For graphics that don't cover the full page, you may or may not consider the quality good enough to hand out to potential customers or clients, depending on how much of a perfectionist you are. Graphics quality was good enough for most internal business needs, but I'd hesitate to use the printer for full-page PowerPoint handouts or the like.
Overall, the text is acceptable for day-to-day business documents, but I wouldn't use the printer for, say, a report going to an important client when I wanted to convey a sense of professionalism. In addition, one font that you might choose for standard business documents needed 20 points to pass both tests, and the text in general had a slightly grayish look, rather than a crisp, dark black. More than half of the fonts in our text suite qualified as both easily readable and well formed at 8 points, but fewer than half passed both thresholds at 6 points, and none passed both at smaller sizes. In fact, the quality is subpar for an inkjet across the board. The 520's output quality is not a strong point. The 4500 is the slower of the other two, and it averaged 1:15 for 4-by-6s and exactly 3 minutes for 8-by-10s. Photo speed was even slower relative to both these other printers, averaging 2:15 for each 4-by-6 and 5:10 for each 8-by-10.
I timed the 520 on our business applications suite (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing) at a total of 14 minutes 27 seconds, somewhat faster than the Officejet 4500, at 16:29, but slower than the Lexmark S405, at 12:47. The WorkForce 520 turned in essentially the same speed on our tests, but it doesn't stand out as particularly fast, because the competition has caught up. When I reviewed the WorkForce 310, I called it a veritable speed demon for the price. Either approach lets you print more monochrome pages without running out of ink. According to Epson, neither design choice has an advantage over the other. Having two cartridges lets the printer hold more black ink at once, and is exactly equivalent to having a single large black cartridge, which is the approach you'll find in most other printers. The only unusual touch in setup is that the printer uses five ink cartridges with two identical black cartridges (along with cyan, yellow, and magenta).
According to Epson, it also ships with drivers and a full set of software for Windows 7, 2000, XP, XP 圆4, and Mac OS X 10.4 and above. I installed the 520 on a Windows Vista system. Then load the ink cartridges and paper and run the automated setup routine from disc. Find a spot for the 9.3- by 18.1- by 15.9-inch (HWD) printer, remove the packing materials, and attach the cables. Setting up the WorkForce 520 on a network using the Ethernet connection is absolutely standard. So if you don't print enough for the limited paper capacity to bother you, and you don't duplex very often, the paper handling won't be an issue.
However, the manual duplex feature in the driver is adequate for occasional duplexing. In much the same vein, the lack of an automatic duplexer will be a problem if you duplex very often. The input tray holds only 100 sheets, which means if you print more than about 20 pages per day (including copies and incoming faxes), you'll have to add paper more than once a week, which is often enough for some people to consider it annoying. You also won't find much in the way of paper handling, which is the key factor that limits the 520 to light-duty printing, even in the context of a micro or home office. There's no PictBridge connector, for example, and no way to print from a USB key or memory card. What you won't find on the 520 are photocentric features aimed at home use. And for offices with wired networks, the printer offers an Ethernet connector as well as WiFi. Office-centric features in addition to faxing include a 30-page automatic document feeder (ADF) for easy scanning of multi-page documents as well as legal-size pages, which are too big for the flatbed.
It will also let you send an e-mail from its front-panel menu commands, automatically launching an e-mail message on your PC and adding the scanned document as an attachment. Like the WorkForce 310 before it, the WorkForce 520 can print, scan, and fax, even over a network, and can work as a standalone copier and fax machine.