Performance
The device has a claimed one-page-per-second speed. A manufacturer's claims are all very well, but in practice we often find that a printer falls far short once we put them to the test. This was not the case with the EvoJet which lived up to its billing in an almost spectacular fashion. Anyone who's used an inkjet before is likely to find themselves transfixed as pages cascade from the printer at a rate which seems altogether improbable.
In order to reflect the true speed of a printer we normally time our print tests from the point at which we submit the job until the moment the last page drops into the output tray; thus capturing any job preparation and spooling time. Including this, the EvoJet despatched our 25-page text test at more than 45 pages per minute (ppm), and our 24-page colour test at nearly 31ppm. Removing the preparation time, both results printed at almost exactly the claimed one-page-per-second speed. Unusually for a fast colour printer, there were no processing pauses after it had started printing our complex colour graphics test.
Curious to see if the printer could sustain such rates over longer jobs, we tried a 100-page version of our text test. This printed at 57ppm, although the actual engine speed was almost 62ppm if we discounted the eight seconds it took to begin printing the first page.
Overall
This is an astonishingly quick printer at this price, then, but whilst quick inkjet prints are rarely impressive, those from the EvoJet were crisp and well-defined. Our only criticism is that on plain paper the dye-based inks lacked punch compared to a colour laser's toner: where the best quality is essential it may prove worth paying the steepish 2.5p per sheet for Lomond's double-sided, coated matt paper as the results on it are superb.
Surprisingly perhaps, photo prints were also extremely good when using Lomond's own glossy photo paper far better than most lasers and not far off a good consumer photo inkjet. Although using the EvoJet's highest resolution halves its engine speed, it's still remarkable to see high quality full-page photos appear in just a few seconds each.
Verdict
The EvoJet Office is best suited to undemanding workloads, and its paper-handling features are basic, but in other regards it's in a different league to competing inkjets and colour lasers. Combining speed, quality and low running costs, it's a promising debut for Memjet's technology. We look forward to seeing it in more products.
[Hardware specifications or Minimum requirements for software] Print capability: 1,600x1,600dpi (max), 1,600x800dpi (normal), four dye-based colour inks (KCMY) Speed: 60ppm mono/colour Recommended duty: 4,000 sheets/month Paper handling: Input 250-sheet tray plus manual feed, output 125-sheet tray Interfaces & protocols: USB, 10/100 Mbit Ethernet Supported operating systems: Windows Vista/7 (32 or 64 bit), OS X 10.5 or later Power consumption: Standby 6W, Active 34W Size: 420x225x550mm Weight: 12kg [Benchmarks] Time to first page out: 9s 25 pages, formal text document: 33s (45.5ppm) 100 pages, formal text document: 1m 45s (57.1ppm) 24 pages, mixed colour graphics: 47s (30.6ppm) Two 10x8" colour photos, best quality: 18s (printed on two A4 sheets) Six 6x4" colour photos, best quality: 20s (printed on three A4 sheets)
