Epson M200 Printer: Designed for speed

But many among us also recall bad quality printouts with faded or fuzzy text,at times barely readable. Recently,digital imaging major Epson sent across one of their recently launched M-series printer for a product evaluation. To be honest,it has been an eye-opener at a personal level to witness the rapid strides made by peripherals firms such as Epson in the realm of printing technology. The M-series comprises of two machines: M100 single function mono ink tank system printer (R9,999) and the M200 all-in-one mono ink tank system printer (R13,999).

My first impressions: the Japanese company’s M200 monochrome ink tank system printer in an intelligent mix of hardware and software,nicely brought together to enhance the productivity of its users. It is small in size,is easy to maintain and output is pretty impressive with high print volume and high quality prints at incredibly low cost per page. To put it in simple terms,an inexpensive printer with a strong feature set. It can print,scan and copy.

Once out of the box,the printer was easy to set up. I connected it to my laptop using a cable and installed the drivers on the computer’s Windows operating system. The first thing that strikes you is the machine’s space-saving design. It sports a compact design and footprint that can be easily integrated into small desktops. Its built-in 2-line LCD screen provides versatile functions like status of print jobs. The printer can be shared amongst a work group through Ethernet,increasing efficiency.

Epson says that this printer can print at just one third the cost of even low quality refilled laser toners used in laser printers. That’s just 12 paise a page for black & white prints. Yet,there is no compromise on print quality or durability as the printers use a genuine Epson pigment ink that ensures sharp,crisp printouts which are fade and water resistant. No laser printer can match this level of printing economy.

Epson says it also understands that Indian corporates need printers that save electricity,and this printer uses one fourth of the electricity of equivalent laser printers. For cost and environmentally conscious firms,this can amount to a lot.

The M200 lets you enjoy pretty high yield options of 6,000 pages,

reducing the constant hassle of refilling. It comes bundled with an initial starter kit of two bottles of ink for a total yield of up to 8,000 pages. Busy offices will appreciate the laser quality speed of 15ipm and draft print speed of 34ppm in the M200,which comes with a copy speed of upto 34cpm.

In addition,this Epson machine enhances your productivity when you copy and scan documents with its Automatic Document Feeder (ADF) that accepts upto 30 pages,keeping your printing time short and sweet.

As far as my experience is concerned,the prints that I produced were very good. Black text is some of the best I have seen from an inkjet,sharp and dense. It’s easy to use,quick to print,reasonably compact and comparatively inexpensive to run.

In my assessment,the Epson M200 can serve nicely as a personal printer,but its natural home is as a printer (solo or shared) in round-the-clock businesses such as hotels,hospitals and retailers. This is because such corporates primarily print black and white documents,and demand low running costs but crisp print quality. Good print quality at reasonable price is what the consumers want and this Epson machine doesn’t disappoint one bit. Highly recommended!