Customer Ratings & Reviews

My wife, who is a teacher, and our family, which has four middle/high school/college-aged kids, burn through ink and paper regularly. We got this printer after some research in the hopes we could print faster, be more ink efficient, and still do all the projects and things we want.I was delighted at the setup (it's a good use of mixed documentation and AI-assisted configuration help). The physical assembly was simple, and it just worked with our computers, tablets, and phones out of the box. The ink system promises to be very cost-effective, and all the printing, scanning, and all-in-one functions make this great so far. My wife was delighted at the speed and 2-sided printing abilities, and so far we've had a really good experience.

This home office all-in-one HP-3950 inkjet printer offers very easy setup (including wireless networking), fast 2-sided Color/BW printing, quiet and smooth operation, and print jobs that look excellent! Tray storage of 250 pages means less refill time...Nice! Filling the 4-color ink tanks with the included ink bottles couldn't be easier!! Due to "no cartridges", at a 6000 page print count this refillable ink tank cost will be 95% Less than my previous color laser jet printer cartridge consumption, AMAZING!!

Love the Epson. Great ink supply. Easy to install and prints beautifully. Staff highly recommended this printer for my needs.

Excellent Printer. Has a touch screen. Does double sided copying. Compact. Ink doesn't dry out. Has Fax

So far I really like my new Epsom printer. A friend has one in her office and spoke so highly of its quality and how seldom the ink has to be refilled. They print a lot and it’s still working great after having it several years. I’m still learning how to use some of the settings. Glad I bought it.

We bought it to print our restaurant’s seasonal menus, and it’s been great, efficient, high-quality color, and a solid value. We finally feel comfortable printing in color without having to “count the beans” and tightly control ink use. I also really like that the feed tray and output tray both automatically fold in when not in use, it helps keep dust and other pollutants from getting inside. One small pet peeve: when printing checks, thicker paper can jam if you load too many at once, so we only feed a few blank checks at a time.

Fairly easy to set up although it took several minutes, longer than I expected. Had to use my smartphone to do it, which I did not anticipate. So far I have been able to print both via wifi from my phone and hard wire from my pc.

Great experience. Order came fast. Printer is exactly what I was looking for. Love that I no longer have to order cartridges. Very easy to set up.

The right features for a home or small business printer. No more worries if the ink is gone. No more pricey cartridges.

Excellent printer! So glad I picked this model - worth the extra. Super easy set up instructions. Love printing from my phone.

Fast, easy to setup, great picture quality, and great new printer.

