The Epson Workforce 4630 printer is a heavy-duty, high print volume, professional-quality all-in-one printer. Although it will feel at home in a small office, it will also fit well in a home or home office.
Epson 4630 Setup & Connectivity
The printer comes nicely packed and has a large fold-out “Start Here” guide. The instructions are clear. It also has a Quick Guide that has instructions for the control panel, paper handling and simple troubleshooting. The complete User Guide can be found online.
When starting the setup, be sure to remove all the packing tape and plastic inserts before you do anything else. Then follow the instructions to install the ink cartridges and paper. You can use USB or Ethernet for wired connectivity. If you decide to use either of these wired solutions, you will have to provide your own cable.
Related: How to Unclog Epson Print Heads
The easiest way to use the wireless option, is to use the Wi-Fi Setup Wizard or the WPS setup if your router is WPS-enabled. The printer finds the wireless network quickly and the instructions are easy to follow.
The 4630 can also print from iPads, iPhones, tablets, and smart phones using AirPrint, Epson Connect, or Google Cloud Print.
Epson 4630 Hardware
This printer is no lightweight. It weighs in at 31.3 pounds. At 18.1″ x 16.6″ x 13.5″ (W x D x H) with the paper trays closed, and 18.1″ x 25.8″ x 15.1″ (W x D x H) with the trays open, so you will need to have sturdy desk or stand to hold it. Luckily, it is a wireless printer so it can be easily stashed in a corner or other place where it is convenient for everyone to access.
The printer itself is well-constructed and solid. The mat black finish doesn’t show fingerprints and although it is a large device, the black color makes it recede into the background more than white or beige units.
The 3.5” color touchscreen is clear and responsive and has a simple interface. It includes four main choices: Copy, Scan, Fax, and Presets. The Presents button gives you a convenient feature that you can use in case you often perform a copy, scan, or fax with the same settings. For instance if you often make 10 copies of a 2-sided document with the best text quality, you simply create a preset for that set of specifications. The Control Panel also gives you access to the Memory Device, Epson Connect, Echo Mode, and Setup.
To the right of the Control Panel are three very convenient buttons: Interrupt, Reset, and Stop. If you have ever accidently started a multi-page print job, you will know how valuable the Stop button is. The Interrupt button is also quite useful when the printer is busy printing a large print job and you need to make a quick copy.
Though older Workforce models have SD and Compact Flash slots, the Epson 4630 only has a USB port. This shouldn’t be a problem unless you are used to taking the media card out of your camera and printing directly from it. The sheet feeder on the top of the printer does not close flat as some other do, but I doubt that most will find that terribly important.
Epson 4630 Paper Handling
This printer has a hefty 330-sheet paper capacity. It has one front tray which holds 250 sheets and an 80-sheet rear tray for envelopes, photo paper and other specialty paper. If you need more paper capacity you can move up to the Workforce 4640 which has two 250-sheet paper trays and the same 80-sheet rear tray.
While many of today’s printers do not print envelopes, this one does. While you can use a small stack of envelopes if you flatten them, I found feeding them individually easier.
The Workforce 4630 features auto-duplexing for print/copy/scan/fax to automatically print in two-sided mode. There is a 35-page Automatic Document Feeder on the top and an 8 ½ by 11 ½ glass platen for single sheets.
Epson 4630 Performance
The Epson 4630 is an all-in-one printer so it will print, copy, scan, and fax and it performs all of these functions admirably. The 4630 is a speedy printer rendering speeds up to 20 ISO ppm black and 20 ISO ppm color. This is double the print speed of previous Workforce models. The new technology that Epson uses for this performance increase is called “PrecisionCore”. Epson describes this as a “revolutionary technology generating up to 40 million dots per second with astonishing accuracy.” The PrecisionCore print chips have a higher number of nozzles in a more condensed area. Because the chips are scalable, they can be combined to deliver more ink and to boost print speed. While several Epson printers have been released with dual chips, the 4630 has an impressive four-chip configuration.
