Epson WorkForce 610 All-in-One Printer

The Epson Workforce 610 color printer offers a lot of printer for not much over $100. It has fast print speeds, with text and graphics looking good and photos with sharp colors. Built-in wireless helps make it appropriate for home and small businesses. The tiltable touchscreen is a bit cluttered and there were some issues getting wireless to work. Bottom line: You can't go far wrong here, but with so many printers in Epson's various lines, you can probably find a better deal (Artisan 810, anybody?).

Epson's line of printers is so deep that it's getting harder to distinguish them. They compete in terms of features and price with each other, and comparing them can be tough. The Epson WorkForce 610 all-in-one color printer is aimed at small and home business users, but for the price it competes against the Artisan line. I had an easier time setting up wireless with the Artisans, and I like the big touchscreen on the (more expensive) Artisan 810. Not that there's anything wrong with the WorkForce 610; it's just relatively unremarkable.

Print speeds were excellent, as is typical with Epson. A four-page Word document took only 45 seconds and provided sharp-looking text. Epson boasts "laser-quality" results and that's not far off. A very colorful four-page PDF took under a minute, and didn't leave the cheap copy paper I use saturated with ink. When using good-quality inkjet paper, results were even better. Colors on graphics printed, such as graphs on Excel spreadsheets, looked good and didn't bleed into the paper. Photo printing is competitive with other business all in ones, though slower than with the Artisans; it took a minute for a 4x6 photo to print. As always, the photo quality was very good--deep, rich colors, sharp lines, and a completely dry print.

The WorkForce 610 offers three scanning modes--the Office Mode simplifies document scanning; the Home Mode offers more photo-related features; and the Professional Mode gives complete scanner control. That may be overkill, depending on your scanning needs; but the options are easy to use and configure.

Disclosure: Review samples were provided by the manufacturer. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.