Epson EcoTank Pro ET-5850 Wireless All-in-One Printer Reviews

PROS

• No limits on ink for two years
• low operating costs
• excellent print quality
• ADF auto-duplexing
• Printhead PrecisionCore 4S
• excellent choices for mobile connectivity
• Warranty of two years with registration

CONS

• high initial cost of buying

SPECS FOR EPSON ECOTANK PRO ET-5850

• Type All-in-one
• Monochrome versus Color
• Ethernet, Bluetooth, wireless, and USB connections
• Legal Maximum Standard Paper Size
• 4 different ink colors total
• Number of Ink Tanks/Cartridges 4
• Direct Printing From Media Cards Not Acceptable
• Direct Printing From USB Sticks is not allowed
• Rated Speed (Color) at Default Settings: 25 ppm
• Rated Speed (Mono) 25 ppm at Default Settings
• Cycle of Monthly Duty (Recommended)
• 3,300
• Maximum Monthly Duty Cycle: 66,000 Pages/Month
• Yes LCD Preview Screen
• Input capacity for printers: 550
• 2 cents for each monochrome page.
• 2 cents for each color page.
• Yes, print duplexing
• Yes, an automatic document feeder
• Flatbed Scanner with ADF (Standard or Optional)
• Yes, duplexing scans
• Legal Maximum Scan Area
• Optical Resolution of the Scanner: 1,200 by 2,400 PPI
• Self-contained copier and fax machine

The ET-5850 is a wonderful choice for a busy office because of its exceptional performance and extremely cheap ink costs. The ET-5850 is likely to meet the expectations of the majority of busy offices thanks to its document feeder, duplexer, three paper trays, and two-sided scanning capabilities.

It’s unlikely that you would be dissatisfied if your print volume calls for a workhorse like the ET-5850. The ET-5850 achieved outstanding image quality at record speeds in each test we put it through. Excellent print and copy quality, crisp document scans, and rapid two-sided operations were all features of this printer. The only drawbacks were that the bundled scanning software does not support automatic cropping and that scans of images produced by default settings were too dark.

Even with the high-yield cartridges from the MB5420 installed, the ET-5850 offers far cheaper ink costs than our previous Editor’s Choice, the Canon Maxify MB5420. Your office’s print volume will determine how long it takes to recover the greater initial investment in the EcoTank; the more you print, the quicker the return on investment.

The Maxify is outperformed by the EcoTank Pro in the most of categories—and doubles the Maxify’s scanning and color printing speeds while maintaining excellent image quality.

The speedy and feature-rich ET-5850 is unquestionably worth a close look if your office equipment budget can support the cost.

Design

The front panel of the EcoTank ET-5850 has tiny windows into its ink reservoirs, much like another ink tank rival, the recently reviewed HP Smart Tank 651, allowing you to order ink in advance. However, you won’t need to do that right away: Black, cyan, yellow, and magenta are the four inks that are included in the box; each bottle has a worth of roughly 0.

With a weight of approximately 40 pounds, the ET-5850 is quite substantial. When printed, it has dimensions of 16.7 x 32.4 x 18.1, thus it will require a sizable amount of tabletop space. Given that it has two 250-sheet paper cassettes, a 50-sheet specialized media tray, an ADF with a capacity of 50 sheets, and a duplexer, this is not surprising. The ET-5850 can scan and copy two-sided original documents using the ADF in addition to producing two-sided prints.

The 4.3-inch touch screen is sizable and functions nicely. Simple menu options are made possible by the huge on-screen buttons, and you may slide the menu symbols across the screen, just like on a smartphone. The animation instructions and help displays are clear and well-organized. There aren’t any actual buttons for navigating. The USB, Ethernet, and phone line (fax) ports are located on the back panel. Wi-Fi Direct and Wi-Fi networking are supported.

Print speed

In our tests, the ET-5850 pushed the envelope and produced extremely quick results on every print, copy, and scan performance. It printed our five-page text document at a rate of 15.3 pages per minute in 19.6 seconds (ppm). That was far quicker than the HP Smart Tank Plus 651, which prints at a rate of 8.8 pages per minute (ppm), and a little slower than the Canon Maxify MB5420, which was formerly our Editor’s Choice for small businesses and prints at 17.5 ppm. Models with ink tanks and high-yield cartridges had an average cycle time of 31 seconds (9.7 ppm). In our tests, business workgroup inkjets averaged 22.1 seconds or 13.6 ppm.

The EcoTank printed our combined text and graphic six-page color PDF in just 32.8 seconds, a scorching 11 ppm that is much faster than the category average of 2.6 ppm (or, 2 minutes and 19 seconds). The identical document took 3 minutes and 30 seconds, or 1.7 ppm, to print on the HP Smart Tank Plus 651. It took the Canon Maxify MB5420 approximately one minute to print it, which is half as fast as the EcoTank.

