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Epson WorkForce Pro WF-M5194

Tony Hoffman
 & Tony Hoffman Senior Writer, Hardware

Our team tests, rates, and reviews more than 1,500 products each year to help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology.

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Pros & Cons

The Epson WorkForce Pro WF-M5194 ($209.99) is one of the rare monochrome inkjet printers in a market dominated by lasers. Thanks to Epson's PrecisionCore print-head technology, which is designed to improve both speed and output quality, the WF-M5194 can compete with lasers. Although it can't print in as high a volume as the Editors' Choice Dell Smart Printer S2830dn, its lower sticker price and slightly lower running costs may make it a better choice for relatively light-duty work.

Design and Features
The off-white WF-M5194 is compact for a workhorse office printer, measuring 11.2 by 18.1 by 16.6 inches (HWD) when closed, and you probably can find room for it on your desk. It weighs 25 pounds, and one person should be able to move it easily into place. The front panel, set at an angle for easy viewing, includes a 2.2-inch monochrome display for setup and maintenance functions.

The WF-M5194 is capable of medium-duty printing, with a 45,000-page maximum monthly duty cycle and a recommended monthly print volume of up to 2,500 pages. It has an auto-duplexer for two-sided printing. Its 330-sheet standard paper capacity is split between a 250-sheet main tray and an 80-sheet bypass feeder. You can add a second 250-sheet tray for a maximum capacity of 580 sheets. The Dell S2830dn has a 250-sheet main tray and a 100-sheet multipurpose tray for a slightly larger 350-sheet capacity, which can be expanded to 900 sheets with the addition of an optional 550-sheet tray. The S2830dn is also built for heavier-duty printing, with a maximum monthly duty cycle of 100,000 pages.

Epson WorkForce Pro WF-M5194 Workgroup Monochrome Printer

Connectivity
The WF-M5194 has a good set of connection choices, both wired and wireless. It can connect to a computer via USB 2.0, or to a LAN via Ethernet or 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi. It also supports Wi-Fi Direct, which lets you make a direct peer-to-peer connection to a computer or mobile device. It supports printing from the Epson iPrint mobile app (for iOS or Android), Google Cloud Print, Epson Creative Print, Epson Scan to Cloud, Epson Email Print, and Epson Remote Print.

You get a good selection of printer drivers, including a universal driver plus PCL and PostScript drivers. I tested the WF-M5194 over an Ethernet connection, with its drivers installed on a computer running Windows 10 Professional.

Printing Speed
I timed the WF-M5194 at 18.9 pages per minute (ppm) in printing the text-only (Word) portion of our new business applications suite, just short of Epson's 20ppm rated speed. Its first-page-out time averaged 8 seconds. In printing our full business suite, which includes PDF, PowerPoint, and Excel files in addition to the aforementioned Word document, the WF-M5194 averaged 14ppm. These speeds are a hair faster than those turned in by the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-M5694, the WF-M5194's all-in-one counterpart. Although the Dell S2830dn had a similar speed for the full suite (14.9ppm), it was much faster (37.5ppm) printing text in simplex mode.

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Output Quality
Overall output quality for the WF-M5194 was average for an inkjet, with good text, average graphics, and slightly subpar photos. Text should be fine for any business use, except those requiring very small fonts. With graphics, I saw slight banding in a few backgrounds, and the printer did poorly with gradients and in differentiating between areas of similar tone. Photo quality is fine for printing webpages and the like but nothing more rigorous than that.

Running Costs
Based on Epson's prices and yields for its highest-yield ink cartridges, the WF-M5194's running costs are 1.6 cents per page, a bit lower than the Dell S2830dn's 2 cents per page.

Conclusion
Because the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-M5194 takes advantage of the company's PrecisionCore technology, it's an inkjet that has the chops to compete with mono lasers in areas such as speed, running cost, and even text quality. It lacks the paper capacity and the durability—as reflected in its maximum monthly duty cycle—of the Editors' Choice Dell Smart Printer S2830dn, but can save you some money over that model in both initial price and lower running costs.

Final Thoughts

The Epson WorkForce Pro WF-M5194 is a monochrome inkjet printer designed to go head to head with mono lasers, and it fares quite well. - Printers

Epson WorkForce Pro WF-M5194

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About Our Expert

Tony Hoffman

Tony Hoffman

Senior Writer, Hardware

Since 2004, I have worked on PCMag’s hardware team, covering at various times printers, scanners, projectors, storage, and monitors. I currently focus my efforts on 3D printers, pro and productivity displays, and drives and SSDs of all sorts.

Over the years, I have reviewed smart telescopes, iPad and iPhone science apps, plus the occasional camera, laptop, keyboard, and mouse. I've also written a host of articles about astronomy, space science, travel photography, and astrophotography for PCMag and its past and present sibling publications (among them, Mashable and ExtremeTech), as well as for the former PCMag Digital Edition.

The Technology I Use

I have a Lenovo ThinkPad T14 laptop that's my work daily driver, an HP Pavilion Aero 13 as my primary personal laptop, and an Asus ProArt P16 for detailed photo work. (I also have an older Dell XPS 13, which now stays at home full-time.) For storage testing, I rely on our three custom-built Windows testbeds in PC Labs, as well as a 2024 MacBook Pro.

My primary home monitor is a BenQ EX2780Q, a gaming monitor with a great sound system and excellent image quality. I use that panel for writing, watching videos, and working with photos. I also have an HP 27 Curved Display—one of the first general-purpose curved monitors—which I have paired with an Acer Aspire desktop computer. My multifunction printer is an Epson Expression Premium XP-7100 Small-in-One. I also own an Epson Perfection V39 flatbed scanner, which I use for photos and short documents, and a Canon Selphy CP1300 small-format photo printer for turning out snapshots.

My first cell phone, in 2006, was a Motorola Razr; since then, it’s been all iPhones—I currently have an iPhone 15 Pro. I use my iPhone a lot for casual photography, though I also use a Sony DSC-RX100 VII and a Canon G5 X Mark II for everyday shooting. For much of my travel photography and astrophotography, I use either a Sony A7r II or A7 III, paired with a variety of lenses ranging from a Sony 14mm f/1.8 prime to a Sony FE 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 G OSS zoom lens. I also pair the A7r with a RedCat 51 for deep-sky star shooting. For astrophotography, I also use the Seestar S30 and S50 and the Unistellar Odyssey smart telescopes, which are essentially astronomical cameras controlled through one’s mobile device.

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