- You are interested
in the Epson EcoTank printers, aren't you?
Yes you are, and you're wondering
if they're worth the money,
because frankly they're a little bit
more expensive than what we've been paying
for printers for the past decade, are they not?
They are indeed.
Let's take a look today at the Epson EcoTank printer series,
here on Dotto Tech.
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(quirky music)
Steve Dotto here.
How the heck you doing this fine day?
Today we're gonna take a look at the Epson EcoTank printer,
and almost exactly one year ago today, I purchased one.
I went out and I bought myself that printer
there that you see above Farley.
It is the basic, the most basic level Epson EcoTank
you can buy, because at the end of the day,
I'm really just kind of cheap.
Now, I am a convert to the Epson EcoTank.
Why am I a convert to the Epson EcoTank?
Because my wife is a teacher
and I used to have a laser printer,
and over the course of every year,
I would buy two or three new laser cartridge toner refills
because of the huge volume of printing that Shannon does.
Drove me crazy.
Of course an inkjet printer would've been worse,
but in my research I looked at the Epson EcoTank
and I recognized that it has an amazing amount
of prints that you can do from each tank,
and I didn't actually believe it,
but I was hopeful that it would indeed work that way,
so I bought it.
After one year, now I can't tell you how many pages
because I haven't been counting the pages.
Epson gives you all of the details.
But after one year we are still on our first tank.
Now it's empty.
It's ready to be refilled.
As you can see here, we have used up the entire tank,
but it printed for an entire year.
Now, recently Epson flew me to New York.
Full disclosure, they flew me to New York
to show me their new line of printers,
which I was happy to do because I like New York
and I like Epson.
And they just sent me this,
a brand new Epson EcoTank printer.
I didn't pay for this one.
They gave it to me.
I paid for the original.
Now, why am I upgrading,
because this one here is still perfectly good?
It, at the basic level, didn't have
one feature that Shannon really wanted,
which is double-sided printing.
So when Epson offered me the new printer,
I jumped at the opportunity, and here it is.
So let's, you and I, today take a look
at setting up the Epson EcoTank,
and while we're doing that, I'll tell you the details
and you can decide for yourself
whether or not it's a printer that might work well for you.
Now, if the concept of the EcoTank is new to you,
allow me to explain, and then we will set up the printer.
EcoTanks are Epson's initiative
that replaces traditional toner cartridges
on laser printers or inkjet cartridges with a tank
that is refillable, and you purchase
just ink, as it came in this bottle,
and you refill the ink tank with these cartridges.
Now, the printer itself costs more,
but you get, as they say in their marketing,
a ridiculous amount of ink,
as is my own personal experience.
One year's worth of ink was one of these bottles,
and they say, for the average consumer,
it's actually about two years of ink in these bottles.
So to put it into perspective,
I would go through three or four toner cartridges
in a laser printer, and the amount of ink that goes
into one of these eco cartridges, or EcoTanks,
and Epson says that one set of replacement bottles
of EcoTank ink replaces 80 traditional inkjet cartridges.
That's 80 less cartridges going into the landfill.
That's a huge savings in dollars and cents
because you purchase a single, well,
how much ink did we use in,
in one year, how much did it cost me to buy?
Lemme jump over to Amazon here.
Yeah, here we are.
One of these cartridges, or one of these bottles,
cost me $22.99 from Amazon.
That's Canadian dollars, so in the States, what is that?
17, $16.50, $17 is the cost of a cartridge, roughly.
That replaced in this particular case 20 cartridges,
20 black cartridges, roughly,
if we look at one on, with the math of one in four.
So that tells us how much money we saved.
Now, we do pay more for the printer.
This printer that Epson has sent me,
which we will now set up, is about $400 Canadian.
So it's a far more expensive printer
than a traditional inkjet printer.
The quality, as far as I can tell,
is just as good, but the cost savings
and the environmental impact savings.
