The best printer scanner copier for your home office with Wireless, Airprint and Google Cloud Print.

I work from home, in my own business, so I need a good printer as well as a good scanner / copier. The latter because I like to do art on the side and scanning my sketches is an important part of my creative routine. That I also need a good printer is self explanatory.

My previous printer had lasted me a decade and was starting to produce prints that I could not use for presentations any more. I was willing to put up with that, because we have a good copy-shop near where I live, but when I moved the new location for my printer made using the modern wireless option a must – dragging those long cables around is just messy. SO, my old printer went to my brother and here’s my new Epson XP-810. I’ll explain why I’m so happy with it in this review.

And yes, printing and scanning quality (so far) is great.

Small Wireless Color Photo Printer with Scanner, Copier and Fax

Best all in one printer for home and home office

This printer takes ‘All-in-One’ to a new level. It doesn’t merely scan and print, it’s also a fax, has special ink for photo-prints and can even print labels for CD and DVD disks.I love that I can choose to print black-and-white, even when the source is in color, which saves on color ink.
I love that it can automatically prints two-sided, which saves on paperEasy to use
I love that the scanner has all the options I need, but hides the ones I don’t. There are three sections for scanning: home, office and custom. The home section is simplest and meant for photographs. The office option is great for documents and the custom section is for those times when you really want to fine tune every option in the book. I don’t think I’ll be using that, but it’s nice that it’s there none-the-less.

When I really want to save time, I can scan right from the printer itself, through the touch screen. That has less options, but it’s faster and real simple.

Wireless
Most home printers are wireless these days. This one has all the variations on that theme you could wish for:

• Print from your iPad, iPhone, tablet, smartphone or laptop computer with Epson Connect through my home WIFI network.
• OR print from any of those through Google cloud print, from anywhere in the world. The only limitation is that your printer does have to be on, and connected to the internet. I do think that limits this option somewhat, but if your family is at home and you want to share pictures from your vacation, this will be the way to go.

Ink
Ink is always one of those worries with printers. It’s usually expensive and when the red runs out, you have to replace the whole color-cartridge.

In this series Epson takes away that issue: there are separate cartridges for each color, so you replace only what you need. Personally I don’t print enough to worry about the price of the cartridges themselves.

Sound
Sound? What sound? This printer is (nearly) noiseless!

Speed
This printer is both fast and slow. It takes quite a while to start up, but once it’s up and running, it is pretty speedy. I save up printing jobs and do them all in one go, so that I don’t have to wait for the printer to get going each time.
The same is true for the scanner: slow to get started, but decent once it’s in scanning mode.

Features I won’t be using any time soon

Great to have though, and perhaps you will use them.

What the Epson XP-810 can do.

1. The scanner/fax includes a 30-page Auto Document Feeder to quickly copy/scan/fax stacks of 2-sided originals. This is really an office feature.
2. There is a rear paper feed which accommodates specialty paper, for arts and crafts projects or printing your own folders or even on textile!
3. You can print directly onto inkjet printable CDs/DVDs.

Photo Print Options

Quality pictures from your home inkjet printer!

I think this option is a real smart move by Epson. Inkjet usually fades pretty soon, so printing your images at home is not usually recommended. However, Epson put a special ink-cartridge devoted to photographs in the XP-810 printer-scanner, so that you can print quality pictures right at home. It promises the following features:

• Borderless photos up to 8″ x 10″
• Smudge, scratch, water and fade resistant ink, so your pictures will stand the test of time.

Printing from your (smart) phone, iPad or tablet?

Possible, but not yet fully operational

Wireless printing is great, simply because it means less wire-mess in your house. However, modern technology also makes it possible to connect smart-phone or tablet to a printer.Does it work? Well, technically it does. I printed out an evernote-note from my android phone to my new Epson XP-810printer, and yes, the print did arrive. However, it was basically the content that fit on the (small) screen blown up to take up a full page. The result was that a note which might have been printed out on one letter-sized (A4) piece of paper, took 3 pieces of paper. Not quite what I had in mind.

I suspect this is partly due to the specific app in question: evernote just hasn’t adapted to this new technology yet. And it would work great for printing out pictures, which is probably what a lot of people would want to use this for. However, for me, printing from my phone to my printer is not where it’s at, just yet.

[And yes, this printer can print from iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows tablets and phones. Compatibility isn’t the problem. It’s what comes after that still has snags.]