Considering that it costs $299, you may be surprised that the Epson WorkForce ST-C2100 Supertank Color MFP offers speed, paper handling, and other features roughly in line with an all-in-one (AIO) inkjet one-third the price: Epson’s own Expression Home XP-4100 Small-in-One Printer. But while the XP-4100 has a low initial price and high running costs, the ST-C2100 flips the equation, balancing its steeper initial price against a far lower cost per page. Either one could be your better buy in the long run, but you should also keep in mind that our Editors’ Choice award winner for home and micro office use, the $159.99 Brother MFC-J4335DW, outdoes both on features.
Fits on Your Desk, Handles the Basics
The WorkForce ST-C2100 prints, scans, and works as a standalone copier. (It doesn’t fax.) At 10.2 by 14.8 by 22.3 inches, the 11.9-pound all-in-one is compact enough to sit on your desk within easy reach for refilling paper—which you’ll do often, as there’s only a single 100-sheet paper tray. Fortunately, it’s a rear tray rather than a drawer, so it’s easy to refill or load different stock such as letterhead or photo paper when needed. The 1.44-inch color LCD is petite but functional enough to guide you through everyday tasks, with nearby buttons for giving commands.
Paper handling for copying and scanning is even more minimal than for printing—with no automatic document feeder (ADF), you must place pages on the flatbed one at a time. The Epson’s auto duplexing, however, can not only print double-sided documents but convert single-sided originals to duplex copies. Epson says the ST-C2100’s monthly duty cycle is up to 3,000 pages, but recommends a modest monthly volume of 600. If you want to keep paper refills down to once a week, you’ll average 400 pages per month or about 20 per business day.
You can connect the printer to your PC by Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Direct, or USB cable. I used the last for testing, and setup from the Epson website was simple; the printer’s installer handles everything automatically, including downloading and installing print and scan drivers plus utilities for scanning and photo editing.
An alternative for setting up the printer is Epson’s Smart Panel app for mobile printing, available in Android and iOS versions. It also lets you monitor the device and both print from and scan to your smartphone or handheld. Like most current Epson printers, the ST-C2100 supports Epson Email Print and Epson Remote Print, which let you send files to the printer via the internet.
The WorkForce’s operating costs are in line with other bulk-ink or tank-based (as opposed to cartridge-based) inkjets, notably the $349.99 Canon Pixma G7020 and the $279 Epson EcoTank ET-4700. Each will set you back about 0.3 cent for a standard black text page and 0.9 cent for a color page. As always, the number you should focus on is the total cost of ownership, meaning the purchase price plus the running costs for the number of pages you expect to print. (See our guide to saving money on your next printer.) Note that for the ST-C2100, there’s no additional cost for ink until you use up the supply that comes with the printer, which Epson’s website claims is enough for 150 pages per month for two years or 3,600 pages total.
Sufficient Speed, Decent Print Quality
Epson rates the WorkForce ST-C2100 at 10.5 pages per minute (ppm) for monochrome pages and 5ppm for color. When I printed our 12-page Microsoft Word text document, it managed 8.4ppm (8.7ppm, not counting the slower first page). For our business applications suite, which combines the Word document with colorful Excel graphs and PowerPoint handouts, it averaged 4.8ppm. Snapshot-size 4-by-6-inch photos on Epson’s Presentation Paper Matte took just under two minutes apiece.
Those speeds more or less match the older EcoTank ET-4700, which we clocked at 8.1ppm for black text and 5ppm for the business document mix. However, the less expensive Epson XP-4100 Small-in-One proved faster, delivering monochrome text and the full suite at 9.6ppm and 5.4ppm respectively. The Pixma G7020 hit 11.4ppm for text but only 4.4ppm for the mix of applications. All these printers were significantly slower than the Brother MFC-J4335DW, which came in at 14.7ppm for monochrome text and 10.5ppm for the full suite.
Output quality was good enough for most office use, despite minor flaws. Our test fonts most likely to be used for business applications were easily readable at 5 points, but examination with a loupe revealed ragged edges even at 10 points. Smaller fonts also tended to lose space between characters (poor kerning) to the point where letters touched. Two heavily stylized fonts with thick strokes were both readable at 10 points, but both showed a tendency to fill in loops.
For graphics on plain paper, the printer did a good job holding fine lines, but color wasn’t as saturated as it should be. I saw some banding, but only in two images in the suite, and it was subtle enough that a noncritical eye wouldn’t notice it. When I printed graphics on Epson’s Presentation paper with print quality set to High, colors were nicely saturated and vibrant, and I didn’t see even a hint of banding.
Epson doesn’t market the ST-C2100 as a photo printer, but images on the matte paper were of impressively high quality, with rich hues and good color accuracy and contrast.
In our smudge tests, black ink smudged easily on plain paper, and a little less so on Premium Matte stock. Color ink did an excellent job of resisting smudging on both papers, but showed water stains after drying.
How Many Pages Do You Plan to Print?
Of all the printers mentioned here, the most direct competitor to the WorkForce ST-C2100 is the Epson Expression Home XP-4100, which offers similar functionality at a lower purchase price but has whopping operating costs (8 cents per black and 20 cents per color page). Your choice between them will depend on whether you expect to print enough pages for the WorkForce’s lower cost per page to save money in the long run.
As mentioned, the Epson EcoTank ET-4700 and the Canon Pixma G7020 offer the same low running costs as the ST-C2100. As one of Brother’s INKvestment Tank printers, the MFC-J4335DW occupies a middle ground in both purchase price and cost per page, which could make it your best bet depending on your print volume; it is also the fastest in the group. The Brother and Canon printers and the ET-4700 also boast automatic document feeders for multipage copies and scans. That said, if you can live without an ADF and anticipate printing a high volume of pages, the ST-C2100 can easily make sense.
