Epson's latest all-in-one outdistances the competition

If you're shopping for a printer to keep your small office productive, this Epson all-in-one is gonna help out. I'm Justin Yu for cnet.com. This is a quick take of the Epson WorkForce WF-2540. Epson describes the WF-2540 as the smallest printer in its class, but that doesn't mean it cuts corners on features. You get a lot of printer for under 150 bucks along with the built-in scanner, fax machine and copying functions. From the physical standpoint though, the folded paper trace on the front and the back of the unit really save a lot of space, but keep in mind that you load paper into the back of the machine so you gonna wanna have it lowered than eye level. The control panel is right in the middle of the device, but don't expect fancy features like a touchscreen display. For starters, this printer ships for less than 150 bucks, but also this device is made for the small business crowd that typically want to know for those output device. You can adjust the angle of the panel itself, but you do get a 2.5-inch LCD display built-in as well as quick access buttons that control the copy, fax and scan buttons along with the number pad for entering fax numbers and a bank of speed dial entries. The flatbed scanner and 30-page auto document feeder running out the extra features. The auto document feeder up top is great for the loading in a stack of documents for hands-free scanning, but my one problem with the construction is a scanner lit. Again, I wasn't expecting much in terms of durability on this machine, but the cheap plastic hinges that are supposed to keep the scanner open are so frail that even the slightest touch is gonna send it crashing down on to your hand. So, just be careful. So you can connect the printer to your computer using a standard hard line USB cable, but you should really use the built-in Wi-Fi to get access to Google Cloud print as well as the Epson connect feature. That lets you e-mail a document or photo to the printer from any connected device that can be a laptop, a tablet or a Smartphone. But speaking of Smartphones, you should also check out Epson's iPrint Smartphone app for Android and iOS devices and you can check out all the details including benchmarks, speeds, and quality scores in 4 review on CNET, but that's gonna do it for me. I'm Justin Yu, you just took a first look at the Epson WorkForce WF-2540. Thanks for watching.