Print performance is not only speedy, but this printer delivers sharp, clear prints in both black and color. Although not advertised as a photo printer, it also does quite well in this area if you use good-quality photo paper and make sure you choose the proper photo settings. Photo results on Epson photo paper were especially good.
With its 30,000-page monthly duty cycle, the 4630 can handle just about everything you throw at it.
Epson 4630 Scanning
The scanner accepts documents either from the flatbed glass or from the 35-sheet 2-sided automatic document feeder. The optical resolution is 2400 dpi and the scanner bit depth is 48-bit color. You can scan to a PC, the cloud, a USB memory device. Unfortunately, there is no way to scan directly to an email account. This can be set up through the cloud, but it then becomes several steps rather than just one.
I find it easier to scan through the Epson software instead of from the printer itself. Not only is this easier, but you get more choices of where and how to save your scan. There are two options for scanning with the Epson Scan software: Office and Professional. Office mode features typical scanning configurations including paper size, orientation, resolution (in dpi) and grayscale or color scanning. Professional mode expands the configurations to include items like backlight correction, unsharp mask, descreening, edge fill, and more.
Epson 4630 Copying
Copying with the 4630 is also speedy with black copying at 19.0 ISO cpm and color at 19.0 ISO cpm. It can copy up to 999 copies from the printer itself with a copy size of 8.5” x 14”. You can collate, preview, resize and adjust copy density. You can also remove punched holes and shadows which are two features that can be quite useful.
Epson 4630 Faxing
With this Workforce printer you can scan in both black-and-white and color. It has a 33.6 Kbps modem, a memory to hold up to 550 pages, and up to 200 speed dials. Although the use of fax machines continues to decline, it is nice to have this option available when you need it.
Epson 4630 Ink
Like most of today’s other printers, the 4630 comes with starter cartridges. These cartridges print about 1,000 black and 1,000 color pages. This is pretty generous compared to some printers from other manufacturers that I have seen whose starter cartridges only printed a few hundred pages.
The Epson Workforce 4630 uses 4-color DURABrite Ultra pigment ink which is smudge proof and fade and water resistant. The cartridges themselves are quite large, measuring 3” wide, 5” deep, and almost 1”high. There are three 3 droplet sizes, as small as 2.8 picoliters rendering crisp clear text and colors.
The printer is designed for use with Epson cartridges only. Not only are third-party cartridges or ink not recommended, but they probably won’t work well and may damage the printer. You may have heard these admonitions before and might have ignored them. With this printer, however, because of the PrecisionCore print chips, you really should to stick to genuine Epson ink.
The Epson website gives the following ink yield information:
- Standard-capacity Black (T786120): About 900 pages
- Standard-capacity Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow (T786220, T786320, T786420): About 800 pages per color
- High-capacity Black (T786XL120): About 2600 pages
- High-capacity Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow (T786XL220, T786XL320, T786XL420): About 2000 pages per color
Obviously it is more economical to purchase the high-capacity cartridges. These XL cartridges are currently selling at the Epson website for $41.99 for black and $43.99 for color producing costs of $.016 per page for black and $.022 for color. Compared to costs for ink per page from a few years ago, you will see that while still expensive, Epson has lowered the per page cost considerably.
Epson 4630 Eco Features
Epson prides itself as a company that recognizes the importance of keeping our planet green. According to Epson, this printer:
- Uses up to 70% less power than laser printers
- Save up to 50% of your paper supply with automatic, two-sided printing
- Is ENERGY STAR® qualified5et546 and RoHS compliant
- Is designed to be recycled
In addition, Epson America, Inc. is a SmartWay Transport Partner.
Purchasing an all-in-one printer today can be a mind-boggling event as there are so many different functionalities to consider. The Epson Workforce 4630 with its retail price of $199.99 gives you a good variety of features at a decent price.
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