Verdict

Pros

• Straight through single-sheet feed
• 2,200 sheet XXL cartridge option
• Expandable paper trays

Cons

• Messy paper size recognition
• Small, mono LCD screen
• Tall, even for a twin-tray printer

What is the Epson WorkForce WF-7110DTW?

There’s an increasing interest in A3 print in home and small-business environments. Epson’s WorkForce WF-7110DTW is a budget A3 printer with a number of useful extras and flexible paper handling. At a modest £112, it offers superb value for money.

Epson WorkForce WF-7110DTW – Design and Features

This is quite a big printer, inevitable given its ability to handle A3. Epson has done its best to minimise the footprint by making the output tray and both of the two, front paper cartridges telescopic. This means you can leave them part extended when printing in A4 or smaller. The top cartridge takes paper from 15 x 10cm to A3+, while the bottom one handles A4 and A3/A3+. There’s also a flip-out, single-sheet feed at the rear that has a straight-through paper path.

The main problem with the paper handling, and this isn’t restricted to Epson machines, is paper detection. You’d think it would be fairly simple to recognise the position of the paper guides in a tray, yet most recent machines require you to reconfirm paper sizes and types each time you load paper.

Epson WorkForce WF-7110DTW – Controls and Connections

The control panel is simple and is arranged around a small, 56mm mono LCD panel. It provides all the information you need to use the printer. Layout-wise, it isn’t particularly good-looking though.

See also: Best Printer 2015

The four individual cartridges clip into a head carrier through an easy-access top cover, which folds back. The black cartridge is available in three capacities, the largest of which is 2,200 pages. The colour tanks offer up to 1,100 pages.

The WorkForce WF-7110DTW includes USB, 10/100 Ethernet and a wireless connection, with the latter offering direct and remote printing from Windows, iOS and Android sources. In our experience, Epson offers one of the best Android apps for spotting available printers and signing into them.

Epson WorkForce WF-7110DTW – Print Speeds

Epson rates the WorkForce WF-7110DTW at 18ppm printing mono and 10ppm in colour. Our five-page text document returned 11.5ppm, and this increased slightly to 12ppm in draft mode, which is much lighter than normal print.

Increasing the page count to 20 gave a further speed increase to 15.2ppm, and the five-page black text and colour graphics test were output at 5.7ppm. All these speeds are within striking distance of the specification and are quite speedy for this class of machine.

An A3 text and graphics page took 1min 34secs, or 12.8ppm, while a duplex version of the A4 text document printed at 7.7 sides per minute. Finally, a 15 x 10cm photo took less than a minute from an Android smartphone and an A3 one took 2mins 53secs from a PC. All better than average speeds.

Epson WorkForce WF-7110DTW – Print Quality and Costs

Print quality is generally very good, in part due to Epson’s recently introduced PrecisionCore print head. Black text is crisp and at first glance could pass for laser print. Inverted text is clean too, with solid blacks and no character infill.

Colour graphics are smooth, with no evidence of banding, although some stippling dots are visible in lighter shades. Photo prints, usually a speciality of Epson, are well-defined and accurate in both natural pastels and vibrant man-made colours.

Using the XXL black cartridge and the XL colour ones gives page costs of 1.9p for mono and 5.8p for colour. These are decent figures, although higher than the recently reviewed A3 Canon MAXIFY iB4050, which gave 1.6p and 3.1p respectively.

Should I buy an Epson WorkForce WF-7110DTW?

There are A3 inkjets available from Brother, Canon and HP, as well as models from Epson’s range too. The Brother units are all multi-function devices, however. Canon’s MAXIFY iB4050, already mentioned, is a good machine, with cheaper running costs plus a Trusted Reviews recommendation. This Epson has more versatile paper handling and comparable print speeds, although it’s more expensive to run.

The HP Officejet 7110 Wide Format also won a Recommended award, but printer models have moved on since then and its single-feed tray and optional duplexer look under-specced against the WorkForce WF-7110DTW.

Verdict

This is an excellent A3+ printer for those who don’t require scan and copy facilities. Offering high-quality print and low running costs, the Epson WorkForce WF-7100DTW won’t disappoint.

Trusted Score