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For a business-oriented printer with a four-ink design, the WF-2660 with the new PrecisonCore 1S printhead yields good print quality for documents and photos. Text doesn't have that fuzzy look that inkjet printers are known for, and can pass for laser-like quality at a glance. In addition, the printer is able to show precise details and close to photo-realistic colors (skewing a little dark at times) with our test images - particularly when I pushed the print quality to "high," and used matte Epson Premium Presentation Paper and glossy Epson Premium Photo Paper. Unlike the Canon Pixma MG7520 that has separate black and gray inks tanks for photo printing, the colors from the WF-2660 tend to be flatter and just aren't able to offer as much color nuance as the Canon. This is especially evident in black and white photos or just images with a lot of black in them. Otherwise, the photo image quality of the WF-2660 is not far behind the Canon.
The WF-2660 is actually not too slow at printing documents. It can print 12 pages of document per minute, which is pretty close to the Canon Pixma MG7520's 14 pages per minute. The Epson also prints full color webpages at 3.35 pages per minute, which is about right for this class of printers. You'll need to be patient if you plan on printing lots of photos with the Epson, though. For example, it took the WF-2660 about one minute and 20 seconds to print a 4x6 borderless color photo on photo paper, but printing the same image on copy paper at standard quality only took 13 seconds. Similarly, a borderless letter-sized photo at 300dpi took the Epson about three minutes to print, while the same image in black and white took about nine seconds.
Using just the four color ink cartridges that shipped with the printer, I printed around 100 sheets in total. This included about 20 high-resolution photos, printed in the highest print quality possible on special stock, while the rest was a mixture of documents and webpages that I printed in both color and black, in standard quality and on copy paper. I have already used up all the black ink, with the blue and magenta tanks very close to empty, according to both my iPrint app and the touchscreen. Given how quickly I drained these cartridges, you should definitely budget for the high capacity tanks. Be prepared to spend around $80.99 (£52/AU$99) for one High Capacity Black and three High Capacity Color cartridges, which means the cost of a black-only page is approximately $0.06, and a four-color page is about $0.18.
We liked
The Epson WF-2660 offers surprisingly great photo and document print quality, an ADF, auto-duplex, as well as all the latest wireless and mobile connectivity options that you could possibly need or want - all in a relatively small package. I love how easy it is to print via email, have the printer email me with my scanned files, and be able to control it all through the Epson iPrint mobile app.
We disliked
The flip side of cramming so many features into one device is that you increase the likelihood of things going wrong, and risk overwhelming the user with too many features to learn and set up. I was unimpressed that the setup process did not consider the needs of users with no optical drives, and relied so heavily on using the Epson Connect website to activate most of the mobile and wireless functions. The location of the retractable output tray directly above the single paper tray was simply poor design. In addition, I wish the WF-2660 had a second paper tray like the Epson WorkForce WF-3640, which makes printing in a busy office more efficient.
Verdict
For a $100 all-in-one device, the Epson WorkForce WF-2660 strikes a great balance between price, features and print quality. It has all the mobile and wireless tricks you could possibly need, print quality that rivals dedicated photo printers, and handy office features like an automatic document feeder that makes it an ideal office companion. Though some of its features can be temperamental, and the learning curve to figure out all the features can be steep, in my opinion, the WF-2660 is a worthy investment for your business.
