Customer Ratings & Reviews

Purchased this printed for my wife. Very poor quality for an ink jet printer. Colors are very full. Printer is difficult to set up and operate. I have an HP that is nearly 6 years old that is easy to operate, has more features, cost less and still makes copies with good color quality.

The Epson Ecotank is a great printer that offers an alternative to the standard ink cartridge set up. And while this may seem like a great away to go there are some things to be aware of. Out of the box you get everything you need to set up your printer. You are provided both 4 colors of ink which in all reality should last you easily 6 months to a year depending on how much printing you do. Installation of the ink is easy as the ink bottles utilize a one way valve to eliminate accidental spillage. The tanks are also keyed meaning that each color ink bottle will only poor in to its corresponding ink tank. This eliminates the possibility of mixing colors up. Set up is quick fast and easy and should be able to be accomplished automatically depending on your computers operating system. If not there is nothing to fear as Epson also provides a free app that allows all the same functions as your PC. Just like a standard printer, with this set up you can easily print, scan, and email documents. There is also a built in LCD screen on the printer which acts as a HUD allowing you to manually input functions as well as change printer settings and access firmware updates. Set up can be done wired or wirelessly and the printer does allow for Android/IOS printing as well. Why buy this design over a conventional cartridge style? The overall design is too allow for two functions based on what i can see. First off they aim to create less waste by having to dispose of cartridges about every couple months which in turn will create a smaller carbon footprint. And second they are trying to do away with unnecessary ink charges by providing a tank that in all reality should easily get up to a year or more before needing a refill which in turn will save you a lot more money in the long run. Print quality is not sacrificed what so ever, in fact i personally was impressed with how vibrant the colors were. There was no ink run off and after a freshly printed page the ink is almost completely dry when it comes out. Overall on paper this unit looks like a good buy however i do feel there are a few things a consumer needs to be aware before making this purchase. Before i touch on this i want to let you know that i actually own the previous model to this Ecotank set up and i can personally tell you that after about a year and half of light use i have yet to refill the tanks. Which is a very positive thing to touch on, now with that being said there are some common issues that were ran in to that are only experienced after prolonged use and one that i hope Epson has remedy. On a standard cartridge set up, every time you replace the cartridge your not just replacing the ink but your also getting a new jet. This means that you get a fresh spray and clean lines with every new switch out. On the Epson Ecotank that is not the case here. Since your not replacing cartridges but rather simply refilling the ink tanks this means your using the same ink jets over and over again which will lower print quality. I have found one way to combat this but it requires regular maintenance. Now yes the printer does allow a function to clear the jets out and i cant stress how important it is to do this every month, but even with that said they are still prone to clogging. So much so in fact that you can actually google Epson Ecotank problems and that will come up as the number one most common problem. I have actually experienced this on my previous model where picture quality declined at the 8 month mark and at the 1 year mark my colored jets had clogged completely forcing me to only print in black ink. Removal of the jets for cleaning is not a difficult task but it does require some knowledge and know how and is not a five minute job. I bring this up because this a known problem that not many people know about. I only know this due to the passage of time on my previous printer. Now im not trying to discourage anyone from buying this printer as the print quality and overall marketing of this printer is a good one with good intentions. More importantly Epson may have fixed this issue on their newest flagship with the ET-3850. All im simply saying is this, time is going to be the real test on rather or not this printer can hold up and if Epson has remedy their past problems. Simply do some research and maybe wait a bit to insure all the kinks have been worked out with the jet issues they used to have. If that problem has been fixed then i would say yes, this is a great buy. For me im not sold on it yet until i know all the issues have been worked out or more importantly at least provided a easier way to remove and replace the jets so anyone can do it in under five minutes.

I originally bought the 8550 and was not pleased because it added pressed in lines in my prints. The 3850 is much better, though I don't use it for photo paper prints so I cannot speak to that quality. I have a different printer for that. I do print on 32 lb stock and self publishing my poetry book which includes a lot of color images. With Quality set to High, I am printing 35 pages double sided for a total of 70 printed pages in 1 hour and 5 minutes. If there are no images you can print faster by lowering the quality. The next setting down will print the whole book in 25 minutes but leaves a few streaks in some of the images consistently. Some important notes for new purchasers, you can customize the color settings and should do so if your prints are under saturated or colors are a bit off. The settings are bit confusing because they are found in a few different places. You can change the contrast, saturation, and overall ink density in one place, but if you want to adjust one color density, you will have to pull up a different menu. Some reviews mention issues with color so this may solve the problem for folks, but ink will show up different on different types of printers. Settings for this project: Main Menu: -Plain Paper -High Quality - Double Sided Auto Long Edge Binding (I cut the pages in half for an 5.5 x 8.5 book. Look up how pages are layed out for this method of printing. Once you have the layout, to print double sided, you will need to flip every other page one horizontally and once vertically. In the end you can cut in half and fold the book together). Print Density -Print Density -20% -No increased dry time (increasing this will increase print time) Under More Options Tab Advanced -Brightness 0 -Contrast -2 -Saturation +3 -Density -1 Image Options -Select Emphasize Text Under the Advanced Print Set up Output -Click on ink manager and increase Black Density to 1.9 (this really helped make the text pop). Play around with the settings and print one page to test. One last note. The outfeed table sucks. When printing a lot of prints, put something small under the first page after it prints so the paper doesn't cur upward at the edges. This increases your output capacity to around 100 pages so I can print 3 books at a time. You can also add something under the end of the tray table so it supports the tray with more pages.