I’ve always been a big fan of Epson. Of course the vast majority of the products I’ve used from them have been projectors. When I had the chance to grab a printer that promised all the advantages of an inkjet with the cost per page that rivals lasers, I decided to bite. And I’m glad I did. I’ve had printers from a bunch of different manufacturers over the years. What I personally have told myself and friends is: go laser. Why? Well lasers offer a ton of great advantages, but they also are lower maintenance for most people, and most manufacturers' toner isn’t insanely priced, like ink in inkjet cartridges which per ml tend to rival fine champagne in cost. Well, not so with Epson’s latest entry. While not the first to offer tanks, the ET-3950 is by far from the less evil side of the inkjet heritage. You can buy bottles of ink from Epson (or not recommended, but probably safe, 3rd parties) at much cheaper prices. The ET-3950 has tanks that can be refilled and consequently avoids the ridiculous cost of ink ‘cartridges’ that we all grew up buying. Couple that with the absolute distasteful consumer engineering that certain other companies do, and Epson comes out looking like the printing hero of modern times. So the ET-3950 isn’t evil, that’s a good start right? Absolutely. In fact the most evil thing about the Epson is unboxing it and removing the plethora of shipping tape used to keep the printer intact while being shipped. Once removed you’re ready to start setup. Setup was quite easy, with the printer suggesting downloading the mobile app to complete setup. I did this and it walked me through filling up the tanks, loading paper, and a test page. Similarly, my Windows machine and Macs were able to see this printer right away without much headache. Airprint is a beautiful thing. This printer features a lot of awesome capabilities. Specifically the front panel can be angled to whatever is helpful for operation. The print tray can fold in and automatically be extended when needed (not retracted, but that’s fine). The ink tank area has visible windows so you can see exactly how much ink you have at a glance. The printer features not only double sided printing but also double sided scanning as well from its automatic document feeder (ADF). Being able to copy a double sided doc (and produce double sided scans), is huge. If you’re like me and want to digitize all the paper sent to you, the ADF has got you covered. There is a higher resolution flat bed scanner as well, for those times you need to copy your license, or other less flexible sources. The flatbed is also used for initial calibration of the inkjet head, where it scans a test page. The printer, at least so far, has been extraordinarily easy to operate. Out of the box, you’re given a starter set of Epson 502 ink. This is 4 containers of Epson’s inkjet ink - one black, cyan, magenta, and yellow. Ink is about $60 for this set, but offers a decent amount of longevity. Filling the ink tanks is mess free with their ‘ecofit’ mechanisms. Due to Epson’s new printhead (improved over the 3850, its predecessor), the head should last the life of the printer and not dry out. So when you’re buying Epson ink, you’re getting the full use of every drop of ink, not just whatever comes out before it dries up or your printing subscription ends (yeah, yall know who I’m talking about). The out of the box ink provides a little more than one full tank in the printer. While I’m not sure how many pages that’s rated for, my use case has been almost exclusively photos so far. Epson rates the out of the box ink at 5500 color pages, however I will say that number is inflated. Watching the ink tank levels in the little windows, the ink has appreciably gone down, and I’ve only printed about 70 pages. That said many of those were photos or dense text. Again, you’re getting a lot of pages from the provided ink - realistically I would guess a few thousand of pages out of the tank capacity. Printing times are pretty quick. Printing duplex slows things down, with print button to first page done at about 20 seconds, but that’s not half bad for duplex printing. Single sided printing on normal comes in right around the rated pages per minute you’d expect (lower than the 18ppm for fast/draft, but around 14ppm). To print all of Sense and Sensibility, 2 pages per side, double sided, it’s about 51 sheets of paper and took 13 minutes almost on the nose. Don’t expect double sided printing to be super fast - but it’s easy on the trees. The best part is it printed flawlessly, no jams, no blurs on in, just razor crisp text page after page. Speaking of text quality, this isn’t the best text I've seen from a printer, but its good for an ink jet. In fact it’s a cut below laser, which is the gold standard. Ink bleeds, and because of that, no matter what you do, you’re much more beholden to both the physics of ink, and the paper quality you’re using. That said, the text is razor crisp to the naked eye. Putting it under a microscope reveals very little blotting or bleeding, even on fairly cheap paper. Photos, similarly show the high resolution of Epson’s print head at work, with nice lines, and fine details. Again, this won’t rival a dedicated photo printer, but with decent glossy print paper, you’ll be printing very nice 4x6, 5x7, and 8x10’s without much effort. Speaking of photo printing, Epson’s out of the box software is a great piece to get started with. On my Windows 11 machine I went to Epson’s site and downloaded the driver/utility combo package. After installation the Photo+ software offered an excellent, easy to use, photo mastering/printing package, allowing me to select multiple photos, add shapes, text, stamps etc. It’s a great little application out of the box. I did have a few times it started misbehaving, but restarting the app fixed those issues. You can save your work as layout files, and even configure advanced printing properties. I loved the photo layouts, so I could print multiple of one photo on a page (5x7, 2 x 4x6). Overall great utilities that just add value to the whole package. Coming to the Epson as a big laser fan, I thought I’d be unimpressed. While the Epson ET-3950E might not have the crispest text, or best photo quality, what it does have is what has made ink jet so popular for so many years: it can do it all, simply, easily, and Epson does it with the industries biggest downside: extortion through cartridge. The reasonable price of Epson’s ink makes the inkjet great again. Inkjet printers have their compromises, but if you’re looking for a printer that lets you take family memories and turn them into physical art while also allowing you to print a boarding pass, or school project, the Epson excels. Epson’s engineering is on display in this printer, and it’s great to see a practical, economical, and overall great printer. This is honestly the first ink printer i would recommend to friends and family in over 20 years. Highly recommended!

