EcoTank ET-8500 Ink Tank Printer | Photo Printing | 6-Colour Inks | Wireless | A4 | Print, Copy, Scan | 10.9cm Touchscreen | Double-Sided Printing | Rear Paper Feed

Bought to replace an aging Epson Inkjet printer for home use. We home educate so our printers get fairly heavy use for both colour A4 and photo printing. First - the obvious downside. It’s expensive whichever way you look at it. You could get several standard cartridge inkjet printers for the price of this. Any savings you will make from having an ink tank will be realised over the course of several years after the initial outlay. Secondly, it’s not entirely straightforward to set up. The app you have to download for it walks you through the process but it still takes at least an hour to fully put the thing together, and then you need to get it talking to your computers. We live in a Mac/PC/iPhone household and it did take a while to set it up on each system. I’m fairly confident with technology but it still felt like a bit of a chore. Now, the positives. The print quality blows any home printer I’ve had before out of the water. Photo printing is indistinguishable (to my eye) from what you’d get commercially. Standard printing on paper is quick and clear. Using the manual feed paper tray at the rear of the printer we have managed to print directly onto thick card stock which has come out perfectly. Once set up, the connection is stable and consistent. Not a single “unable to locate printer” error and due to its AirPrint capabilities iOS devices on the same network recognise it without needing to download the app. Having spent years with the choice of either paying through the nose for genuine printer cartridges or getting cheap generic ones that only work half the time, having the ink tank system seems to be the way forwards. Despite fairly heavy use we’ve barely got through any of the ink that it comes with, and replacements ink, both genuine and generic, is reasonably priced. As there is no security system like the chips you get in cartridges you won’t be penalised for using generic ink. The printer’s other features all seem to work well. The LED touchscreen is brightly lit and functional. There’s a button on it which can give you tutorials on pretty much all of the printer’s functions. You can load several types of media at once (we have A4 paper, glossy photos and use the rear feed for card stock or A4 photos). The scanner works well with various devices. All in all, I’m very happy with it despite the initial outlay

I love this machine. It has everything that I want from a colour printer. The fact that the ink lasts so long is fantastic and having used this for printing out all of my Christmas cards I can say that the level has hardly moved. The filling of the ink was something I was concerned about having filled from bottles before on an older machine but I need not have worried as it is so easy to do and no spillage is possible. I had to try out different papers to find ones that were suitable for printing double sided for my cards but well worth it in the end as the quality of the printing is perfect. The colours are bright and no bleeding and this is far superior to my last Epson printer. Although initially the price is a lot more than I wanted to pay, but taking into consideration how long the inks lasts, the quality of the printing I definitely recommend this printer. Also I got it at a discount deal and even on an Amazon pay over 12 months free credit so perfect. The set up to my wifi went without any problems and having automatic double sided printing, the bottom photo tray and also the rear feeder tray is great. Being able to scan and copy is a bonus. Definitely recommend this printer.

My excellent Canon Pixma printer died and on principle I wanted to get an ink tank printer to avoid cartridges. The problem was that it seems most of the ink tank printers are far more expensive upfront (cheaper in long run) and sacrifice useful feature or print quality to fit these in (Canon take note!). This Epsom is one of the most expensive, but doesn’t sacrifice on features that I needed (it is also a Which Best Buy for good reason). So I took the plunge as I could spread the cost out over 12 months with Amazon. So far I am very pleased! This printer was easy to install via the phone app - this is the recommended way and gives clear interactive instructions. Ink tank filling is mess free. After install was completed (~10mins), the PC found it immediately over Wifi. We were printing within 15 minutes. The most important thing for me is print quality and speed. The quality of photos is excellent on photo paper. The difference to professionally printed photos I can’t find. The quality of documents on plain paper is good, especially given the high speed with which they are printed! The small criticism is that on plain paper this printer could go less heavy on the ink. In particular any absorbent paper will likely see some ink bleed (so consider what you print on). But for home use overall it is excellent. I can’t yet comment fully on the longevity claims of the ink tanks. But they remain around the full level, despite some high initial use. So looks promising. In terms of other features… Scan / copy quality is great. The printers footprint is surprisingly small (smaller than my Canon). It has 2 paper trays for A4 size and photo paper, 1 CD tray and a rear tray. The touch screen is big and easy to navigate. It has a maintenance tank to collect excess ink rather than leave the printer full of ink from head cleaning (like my Canon). The printer even has its own email address to send it documents to print. Then there is the mobile phone App… this is great also. Easy to use and print from. This also enables some creativity (template ideas etc). The PC software is less refined, but provides the same functionality. Some of the creative functionality is also available on the printer touch screen. So although this is still on the expensive side I think well worth it. It is high spec and you pay for what you get. Time will tell if it lives as long as my Canon and represents better value. No printer is perfect, but this one gets pretty close!

Number one photo printer

Photo tray does not work. Only way to print photos is via the rear tray. Latest problem: Rear tray must be manually selected each time - which is cumbersome. Do not buy this printer.

Excellent A4 size photo prints