I am not happy with this printer. Oh, how I wish I kept the box because this would be going back.

I've never had an Epson printer before but this one completely sold me. There's a lot to love about this machine and I keep finding new things to try with it. The obvious first thing to talk about is the EcoTank feature. Anyone who has ever had any type of cartridge printer will tell you the complete failure of them are the print cartridges, which seem to always run out at the most inopportune times. The EcoTank comes with four BIG bottles of ink. Black, cyan, magenta and yellow. The ink tanks are a breeze to fill and in my experience, a very clean operation. While filling the tanks, the process stops automatically when the tank is full and you can remove the bottle. Any ink that remains in the bottle can be saved for use later. The different color tanks will only allow you to use the proper color ink in them by way of special plastic “keys” on the nozzle of each bottle. It's impossible to accidentally put the wrong color ink in any of the tanks. The footprint of this printer is nice and compact. Considering all that it does, I was really amazed. The paper tray has a most welcome 250 sheet capacity. How refreshing is that? I get so tired of these other printers giving you a 100 sheet tray, what's the point! It also has duplex printing so you can even save paper. Loading paper is easy and intuitive. It has a pull out output tray to catch the prints. It's not the sturdiest output tray I've used, but it works fine. I followed the included setup guide and had no problems setting up all the functions. I also loaded the Epson Smart Panel app on my Android phone and was printing from it in about one minute. Nice app. Print quality and speed were both great. There are a lot of tweaks that the printer preferences window gives you too, as you'd expect. The on-board control panel can be tilted to a convenient angle to use, and it has a clear 2.4” color display. It was a little disappointing that the display is not a touchscreen, and I had to get used to using the arrow and select buttons to navigate. Not a huge deal, just not what I'm used to on printers these days. The scanner works really well and is capable of pretty high resolution. It let me scan photos at 4800dpi in jpg, bitmap, tiff, png and pdf. The scans turned out great. Better than my current, year old HP all in one that would only let me scan at 1200dpi. The copy feature works fast and easy and has an auto-feed tray which is really handy. I did notice that when using the auto-feeder, my copies all came out just a bit skewed and not quite straight. Annoying, but for quick copies, not a game changer. Opening up the flatbed and directly copying from it, remedied the problem. Another small thing I really liked about this printer is that it plugs straight into the wall, no annoying external power supply to have to find a spot for. I'm saying good-bye to print cartridges, and welcoming the EcoTank. When you look up the cost of replacement ink for this printer, you'll find that the bottles of ink cost the same as a replacement ink cartridge but last a LOT longer (I've only used a few days, so I can't comment from my experience, but the amount of ink in each bottle is obviously way more that you get in any ink cartridge). And on top of that, you don't have to feel guilty about pitching your used up cartridges or trying to figure out how to recycle them. I'm really sold on this printer and look forward to using it for years.

It is a piece of junk. The screen is a joke. The overall quality of many printers are not good. They are plastic junk.