The new Epson ET-3950 wireless EcoTank All-in-One Printer is a superb choice if quality and cost per page is important to you. This is a very reliable, inexpensive, easy to use and compact device which will economically and quietly print large quantities of documents at an unmatched quality level. Epson is one of the three major units of Japan’s Seiko Group (the other two produce Seiko watches and SII microelectronics.) Seiko created the printing timers used in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, then developed the first electronic mini-printer (the EP-101) in 1968. In 1975 the company created the Epson name to brand the next generation of printers based upon the EP-101 technology. Epson literally means “son of EP” and it introduced dot matrix printers in 1978. Epson created the micro piezo inkjet technology (which is the basis for most modern inkjet printers) in 1993. To combat the cost and waste associated with inkjet cartridges Epson released the first of the EcoTank line of printers in 2015. The ET-3950 is the seventh generation of these superb devices and incorporates numerous improvements. When it comes to printer technology you can’t go wrong with Epson! Here are the key features of this great multifunction printer: • Epson ET-3950 All-in-One Color Inkjet Printer/Copier/Scanner (Model C11CL43201 UPC 198390000936) • 2.4 inch color LCD control screen with animation of help function • 30 sheet capacity auto document feeder • Connectivity: Wireless (802.11ac, 802.11 k/v/r mesh), USB, Ethernet 10/100 • Ink capacity/page yield: Black 127 ml = approx. 7,500 pages, Cyan/Yellow/Magenta 70 ml each = approx. 6,000 pages • PrecisionCore technology gives print resolution up to 4800 x 1200 dpi • ISO print speed: 18 ppm (Black), 9 ppm (Color) • Automatic duplex (two-sided) printing (7 ppm Black, 5 ppm Color) • Multi-page printing on a single sheet – up to 16 pages/images per side • ISO duplex print speed: 6.5 ppm (Black), 4.5 ppm (Color) • Paper capacity: 250 sheets in lower tray • Paper sizes: Adjustable down to 3.5” width, Letter, A4, Legal, #10 envelopes • Duty cycle: Up to 10,000 pages/month • Scan function: up to 1200 x 2400 resolution, 8.5 x 11.7 inch flatbed (A4 paper size), auto two-sided scan • Copy function: up to 99 copies, reduce, enlarge, borderless, duplex (11.5 ppm Black, 5.7 ppm Color) • Epson Smart Panel app for Apple and Android phones • Dimensions: 14.8 inch Wide x 13.7 inch/19.9 inch (w. tray extended) Deep x 10.6 inch Tall • Weight: 15.9 pounds • Includes Photo+, Photo Editing, ScanSmart, NetPrint utilities, setup and driver software • One year warranty on parts and labor First impression of this printer is that is elegantly styled in an arctic white with subtly rounded corners to relieve the bulkiness seen in some competitors’ devices. It has a minimal impact upon your workspace with a nearly square footprint (just 14.8” x 13.7”) and stands a compact 10.6” tall with the automatic document feeder open (9.4” with the feeder closed.) Epson cleverly designed the sheet feeder to fold flat when not in use, minimizing both the height and the width of the printer. The power cord has no bulky transformer on it so it adds to the clean look of the printer. Overall you will be pleased to share your office with this beautiful unit, especially since when in operation it is very quiet. Wirelessly connected, it can be located in any convenient space – it does not need to be next to the PC it is serving. This is ideal for homes and small offices since you can also use this great device as a supplemental copier. Setting up this printer is very easy. The quick setup instructions are well-written and you could just follow them. But an even easier method is to download the Epson Smart Panel to your phone and obey the illustrated step-by-step instructions in the app. Filling the ink tanks on the printer Is foolproof and no longer requires lifting the main body of the printer to access the fill points – just flip open the small cover on the right side. The ink bottles have alignment tabs which securely hold the bottle while it fills the respective printer tank and the filling process stops automatically when the tank is full. There will be some ink left in the bottle, so reclose it and store it in a seal bag (see photo) to prevent possible leakage. Flip down the ink tank cap and repeat the process with each ink color. Once the ink tanks have been filled, turn on the printer’s power and follow the detailed instructions in the Epson Smart Panel. The system will be charged with ink in a process that takes about ten minutes. Next, load some paper and the printer will conduct an alignment process during which four pages will be printed and you will be asked a series of question to select the line on the page which best matches the sample shown on the control panel. You should download the nice suite of supplemental software (Driver and Utilities Combo Package Installer) from the Epson website. That site also has videos and the User Guide/Manual. If, for some reason you do not want to use the printer’s wireless connection option, there are two other connection methods: attaching an Ethernet cable to your router or using a USB cable to your PC. If you don’t want to use the downloaded setup software and have a Windows PC just go to Settings, then Devices and select Add Printer. The Epson printer should be discovered and the driver automatically downloaded. The Epson ET-3950 has a large (250 sheet) paper capacity in the lower paper drawer. It loads easily and is adjustable for multiple paper sizes. To print envelopes, remove the paper and adjust the paper guides to the width of the envelope. If you want to use legal-size paper the end of the paper tray flips down to accommodate the longer paper. Print quality is really excellent, even in the economy (standard) mode. In the higher quality (business document) mode the print quality matches most laser printers I have used. The printer driver provides nice printing options like 2 on 1, 4 on 1 and up to 16 on 1 (number of page images on a single sheet of paper), borderless, scaled, fit-to-page, booklet and others. The most useful option is the automatic duplexing (two-sided printing) which it manages without drama. Photo printing quality using the Epson proprietary PrecisionCore technology is quite good (up to 4800 x 1200 dpi resolution) and will satisfy most purposes. This printer’s color capability will be best used in printing business documents (graphs, multi-colored text, PowerPoint slide copies, etc.) and it does a very nice job on such tasks. The printing speed is not equal to that of a laser printer but certainly acceptable at about 18 pages/minute (black) and about 9 pages/minute for color documents (speeds estimated by my own testing.) For home use and most small offices this is more than adequate. Scanning, at resolutions up to 1200 x 2400 dpi, can be managed from the printer’s control panel or by using the included Espson Smart Scan Utility (or by just using Windows Fax and Scan utility.) I recommend Epson’s utility which will scan to a PDF, stich large documents together and facilitate OCR, among other features. A really nice feature is the automatic two-sided scan option. The copy function is excellent, producing up to 99 copies in black print or color from each original with options for shrinking or enlarging originals, adjusting contrast, etc. The color control panel walks you through the options available or you can just hit the start button to make a single copy with the default settings and the automatic document feeder. There is an automatic two-sided copy function option. Other bonus features include easy printing from phones and tablets using the free Epson app. But the most important feature of the Epson ET-3950 All-in-One Inkjet Printer/Copier/Scanner is that wonderful EcoTank. It holds 127 ml of black ink and a total of 210 ml of color ink (70 ml each of cyan, yellow and magenta). Those massive tanks will print about 7,500 sheets of black ink documents and about 6,000 sheets of color documents. If you print ten pages a day that initial ink supply will last you for more than three years! The best part is the incredibly low cost of the ink. The refills for the ink tanks are far less expensive than replacement cartridges. The cost comparison to standard ink cartridges is amazing. A typical replacement inkjet cartridge for other printers costs $30 to $40 and will print 220-350 pages at an ink cost per page of about $0.09. The ink cost per page of the EcoTank system is about $0.004 – less than 5% of the cost of a standard inkjet printer! If you are upgrading from a traditional inkjet printer you may be used to minimizing your printing to avoid the expense of ink cartridge replacement. This Epson Et-3950 will free you to print much more readily since you have a cost per page lower than almost any other printing device on the market. Those savings are due to the fact that you are not replacing the print head, as you must with each new ink cartridge, and the elimination of the plastic cartridge body cost. The ecological benefits of eliminating this waste are a nice bonus. The only replacement item on the Epson ET-3950 is a “maintenance box” which collects excess ink. It costs about $15 and probably needs replacement every other year. The only caution that I would advise is that you print at least one page in black ink and one color copy every month to keep the ink lines from potentially drying out from lack of use. The more I use the Epson ET-3950 EcoTank All-in-One Inkjet Printer/Copier/Scanner, the more I like it. You can see the evolutionary changes Epson has made in the increased speed, higher monthly duty cycle, better resolution and overall better aesthetics. I can happily give this great printer a full five stars and my unqualified endorsement. Buy it without qualms!

