Amber Neely
For those looking to upgrade their home office, Epson's EcoTank printer combines a printer, scanner, and fax machine into one multi-function device, allowing you to save time, money, and space.
Despite all of the technological advances over the last decade, most of us haven't gone entirely paperless yet. Whether it's printing shipping labels or keeping hard copies of important documents for our records, printers still have a place in our home office.
That's why we're taking a look at Epson's EcoTank ET-4760 All-in-One Cartridge-Free Supertank Printer, to see if the upfront investment pays off by saving us precious office real estate and money in expensive ink refills.
Design
The EcoTank is a compact little all-in-one, perfect for sitting on an office shelf, on top of a filing cabinet, or the corner of a desk. While not the smallest printer, it does include scanning and faxing capabilities, which can cut down the need for additional devices in your home office, ultimately saving you a significant amount of space.
We received a white EcoTank for review, but it also is available in black.
Setup
Unlike traditional cartridge-based printers, you'll need to fill the ink tanks yourself. Fortunately, this is a straightforward process, and provided that you are careful, it should be relatively mess-free.
We found that filling the tanks was easy, and Epson's step-by-step guide walks you through every step, with no guesswork needed.
Of course, once you've filled the printer, you'll want to connect it to your home network. We've used EcoTank printers in the past, so we already knew what to expect, but we'll admit that connecting the printer to your home network via WiFi is a bit of a pain, but not difficult.
Using the touchscreen display, we were able to open up the printer's network settings, find our home network, and enter our password. Connecting took only a few seconds.
Once connected, it's easy to print via your iPhone, Mac, PC, or Android phone.
If you choose to use an Ethernet cable, you'll only need to put it into your router — no fiddly typing required.
Since the printer is connected to your home network, most computers and devices should print without installing any extra drivers. However, Epson does offer a suite of software for printing and scanning, should you need it.
Performance
The EcoTank is a standard printer when it comes to printing. It averages roughly 15 pages per minute for an industry-standard black and white print and about eight pages per minute for a standard color print.
Of course, if you're printing high-resolution artwork or photographs, it'll take quite a bit longer.
What really makes this printer shine in the home office, dorm room, or the small office setting is the ability to do two-sided prints.
Everything we printed from the EcoTank came out looking great, and we were especially thrilled with any text documents we printed.
If we had one complaint, it would be that any color-heavy prints tended to be quite wet when coming out of the printer. If possible, you may want to wait five minutes before moving any ink-heavy prints.
Of course, this is an all-in-one printer, which means it also offers a flatbed scanner. While we've moved on to compact scanners for most of our document and photo scanning, having a flatbed scanner on hand is useful for those times when we want to scan books or pages of magazines.
Additionally, the scanner allows the device to be used as a fax machine and a photocopier.
The scanner worked as anticipated, and we were able to access it directly from our favorite programs, such as Photoshop. It has a maximum scanning resolution of 9600 DPI, which is likely more than you'll need for home office use.
Cost vs savings
EcoTank printers aren't cheap by any means, but we've used them in the past and can attest that they're a good investment if you routinely need to print color images.
As they use liquid ink tanks rather than a traditional cartridge, the cost of filling up an EcoTank is significantly cheaper. A single set of three EcoTank color bottles is about $40, but equals roughly 80 individual traditional cartridges.
When it comes to printing a standard color print, it will cost you about one cent per page versus the average 20 cents with ink cartridges — and those savings can really add up.
There is one notable downside to the EcoTank, though — and that is moving it. Once filled, moving the EcoTank can be a little perilous as it must be held level to avoid spilling ink. We suggest that you fill the ink tanks in the spot you plan to use it.
Overall
With a nearly $500 price tag, the EcoTank ET-4760 isn't the cheapest printer you could buy, but the savings can be significant over time. Additionally, it combines many pieces of office equipment into a single device, allowing you to get a home office up and running in less time with less clutter.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Pros
- Combines printer, copier, fax, and scanner into one device
- Liquid ink tanks save money and allow for more prints between refills
- Unique bottles allow for mess-free refills
Cons
- High initial cost compared to cartridge printers
- Full-color pages remain wet, prone to smearing if handled too early
Where to buy: You can pick up an EcoTank ET-4760 from Epson's site for $499.99, or those who have Amazon Prime can snag one from Amazon for $499.99 with free two-day shipping.
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
Andrew O'Hara
19 Comments
Thanks for the review. Always curious about the savings on this printer every time I’m at Staples.
Last September 2020 when our printer died this was the only in stock printer. The price hurt! The review is completely truthful. One thing that just happened in the last week is: I got rid of my router and am now using the one in the Comcast gateway box. After I did that it printed garbage from laptops & desktops until I removed, restarted, re-added the printer. Ok good so far. Unfortunately my iOS devices cannot find it anymore. I have bigger tech issues with Comcast’s lack of reliability and Comcast always telling me it’s my equipment; now saying it’s my hub switch. I’ll revise this comment once I get AirPrint to work from our iPhones & iPads.
We have an Epson WF-2860 that uses the standard ink cartridges. If I order the high capacity ink it costs around $100 for the four colors (I tried the cheap aftermarket ink cartridges and they were a disaster). So these EcoTank models look pretty tempting to me and would seem to pay for themselves in short order in the cost of ink alone.
Personally I cannot fathom why anyone would ever buy an inkjet printer. I switched to a laser printer ages ago and saved so much money in the long run. I do need color from time-to-time so I added a color laser a few years ago. It’s more expensive than B&W (duh) but still much cheaper than ink, way faster, higher quality, and no smudges or worrying about my printouts getting wet and smearing.
The only legitimate use that I can think of for inkjet printers is for photographs, and it’s far more economical to send them out than to print them at home.
Canon’s ImageClass printers are top notch and feature rich. My color printer not only prints duplex but also scans duplex which is handy when I’ve got a stack of double-sided documents to digitize.
I have the less expensive Epson EcoTank 2750 and while it has a few less features, including a fax machine and scanner feeder, it has been a huge money saver. We filled it up on first use in January 2018 and just refilled the tanks up for the first time in December 2020, almost three years of worry free and cost free printing. We have three kids in high school and my wife and I are both attorneys, so we are constantly printing. With our old inkjet cartridge printer, we would go through cartridges every 1 or 2 months. I would highly recommend, as you will save significantly with either the more basic EcoTank or this more expensive one.