Epson WorkForce Pro WF-7840  Printer Review

The build quality of the Epson WF-7840 is great, as it's made of sturdy-feeling plastic. Design-wise, it has two paper trays at the front and a feeder at the back, with width sliders to accommodate different paper sizes. It provides good access to paper jams and ink cartridges, but the printer must be on to replace them. The scanner lid stays open on its own, and it has adjustable hinges, allowing you to scan thicker items. The maintenance box that stores flushed ink is easily accessible from inside the printer. Unfortunately, our unit makes many creaking and squeaking noises while printing. Also, the cartridge bay lid damper isn't very good, as the final inch slams down.

Like all inkjet printers, there's a risk of ink drying up and printheads clogging on the Epson WF-7840; there are tasks built-in for printhead cleaning, printhead nozzle check, printhead alignment, and paper guide cleaning. Moreover, as the page yield is relatively low, you can expect to change cartridges frequently if you have a big print load. To replace the cartridges, you need to turn the printer on, select "Ink Cartridge Replacement" in the settings, and then wait for the cartridge carrier to move into view. On the bright side, you don't need to refill its paper tray as often since it has two large trays that hold up to 250 pages each, as well as a manual feeder that holds up to 50 pages. In the case of a paper jam, you can easily reach the sheet rollers by removing a panel in the back. You can also remove both the input tray and the output tray to access the front sheet rollers.

See the manual here.

The LCD touchscreen is easy to navigate and responsive. It has touch-sensitive buttons for Home and Help and four shortcut buttons to interrupt, reset, view the paper settings, or view the job status. The touchscreen has great vertical visibility, but the viewing angle isn't as good from the side.

The cartridge system is satisfactory. It yields a relatively low number of prints with its black and color cartridges, but there are black and color high-yield cartridges and a black extra-high-yield cartridge available. The Epson T812XL Black and T812XL CMY high-yield cartridges are good for around 1,100 pages, while the extra-high-yield Epson T812XXL Black cartridge will produce up to 2,200 pages. You can't print in color if any color ink cartridge is empty.

If you're looking for a wide-format printer but want a higher page yield, consider the HP OfficeJet Pro 9730e.

The scanner has adjustable hinges that lift high enough to scan thicker items. It also has optical character recognition (OCR) capabilities; you can save scans as searchable PDFs using the Epson Scan 2 utility. While not perfect, most errors result from special characters.

The scan quality is good. Small and fine details are clear and well-reproduced. The biggest pain point is that the image processing oversaturates colors, making them much more vivid than the source material.

You need to extend the front trays to accommodate Tabloid-size paper.

• Quick start guide
• Installation CD
• Detachable power cord
• Epson T812 starter cartridges:
  • 1x T812 Black
  • 1x T812 Cyan
  • 1x T812 Magenta
  • 1x T812 Yellow

This printer produces very good black-and-white documents. The text looks sharp, and graphics, like charts and tables, are detailed. Finer elements don't fair quite as well, as they appear smudged. Finally, the way the printer translates color to grayscale loses some finer gradients; for example, it's difficult to distinguish between the two smaller segments in the pie chart.

Color documents look great from this printer. The text is clear and legible, and larger blocks of color for charts, graphs, or tables look sharp, albeit slightly grainy. Finer details could be better; for example, background lines in charts and graphs look fuzzy.

The cost-per-print is great. Although the page yield isn't very high, the cartridges aren't overly expensive, so your maintenance cost will remain relatively low.

There are two front paper trays with a capacity of 250 sheets each and a rear paper tray that holds 50 sheets. This printer is also capable of automatic duplex printing with Tabloid-size sheets.

Photo printing quality is decent. Photos have good detail but look a little grainy, with some banding.

This printer has adequate color accuracy. Although the colors in photos will look noticeably different from the source material, it's still fine for casual use, like printing pictures at home. However, professionals who need exact color reproduction should look at other options.

This printer has a decent color gamut. Colors are saturated, but it struggles with greens and reds; there's also some noticeable graining and banding, especially in the transition from green to yellow and yellow to red. Photos will still appear relatively detailed. If you want a similar printer with a wider color gamut, consider the Epson Expression Photo HD XP-15000.

You can print from a USB drive using the front USB port.

The Epson WF-7840 is compatible with the Epson Smart Panel app. The app allows you to print, scan, and copy from your mobile device, monitor ink levels, order cartridges, and perform maintenance tasks. It also provides access to video tutorials and troubleshooting guides.

You need to install drivers to print on Windows devices and install the Epson Scan 2 software for scanning. Neither macOS nor Chrome OS devices require drivers. The Epson Smart Panel app is available on Chrome OS; this gives you the same functionality as Android devices.