If you’re looking for a solid home printer but don’t want to pay the big bucks, then the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4720 is our top pick for you. It packs all the features that you’d expect from one of the best all-in-one printers, but without the price tag that you'd expect. It prints, scans, copies and comes equipped with wireless connectivity so you can print from your mobile devices and computer, or you can plug it in via a LAN connection if you have it set up with your home computer.
Obviously this is a budget device, so there are a few drawbacks but it still has all the extra bells and whistles that some of the pricier options on the market have. For the bargain price of just $179.99, the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4720 is a quality budget printer.
Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4720 review: Print quality
The Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4720 prints at a surprisingly high quality for a printer this cheap, which is one of the main reasons we love it so much. It’s not the best around by any stretch, but it outperforms most other printers in this price bracket (and even a few that cost more). It has a maximum print resolution of 4800 x 1200 dpi.
It’s fast too, printing black and white text documents at a rate of 20 pages per minute. PCMag tested its ability with a wider range of documents, including PDFs and Excel spreadsheets, and found that it still managed to average 14.1 pages per minute, which is still exceptionally fast.
You can use the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4720 as a photo printer too, and it kicks out some good quality images with good color variation, but some users and reviewers have noted that it loses details in particularly bright areas.
Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4720 review: Features
The Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4720 is an inkjet printer which uses a four cartridge system - black, cyan, magenta, and yellow. We prefer this to the unified ink cartridge printers out there, as it means you can just replace the ink that runs out first, rather than having to chuck the whole cartridge the second the one ink runs out.
According to PCMag’s tests, the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4720 ink running costs come to $0.19 per black and white page and 8.2 cents per color page. This is in line with most other standard all-in-one printers like the HP OfficeJet Pro 9015. If you’re looking for something more ink efficient though, check out the Brother MFC-J805DW which blows everything else out of the water on ink costs.
With a 250 paper sheet capacity, it’s well suited to small offices where you don’t want to be restocking the paper supply constantly. The Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4720 is easy to use too, with a 2.7-inch color touch screen for operation and an easy to navigate menu system.
The Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4720 even comes with all the extra trimmings that you might expect to be missing from a budget all-in-one printer. As an all-in-one printer, the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4720 is also capable of scanning and copying documents and it can automatically scan multi-page documents thanks to its 35 page capacity automatic document feeder. It also supports wireless printing from any of your WiFi or NFC capable devices and even has voice command support with Alexa.
Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4720 review: Price and warranty
The Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4720 has an MSRP of $179.99, which puts it on the cheaper end of the scale when it comes to the printers that we reviewed, but the Brother MFC-J805DW is $10 cheaper and has cheaper ink running costs. Despite that, we think the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4720 offers excellent value for money and does have some advantages over the Brother model, including a larger ADF capacity and much nicer styling.
You get a standard one-year warranty with the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4720, which is fine, but we’d have liked to have seen this extended to two years. The Epson website is filled with FAQs and support documents should you have any issues, and you can also contact Epson for technical support.
Should you buy the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4720?
If you’re looking for a cheap all-in-one printer that’s loaded with premium features and prints good quality documents and images, then the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4720 is an excellent choice. It outperforms other printers in its price range handily, and comes with added extras like a large capacity ADF, automatic dual-sided printing, and wireless printing via mobile devices.
