At one point of time, HP used to dominate the deskjet home and office market in India. However, in the last couple of years, Epson has worked very hard and has taken a considerable portion of the pie. We have seen them evolve and with the Ink Tank printer innovations by them, we had a feeling they will start leading. Enter Epson EcoTank Monochrome M1120 Wi-Fi Ink Tank Printer. We got this neat office companion over for a review and found it to be quite exceptional. We kept throwing curve balls at it and it kept hitting it out of the park. This is our review of the Epson EcoTank Monochrome M1120 Wi-Fi Ink Tank Printer.

Design

Out of the box, this printer is like the usual box printer you get for offices. White with subtle black panels can be found all over the Epson EcoTank Monochrome M1120 Wi-Fi Ink Tank Printer. This just spells it means business and yes it does. The printer is not heavy at all, yet does not come across as flimsy device. Since it is a single feature, monochromatic printer, the weight was bound to be less.

The front has the paper holding tray as well as the print production tray, which is great as then it will also use up less space. The top part of the printer has the button placements, which ranges from power on/off, WiFi and tank refill button. These are feather touch physical keys. The rear has the USB as well as power ports.

The front also has real-time analogue ink level indicator. Yes, you do not need to rely on a digital meter on the printer software, but can see the ink levels in real time through a viewing window. Talking about which, the Ink bottle comes in the box. But filling the tank is a long task. The manual does come in handy showing you how to refill, however, you still have to wait for the bottle to empty into the tank (for a long time). Then there is some more wait time for the ink to charge for the first time.

Overall, the form factor of the Epson EcoTank Monochrome M1120 Wi-Fi Ink Tank Printer is like any other office printer, except lighter and slightly compacter. Ink refill time could have been lowered.

Performance

This printer is a fighter jet in the performance sector. Once set up, which does take some amount of rocket science since one has to connect it to the WiFi too, the prints come out at a very fast pace. So, let’s get the cat out of the bag. During the Epson M1120 Printer review, we could extract 25 pages per minute (PPM) of black and white prints under low settings. But here the colours are more towards light grey than black.

However, we were amazed to see it squirt out 22.5 great looking pages in 1 minute under the standard mode. And the black colour here is very comparable to a good laser printer. The prints got even better when we turned the high-quality prints settings on. However, that brought the PPM level down to just 2.5. Which was a bit shocking for us. Nevertheless, one can use it is in standard mode and get good prints around the office. Black and white images, on the other hand, lost a bit of detail and seemed a little blurry in the low mode. But were quite decent in standard and crisper in the high-end mode.

Epson claims that users get a print at only 12 paise per page. That is not bad at all. Over that, one can easily refill the ink tank on their own, no need to take the cartridge to a refilling centre. Just bring or order an ink bottle and you can do it yourself. Prints over WiFi or USB more or less take the same amount of time. If the printer is kept near the router and you give a print from your desk. By the time you walk to it, the prints under standard mode are more likely to be out.

To talk about some more specs, the printer supports A4 size sheets of up to 15ipm. The paper tray can hold up to 150 sheets and the maximum print resolution supported is 1,440 x 720. Which is okay for an office printout, however not the best if you want to give a presentation from these prints. Also, this printer does not support edge to edge prints.

Verdict

This printer consumes only 13W of power when in use and 2.4W when in standby. It supports Windows 7 and later, as well as Mac OS. Also, there is support for Epson connect, which means you can give prints straight from your mobile devices using WiFi direct.

If you have small to medium size office then this printer will suit you well. This is a good printer to own for day to day usage and is economical too (over a period of time). The initial asking price for the Epson EcoTank Monochrome M1120 Wi-Fi Ink Tank Printer is Rs 12,000 at places like Nehru place. That is a bit extravagant if you ask us.

Pros:

Good to look at

Economical prints

Fast PPM under standard mode

Cons:

High-quality prints are very slow

Initial asking price is high

Print resolution could have been better