Epson - EcoTank Photo ET-8500 Wireless Color All-in-One Supertank Printer

I got a refurb 8500 from Epson that has been great

I have the ET8500 A4 printer and wish I had bought the A3 version for a £100 or so more.. I have just sold my Canon Pro 300 A3 plus printer. Basically the Epson printers are expensive and the ink is cheap. Epson make most of their money from the printer not the ink. For Canon the printers are quite expensive and the ink is VERY expensive. (see below) The prints from the Epson are very good especially as I do not use the top quality photo papers. Just Kolas Satin 250 g from Amazon that costs about £0.22 (UK) per sheet. Chat GPT estimates the ink cost of printing an A4 full colour photo as about £0.08 for the Epson and £2.00for the Canon. So I pay about £0.30 for each A4 print. I have a calibrated monitor and print from Photoshop. I have a action that adds brightness and a small colour correction to the file before printing. The results are usually a good match for the image on the screen. Occasionally I have to tweak the colour a bit and print another copy but at about £0.30 I do not mind. People at my camera club are impressed with the quality of the prints I produce and say they compare well against those from a top end printer like the Canon.

I should have also have said that the scanner in the ET 8500 is very good

i’ve had the et8500 and now have a canon pixma pro 200, definitely recommend the pixma pro 200 over the Epson. however, as a general printer, the et8500 is fabulous. just not as much for photos. it performs decently well on satin/luster paper, but matte colors are always too dull (i tested it for a year on countless papers and settings, research and recommendations from Red River Paper), and glossy papers usually smudged. I’ve had virtually none of those problems or any other issues with the Pixma. cartridges are a lot more expensive than the eco tank, though. but the quality shows, especially when you use properly coated paper for inkjet ink, such as Red River Paper, Canon, etc.

We went from pixma to Epson ET-8500, eco tank with all colors filled with black. Refills are super clean and last a long time. No need to buy toner cartridges.

I personally am an inkjet guy, but if you go with a thermal type laser you get access to Koehler black cored paper that replicates a real card snap. I can't help on a best recommendation for laser though. If your family will occasionally do photo prints as well you might consider an epson 8500 or its larger brother the 8550. I use the 8550 for my proxies but my gf uses it for her photography as well. Its a very capable printer, and having the black document ink in addition to pigment black really helps on refills if you are doing a fair amount of plain document prints. Ink is very affordable and my proxies run $0.015USD per single face cards or roughly $0.135 per page of epson brand ink. It may matter or it may not to you but the 8500/8550 is also capable of printing on 1.3mm foam board from the rear slot. Here is a [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/magicproxies/comments/1ij7pip/paper_test_summary_list_with_links_epson_8550/) with various papers I have tested with my 8550 in addition to several links to other posts by fellow proxy makers. Edit: For the record I was unable to get successful prints on my 8550 using an inkjet on black core card stock to justify the price, furthermore what is widely sold as "cardstock" from most manufacturers is not a true cored playing card stock. I have been told that swapping over to a full pigment based ink on my 8550 would allow me to print, or alternatively if I prepped with a product called "inkaid" I could get reasonable prints. However I have never seen a post with photos about either of them in use.

The 8550/8500 are exactly the same except the 8550 can print up to 13in wide. I have enough trouble with cuts on a standard 8.5 width let alone the two sheets I attempted at 13in wide. That being said being able to run out photos and posters for people at 13in wide is pretty handy. I have done a few 13in by 19in wall posters of real cards for gifts. Also something to note, the 8550/8500 is also capable of user defined paper length up to 70in or so. Can't remember the exact number but its in the tech specs if your curious. This is a [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/magicproxies/comments/1ij7pip/paper_test_summary_list_with_links_epson_8550/) with a bunch of papers I tested on the 8550 if you want to see what it can do. If you have already seen it then my apologies. Edit: Checked the specs max user defined paper length is 78.7 inches.

I have been happy with the Epson EcoTank Photo ET-8500 which I bought from B&H for about $750. It has a 8.5 x 14 inch scanner, so does not check that box (for that I have access to an Epson Expressions 13000XL-- that thing is expensive though). The Epson EcoTank accepts paper up to 13x19 inches. Like all inkjets, it needs special paper- I've found Inkpress to be a good budget line that has some papers that can be printed on both sides (especially the Duo Matte 80 paper). My one disappointment with the Epson EcoTank has been in how it handles text-- I've been happy with image and photo printing, but text is always printed much heavier than seems correct, especially when compared to the crisp type I get out of my laser printer (HP Color LaserJet Pro 3201).

Sorry, I meant the ET-8500 (I was reading another comment about the 2980). The ET-2800 only supports up to 12 mil and might work with 13–14 mil if I push it down, but it leaves heavy roller marks.

Either use double sided card and just print the cardbacks on the other side, or print the fronts on sticker paper and the backs on card/photo paper, then stick. Any decent photo printer should do the job, but the Epson ET-8500 does it very easily and while upfront costs are fairly high, a tank of ink gets you so many more prints than the old cartridges did.

I second what others have suggested ie EPSON ET-8500 or 8550 (same print engine, different size) with a couple caveats: 1. whatever film you use on the brothers printer (a laser one) will not work on an inkjet printer 2. I don’t remember if the printer offers printing from a USB drive connected to it. Even if was, the recommended way to get proper colors is using a computer (MAC or PC), where you have full control over the printer settings.

If you're looking for an art printer, don't get the ET-2850. It's a consumer-level home printer designed for documents. [www.epson.ca](http://www.epson.ca) has the ET-8500 refurbished for $579. That's a dedicated photo printer.

Get an Epson EcoTank ET-2800. The ink costs on cartridge printers are way too high. While the ET-2800 is a 4-color printer, it can print photos fairly well. You can also look into the ET-8500, if you're looking for a dedicated photo printer. tl;dr: The more you pay for your printer the less you pay for your ink. Buy the EcoTank. Spending the money up front is highly recommended for lower ink costs and less frustration from tiny ink cartridges. For comparison, the $299 (all prices CAD), consumer-level, cartridge printer (in this case the XP-8800) uses cartridges that are 9.3 mL (color) and 11.2 mL (black) for high capacity cartridges and 4.1 mL (color) and 5.5 mL (black) for standard capacity cartridges that would each cost about $33.49 (XL color) and $29.09 (XL black) to $17.49 (standard color/black) _each_ **($197 for 57.7 mL or $105 for 26 mL of ink vs. $94 for 280 mL of ink)**. The reason for this is that printer hardware may cost $450 alone, and add to that the cost of inks included in the printer. When a printer is sold at breakeven or a loss, the profit has to be recovered with the supplies. When you purchase an EcoTank printer, you’re paying for the hardware, so there’s no need to “make-up” for the loss. There’s an inverse relationship between printer and ink cost.