The printer is really bad, never buy this printer. It is a lemon

This printer is for you if in the past you, like me, have had to fight the urge to pick up your old printer and throw it out the window because it is temperamental or difficult. Or if you typically chose laser printers because you hate tiny ink cartridges,but black and white doesn't always cut it, and color is to expensive. In steps the Supertank. Epson - EcoTank ET-3850 delivers on features, easy to set up, easy to connect to, reasonable speed and prints forever, and yes gives you color. My use cases are simple, I use it in my home office. I have industrial printer at work, but the more I can do at home at my convenience and timing the better. So yes, I use it for scanning, typically flat sheets but on occasionally documents. And then there is printing reports.. the splash of color with the corporate logo really improves the look over my laser printer as well as the fact this prints double sided. And recently my wife wanted to print out 70 invites to a family wedding rehearsal dinner. The EcoTank handled it well, faster than I expected and the colors came out bold and sharp. Speaking of color, the trick to reasonable photos is good quality photo paper. If you cheap out, you won't be happy. So now that you know my perspective, let's dig into some details. Set-Up: You can set it up the old fashioned way of reading manuals and trial be error, or, you can download the virtual assistant to your phone by scanning the QR code on the printer. I always seem to have problems connecting to my home network, the app made it simple. And I was also concerned about filling the ink wells. Pleasantly surprised at how well thought that was, and clean. I make a bigger mess with laser toner cartridges. All in all it took about 20 minutes from opening the box to printing out my first calibration sheet. A very relaxing 20 minutes, zero cursing. And bonus points, It folds up nice and compact. Use: Good clean crisp text. As mentioned reasonable speed and good colors. You won't be disappointed for this price range. Plus you get the benefit of easy to monitor (transparent) ink well, and a good supply of ink so you won't run out any time soon. Some might find the display screen to be on the small side, but for many functions you can use your phone if you prefer. Conclusion: You will be hard to fault the Epson - EcoTank ET-3850 at it's price point. It has all the functionality and performance a home office needs, and is easy to use with refillable long last ink wells versus cartridges. It has the advantages of an ink jet printer in the wide range of media it can print on and the bold colors, but without those ink cartridges. The copy works well and there is an automatic document feeder built in too.

The setup of the ET-3850 was very easy. I followed the quickstart guide step by step and within 30 minutes I had the ink loaded and the printer online in my home network. Typically for other printers I needed to enter my network password on the printer, but not here! There is a wizard on the printer that connects it with the network as I installed the software on my laptop. This was a huge plus. The quality of the printing for black and white is similar to my old Epson Workforce printer. The colors were comparable on both printers. For the ink, I like the bottles. The tops of the bottles are coded so that you can't put them in the wrong reservoir and they are no spill. I also like that you can see the levels of the ink in the front of the printer without opening any software or looking at the menus. Overall this is a great printer for home use. I typically use my printer from a laptop. However, Epson now has an app for your phone where you can manage your printer. This is very helpful for people who do most of their printing from their phone.

The quality of the printer is so bad! It is not worth the ink being cheap!

I use an ET-3760 in my classroom, so I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting ahead of time. As expected, the printer came with decent-size bottles of ink in the box. It took just a few minutes to get things unpacked, set up and begin filling the ink tanks. The process of filling is very easy and should be spill-free every time. Once filled, the printer does take a few minutes to complete charging and adjusting before it is ready to go. I think it says 10 minutes, but it seemed to go faster than that. Once that is complete, you are off and running. I have been using this one to print on 4 x 6 photo paper at home and am very happy with the results. The prints come out very clear and the colors are very good also. It seems to compete pretty well with having the prints done at the local stores and is far more convenient to have them done at home so I can see if adjustments need to be made immediately. The size of the printer is pretty nice considering the features and it doesn't take up nearly as much space as the HP smart tank printer it is replacing. I trust this one will perform as well as the other ET printer as that one has been problem free for over a year now. I haven't even used all the ink form the set of cartridges that came with that one, despite using it very frequently. I am very impressed with Epson's implementation of the tank concept! I would imagine that there has to be some catch with the value these printers offer, these companies have to be losing out on revenue from all the cartridges they are not selling! I am very happy that they have decided to develop this technology since it has been around for some time with aftermarket kits and really saves on the waste involved with the cartridges. The print speed is not exactly earth-shattering, but does a decent job and has all the expected features of double-sided printing, different qualities and a wide assortment of paper sizes supported. Once you get used to the speed, it is completely acceptable. I also have a color laser for times I need speed and true quality on plain paper but it is very expensive to keep running compared to this thing. I had used Epson printers in the past but had moved to Brother and Canon devices after several problematic (and expensive) printers. I'm glad I decided to give them a try again as I am completely happy with the features and quality of the product and output. I used to bring the other printer back and forth and finally broke down and got this one for use at home so I have the same reliable print options at home. Looking forward to years of good prints and inexpensive operation.

When I print, paper jams occurs all the time. I tried different paper weights but no improvement.

Not good is two months old and the power is not good I can’t used any more

I am happy with printer, however I could have got same printer for $100 less at Sam’s club. Your sale saved me $50. Not such a sale.I guess my problem is with Brst Buy not printer,

This is printer two of same model and it is not working well

We received this printer for purposes of evaluation and review. It has a similar footprint to other all in one printers. We have it slotted in between a wall and a book case. It's tight, but everything is accessible with no problems. Setup was easy enough, though, there seemed to be a few more steps than I was used to setting up other printers, but that might add to the quality as most of those steps were comparing print jobs for best accuracy. Setting it up on the wireless network was as easy as expected. Importantly, I actually really got a kick out of filling up the ink reservoirs with liquid ink. The ink loading system is well set up and I don't think you can spill ink if you tried (I did). The printed sheets we tried were acceptable, though maybe not great. The edges of the font didn't bleed, but didn't seem crisp. For our purposes, this is fine. If we were actually looking for jobs, we would have no hesitation printing out resumes and cover letters on it. Printing in color was also acceptable without being great. I did enjoy that the printer asked me if I really wanted to print an image using standard paper rather than specialized photo paper. The colors were good and the image was about as good as you'd expect from a printer at this price point. Really, my favorite thing about the printer is that it's an opportunity to break away from those terrible cartridges other companies use. Filling the reservoirs was almost an act of triumphant defiance against a really lousy, wasteful cartridge system. Would I recommend this to a friend? Absolutely, unless they have greater professional needs or are using it to run a business.

