EpsonExpression Premium ET-7700 EcoTank Wireless 5-Color All-in-One Supertank Printer with Scanner, Copier and Ethernet

PROS:- Print quality is AMAZING. Printing on photo paper results in pictures that look like they came from a photo lab. I seriously can’t tell the difference between photos I print and those that I order from the store.- Ink is crazy efficient. I’ve printed countless black-and-white pages; shipping labels; full-color, high-resolution printouts; and a couple photos over the past 2 or 3 months (near-daily use). The ink has barely moved.- Setup was pretty easy, as was filling the tanks with ink. (Again, So. Much. Ink. I can’t get over how much was included and how long it’s lasting. With my Kodak, I was going through ink cartridges every month or two.)CONS:- The wireless connection is slow & takes about a minute to send from the computer to the printer. It’s much faster to hook it up to the USB, which is kind of a pain given that it’s got the wireless feature and I need my USB ports for other hardware I’m usually running simultaneously. Not a dealbreaker but worth mentioning.- I use the rear feed more than I expected due to the fact that I print on thicker paper or photo paper quite frequently. Again, this is slow. You have to select rear feed, then it takes a bit to prepare (whatever that means), then you have to load and print one sheet at a time. I can live with it, but the one star was knocked off mainly due to the pain/slowness of using the rear feed.(This may be personal preference, but I much prefer a rear-feed printer that doesn’t flip the paper as it’s pulled through. I would have gladly given up the closed paper tray for fully rear feed, but I couldn’t find any other models that would offer printing of this quality and with the refillable ink.)- Speaking of the closed paper trays, I spent a good 30 minutes trying to figure that out. It is definitely cheap plastic like other reviews have mentioned. I couldn’t figure out how to get the tray to slide out to allow paper to be filled. I was scared I was going to break it, and the instructions were not helpful. FYI: There’s a place where you have to push down while sliding outward (to release the bottom tray from the top).- This might be hard to explain, but it often prints on 2 pages at once using the paper tray. It’ll start printing on the first, then it also accidentally grabs a second sheet of paper about halfway through. Half of my document is printed on each page, resulting in 2 wasted pieces of paper. To avoid waste, this requires me to print one single sheet at a time - which again, is slow and frustrating, regardless of whether I’m using the front or the rear feed. I’ve figured out that slowing the printing speed down minimizes this, but it’s still frustrating that it’s an issue at all.I realize that there are more cons than pros. HOWEVER, the print quality makes the smaller inconveniences worth it - at least so far. It is time consuming to print and, for my small business and how often I print, it does slow my work day down a bit. That being said, I’ve thoroughly impressed with the quality of the prints and the efficiency of the ink. Despite the cons, I would definitely recommend this printer as of now.(I will also note that I DID pay full price for this printer and received no compensation at all. I was nervous with how many paid reviews I saw but decided to take a chance. Overall, I’m glad I did.)**UPDATE, Jan. 2019: Still extremely happy with this printer. I’ve had it 9 months, use it every day for multiple high-quality prints, and have yet to refill the ink. (Over 2000 full-color sheets and over 1000 black-and-white the last time I checked.) The maintenance box finally had to be replaced about a week ago. It was SUPER easy. The replacement came with the printer in the first place, and the software on the computer walked me through it in a few simple steps; it took maybe 3 minutes. (I was nervous based on some other negative reviews about the maintenance box specifically, but it truly was too easy. Don’t let those sway you!)Overall, I’ve had no major issues with the printer and have been extremely impressed with the prints and, especially, the ink efficiency. It has been well worth the price, in my case.*UPDATE #2, August 2019: I refilled the ink tank somewhere around May (a year after getting the printer). An extra set of bottles came with the printer, so I still haven’t had to buy ink 1-1/2 years in. I used the original replacement maintenance box back in January, and it does need to be replaced again (8 months later - still daily use of full-color pages). All I’ve spent in the past 1-1/2 years (besides the up front cost) is $10 for a 2nd maintenance box. (I ordered it directly from Epson.)*UPDATE #3, October 2020: Finally loaded the last of our original ink into the printer. I’m confident this will still last another year or so. I’m still extremely happy with this printer and would buy another in a heartbeat, should this one go out for any reason. Well worth the investment and I’ve upped it to 5 stars!

