Epson has been a favorite brand of mine for a while now. I use them at work. I use them at home. And today I’ll be looking at one of their latest models, the EcoTank ET-2760 with its wi-fi capability, SD card slot, and ink cartridge-less system.
No Ink Cartridge System
If there are no ink cartridges, what is there? Well, instead of the traditional ink cartridges, you get ink bottles. There is a special compartment on the printer that you open up and the bottle dispenses into the section designated for that color. Once the bottle stops releasing ink, the compartment is full and you can save the rest of the ink in the bottle for your next fill up.
Refilling cartridges with bottled ink has been happening for a while now but you always had to go third-party for the ink and hope it worked with your used cartridge. So, I think it’s about time someone came up with a concept that lets you pour your own ink directly into the printer itself.
The compartment has a semi-clear window so you can see exactly how much ink you are using and how much you have left. This is a huge plus for me because it feels like I’m always in the middle of a project when my printer finally tells me it’s time to buy ink. Now I can top off the ink compartments before starting a large project.
According to Epson, one bottle of ink can get you thousands of pages (depending on usage). As far as cost is concerned, the black cartridge on Amazon only costs around $19 which isn’t bad when you compare to how many prints you get with it. The colors range from $7.50 to $11 per bottle.
Unboxing
From unboxing to printing, it took me about 30 minutes with firmware updates and installing the drivers on my Windows 10 PC. On my Mac, it took just two minutes to locate the printer on the network. It was light in weight and easy to pick up and put on my desk.
It came with a full-sized set of ink bottles for cyan, yellow, magenta, and black. If you plan to hook this up to a computer, you will need to have a printer cable on hand since it doesn’t come with it.
How Fast Does It Print?
Other than the lack of ink cartridges, the Epson EcoTank has several other neat features. It’s an all-in-one with auto two-sided and voice-activated printing ability. It prints pretty fast at 10.5 ISO pages per minute (ppm) and color is 5 ISO ppm.
Complaints
The only complaint I have about this printer is the size of the digital screen. It’s super small and if you can’t read small print, this is not the printer for you. I’d say the square screen is about an inch to an inch and a half in size.
The second complaint I have is how much ink it chews up when charging for the first time. It went down one notch on the compartment and I didn’t even print anything. Thankfully, I had just enough ink left in the bottles to make up the difference.
Overall
Overall, I’m very happy with this printer. The ease of setting up, the ink bottles over cartridges, and auto double-sided printing all make it worth the investment.
The Epson EcoTank ET-2760 All-In-One Printer retails for $299 and is available on Amazon and your local printer retailer.
Disclaimer: GeekMom was given a review sample in exchange for this review.
UPDATE: After speaking with Epson, they have told me that you should use all the ink in the reservoir within six months. If you do not though, it will not harm the printer or the quality of prints. Store the ink bottles with their lids on and in a cool, dry place.
If you need to buy printers, I can recommend you from personal experience to buy HP printers. This is the best option for your purposes, I think. Toner for printers you can order online on the website https://www.mrdepot.ca/products/hp-17a-toner. The price is very low, and the main thing is that there is always available for a very large number of different models and brands.