Epson Eco Tank Printer Comparison Review

We like to save money so when we were offered the Epson Eco Tank Printer to review we were keen to try it out and compare it with our current HP Envy.

Whether you print at home or in the office, the Epson EcoTank printer promises to reduce printing costs by up to 65% and the new ultra-high capacity inkjet printers claim give you the perfect combination of affordability, convenience, reliability and quality in one amazing package.

Epson EcoTank printers come with four 70 ml bottles of ink which is enough to last most people two years , so you can print without worrying about running out or extra costs, but I have to admit that having small people in our house I did have concerns about the refillable tanks that are on the side of the printer in easy access for little fingers and for good reason.

Firstly, attach the power cable before you start filling the tanks with ink as it is situated under the printer and is tough to get to when the tanks are full.

Secondly, make sure the printer is where you want it to be when you fill it with ink, as you run the risk of ruining what you are wearing when you move it (Yes – Hubby’s best white t-shirt).

Filling with ink is fairly straightforward but I would not recommend doing it with small children are around.

I wore an apron to save my clothes from any spillages and had kitchen roll on hand in case of any spillages. Each colour is clearly marked and you simply break remove the nozzle, take off the foil seal, replace the lid and then break the plastic at the top of the nozzle to begin filling. Do NOT squeeze the bottle too hard, otherwise you may get an air bubble which blocks the tank and spits the ink back at you.

Once filled with ink you press the button to charge the ink which takes around 20 minutes and then you are ready to go.

For ease of installation I prefer my HP Envy and Instant Ink as it is less messy and takes seconds, however, the Epson won’t need refilling for around two years.

Hooking the HP Envy up to the computer wirelessly took less than 10 minutes, however with the Epson we had huge issues as our PC, my laptop and hubby’s laptop were unable to discover it. Finally we had to connect is via the cable which is not ideal as it is so wide with the ink tank at the side that it doesn’t fit in our computer desk.

SPEED TEST

For this experiment I was printing raffle tickets for our school fayre, so needed hundreds of sheets of paper in both printers. I ensured that both were selected ‘Best’ or highest quality mode.

There was a noticeable difference in speed with the HP Envy a good 9 seconds quicker per sheet of paper, which when printing hundreds of sheets became really noticeable. The quality difference was barely noticeable as there was just text on the tickets, however the purple on the school logo was brighter using the HP Envy.

I did however have an issue with the HP Envy and Instant Ink. I am set up on the cheapest price plan at just £1.99 but this limits me to 50 pages printed per month. With Instant Ink, if you do not use all of the allotted pages of your plan in a month, HP Instant Ink stores those pages in a rollover account. You can use your rollover pages in future months if you ever need them, and they never expire, however you can only roll over a maximum number of pages equal to your monthly plan (for example, 50 pages for a 50-page plan) so if you only print once every six months, you would only have 50 rollover pages and not 300, so when I did the large printing job for school I incurred an additional charge of £32 which was a bit of a shock.

In this situation you need to work out how you are going to use your ink. If like me you organise school events for the PFA and have to print out large quantities of items two or three times a year then the Epson Eco Tank works better, but if quality is important and you print little and often then the HP Envy and Instant Ink package will work better.

As part of the school fayre I also printed posters and newspaper articles which are displayed on the school noticeboard. There is a huge difference in the quality here and the posters printed on the Epson have faded badly whereas the HP Envy are still going strong today, even on photocopies of newspaper articles.

There is also a huge difference in printing quality when printing photographs on proper photograph paper. The HP comes out dry, sharp and ready to put straight in a frame, however the Epson comes out damp, smudgeable and dark. This was very noticeable when printing our photo’s for Eliza’s holiday diary, with Epson pictures on the left and HP Envy on the right.

All in all the HP Envy wins the battle of the printers as it costs just £50 compared with the Epson cost of £200. I feel nervous having liquid ink around with young children even though it is quite secure I think a determined child would easily access it.

I like the fact that HP send me ink just before I need to change it, so I am not in a panic trying to find it in the shops when I need to print homework off. My only grumble with the HP Envy and Instant Ink function is that I cannot carry over the prints I didn’t use from previous months which would have halved my shock £32 bill, but I have fed this back to the HP team and they are looking into changing it.