EcoTank ET-8550 A3+ Wi-Fi Ink Tank Photo Printer

This printer has been absolutely faultless and is easily one of the best purchases I’ve made. I use it constantly and it never skips a beat. Print quality is excellent with sharp detail, smooth gradients, and very accurate colours, even on larger A3+ prints. Whether printing photos, graphics, or everyday work, the results are consistently professional. The EcoTank system is a huge plus – ink lasts a long time and running costs are very low compared to cartridge printers. Setup was straightforward, Wi-Fi connection is stable, and it integrates well with different devices. Paper handling is solid and reliable, even with heavier or specialty media. It’s quiet, fast enough for regular use, and feels well built. Maintenance has been minimal despite heavy use, which says a lot about its reliability. If you’re looking for an A3+ printer that delivers quality, efficiency, and long-term value, this one is an easy recommendation. Would 100% buy again.

I do photography and wanted an A3 photo printer, but also for it to be able to copy (A4), scan (A4), and print normal text paper (eg letters, office papers, etc). This printer does it all, with the advantage of cheap inks. I had a designated photo printer but it was not good for normal text paper, as it uses far too much ink. So I needed a second printer to print letters etc. When both printers died, I did a huge amount of research, then tested a friends ET-8550 and was hugely impressed. This printer really does it all. Photos are excellent, with good colour rendition especially if printed via Photoshop so that you can use the various colour profiles. Just turn off 'printer manages colour' to do this. A3 and A4 photo paper can be fed via the rear tray to save bending the paper. I haven't yet used the straight feed for Fine Art papers yet, but should be easy enough. Just remove the back panel and it will glide straight through. Text, letters, and what I call 'office' paperwork can be printed easily and at reasonable speed. Perhaps not so good if printing a lot of papers as the paper tray only holds up to 30 sheets, but is good for normal home use. As others have mentioned, the ink tanks are easy to fill (ink bottles each have a different shape surrounding the nozzle so can only be fitted to the correct hole). Just put the bottle in the the right hole and it will fill. No need to squeeze or anything. Once filled just remove and keep the lid on if any left in the bottle. I only use Epson genuine Claria inks. I have tried 'compatibles' in the past and they wrecked the printer head resulting in having to buy a new printer. Whilst the genuine Epson inks are more expensive, the photos last a long time with no fading or colour bleeding. Photos are excellent, and are good enough quality for competitions. The one thing I'm not impressed with is the 'advertising' from Epson regarding the number of photos being able to be printed on one set of inks. It states 2300 photos, although elsewhere it states 1800 photos. Well yes it does, but if you hunt and research you will find that number is for 15cm x 10cm prints. That is 1/4 sheet of A4. If you print a full A4 photo, you can print 450 - 575, depending on the colours of the photos. This is still 10x more than most photo printers, and makes for very economical printing, but saying 2300 could be a bit misleading for some people. Obviously A3 will use twice the amount of ink, so 225 - 288 A3 photos. My old photo printer could only manage 20-40! Scanning is easy using the Epson ScanSmart programme, which is downloaded when you set up the printer. Talking of which, I removed 24-30 blue tapes from inside and around the printer when setting it up. They hold everything in place for transport, but you must remove them all before use. Do look inside, around the back, everywhere! They could stop the printer from setting up correctly. I set up manually from my tower computer, but have also used the automatic and wi-fi from my laptop. Both are easy to do if you follow the instructions. I have connected to my computer via USB, and also set up wi-fi so I can print from my laptop, both of which work well. There is also an ethernet port if you wish to connect via that. One thing which took me a while to find was the receiving tray closure. It opens automatically when printing to receive the paper, but to close it you can gently push it back in, but it is very very stiff. Or... go to the touchscreen and touch the close button, and hey presto it closes! I wish Epson would tell us! All in all a really good printer, and yes I would recommend it.