Recently I started to notice that the ink cartridges inside of my existing printer/copier/scanner have been drying out quickly. I would insert a brand-new cartridge and somehow it would be empty the next time I needed to print. Occasionally, I would go a couple of months without needing to print, but it never occurred to me that ink can dry out over time from within a cartridge. So, I decided to try a printer that uses an ink reservoir instead of the typical ink cartridges. Enter this Epson ET-3950. Set up takes longer than expected (about 20 to 30 minutes), but I did like that the mobile app walked me through the process with a screen that made me feel as though tech support was guiding me via text messages on my phone. Strangely, the set-up process appeared to use up 25% of the ink. I'm not sure if that ink is now contained in tubes or hoses inside of the machine, but I was shocked to see all four ink reservoirs drop to 75% capacity. Epson brags that up to 3 years of ink is included in the box, but the company fails to mention that there are other required expenses. Besides the subscriptions offered within the Mobile App - the printer uses a container referred to as a "maintenance box" which collects excess ink. When the maintenance box fills with ink, printing is disabled until the box is replaced. The maintenance box is easier to access than in previous models, but replacement is an extra expense that I can't imagine anyone is expecting. Overall, I do quite like the Epson ET-3950. I appreciate that the device is able to not only print a test image, but it also scans that image to verify that the print quality is as intended. Both the mobile app and the manual functions are simple and easy to use - and I was relieved with the tactile feel of the buttons on the face of the machine. (They look to be touch screen style buttons, but they actual have tactile movement.) The screen is on the small side, but it is sharp, colorful, and easy to read and navigate. Scanning, printing, and copying are all quick and fairly quiet. I don't like that the user is forced to agree to dozens of pages of terms and conditions, or that the app tries to sell a subscription for access to editing software, but when all is said and done - I do recommend this printer/scanner/copier to anyone needing a versatile device in a home office. I haven't owned the printer long enough to verify that the ink won't dry out, but I'm hoping for the best.

