Epson WorkForce ET-4550 EcoTank All-in-One Printer Review

Coming up with a simple characterization for the Epson WorkForce ET-4550 EcoTank All-in-One Printer ($499.99) is a challenge. On the one hand, it's a fairly typical office-centricmultifunction printer (MFP), and a good fit for either personal use or light-duty shared use in a micro office. On the other, it's expensive for that sort of printer. But as part of the EcoTank family, it's Epson's answer to anyone who has ever complained about the marketing model that gives away the razors (read: printers) to sell the blades (read: ink). With the ET-4550 ($1,189.99 at Amazon) , you pay full freight for the printer, and save lots of money on ink.

According to Epson, the ET-4550 is essentially identical to the Epson WorkForce WF-2650 ($1,189.99 at Amazon) , except that it adds an Ethernet connector and—far more important—it doesn't use ink cartridges. Instead, it adds ink tanks on the side of the printer, and ships with bottles of ink, which you pour into the tanks. (More on that below.)

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Along with the nearly identical features, the two models offer similar performance. There's a big difference in price, with the ET-4550 costing about four times as much. But unless you hardly print at all, it will be a lot less expensive in the long run. The ET-4500 comes with enough ink for 11,000 monochrome pages (if you use it as a replacement for a monochrome laser), or 8,500 color pages, with both yields based on ISO/IEC standard test pages. To print the same number of pages with the Epson WF-2650, you'd have to buy more than $1,600 worth of ink cartridges. And that's not including the cost of the printer. (For more details, see Never Buy a Printer Ink Cartridge Again.)

BasicsIn addition to Ethernet and USB, the ET-4550 offers Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi Direct as connection choices. Core MFP features include the ability to print and fax from, as well as scan to, a PC, plus standalone copier and fax machine capability. The key office-centric feature other than faxing is the 30-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF), which supplements the letter-size flatbed and can handle up to legal-size pages.

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Paper handling is limited to a 150-sheet capacity, which is what makes the printer most appropriate for personal use or light-duty use as a shared printer. However, it also includes duplexing (two-sided printing) as a welcome extra.

The ET-4550 has support for mobile printing and scanning. If you install it on a network, you can print and scan through the cloud, using the Epson Connect service, to selected websites—including Box, Dropbox, Evernote, and Google Drive—assuming, of course, that the network is connected to the Internet. You can also connect to the printer by way of an access point to print from or scan to an iOS, Android, or Kindle Fire phone or tablet.

If you connect the ET-4550 to a single PC via USB cable rather than to a network, you'll forgo the ability to print through or scan to the cloud. However, you'll still be able to use Wi-Fi Direct to connect directly to the printer from your mobile device to print and scan.

SetupAt 16 pounds 5 ounces, the ET-4550 is light enough for one person to move into place easily. It's also small enough, at 9.5 by 20.3 by 22 inches (HWD), to easily share a desk with. Setup is standard—except for the ink, of course.

The ink comes in eight bottles, with two for each color. Both black ink bottles hold 140 milliliters (ml) of ink. Each of the other ink colors comes in one 70ml bottle labeled Initial and one 40ml bottle labeled Bonus. The rated yield of 11,000 monochrome or 8,500 color pages is based on using all eight bottles.

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The left side of the printer includes an array of ink tanks, with a cover on top and translucent sides that let you see how much ink is left in each tank. To fill each one, you first prepare the appropriate ink bottle by removing the top, peeling off a seal, replacing the top, and breaking off the tip from the neck of the bottle. You then open the hood, remove a rubber cover from the tank, and carefully insert the top of the bottle's neck into the opening on the tank.

The two don't connect or dock in any way, but there are extensions sticking out along the neck of the bottle. That lets you put it just a bit into the tank opening to make sure you don't slip off the opening and spill any ink, while still keeping you from putting the bottle in too far. The neck is also narrow enough that you have to squeeze the bottle to force the ink out, rather than actually pour it, and you have to squeeze several times to empty the bottle.