This printer is amazing. It has no touch screen which takes a bit of getting used to. It’s big when you open it up for printing at 990mm deep. You need 160mm at the back for the paper feed. Filling the ink tanks is easy. Slot the bottle in the port and it self fills. There is no spillage at all. Priming the printer with ink isn’t explained very well. This is what you do. Turn on printer. Wait till you see the orange ink light come on. Then press the button for 5 seconds. The priming cycle should start. If nothing happens. Turn off printer and unplug power cable and usb lead. Then press the start button for 30 seconds. Connect everything again. Turn it on and do the priming cycle again. This is what Epson told me to do and it worked. It took about 5 minutes and then I had to turn printer off and then press start button and the right hand button at same time to print the nozzle check. It’s then you install the software and you will get a firmware update as well. The Epson printer connection checker has the printer utilities but I’ve not used them as yet. Software support isn’t as comprehensive as I would have liked. Nowhere near as good as my XP-960. There also a phone app which may give you more functions. I did 2 print test images on Epson A4 glossy photo paper 183gm using the Epson photo+ on standard quality setting. This is a brilliant piece of software. My phone camera doesn’t do the quality of the prints justice. Once you get your head around not having a touch screen this is for my usage the perfect printer. Replacement 70ml ink bottles are £9.99 direct from Epson so printing even at A3+ is very affordable. If you want high class prints on Glossy metallic. Lustre and Baryta papers this is for you. Update 2 Been using this printer a lot. My print output has gone through the roof. I've printed a further 47 Astronomy images on A4 with 19 on A3 along with close to 60 A5 test prints. My ink levels have hardly moved, I'm now about 1/3 of the way into the 2nd mark. I'm wondering if my extra 2 sets of ink bottle purchases were a bit premature. If i was still running my Epson XP 960 i would have used 2 or 3 sets of XL Elephant cartridge sets by now which is approximately £192-£288 of ink and be into the 3rd or 4th set which is another £96. Which makes this printer a very cheap investment even though the initial cost felt high. The out tray is still a little stiff and so is the rear paper feed platen. The printer still makes clunking noises when printing but i have become used to the sound now and doesn't detract from using it. Using the High quality print setting isn't much use to me as all it does is lay down extra ink which can in some situations remove some of the finer details in my images. On big bold colour prints it's ideal, for my type of prints it detracts so i will stick to Standard quality and let the ICC profiles do their magic. As for print quality.. I can't tell the difference between Claria photo inks in the XP 960 and the 107 Eco tank ink sets in a side by side comparison. The Astro images are 800dpi scans of my printouts on Lustre 300gsm with ICC profile. I hope they give a good idea of the print quality of this printer. I've now expanded my range of paper types to 5 with Smooth pearl 310gsm and Velvet Fine Art 275gsm in A4 which give me a better look for LRGB images ( Luminance Red Green Blue ) bare in mind paper weight does not equate to paper thickness the 275gsm Velvet is slightly thicker than the 310gsm Pearl. The only downside.. if this is a thing, I had to buy a cabinet to hold the paper boxes and sit the printer on.

This is not a cheap printer so the quality of the print should be excellent. Initially the definition and colours looked very good but there were feed roller impressions along the entire length of the printout which stood out clearly and made the print unusable. Further Epson customer service was really bad. Using their website to register the product proved impossible, just taking you round in circles. Also they could not be contacted to register my complaint. If I don’t hear from them, I will be returning the product after Christmas.

In most respects, the ET-8550 was a bit of a revelation. I'd previously owned several HP photo printers, including some semi-professional A3 and A3+ models. I had a bunch of reasons for going with HP at the time, including the physical robustness [they really were built like tanks], the print quality and software support - including the fact that until recently HP have had much better support for the Linux operating system than Epson. Then my last big HP developed a major hardware fault; I didn't see anything in their range I liked, so I purchased an Epson XP-950. Only A4 and not really a purpose-built photo printer, but it did exceptionally well except for the ludicrously small amount of ink supplied in each cartridge... A chance conversation with a friend resulted in my getting a personal recommendation for the Ecotank approach by Epson, which resulted in my purchase of the ET-8550. It's a power-house of a printer and no mistake, with superb media handling, outstanding print quality on any medium [but most especially on Epson paper, for which ICC profiles are available] and a much more sensible and economical approach to ink. I've now owned mine since March, so it feels like this has been enough time to allow for an experience-based review. As I often do, here are some positive and negative points to consider:- + Positive + + Superb - really outstanding - print quality, especially with Epson paper ... Can't emphasize this enough + Trivially easy to set up and calibrate - standing start to working perfectly in just a few minutes + Excellent, safe and easy-to-use ink loading courtesy of "keyed" ink bottles. Excellent design + Generally quiet in operation, especially when printing photo quality + Superb paper handling, even thick cards and really heavy photo paper - jam and snag-free + Really excellent integrated scanner - fantastic resolution and colour accuracy, right out of the box + Solid, comprehensive software and drivers, including for Linux [which are simple to install] - Negative - - A touch on the pricey side - The resolution of the touch screen can be a bit off from time to time [a minor niggle] - Integrated, flat-sheet paper handling leaves quite a bit to be desired. I want to call out the last of the negatives, because it is a bit surprising to me. With the generous built-in ink tanks, this printer produces fabulous quality output very economically... but the two integrated flat-sheet media trays handle something like 20-30 sheets of paper each, which just isn't enough. Yes, I understand that this printer is clearly intended to be a "photographer's work horse" - and for most of that use the back roll feed or rear/top paper feed will be in use. But this is a fast, excellent quality printer that can print duplex. So if you want, for example, to produce "glossies" - such as A4 sheets of marketing materials that combine text, graphics and photographs - and you want to use a photo-friendly cut-sheet [but double-sided] china clay paper, you're going to be continuously returning to the printer to keep it fed. Such a shame as this printer is super-compact... and another 2-2.5cm in height and a corresponding increase in internal paper capacity would have made it perfect. But if you want to print to A3+ and produce mainly photo-quality output, I don't think you'll beat this printer at this price point, not as an all-rounder.

