I can't believe I'm saying this but after about 20 years I'm ready to go back to an inkjet printer but namely the Epson EcoTank type.

We have a Brother color laser I bought in mid-2020 as a refurb for $150 and it's been OK so far except that $50-$75 aftermarket/Amazon toner cartridge sets don't work well in it and often produce less-than-stellar dull and smudged looking print quality. A set of genuine Brother toner cartridges is like $260-$295 though.

My wife now prints a lot for our kids homeschooling work and we need something that is going to work better and not be expensive to top off. The other day the Brother began jamming badly and making a strong burning smell and is now stuck in some sort of diagnostic mode loop. I suspect it's in the process of shitting the bed for good and won't be worth the cost of repairs plus the exorbitant toner cost to have decent print quality.

My brother in law does have an Epson EcoTank printer and raves about it, that it's easy to top off and economical and does good print quality. I thought I'd ask here to see if anyone had one of these and could recommend a model?

Thanks!

I just replaced my old Epson cartridge printer with an Epson Ecotank 3830. I got tired of buying expensive cartridges and having to clean heads too often. I picked this model because it's speed is acceptable for home use and will copy, scan, and do 2-sided printing. I thought about a higher priced model but don't really need the auto document feed. The print quality is okay (using the cheap photocopy paper my wife bought). I prefer a premium 24 lb. bond with higher brightness and GSM ratings.

I recommended and installed one for a client about a month ago.
The reason was all the HP units are tying their printers to the "cloud" and forcing (almost) if you don't opt out to being connected to the Internet or suffer connectivity issues in part.
Moving on the Epson Eco Tank I noted that it installed easily, printed well and the ink-fill system was designed particularly well.
One thing that struck me was how cheaply the feed trays were being all plastic.
I would have expected something sturdier.
I had no feed issues but only time will tell if there is a problem.
Other than that, it seemed to be a pretty nice printer value.
It was a mono-ink straight printer.
YMMV

I have that printer. It prints papers and photos as well as any home grade printer I have ever owned which is to say it is fine. Where it shines is clearly the ink system. They ship it with enough liquid ink for tons of copies. It lasts a long time and just by looking at a bottle of ink and a cartridge it is easy to see why it lasts so long and is way cheaper. This is how they all should work.

TLDR: buy with confidence.

Does anybody have anything (good or bad) to say about Epson's drivers / utility software for MacOS?

That is one thing that Brother really does right, so I hesitate to look at other brands.

We do. An ET-3760. Had it about a year? Very happy with its performance.

I run a Epson ET-4850 with a 2023 Mac Mini. No real problems. Epson updates their software frequently, but their updater works OK on the Mac
.

Timely. I just opened and set up an Epson ET-8550 yesterday.
I work with Macs, so they have you install an app on your iPhone that walks you through the entire setup process including filling the ink tanks and connecting to WiFi.
I had a glitch which was resolved by (guess what) unplugging the printer, plugging it back in and restarting.
I then went through the process of aligning the print head.
This whole process probably took an hour. But it was made palatable by the use of the Epson app.

I then printed out a photo which is a copy of an old (exactly 100 years) family photo that included my mother and her siblings; my mother was 12 then. I showed it to my wife who marveled at the quality of the print.

I went back in to Lightroom and changed some of the settings to lighten it and increase contrast; of course cropped it, etc.

I am delighted with the printer’s print quality and Wi-Fi connectivity.

Filling the ink tanks was—much to my surprise—foolproof and without a drop of ink (or blood) spilled.

The 8550 includes a scanner, about 8.5 x 14, which I have not yet used.

Conclusion: highly recommend this printer (8550); beware that setup will take time, of which most of it was adjusting the print head which is recommended. The use of the app, which connects itself via Bluetooth to the printer, greatly eases the setup process.

All I own is Mac. Computer, laptops, iPads, iPhones. Works fine. No issues.

Thanks for all the input!

Sounds like Epson really got smart and has a good thing going here. The whole reason I ditched inkjets in the first place were the rip-off prices on the ink cartridges which could often easily exceed what you spent on the printer back then. Sounds like they actually listened to the market and responded in kind to it.

They have pissed off a bunch of manufacturers I assume. The whole “here’s a free printer now buy our cartridges” is done. I don’t believe you even have to buy Epson ink.

quote:

Originally posted by pedropcola:
They have pissed off a bunch of manufacturers I assume. The whole “here’s a free printer now buy our cartridges” is done. I don’t believe you even have to buy Epson ink.

I'm sure. They were ripping us all off for years with the whole scheme. Screw em!

I am in need of a new printer as well.
My old Canon is dead.

Is Epson the go to over the Canon Megatanks?

Yeah, the new rip-off is making every one of the ecotank printers an all-in-one unit--so you have to buy a scanner/copier even if you just want something that prints.

I wanted to love the Epson [fed up with HP BS and highway robbery cartridge prices].

Don't remember the model #, it was middle of the road. Tried it for a few days but returned... Too slow and would not print double-sided.

Bought a Cannon (Ink tank style also): love it... Probably 1/4 of the cost per sheet for ink vs HP.

Interacts with my personal MAC, iPhone and work PC just fine

(Only gripe is it regularly defaults to the rear feed vs tray)

I haven't heard of these tank model printers until now. I hate paying through the nose for cartridges all the time. I guess I know what our next printer will be.

An entire EcoTank printer, at $200-$250 from walmart.com, costs about the same as 5-6 cartridges for most printers. It might be my next purchase.

I got tired of the Epson cartridge printers as they held enough ink to print 10 pages and they were done. They also needed constant maintenance.

I ended up with a Cannon ink tank printer, I alike it a lot better. The only issue I had with it was I went a few months without printing anything and had to do a deep clean and ink purge. Once I did that it was fine.

Link

Costco EcoTank 3850 scan print with doc feeder is what I'm looking at to replace the HP 8715, it's discounted from $399 at Epson to $299 with extra refills....

Epson ET-4550 here. Bought Dec 2015, works great, no problems.

It's a multifunction theoretically - but I never use it for anything except printing. Highly recommended for printing. Not having used the other features/capabilities, I can't speak to the rest.

My 4550 prints double sided just fine - I'm guessing the above poster with two-sided issues might have bought a model without two-sided capabilities?

Also, can't speak to Mac OS driver support (no reason to suspect any problems, but we've no Mac PCs here) but I can say my wife's connected to it over WiFi from her iPad and iPhone and printed with no issues.