This printer was nicely packaged so there was no expectation of damage, which is great. The Epson Ecotank ET-3950 is more compact than other printers I have so it’d work well on a small desk or table. Even though set-up took almost 30 minutes, it was a pretty straightforward process that took a combination of the app and the printer menu options. One concern I have with the hardware of the printer trays and openings is that the hinges seem really flimsy, so I worry about them breaking sooner rather than later. Filling the ink tanks was super easy and not messy at all. I like the idea of not having to buy an ink subscription or replace cartridges that cost about as much as getting another printer. However, based upon the level of ink used to print one 8x10 full color photo, I can’t see myself getting much color-printing use out of this printer without needing to add more ink soon. I think it’ll be fine for everyday basic black and white or grayscale printing, though, without refilling frequently. Definite plusses of the ET-3950 is the automatic duplex printing and its scanning and wireless printing capabilities, even from mobile devices, and its space saving size.

I’ve owned many inkjet printers since the late 90s. This is my second Epson Eco Tank printer. I bought an ET-3700 late 2017. That printer is still going strong. Eco Tanks are the way to go if you do a lot of printing. Worth the extra money over printers that use little ink tanks. Plus, you get full bottles too!! Not “starter” ink that only gets you a few pages and suddenly you’re buying ink for a printer you just bought. Item was well packed and easy to remove the contents. Quick start manual tells you to remove the blue tape holding things together for shipping. You have to lift the top and scanner lid to remove one of them. NOTE: scanner lid must be down to open the top of the printer. Lowering it back down is a two step process. Unlike my old Epson ET-3700, which you push down and then it slowly lowers itself down. The manual suggests that you use a smartphone app to set up the printer, but you can skip this if you need to. However, you will need to download drivers and software to use it with a PC, phone or tablet. Please see the product description for complete specs. Setup: Using the app to fill the tanks was easy to do. The instructions were clear and very easy to follow. Same for setting up WiFi while it did ink initialization. That’s where it loads ink into printhead from the tubes that connect it to the ink tanks, about 11 minutes. It takes the full ink tanks down about a notch. Next it will ask you to print out an alignment sheet, you scan, and it does the rest. It next download a firmware update, and after that, I went to Epson’s site and downloaded the combo installer for the software and drivers for my Windows 11 PC. Design is nice and clean: The build quality feels good. I really like how the auto paper feeder for the scanner works. The way it flips open for use, and the way it opens up for cleaning or clearing a paper jam. The motorized paper tray is a nice touch too if you print from a mobile device and the tray was left closed, it auto opens itself. The ink level of the tanks are easy to see, and adding ink is easy. I like how the control panel tilts up for easy use at any angle. Unlike the fixed panel on a Canon Maxify GX3020 I reviewed a couple of years ago. It has a fixed control panel with a little monochrome screen that’s small and hard to read.. The color LCD screen is easy to read, but it’s not a touch screen. Keypad has tactile response but feels kind of flimsy, like my older ET-3700, but it has held up fine. So, I don’t think that will be an issue unless maybe a user is using fingernails to press the buttons frequently. Note: the ET-4950 is basically the same as this one but has a touch screen and is a FAX with a land line phone jack. On the ET-3950, paper only loads in from the pull out front tray. No rear or top tray. Score one for the GX3020, as it has both. With the GX3020 you have the option of having different sizes and types of paper available the same time. The top feed on the GX3020 is good for printing photos using the top feed because you don’t have to swap out what’s in the single paper tray like the ET-3950. Connections: Your options are WiFi, WiFi direct, ethernet and USB. I had no problems setting up and using any of these. Most people will probably use WiFi that’s connected to a router. Epson will tell you to get the mobile app and go from there. Just follow the directions and it’s easy. For a PC you will need to go to Epson’s site and download the Epson Smart Panel app. Download the Drivers and Utilities Combo Package Installer . It will install everything you need to use the ET-3950. Works with similar Epson devices too. Scanning: Using Epson Scan (Scansmart), you have a choice of ways to scan documents and photos. Using the app on a mobile device, computer or to the cloud. If you tell it to scan to a computer from the printer, it will tell you to download and install the scanning software on the PC you’re scanning to. However, I got much better results by scanning from a PC using the Epson Scan 2 app. You can tweak how it scans as well and save those tweaks as a preset for later use. You can select color, gray scale or BW, document or photo, dots per inch (DPI) resolution, file type to save the scan, and file naming. File types are bitmap, jpg, PNG, TIFF (plus multi) and PDF. PDF will serve you best since they are commonly used. Especially