With Adapter), Memory Stick Micro (With Adapter),
SD, SDHC, MiniSD (With Apapter), MiniSDHC (With Apapter),
MicroSD (With Apapter), MicroSDHC (With Apapter),
Multi Media Card, MMCplus, MMCmobile (With Adapter), MMCmicro (With Adapter),
xD-Picture card, xD-Picture card Type-M, xD-Picture card Type-M+,xD-Picture card Type-H
Available from — Electronics retailers and Apple resellers
Contact — Epson NZ Ltd.