The EcoTank produced a letter-size glossy photo print in 2 minutes and 21 seconds using the rear special media tray. The same photo was printed in 2 minutes and 5 seconds by the Canon MB5420, which was marginally quicker. The HP Smart Tank Plus 651 was considerably slower, averaging 5 minutes and 4 seconds, whereas high-yield inkjets took an average of 4 minutes and 31 seconds.

With only one or two pages lost each minute compared to single-sided prints, the ET-5850 was similarly excellent when printing on both sides. At 14.5 ppm, the EcoTank spit out two-sided text papers. The Canon MB5420 did it at 11.7 ppm, in contrast.

At 9.5 ppm, the ET-5850 produced two-sided color documents swiftly. The Canon MB5420 did it at 6 ppm, in contrast. Epson EcoTank ET-4750, which prints at 3.4 ppm, and Canon Pixma TS9120, which prints at 2.3 ppm, are two slower variants.

Speed of copy and scan

The ET-5850 produced a black-and-white copy in under 6.7 seconds, which is the quickest time for an inkjet all-in-one that we have seen. It was the fastest business model and more than four times faster than the high-yield and ink tank average of 28.8 seconds. The next-fastest business model, the Canon MB5420, completed the same copy in 7.6 seconds.

The EcoTank also produced a color copy in just 10 seconds, which is incredibly quick compared to the majority of general-purpose versions. The Canon MB5420 produced a color copy in 13.4 seconds, which is quite impressive. Business models typically take 31.1 seconds to complete. High-yield models have performed this task a little slowly in our testing, taking 49 seconds on average.

The ET-5850’s automated document feeder (ADF) is quick, just like its duplexer. The EcoTank copied a five-page single-sided text document using the ADF in 21.7 seconds, or 13.8 ppm. Contrarily, the HP Smart Tank 651 needed approximately 11 minutes—less than half a page per minute—to duplicate five text pages. The identical copy was completed by the Brother INKvestment J805DW in 44.2 seconds or 6.8 ppm.

When duplicating two-sided multi-page documents, the ET-5850 continued to perform quickly; it took only 1 minute and 11 seconds (8.5 ppm) to generate a two-sided copy of a 10-page double-sided text document. At 8.8 ppm, the Canon MB5420 was a little quicker.

Both of our testing revealed quick scanning rates. The ET-5850 quickly scanned an 8 by 10-inch photo at high resolution, producing a 600 dpi JPEG in just 17 seconds—the quickest speed we’ve recorded for an inkjet all-in-one. At 31.7 seconds, this was nearly twice as quick as the Canon MB5420 and the business sector average of 31.1 seconds. On the other hand, the same scan on the HP Smart Tank Plus 651 took 2 minutes and 16 seconds.

Similar to how it scanned quickly, the EcoTank created a 300 dpi grayscale PDF in in 5.6 seconds, which is significantly faster than the 7.1 seconds average for business inkjets in the same category. The identical scan was completed by the HP Smart Tank 651 in 8.3 seconds. In 9.4 seconds, the Canon MB5420 completed the scan.

The EcoTank’s ADF allows for speedy scanning as well. It took about 40.3 seconds, or slightly more than 8 seconds per page, to create a five-page, 300 dpi PDF scan of a document with mixed-color text and pictures. The EcoTank created a two-page, 300 dpi grayscale PDF after scanning a two-sided original using the ADF in 21.5 seconds. The same two-page document took 27.9 seconds to scan in color. The EcoTank scanned a 10-page, two-sided original swiftly, producing a 300 dpi PDF in 1 minute and 39 seconds, or just under 10 seconds per page, even when more pages were added.

Print quality

Prints from the EcoTank ET-5850 are of excellent quality. The letterforms of the text appeared sharp and as near to razor-sharp as an inkjet printer can produce them. Text printed on both sides appeared equally sharp.

High-quality graphics prints were produced. In flat places, there was some faint banding, but it was well spaced and unobtrusive. The banding seems to be lessened with premium inkjet paper. Details appeared sharp, mid tone transitions were fluid, and colors appeared nicely saturated and natural.

Rich colors and fine details made photos printed on glossy paper look quite lovely. The EcoTank favors reds and yellows over other colors, giving off a warm tone that may be a touch unnatural-looking. In photographic prints, shadow areas frequently lost some fine details.

Text document copies appeared appealing, with letter forms that were a little bit fatter than in the original. The quality of the copies occasionally deteriorated from an apparent ADF or paper feed error. This resulted in a few lines of text that were jagged and out of alignment on copies of multi-page text documents. A 10-page copy had one page with a row of misaligned text, while a five-page copy at worst had a line of misaligned text on three of its pages. However, a few other documents were accurately reproduced, and drawings on plain paper appeared to be faithful copies of the originals.

In PDF format, scans of documents containing a combination of text and pictures looked quite appealing. The document scans appeared to be exact and in-depth. However, default settings often resulted in scans of glossy photos that were darker than the original. Although skin tones were natural and details were crisp, dark mid tones frequently shifted suddenly into darkness, creating the impression that the image was underexposed. Shadows in the original print appeared overly dark and flat, erasing details.