for scanning a text only document. Just make sure the DPI is high enough to clearly capture any small or fine print that it might have. If you plan on editing a document with photos and - or graphics, scan it with the photo setting at 300 DPI or greater and save it as a PNG or jpg for the best quality.. The higher the DPI, the more detail the scan captures. It also produces a larger file and a larger image on the screen when viewed at 100%. This is good for editing, even if you need to reduce the image size when finished. You can keep the larger size as well if you think you might need to use it later. Scanner resolution: Up to 1200 x 2400. See photos. When scanning on the glass, it’s almost silent. The document feed is pretty quiet, too. Copying: Same as scanning except it gets printed as soon as it’s scanned. There are some basic selections you can make before scanning, such as: Color or BW, single or double sided, and number of copies. Advanced setting let you reduce / enlarge, scan quality, remove hole punches, and shadows, among a few other things. Document feeder: The ET-3950 top feed lets you load up to 30 pages at a time to scan. It can scan both sides if needed. It positions the linear imaging sensor to the far left of the machine and feeds the documents over it, as opposed to moving the sensor under a document laying on the glass. However, it’s not going to be fast. Example: 11 seconds a page, 2:35 to scan 13 pages, single side at 150 dpi, from hitting SCAN until complete. If you need to scan a lot of documents frequently, consider the Epson WorkForce ES-580W document scanner. I reviewed one 4 years ago and was impressed with its output and scan speed. It can scan both sides at once in a single pass and is blazing fast compared to a flatbed scanner. Up to 35 ppm at 70 dpi versus 9 pages at 75 dpi with the ET-3950. With the ES-580W, you can load up to 100 items in it of various sizes, like small receipts. Best Buys sells both. Paper handling & speed: The printer is full duplex, meaning that it can print on both side of the paper. However, you Must keep in mind that if you load a document in the tray, like photo paper, the side you want it to print on must be face down. The ET-3950 only loads paper from the pull-out front tray. I like the power paper tray that extends when you go to copy or print something. A very nice touch. Also, Epson 502 dye ink is about half the price of Canon’s GI-26 pigment ink. I had a couple of paper jams that were easy to fix. A panel in the back pulls off if you get a difficult one. However, it handled card stock and photo paper fine. Epson rates it at 9 PPM color and 18 PPM Black. The output tray can hold 30 sheets and the input paper tray 250 sheets. Print Quality: The ET-3950 uses pigment black ink for deep crisp black text, like a laser printer. It uses dye ink for the colors. Pigment ink is composed of fine particles suspended in a liquid medium. Dye ink is all liquid. The difference is most important when dealing with professional photo printers, and this is as far as I’m going in explaining the differences since the ET-3950 isn’t a dedicated photo printer. But it does a good job printing photos. I was very pleased with the speed and print quality for text. Same for a document with black text and color graphics. Bleed in on plain paper was very well controlled, and I had to use a magnifying glass (loupe) to see any. I also compared the black text to a couple of laser printers I have, HP and Brother, and the ET-3950 looked just as good. Colors were bright and crisp as expected with dye ink. Yellow tended to be very slightly towards orange, also as expected with dye ink. You won’t notice unless you do a side-by-side comparison with a pigment print. Photos looked good even when I compared them to photos and test charts that I have printed with my dedicated Canon photo printers. A Pro-10 with 10 pigment inks and a Pro-100 with 8 dye inks. The biggest difference were in the blacks. They weren’t quite black enough. I’m guessing the ET-3950 might not be using the pigment black ink on photos, or it’s not blending well with the dye ink. In fact, on some photos and test charts, the black areas had a slight blue cast. I didn’t see it when printed on plain paper or presentation / archival paper, only present on the glossy or matte photo paper. I tried Epson, Canon, HP and Staples photo paper and got similar results on all of them and they all had the same slight blue cast when printing photos. On the other hand, colors were well saturated and pretty accurate compared to my test prints, and what was displayed on my laptop’s screen. Note: The laptop I used, also reviewed a few months ago, has an OLED screen with a P3 color gamut that’s Pantone certified. Meaning its color accuracy is extremely high. As for the slight blueish cast to the blacks in photos, most people will not notice it unless it’s pointed out to them or with a side-by-side comparison. With that in mind, I’d recommend it for printing photos as well. Plan to print a lot of photos? Then consider the Epson Eco-Tank ET-8500 and ET-8550 (13x19 inch photos for the 8550). They are an all-in-one, like ET-3950, but use slightly different inks and have a dedicated photo black ink for truer blacks. Both are available at Best Buy. See Photos. Conclusion: The ET-3950 lived up to my expectations and then some. The only exception is I with it had top and rear paper loading. No matter, it does an excellent job at everything it’s meant to do. Highly Recommended.

