Epson EcoTank ET-4800 A4 Multifunction Wi-Fi Ink Tank Printer, With Up To 3 Years Of Ink Included

First time I have ventured into printing with refillable ink and I must say I am very impressed. I have had many Epson printers all with cartridges. I have always bought compatible ones and have constantly dodged warnings, naggings and refusing to print because of it, and they never lasted that long anyway. This is a game changer. The reservoir is huge compared to the cartridges offering up to 72 cartridges worth (they say) of ink. And you get this included with your order. Even when pricing original Epson ink it will work out cheaper and no nagging. Plus, you are doing your bit for the environment and giving the manufacturer all the money to invest. True the printer is a lot dearer but will work out just as cheap or cheaper if you are keeping it for the duration. The actual filling with ink is a doddle. The bottles have been ingeniously designed from the ground up to fit each tank individually. They don’t spill and the ink stops flowing when enough ink is in the tank. I was a bit apprehensive about doing this initially but it’s easy and not messy in the slightest.Epson have put a lot of effort into setting up their EcoTank models. You can install it perfectly and easily from new by downloading the setup APP to your smartphone. This communicates with the printer from the outset and expertly guides you through the whole initial set up process with pictures and confirmations at each stage. Leaving you with an initialised product ready for connection to your computer. This to is easy as it links itself to a specific setup page just for the model and does all the work for you just by responding to the questions. Mine was a Windows 11 installation. Very clever and very simple. It all takes a bit of time but patience is a virtue.The new software is good too. One example is organising scans from the scanner. The software is intuitive. Organising pages is easy and it can even intelligently rotate pages. This more or less does away with spending a lot more on double sided scanning as there is so little effort in just popping the pages back on the ADF knowing there is minimal effort needed for sorting.It takes up a small footprint for the amount it does. It is relatively light as well. It does feel a little plasticky but I don’t think so much so that it will fall apart. It just appears functional and is. The screen is small and is not touch meaning you have to keep pressing buttons and then okaying. Shame I would have loved the touch screen so much better. Also, when you lift the scanner unit it only holds in place when you force it upward so that it locks. I found this nerve racking as I thought it might break, I am sure this could be better manufactured.I will not be printing photos on it. For me it is meant for office type documents and they have all printed really well so far. It prints double sided also. I am more than happy to give anything I print to anyone who I believe should find it much more than acceptable. I do use decent paper.Perhaps the only down side is it seems to be a little slow in everything it does. Don’t get me wrong in no way a deal breaker for me but if you were in the office and want everything at speed then perhaps another model may better suit.I note some people are reporting a WiFi issue mine worked straight away although I cannot know yet whether this will come to haunt me. But there is the 5 year warranty which Epson are currently offering on their EcoTank models.Overall, I am extremely pleased so far. Far better than my Epson’s of old in terms of hardware, ink printing and software. A great upgrade. At this stage I am glad I bought it. My major gripe was Amazon reducing the price 2 days after I bought it.

Last month I purchased and returned the Epson ET 2861 because having set it up I discovered that it could not Air Print from my IPhone, nor could I print duplex. I set the ET 4850 today and I am pleased to say it does both and has a sheet feeder. It takes a bit of time to set up but it prints and scans rather well ( like most modern printers) and if you have the time to set up Epson Connect you can scan from the device to designated email accounts, Dropbox, Google Drive and other Cloud services. Emails and documents can be sent remotely to the printer. No surprises here but the ability to control the device from your smartphone using Epson Smart Panel is rather good and the online set up of the printer is straight forward if you have the patience. A good bit of kit but a novice might find setting up all the available services a bit of a challenge.At first sight the presence of a CD disk was a bit of a worry (just bin it if you don’t have a drive) as were the instructions as to how to set the device up as a fax which I rather think is a redundant means of communication.

This is a great generic printer/scanner/copier/fax machine (even ignoring everything past "printer"), although the colours are a little too washed out at times - the black isn't black enough, the colours aren't really VIBRANT (even on photo paper)For the way EcoTank works, this is fantastic, the ink levels being visible and being able to be topped up before they run out is a genius idea, and makes it a million times better than other colour printers, especially the ones where the colours are all in the same cartridge (which is a HUGE waste of money), which makes the ink management a breezeStrangely the setup wasn't as easy as it states in the box, I tried it on the mobile app but it never connected to the wifi, resetting it and plugging it in was MEANT to setup everything, but it was then "forced" to be used wired rather than wireless... but once it was setup and on the network (lots of manual entry) setup on my work Mac was stupidly easy, it just did it, while the Windows install was a complete pain in the butt! Once it's setup though it's really simple to print to, from multiple devices, and when it's on wifi it can live anywhere that's useful or out of the wayMy reason for not giving it five stars is a bit odd, as they don't properly "announce" my requirement, but more hint at it - I need to print on card stock, and this listed that it printed on 300gsm photo paper, so I thought it should print on 300gsm card, but alas, it did it once and then never fed the card again... trying 250gsm had the same result, but the only one that ACTUALLY worked is 200gsm, which is not quite stiff enough for real card printing