Bought to replace an aging Epson Inkjet printer for home use. We home educate so our printers get fairly heavy use for both colour A4 and photo printing. First - the obvious downside. It’s expensive whichever way you look at it. You could get several standard cartridge inkjet printers for the price of this. Any savings you will make from having an ink tank will be realised over the course of several years after the initial outlay. Secondly, it’s not entirely straightforward to set up. The app you have to download for it walks you through the process but it still takes at least an hour to fully put the thing together, and then you need to get it talking to your computers. We live in a Mac/PC/iPhone household and it did take a while to set it up on each system. I’m fairly confident with technology but it still felt like a bit of a chore. Now, the positives. The print quality blows any home printer I’ve had before out of the water. Photo printing is indistinguishable (to my eye) from what you’d get commercially. Standard printing on paper is quick and clear. Using the manual feed paper tray at the rear of the printer we have managed to print directly onto thick card stock which has come out perfectly. Once set up, the connection is stable and consistent. Not a single “unable to locate printer” error and due to its AirPrint capabilities iOS devices on the same network recognise it without needing to download the app. Having spent years with the choice of either paying through the nose for genuine printer cartridges or getting cheap generic ones that only work half the time, having the ink tank system seems to be the way forwards. Despite fairly heavy use we’ve barely got through any of the ink that it comes with, and replacements ink, both genuine and generic, is reasonably priced. As there is no security system like the chips you get in cartridges you won’t be penalised for using generic ink. The printer’s other features all seem to work well. The LED touchscreen is brightly lit and functional. There’s a button on it which can give you tutorials on pretty much all of the printer’s functions. You can load several types of media at once (we have A4 paper, glossy photos and use the rear feed for card stock or A4 photos). The scanner works well with various devices. All in all, I’m very happy with it despite the initial outlay

This is hands down the best printer I've ever seen. I can't imagine how the quality could be improved with another printer. It's as good as it gets. Forget ever needing to order photos or prints online, you can print your own photos at home with this. The paper you use is important however, as testing shows cheap low quality paper gives (surprise) low quality prints. But with a good photo paper, the colours are stunning. Stunning! It's easy to set up, although does take a bit of time initially. It requires a lot of space to have on your desk always ready to go, so make sure you have the space. The size of the printer itself isn't the only consideration (and it is large), the paper tray and rear feeder tray needs to be taken into account too. I love the ink tanks over cartridges. Love how you can fill them up individually and see the levels at all times physically. I'm not sure on the accuracy of the claimed amount of pages you can print on a full tank though, as it seems to be draining much faster than the stated 1000s of pages. Although I am printing a lot of full page coloured A3 art (I'm an artist). TL;DR: You will get professional level prints with this. And the ink does last a long time, but probably not as long as Epson says. At least if you plan on doing a lot of full colour A4/A3 pages. Tech Support gets 1 star cause the only time I contacted them they never replied. Luckily I was able to figure it out myself in the end. But yeah, strange and maybe an anomaly but has to be mentioned.

I was very skeptical if I should keep this but it’s just great. The convenience of the app and wireless connectivity is really handy. Pick the right paper and choose the right setting is an exercise but the result is really good. I’m quite confident that the quality is even suitable for selling products not just home use!