Daily App: Epson iPrint Is Among the Most Capable

With its broad and diverse suite of mobile device applications, Epson makes a compelling case for consumers to purchase its printers and for solution providers to partner with Epson. The company's free tools for Android, BlackBerry, iOS and Windows Phone offer the ability to print now or later, send scans via email, scan to a device or to the cloud, check supply levels and otherwise monitor its printers and MFPs from literally anywhere in the world.

We chose to take Epson iPrint for Android for a spin, but Epson iPrint for iOS looks to deliver precisely the same feature set. As with most tools of this kind, Epson's work only with its own printers; we tested it with the Epson Workforce Pro WF5190 color inkjet printer, a recent model that we were reviewing for Printer Week 2015.

On first launch, iPrint presents a list of icons for outputting compatible documents and accessing other capabilities, depending on the selected printer. If none is selected, tapping on the top line brings up a screen that will search for printers on the LAN, allow manual input of an IP address or access Epson Connect and Remote Print. This button links to functionality provided by separate Epson apps, which also are free.

The Photo button links to the Android Gallery with images grouped as in the device. The Saved Documents button provides access to on-device files; tapping on a supported document brings up a static preview with access to the usual array of printer settings and output preferences. The app can print jpg, gif, tiff, bmp, png, pdf, doc, xls and ppt file formats. There's also direct access to the device camera, Web pages through an embedded browser, and files stored on Box, Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive. Printing from external Android apps is supported through Android's Share feature, but the page we tested was truncated to letter size rather than scaled or tiled. Access to printer settings is through the device's default browser and the printer's Web internal page.

PUBLISHED FEB. 5, 2015