Ink runs out extremely fast when you print in color.

I just bought the Epson Tank ET-3850, which replaces a line of printers utilizing expensive ink cartridges. The ET-3850 utilizes four bottles of ink, supplied with the printer. My model is white, something appreciated by me after a succession of black printers, just a "personal thing." Setup is straight forwarded and easy. Windows users will find a disk supplied, MAC users (me) will be instructed to go to the Epson website for setup instructions. NOTE: A USB CABLE is NOT provided with this printer, should the user wish to go that route in the setup. If you feel you might, suggest to obtain this cable in advance. One can also setup via wireless, which the printer will want to do from the start. There are printed instructions supplied which will guide the user through the various steps in setting up this printer, including instructions how to fill the four "tanks" with the four colored ink bottles supplied with the unit (easy). I also ran the gamut on what this all-in-one printer does: scanner (excellent bright scans), print, fax. My observations: SMOOTH operation! Epson advertisements highlight this type TANK printer as being able to SAVE ON INK, as compared to the expensive ink cartridges utilized by other printers. Time will tell. I'm strictly a Home User, so it will take a bit of time to see how the four tanks filled with ink hold up (I'm expecting good things). SUMMATION: I REALLY like this printer!

I have used many printers and many brands. First of all, i really love INK TANK printers these printers save money a lot in the long term. If you are thinking about buying a printer I personally do not recommend Inkjet, Cartridges, Laser printers, Instead, go with ECO TANK printers, Ink never evaporates until we use it fully and it is very cheap to refill. In the list of ECO TANK printers i used so far, I really like this EPSON. It has many good features. 1) Prints on both sides of the paper which is very important to save paper and environment 2) Printer speed exceeds my expectations, I have seen printers who takes time to print, you do not know really printer working or not for few seconds. 3) Supports printing from mobile devices both android and ios 4) Setup is so easy 5) Seamless network connection this is very important, some printers disconnects and connects back and sometimes it trigger frustration 6) you can load more papers in the tray 7) Copy and scanning works perfect without any issues 8) Touch screen - i liked it. I really do not find any issue with this printer. 100% I recommend this printer without a second thought. If you want to buy a printer for your home, you can stop your search right now and buy this printer. I am telling you, after using some months or years you will come and say thank you to me :)

Unboxing the Epson EcoTank ET-3850 printer, you’ll find the printer itself, a full compliment of Epson ink bottles, a power cable, and documentation & driver CD. Despite the availability of the options on the printer, there is no ethernet cable or USB cable included. The printer has a very small footprint at only 13” x 14”. Setting up the printer itself is an easy, though prolonged, process. Once the printer is unpacked and the app installed to your computer or mobile device, you must use the keyed bottles to fill the ink reservoirs. Each bottle will take approximately 75 seconds to transfer. Then the unit will begin charging the ink system, which takes 10 minutes. With the system charged, you must now complete the head alignment process. This part of the setup prints out 4 separate pages with patterns that you must eyeball and choose the best option from. The alignment is a strikingly manual process that many other printers have handled automatically for many years. At this point, you can start printing with little additional work. Android 11 devices in my home on the same wifi automatically found and suggested the printer without any downloads or setup. And Windows 10 computers added the printer easily when using the “Add Printer” process. Print quality for both documents and photos has been very impressive with sharp edges, solid colors, and dark blacks. Output is fast both from mobile and desktop and operation is quiet. And 2-sided printing worked quickly and reliably. To perform scanning will take additional setup. I needed to download the Epson ScanSmart app from their website onto my desktop. This installed a series of utilities to my computer, including an System Updater and Event listening service (for the scan to desktop functionality). Once the programs were setup, scanning operations were quick and easy when initiated by either the computer or scanner. Results were impressive with quick operation, sharp images and good color representation. The document feeder, which only works with 1-sided pages, performed reliably with straight images and no jams. A few additional observations: - The paper tray is a bit of an annoyance as there is no adjustable stop to keep the paper tight against the back edge. So, if you load something small like 4x6 photo paper and insert the drawer too quickly, the paper will slide back. - There is no manual feed tray. - Ink costs, for me at least, are going to be significantly reduced. (versus my existing 10+ year old inkjet).