As the previous owner of an Epson ET-2720 inkjet printer, the latest generation Epson EcoTank ET-3950 Wireless All-in-One Color Supertank Printer is an upgrade for me…mainly in its paper handling capabilities such as two-side copying, for example. However, the overall concept of using economical ink refill bottles remains at the core of why this printer is so popular and why I like it so much. Say goodbye to expensive replacement ink cartridges that can easily cost upwards of $100 for a typical inkjet printer. The ET-3950 offers “guilt-free” printing as the ink just seems to last forever. Best Buy sells very affordable replacement ink refill bottles for about $15/each for cyan, magenta, and yellow ink, while the larger black ink sells for around $25. I find the ET-3950 to be a fantastic all-around printer for home or small office, featuring wi-fi network printing from all your desktops, laptops, tablets, and phones. Of course, it can also be installed to a wired ethernet network as well. One cool thing I discovered is that the ET-3950 can be connected through direct wi-fi, eliminating the need for a wireless router, or even connection to the internet. Unboxing and Setup: The first step in setting up the printer is removing several pieces of blue tape, used to protect the printer during shipping. From here, you have a couple of choices to install…follow the instructions in the Quick Start printed guide, or you can use an app on your smartphone to guide you through the simple installation process. I opted to give the smartphone app a try and the process completed smoothly without any issues worth noting. Either way, I was up and running in no time and any issues I encountered were typically “operator error”. A video guide could be helpful, but the smartphone app proved helpful. Loading the ink tanks for the first time is probably the scariest part if you’ve never done it, but Epson makes the process simple and quick. Each EcoFit bottle has its own unique connection tip that you insert into the ink access area, so you can’t inadvertently load the wrong color of ink into the wrong tank. There was just enough ink left in each bottle to make it worthwhile to save them for later use. The final step in the initial setup is connecting the printer to your computer. In my case, I installed the Epson printer driver and software directly from Epson.com to my desktop PC and I was all set to print. The only issue I stumbled on was that I should have removed the old ET-2720 printer from Windows, since it was no longer connected, but Windows still considered it to be my default printer. Once I removed the old printer and set the ET-3950 as my default printer, I was back in business. Printing: Printing is naturally controlled by the software that you use to print, but the process is simple and everything worked right from the start. Loading paper couldn’t be easier, with access to a 250-sheet-capacity pull-out tray directly in the front of the printer. The printer has a small LCD menu screen to help you with selecting and/or confirming paper sizes, which can also be done in most cases in the program software. It would be nice if it were a touch screen, but that’s unfortunately reserved for their more expensive printers. Using the Epson Smart Panel app on my Apple iPhone, I was able to print directly to the ET-3950, producing a decent 8.5”x11” photo on regular paper from a photo on my phone, and it took less than 10 seconds, which was astounding. I was excited to learn the printer is capable of printing decent quality photos with its 4800 x 1200 dpi print resolution, so I next tested printing a 4”x6” print on glossy printer paper and the result was excellent. At high quality settings, the photo took a little over a minute to print. I don’t print photos often, but it’s nice to have that option for that infrequent need to print a photograph without requiring a dedicated photo printer. Epson does offer two 6-color ink EcoTank photo printers, meant specifically for printing lab quality prints. Scanning and Copying: The ET-3950 has a built-in easy-to-use duplexer with auto-feed tray, making two-sided copying a breeze. The printer menu also gives you the option of printing two separate pages into a two-sided document, as well as the reverse. One can download Epson’s excellent scanning software called Epson Scan 2, making the ET-3950 a powerful and comprehensive scanner for photos and documents with 1200 dpi scanning. And the best part, all of this can be done wirelessly to any desktop or laptop in your home. We have our scanner conveniently located in a spare utility room, away from cluttering up valuable desk space. While the EcoTank series of printers might seem expensive at first, the savings in ink alone will turn the ET-3950 into an economical choice for all your printing and scanning needs. Its wealth of features as a multi-function printer/scanner/copier surely can meet most home and small business requirements in one convenient package.

