Epson EcoTank ET-2500 Printer Review
As any of my regular readers will know, I am a secondary school teacher. And as anyone who takes any interest in education in this country, school budgets are really pinched. My Head of Department won’t let any of our department use the colour photocopier at school as the cost per copy is too high (although if you think this sounds bad, at a previous school, we had a whole term where we had run out of budget to use on the photocopier so had an outright ban from it). I do like a good worksheet for my pupils, and being a Biology teacher, there is nothing better than a brightly coloured diagram on a handout. Imagine, then, how excited I was when I was sent a new Epson EcoTank ET-2500 Printer to test.
The standout feature of the printer is that it has no need for ink cartridges. Instead it has an integrated ink tank system, and the four 70ml ink bottles that come with the printer should last for approximately 2 years, and reducing printing costs by around 70%. This is obviously based on an average household printer, and not one owned by a teacher who loves providing classes of 30 pupils coloured worksheets on a regular basis, however, I am convinced that it will take a lot longer before I need to replace the ink than it would if I was using the old ink cartridge printer.
By biggest concern with the lack of an ink cartridge was how fiddly it would be filling the ink tanks. There are four ink tanks in the Epson EcoTank ET-2500 Printer, and it comes with the four inks – black, cyan, magenta and yellow in 70ml bottles which are sealed in plastic bags. The ink tanks are clearly colour-coded so there is no confusion with which ink goes where, and has the code for the Epson ink on it which should make buying the correct ink in 2 years time much easier!
Filling the tanks was actually really easy. Each tank has a soft rubber cap which has to be taken off before filling. Thankfully, even though there is a little space to store the cap whilst filling the tank, each of these seals is also attached to the printer, making it impossible to lose!
Then, you just need to snap the lid off the ink and fill its corresponding tank. I obviously put a few sheets of paper underneath the printer as I was worried about the mess, but I needn’t have bothered. It really was mess free. In fact, the only mess that I did get, was a bit of ink on my fingers whilst filling an ink tank AND simultaneously taking a photo to show how easy the process was (the irony is not lost on me).
The set up process was all very straight forward too, however, once the tanks had been filled, the ink needed charging for about 20 minutes, so this isn’t the sort of printer that you can just take out of the box and start printing straight away. Although this would be a bit annoying if you had got a document that you needing printing of copying quickly, the fact that this just needs doing when the ink tanks have been refilled (and remember this should only be once every 2 years) it shouldn’t be too much of a problem!
Whilst you are waiting the 20 minutes to charge the ink, you can get the printer set up on your WiFi system and download the Epson iPrint app onto mobile devices. I have had problems getting my school laptop to print to our old printer, but didn’t have the problem with this one. It was also really easy to get photos on my phone printed out via the app. I can see the printer getting a lot of use, especially as I should be able to print up to 4,000 pages in black and 6,500 pages in colour with the ink that was provided. The Epson EcoTank ET-2500 Printer also scans and photocopies, but is also fairly lightweight and small for all the worksheet-producing potential that I now have on my desk.
Our printer at home also gets a lot of use when it comes to printing out photographs. I think my girls are the most beautiful things that I have ever seen, so any photographs I have of them should do them justice. The Epson EcoTank ET-2500 Printer didn’t disappoint when it came to printing my photographs. I put it to the test on one of my favourite ones of Freyja, and using photographic paper, the quality really was impressive. I tested the photocopy function by copying this picture onto standard paper and was pleased to see it was a similar quality to a print that I would get from a standard colour photocopier. In the following photo, the photographic print is on the left and the colour photocopy is on the right.
The Epson EcoTank ET-2500 Printer costs £229.99 which may seem pricey at first glance, but comes with the four bottles of ink each worth £7.99, and if I don’t need to buy any more ink for another two years, then not only will this make the printer good value, it will also have less impact on the environment as I won’t need to be buying and replacing ink cartridges.
Disclaimer: I was sent the Epson EcoTank ET-2500 Printer for review purposes, but as always, all thoughts and opinions are my own.
