For those gadget savvy, authors and people believing in reading printed text and keeping electronic text in paper form, students working their heads out in projects and a new breed of freelancers and employees working from home under the concept of ‘SOHO’, this product review is dedicated to you.  The product we are talking about is a Printer.  We know that the moment we say Printer, three things pop into our mind – Finding a place to keep it in the computer table, tangled wires and managing the ink from drying so we get it working when we need it most. Trust me, I too belong to this league and I have 3 printers all lying idle. It is a costly real estate keeping it in my ever cramped home of books, papers and gadgets.  It has been a frustrating experience buying a printer with the idea of getting everything done in-house and when we do want to use it, it just does not work, spews ink and ultimately makes you run to a shop to get it printed. So post 2013, whatever printer related work has always been a run to the shop at last minute. A staunch NO to repeated requests for a printer and sometime even laserjets were suggested as an option going by the volume of printing we do. Whoever said we are going towards a paperless world should check our volume of paper used for printing, thanks to every organization we work with who wants hard copies with soft copies. Not to leave out the scanning and copiers aspect, it has been a huge investment of time and money, let me mention it here, it is not to take the copy, but going in search of a shop in an auto or car to get it.

So when we came across a printer, EPSON L455, a new one, you can see the advertisements for it in the television even now as we write this post, it was more of a 50-50 decision to buy one. Thankfully we could get in touch with EPSON and they readily agreed to give it to us on a trial basis for a review. We were quite excited because it gave us an opportunity to confirm if the product suits us before investing money on it.

Interesting aspects of EPSON L455 is NO Wires, it just needs a power cable to be plugged in; you can print using your Wi-Fi network from the desktop or laptop or smart phones.  What a relief!  This also gives us the flexibility to keep it anywhere we like, only criteria being the Wi-Fi network should be in the range for the printer to work.

After the initial excitement that two major points were alleviated, our next concern is the ink. We had spent much time pulling out the ink cartridges from the printer onto the refrigerator and again back to the printer to ensure ink does not dry. The worst part is the printer stopped working but the ink cartridges were fine. So with such an experience checked out the printer and was happy they have changed the technology to Ink Tank, an easy to attach and detach box to easily fill in the ink. Additionally, the printer is equipped with an automatic ink cleaning mechanism, so we need not worry about clogged ink cartridges.

For people at home averse to technical jargons and complex processes, all these were technical details and what they wanted to know is the ease of printing.  So I let them to do everything and so the printer was taken out and the power cable was connected. Installation CD was in the box, we took it and inserted it into the drive and it automatically detected the Wi-Fi network and printer to Wi-Fi connection was set-up.  Job done and it was Child’s play here.

On the Printer side, there are not too many buttons to confuse,  Switch On/Off, Home, Navigation with OK button and Charging – A big advantage and a display with easy to navigate options and the buttons to use specified clearly. My daughter checked it out and set it up.

We have Copy/ Scan and below each, we can see settings, choose settings and you have options to set number of copies, color / Black and more as per the chosen function clearly defined and easy to set up.   We can also set this up while printing from the computer/laptop.

Paper Jamming is another issue with printer and this printer detects and stops printing. It did not jam on its own but we left the pages to accumulate leaving the paper coming out without any space and the printer showed up the error and stopped printing.  Awesome!

Installation also installed software to send out a scan request. The subject to be scanned should be placed on the top below the lid and we can either scan it and print it or send out the request from the computer.  We do have options to save, email it as a jpg.  We have a lot more to explore in this section though from the practical point of view, we need no  learning curve to use this printer.

We can airdrop from iOS or print from Android by using the Epson iPrint App available for free in the App store or Google Play store. It is a light weight app and does not use much of our valuable storage.  Installs as a breeze and automatically detects the printer if you are hooked on the same Wi-Fi network. Everything you can do while setting up printing in a laptop/computer can be done from the smartphone and printing is smooth.

Printing quality is good and we get Photo quality prints if we use the photograph roll paper, cost about Rs.40/- per paper.  It is time to give the photos in the computer and mobile a life in a physical album.

Coming to the cost, this printer comes with a price tag of Rs. 16,999/- MRP but comparing it with the cost of a black and white print at Rs.0.08 and color at Rs.0.28 (Rs.0.20 for color and Rs.0.08 for black as it is also used in color printing) is a steal.  The black ink sells at Rs.320 and we get 4000 copies. We get color inks (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow) at Rs.1200 and it gives 6000 copies, both under ISO standards of printing. Really worth the while compared to spending money on printers with poor life and high cost of printing. With these affordable rates on the inks, EPSON has made it easy to go for original refills than the fake ones that just do not deliver quality.

We are fully satisfied with the product and getting one for our home, seems to be a good deal, but yet would certainly be happy to look for better price on the printer. :)