Background:When I started my small business, I initially used our home HP Photosmart 7520, which was a solid photo printer and has consistently done a great job of printing product labels. For my particular business, we also have a need for color-accurate photocopies. As the business has grown, the cost of replacement ink cartridges for the HP 7520 has become a significant issue. Although HP claims 750 pages with color per XL ink cartridge, the number is more like 100 (or less) when photocopying full-color pages and printing sheets of product labels. Because the genuine HP cartridges are now $20-$25 each, we use them until they run out, not just until the printer recommends changing it, to maximize the ink use. We've been going through a set of color cartridges every 4-6 weeks.Evaluating Options:Our specific requirements for a new printer were:An improvement in replacement ink/toner cost over the HP 7520;Less frequent cartridge replacement (to avoid the time wasted determining exactly which cartridge finally ran out);Reasonable responsive to copying and printing requests.High-quality color printing on non-photo media - Avery matte and gloss labels.Accurate color photocopies - this one is particularly challenging because it's never covered in reviews. It depends on both the ability of the scanner to properly detect the colors of the original and to match those colors with correct output selections.Eternet was highly desirable but not a 'must have'An automatic document feeder (ADF) for the scanner was a nice to have but not important.In order to evaluate color copy quality, I went to different brick and mortar stores that carry demonstration models. This was still a challenge as I found most stores (Staples, Office Depot and Best Buy) didn't keep their demos properly stocked with ink and paper, or they intentionally place a letter-sized sticker over the copier bed. The Epson EcoTank printers proved to be the most difficult to evaluate, because not a single store had one with ink. I was told the reason for that was that people steal the ink by siphoning it out of the tank. However, a Canon MegaTank printer at the same Office Depot store had a full tank of ink, reportedly because the Canon sales rep loaded it.Calculating Upfront and Running Cost:I included the upfront cost of each printer and used a page count of 10,000 to evaluate all products in the same manner. All page capacities for ink and toner were based off what the manaufacturer claimed, and the pricing for replacement ink and the printers was based off the best available Amazon price on April 23, 2018 using only genuine OEM ink/toner.Color Copy Performance:In evaluating color copy performance, I used a test image selected as a representative challenge for our copying, and used that original document with all tests performed on all equipment. I generally found most laser printers to be significantly inferior to the HP7520's output, which was our baseline. The Canon MF632cdw/MF731cdw laser printer family was the only laser printer to perform adequately enough, but the cost analysis for toner estimated it would only improve our consumable rate by a 25% savings. Both Canon laser printers fell at approximately $1,550 in our evaluation (the 731 was slightly lower due to its larger capacity cartridges and slightly more favorable price point per page).For inkjets, I evaluated an HP 8710 and a Canon Pixma G4200 as having comparable quality copying output, but the time it took to generate a copy was unacceptable. The HP 8710 took 1 minute, 6 seconds to produce a color copy (tested on two different 8710s at different stores and got the same result) and the Canon took approximately 45 seconds. The HP8740 (same family as the 8710 with additional features) was a significant improvement in projected ink cost ($1,135 vs the HP 7520's $2,056).I did not include any of the numerous other printers I tested which produced color copies that were completely unacceptable for our purposes.At the end of the testing, I wasn't able to evaluate the Expression Premium ET-7700 prior to purchase. Since the printer was $449.99 at the time I bought it, this was a big leap of faith, because printers, like most electronics, have highly restrictive return policies if allowed at all. Based on overall good reviews, I still selected the ET-700 for these reasons:-by my cost analysis, it was $490, a 75% savings over the HP7520 and second only to the Canon Pixma G4200 (which was $360).-user reviews reported excellent copy quality and color prints, and times-the fact that it used a photo black lent itself to producing better color prints (based on both user reviews and my experience with the HP7520, which is also a 5-color inkjet)-it had Ethernet (it does not have an ADF)-because the ink bottles refill large tanks, you never need to drain a cartridge or fiddle with cartridges running out (a big bonus particularly with a 5-color product).After buying the ET-7700, I have to both rate it 5-stars and provide a basis of comparison for the testing. I rarely write product reviews, but because of the effort I went through, I wanted to help other potential buyers.The ET-7700's color copy output was superior to all other all-in-ones tested, and slightly better than the HP7520. It copies and prints full color noticeably faster than the HP7520, and was faster at copying than all other inkjets evaluated (the Canon laser printer was the fastest with acceptable quality). The quality of the product labels produced on the same Avery labels was outstanding and not visually different than the HP7520.Loading the ink with the bottles, in my opinion, was trivially easy and clearly thought was put into the system in this regard (the bottle stops filling the tank when the tank is nearly full, and didn't leak during removal even when the bottle had ink remaining in it). I do like how they keyed the bottles to only mate with the correct color. Although I'm very careful, I can't imagine trying to 'fix' putting the wrong color in a tank.In the end it's been a big relief so far that I took the leap and selected the ET-7700. The printer's been in use for one week - if there is an issue overtime I will update my review. The ET-7700 outperformed every other unit I tested quite handily, while still providing us the improvement in efficiency we were hoping for by reducing cartridge fiddling and a staggering reduction in ink cost without compromising quality. It's really a shame people can't see how good the output looks in the brick and mortar stores, because these would really fly off the shelf. Nice job Epson.

The first one jammed so many times Epson sent me a new one under warranty ( excellent help from Epson ) The second took some learning time but the results was beyond expectations as to the quality. The 8 x10's of the vineyard are display quality. I don't do many 5 x7's but when I do it frequently jams otherwise I'd give it 5 stars. Update 8/2/20: Epson sent me a 3d printer. Still won't print 5 X 7 and 8 X 10 jams frequently and lots of lines on black background prints. After several nozzle cleanings they print ok but very time consuming and lots of ink and gloss photo print paper wasted,. maintenance box fills up and needs to be replaced more frequently .