Kenyan SACCOs, microfinance branches, hospital records departments, clearing and forwarding agents working the Mombasa port corridor, hardware distributors, petrol stations, and county revenue offices still run on carbonless triplicate paperwork that a laser or inkjet cannot touch. The Epson LQ-690 strikes ink through every layer, so the customer sheet, the accounts sheet, and the file sheet come off the same pass carrying identical figures. Offices producing 200 to 400 delivery notes a day gain a machine rated at 20,000 hours mean time between failures, replacing narrow 9-pin units that stall on thick multi-part sets.

Unlike other electronics retailers in Kenya who quote dot matrix printers without stating column width or ribbon yield, Mascom International confirms every Epson LQ-690 we sell is the 106-column model rated at 10 million characters per ribbon. Users consistently report the Epson LQ-690 clearing a full day of invoicing on High Speed Draft without a single misfeed, and finance teams tell us one cartridge holds up for a quarter or longer. Walk into our Kimathi Street store to watch the Epson LQ-690 run a live multi-part set, or order it for pay-on-arrival delivery anywhere across Kenya's 47 counties.

The Epson LQ-690 physically strikes 24 pins through the ribbon and paper, so pressure carries the image onto every sheet in a carbonless set. Lasers and inkjets place toner or ink on the top sheet only, which is why banks, courier depots, and clinics still keep impact printers on the counter. The Epson LQ-690 also prints on continuous fanfold stationery, labels, envelopes, and card stock up to 0.49 mm thick, media that jams most office laser trays instantly.

Because Kenyan law, audit practice, and customer habit all still rely on signed triplicate paperwork. A SACCO teller hands the member a receipt, files a second sheet for reconciliation, and keeps a third for audit, all created at once. The Epson LQ-690 produces one original plus six copies per pass, so even a six-part warehouse dispatch note prints in one action. Running cost also matters: at roughly KSh 1,200 per ribbon covering 10 million characters, cost per page stays far below toner.

High Speed Draft runs the Epson LQ-690 at 440 characters per second at 10 cpi and 529 at 12 cpi, using fewer dots per character for internal paperwork like picking lists and stock sheets. Letter Quality slows to 110 characters per second at 10 cpi and 132 at 12 cpi, laying down denser dots for statements, contracts, and anything a customer keeps. Draft mode sits between the two at 330 and 396 characters per second respectively.

The S015610 black ribbon cartridge is rated at 10 million characters in draft mode. A typical A4 invoice carrying 1,500 to 2,000 characters therefore yields roughly 5,000 to 6,600 printed pages per cartridge. A branch printing 100 invoices daily replaces the ribbon about every two to three months. At Kenyan retail pricing of KSh 1,000 to KSh 1,500 per cartridge, that works out near KSh 0.20 per page, against KSh 3 to KSh 8 per page on a mono laser.

Yes. The Epson LQ-690 carries eleven resident barcode fonts in firmware: Code 39, Code 128, Codabar NW-7, EAN-13, EAN-8, UPC-A, UPC-E, Interleaved 2 of 5, Industrial 2 of 5, Matrix 2 of 5, and POSTNET. Your software sends the barcode command and the printer draws the bars itself, so no barcode font needs installing on each workstation. Warehouse teams in Industrial Area and Athi River use this to number cartons and dispatch notes directly on multi-part stationery.

Yes. The Epson LQ-690 ships with both a USB 2.0 Type B port and a bidirectional parallel port as standard, so a plain USB printer cable connects it to any current laptop. Epson publishes 32-bit and 64-bit drivers covering Windows 7 through Windows 11, and the printer also answers to the generic ESC/P2 driver already built into Windows. Older accounting systems that send raw text to LPT1 keep working through the parallel port on a desktop tower.

Both are 24-pin, 106-column flatbed machines sharing the same S015610 ribbon and the same original plus six copy capability. The LQ-690II raises High Speed Draft at 10 cpi from 440 to 487 characters per second and adds a network variant, while the Epson LQ-690 keeps USB and parallel only. Print quality at 360 x 180 dpi, the 20,000-hour failure rating, and the 400 million strokes per wire print head life are identical, so the older model remains the value pick.

The Epson LQ-690 is sold in 220V and 240V versions, so the unit Mascom International stocks matches Kenya's 240V supply directly without a step-down transformer. It draws only 38 watts while printing and 3 watts on standby, meaning a modest 650VA to 1000VA UPS carries the printer and a desktop through a short outage. Because print data sits in the 128KB buffer, a clean shutdown loses at most the page currently on the platen.

It depends on volume and paper thickness. A 9-pin printer forms characters from 9 wires and handles narrow 80-column stationery with three or four layers. The Epson LQ-690 uses 24 wires for sharper text, spans 106 columns for wide fanfold sets, and pushes through seven layers. Branches printing under 50 documents daily on narrow paper save money with a 9-pin unit. Sites running hundreds of wide multi-part sets recover the difference through fewer reprints and longer ribbon life.

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Every unit is covered by the 12-month warranty stated above, with claims handled at our Nairobi CBD service desk. Buyers across Kenya rely on Mascom International for accurate specifications, current pricing, and honest after-sales backing on every printer we stock.