For most people, this is probably the printer that you want. This does EVERYTHING, and should be economical to run for a long time. First, this is a networked printer, and can use USB, wired Ethernet, or wireless networks (both 2.5 and 5 GHz supported). It can print on both sides of the paper, and has a sheet feed scanner on the top. You can just put a stack of papers on there and it will scan them to your computer. The only things that it doesn’t do is scan both sides of the paper, and fax. So this has pretty much everything that you need for the home office. But there are a LOT of printers available. What makes this one special? Two things. First, this has huge tanks of ink, and it can be easily refilled from bottles. No more expensive ink cartridges. The ink is very reasonably priced for the amount that you get. So this won’t cost you a lot of money in the long run. The second? A removable ink sponge. Every time your printer cleans itself, it squirts ink onto the sponge. This is common for all inkjets. But what do you do when the sponge gets too full? For most printers, you throw it away. For this one, you can replace just the sponge, which is a great feature that I have never seen before. Setup can be accomplished via a phone app (I tried the Android version), or using the PC drivers (I was using Windows 11), or you can connect it to your network using the front display and buttons. There is a small but usable color display on the front that has enough buttons to allow the printer to be easily networked and set up. This display can also inform you of error conditions (such as ink status and jams) without having to run back to the computer. I have always been a fan of the print quality that you get from Epson, and this is no exception. Photos look great. The front panel also tilts out so that the screen and buttons are easier to reach. I only have two real complaints about this model. The first is that the white light around the power button pulses slowly, which can be distracting depending on where you put it. The second is that the output tray slides out automatically when you print, but you have to press a button to put it back. Yup, those are the only nits to pick. So, the final question is “who should NOT buy this printer?” There are only two cases. The first is the person who prints so seldom that they would never use up the ink. The other is the person who prints so office that they would be better served with a color laser printer. For everybody else, get this.

I have always liked Epson printers. I think their print quality, especially for photos, has been top notch. Using the app on my phone, setup of the printer was straight forward and took about 15 minutes including filling the ink tanks. The app walks you through the setup step by step checking progress along the way. 1I like that it prints a printhead check page that you scan and the device then configures the best settings and in my case, it even told me I needed to do another head cleaning as there were missing segments in a couple of the colors. While the app connects to Wi-Fi, it walks you through filling the ink tanks. Each bottle is keyed for its location to make it difficult to mix up the colors. I love that you can see the levels right on the front of the printer as well as in the app. There is a color screen on the printer but it's not a touch screen, you have to navigate the icons and settings by pressing the membrane arrow and enter buttons to the right of it. You can also do everything from the app. The Epson Smart Panel app gives you full control of the printer including scanning, copying, printing and even document capture which takes a picture of a document and prints it. It also allows you to print remotely via the Epson Remote Print driver and software. I haven’t tried this out yet but looking forward to it. I also like the small footprint of this device and the unique slide out paper tray. This confused me at first as I thought it would self-retract after some time or when the printer goes to sleep but this is not the case. It does slide out when you print but you have to press the button to park it back. The print quality, like my previous Epson printers, is crisp and sharp on plain paper. I’m looking forward to printing photos on photo paper. Printing is also more than fast enough for home printing. It also does automatic duplex printing, a nice feature to conserve paper or large presentations or books. Scanning gives you two options, a sheet feeder and flatbed surface. Using the sheet feeder on a mixed setting and wi-fi, it took 15 seconds per page. The output back at my computer was very good. Overall, I really like this printer. It’s compact, uses inexpensive ink that lasts forever and the print quality is excellent. Five stars.

The salesman was very helpful in finding a printer that met our needs. A printer where the ink doesn't dry out if it is not used that often... He showed us the types of printers that use 'supertanks' which met our need perfectly. It offers nice colors and B&W, easy to set up, and no need to worry about the cartridges drying out since it doesn't use cartridges.