To me, the reason that I originally purchased
my first Epson EcoTank printer was
because of the environmental responsibility
and the fact that it just drove
me crazy buying cartridge after cartridge after cartridge.
So it's, long-term, economically beneficial,
but long-term, environmentally beneficial as well.
So here's the printer.
Let's set it up for you.
Now, I've set up a lot of printers in my life.
Back in the TV show days, every season
we would do multiple printers,
and setting up this Epson EcoTank was
pretty much the same as setting
up every printer you've ever set up.
Once you've cleared away all of the different packing tape
and all of the different little bits of styrofoam,
which actually I will give Epson credit,
there wasn't an awful lot of packaging
in this particular box,
you then check your quick start guide
and you go through and set up the printer.
Now, it was a lot of fun actually setting up the EcoTank
because the coolest thing is inserting the bottles
into the individual tanks.
Now, you might worry that it's gonna be a bit
of a messy process, but it isn't.
You simply open each of the caps,
drop the tank on top, drop the refill tank on top,
and the tank burble,
and the ink burbles itself into the tank.
Not a single drop was, went awry,
so it was a no-mess, no-fuss fill-up.
And I love the fact that you can physically see,
without going into any software,
you can see, just by looking at the front
of your printer, how much ink you have left.
That, to me, is a terrific additional feature.
So what do you get when you purchase an Epson EcoTank?
What is the overall printer experience like?
Well, having set up as many printers as I have,
I have to say that the Epson EcoTank is a good printer.
It does a great job on office documents.
If you put in coated stock,
it does a very nice job on photos.
It has, of course, a built-in scanner
if you still want to use a flatbed scanner.
It's built-in and you can access it
and use the scanner as you choose.
Of course when you look at the features on the website,
the main features, the main benefits,
of this printer are always gonna be relating to the economy,
how little it costs to operate
and how much you save both yourself and the environment.
So most of the main features is two years of ink,
90% less ink, and cost-cutting, et cetera.
But it's also a very convenient printer to set up.
Once you're set up on the wireless network,
it's very easy to set it up to print
from your smartphones or any computers.
So guests or others can add on
and be able to print from the printer
at any point quite effortlessly.
This model has a built-in SD card slot,
so you can print directly, should you choose to,
from a camera's SD card.
But I think that those sort of features are
really slipping into the background now
as so many of us now take pictures on our smartphone,
so things like smartphone printing become a
lot more important an asset than does
to be able to print from a SD card from your camera.
And setting up the Epson EcoTanks
with smartphones and tablets is very simple.
Now that they're on the WiFi network,
printing from any device is very easy.
Back when I used to do the TV show,
we did so many demos on printers over the years,
and the printers were in an arms race,
always trying to get smaller,
more precise dots, more precise printing,
better color representation, more color-fastness.
Just basically they were
continuously leap-frogging one another.
Epson, Canon, HP, Lexmark.
They were all in this arms race
to make their printers better.
They have all reached a level of outstanding quality.
The value you get and the quality
you get from your prints these days is spectacular.
So now we turn our eyes to some
more sophisticated needs for a printer, the cost per copy,
the environmental impact of those printers,
with the knowledge that any printer
that we get today is gonna do a great job
on both office documents and photos.
I made the personal choice over a year ago
to buy the Epson EcoTank.
I can't tell you for sure that
it's better than the competitors' similar products.
What I can tell you is it met every goal that I had for it.
It exceeded my expectations and it made me feel
that I had made an intelligent, responsible purchase.
I'm sure if you take a look at the Epson EcoTanks
and you choose to buy one, you will feel the same as I
once you have completed that journey.
I will have links below.
They will be Amazon links if
you choose to purchase on Amazon.
So please know that they will be Amazon affiliate links
that are linked below.
I look forward to your comments, feedback, suggestions.
Do you use other printers?
Have you bought into the EcoTank system?
What do you think of it?
Has it worked out for you as well as it worked out for me?
Looking forward to seeing your feedback in the comments.
'Til next time, I am Steve Dotto.
Have fun storming the castle.