The Epson WorkForce Pro WF-8090 ($799.99) is a beast of a printer, an inkjet clearly designed to go head-to-head with color lasers. In that, it largely succeeds, with sizzling speed and low running costs. The WF-8090, which Epson bills as a heavy-duty workgroup model, can print on tabloid-size and larger paper (up to 13 by 19 inches). Its main drawback that we found in testing is subpar output quality, but it's still good enough for most internal business use. It's certainly worth considering if you don't need your color laser to print professional-looking reports or marketing brochures.

Although there are other inkjets that can print at tabloid size or larger, they tend to be for lighter-duty use, such as the Epson WorkForce WF-7110, our Editors' Choice tabloid-size printer for a micro office. The WF-8090's real competition are color laser printers, such as the Xerox Phaser 7100/DN, our Editors' Choice budget, tabloid-size color laser-class printer. The WF-8090 easily bests the Xerox 7100/DN in speed, has much lower running costs, and sells for barely half its price. Where the Xerox 7100/DN shines in its output quality, which is good enough to let you take your printing of marketing materials in-house.

Design and Features
The two-tone (off-white and gray) WF-8090 is ginormous for an inkjet, measuring 14.9 by 22.3 by 22.4 inches (HWD) when closed for storage, and 22.1 by 22.3 by 34.1 inches with the feeder and output tray extended. It weighs 57 pounds, so moving it into place is a two-person job. The printer's size is mainly due to its need to hold large-size paper. The main tray can fit tabloid or A3 size (11.7 by 16.5 inches), while the multipurpose feeder can fit super-tabloid (13 by 19 inches) paper, and can print banners up to 13 by 45 inches.

The front panel includes a 2.2-inch, four-line monochrome LCD, a four-way controller withcentral OK button, and several other buttons, including the Power button with the standard icon Start, Back, and Paper Setup controls. I found the LCD and the controller awkward to use, when I had to switch which tray was using a particular paper type. It's hard to read the text that scrolls marquis-type across the small screen, and the printer wasn't always responsive when I pressed the keys that the screen prompted me to push (such as the forward and back arrows).

The WF-8090 is built to print in volume, with a 75,000-page maximum monthly duty cycle and a recommended monthly duty cycle of 5,000 pages. It has a 330-sheet standard paper capacity, split between a 250-sheet main tray and an 80-sheet multipurpose feeder. Up to three 500-sheet trays ($349 each) can be added, for a maximum capacity of 1,830 sheets. The WF-8090's standard paper capacity is a bit on the low side; the Xerox 7100/DN's capacity is 400 sheets, while the Epson WF-7110's capacity is 500 sheets. The WF-8090 has an auto-duplexer for two-sided printing.

Setup
There's no setup disc included with the WF-8090. Instead, the quick-start guide directs you to an Epson support page to download the software. Once downloaded, it's easy enough to install. Epson is one of several manufacturers now offering software downloads rather than providing a disc. It has the advantage of ensuring that the software is up-to-date. The downside is that it could take a while to download the software, depending on your connection speed.

Connectivity
The WF-8090 can connect to a computer via USB or a local-area network via Ethernet or 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi. In addition, you can make a direct peer-to-peer connection to a computer or mobile device via Wi-Fi Direct. It supports printing from the Epson iPrint app for iOS or Android, Google Cloud Print, Epson Email Print, and Epson Remote Print. Both Epson Email Print and Epson Remote Print allow users to automatically print to the WF-8090 by sending it documents via email. Epson gives you the option of having an email address assigned to the printer during the setup process, which you can change to an address more to your liking.

In addition to an Epson (host-based) printer driver, the WF-8090 includes PCL and PostScript drivers. Not all businesses need PostScript printing, but those that do require a printer with a PostScript driver. I tested the printer over an Ethernet connection, with its drivers installed on a computer running Windows Vista.

Printing Speed
The WF-8090 is built around Epson's PrecisionCore technology, which allows multiple print chips in a single print head. Each chip adds more ink nozzles, letting the printer put more ink on paper at once for faster printing.

I timed the WF-8090 on our business applications suite (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing), at a sizzling 12.9 pages per minute (ppm) in its default simplex mode. This is much faster than the Xerox 7100/DN, which we clocked at 6.1ppm in its default duplex mode and 7.9ppm in simplex. The LED-based OKI C831dn tested at 7.5ppm, while the Epson WorkForce WF-7110 inkjet tested at 5.5ppm, both in simplex mode.

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Output Quality and Running Costs
Overall output quality was subpar for an inkjet, with average text, slightly below-par graphics, and subpar photos. Text quality should be fine for business use, except when very small fonts are used.

With graphics, some backgrounds looked dull, and/or slightly blotchy in testing. Very thin, colored lines were almost lost. Graphics should be fine for internal business use, except for things like formal reports. They should also be acceptable for PowerPoint handouts, though I'd avoid giving them to people I was trying to impress with my professionalism. About half of our test photos were of a quality you'd expect from drugstore prints, while the other half were problematic. A monochrome photo showed a slight tint. Although the WF-8090 did well in showing detail in dark areas, a couple of the test prints were overly light.

Based on Epson's prices and yields, the WF-8090's cost per monochrome page is 1.6 cents and per color page is 6.7 cents. Both are very low for an inkjet, and are low even compared with most lasers. The Xerox 7100/DN's costs are 2.2 cents per monochrome page and 13 cents per color page, while the Epson WF-7110's costs are 3.2 cents per monochrome page and 11.4 cents per color page.

Conclusion
As an inkjet built for tabloid-size printing, the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-8090 has two main features to recommend it: phenomenal speed and very low running costs. Where it stumbles is in output quality. For print quality good enough to use in advertising materials, look to the Xerox 7100/DN. For light-duty tabloid printing, the Epson WF-7110, with its much lower price tag, may be a better choice. But if you need to print in volume, including tabloid-size and color printing, and you're fine with workaday output quality, the WF-8090 may be hard to pass up. In speed and cost per page, it outdoes laser printers, and it comes in at a much lower sticker price as well.