All this is generally well explained in the setup guide, although there are some odd instructions too, including "do not drink the ink." (Really.) There are also plenty of warnings about not spilling ink, and instructions for how to deal with it if you do, including a pessimistic, "If ink gets on your clothes or belongings, it may not come off."

To avoid any problems, I made a point of positioning the printer well back from the edge of the desk, so I wasn't likely to spill anything on the floor. I also put the printer on a paper towel sitting on top of a plastic bag, and wore latex gloves on both hands. I managed not to get any ink on the paper towel, but I can't say the same for the gloves. If you don't have any handy, you're well advised to buy some before you install the printer.

The good news, of course, is that once you fill the tanks, you can print thousands of pages before you have to fill them again with the second set of bottles and print still more pages before you need to buy more ink. Even when you do, it won't cost a lot for the next set. The price on Epson's website for a 140-ml bottle of black ink with a 6,000-page yield is only $19.49. The price for 70-ml cyan, yellow, and magenta bottles, with a 6,500-page yield is $12.99 per color.

Speed, and Output QualityFor my tests, I connected the printer to a network by Ethernet and installed the drivers and other software on a system running Windows Vista. I timed the printer on our business applications suite (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing), at 3.8 pages per minute (ppm). Not surprisingly, since both are essentially the same printer, that makes it tied with the Epson WF-2650, both for the overall speed and—except for a 1-second difference on one document—for each individual document in our tests. However, both are slower than the Brother MFC-J470DW ($1,189.99 at Amazon) , which is our Editors' Choice moderately priced color inkjet MFP aimed at a small or home office. The Brother printer came in at 4.9ppm.

Output quality for the ET-4500 is a little better than most inkjet MFPs overall, falling at the high end of the range that includes most models for text output, the bottom of the equivalent—but smaller—range for graphics, and in the top tier for photos.

That makes the text easily good enough for almost any business use, as long as you don't have an unusual need for small fonts or need the level of quality you'd want for, say, a resumé. Graphics, similarly, are more than good enough for any internal business use. Most people would also consider them good enough for PowerPoint handouts and the like.

Photo quality is better than most drugstore prints. However, if you expect photos to have a glossy finish, you may not like the matte look of the Premium Presentation Paper Matte that Epson recommends for photos.

ConclusionCertainly the strongest argument for the ET-4550 is its low ink cost. But by turning the marketing paradigm of low-price printers with high ink costs on its head, Epson has also introduced a bit of sticker shock for the printer itself.

One way to look at the pricing is that, based on the cost of additional ink, the initial cost works out to $415 for the printer and $85 for the included ink. But that still makes the ET-4550 more than three times as expensive as the Epson WF-2650. A more helpful approach is to look at the total cost of ownership as part of your buying decision, and calculate a rough approximation of how much any given competing printer will cost in the long run.

You should have a good idea of how many pages you print in a typical week. Multiply that by 50 to get the number of pages you print in a year, then do the math to figure out how quickly the ink cartridges you'll be buying plus the initial cost of the printer will add up to $500 or more. That's the break-even point. If you typically keep your printers for longer than that before replacing them, the ET-4550 will save you money. If you don't print that much, it won't. It's that simple.

If you need an MFP for personal or light-duty shared use, don't print enough for the Epson WorkForce ET-4550 EcoTank All-in-One Printer to save money over its lifetime—or save enough to matter—consider the Epson WF-2650 or the Brother MFC-J470DW for their lower initial cost and total cost of ownership. You should also consider them if you need a printer that you can repeatedly move to and from a dorm room, say, without worrying about spilling ink. For those who print enough for the ET-4550's low ink cost to matter, it can be a good fit for personal or light-duty shared use, with its total cost of ownership making it a highly attractive choice.

4.0See It$1,189.99 at AmazonMSRP $499.99View More

The Epson WorkForce ET-4550 EcoTank All-in-One Printer costs a lot for a personal multifunction printer (MFP), but it comes with all the ink most users will ever need.

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