Epson EcoTank ET-4850 review: An expensive fix for printer pain

 Printers have the reputation they do for a reason. From the outside, the difference between a good and bad one can be hard to spot. Even then, you won't know for sure whether a printer is going to helpful or a headache until you take it home.

The question of cost doesn't help things. It's hard to know how to spend smart when it comes to printers. How much is too much to pay for something as mundane as the ability to print out the odd document? How little can you get away with spending before you end up with the kind of printer that you resent living with rather than confidently rely on?

Epson’s ET-4850 is far from the most affordable answer to those questions but I can’t say that I was disappointed with the response it supplied.

When it comes to looks, the EcoTank ET-4850 sits just above what your expectations of it might be. As a brand, Epson isn't really known for the flexing when it comes to aesthetics. If all you're after is a printer that looks like what it is then you don’t be too disappointed by what’s on offer here.

Prefer something with a little more flair? The ET-4850 doesn't have a huge amount going on in that department but what little is here counts for a lot. The tray for the copier flips in itself when not in use but that's about it.

All told, the machine is relatively compact but a little bit chunky as far as printers go. There’s a 250-sheet paper tray at the bottom, a copier built into the top and a quartet of ink tanks nestled between the two.

While the EcoTank 4850 does rely on a companion app for its setup, the mechanics of this process aren’t what you’d expect. Rather than go through a typical setup wizard, the entire on-boarding experience is rendered as if you’re engaging with a chatbot. This took me by surprise and felt a little bit awkward.

However, on the whole, it did end up smoother than the setup experience of other printers that I’ve tested in the past. If I worried that I might have missed a step, I could just scroll up and double check for myself. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call it entirely foolproof or fun but it certainly worked better than I would have anticipated. 

In addition to handling the setup, the Epson Smart Panel app also allows you to use the ET-4850 remotely. Available on iOS and Android, this app isn’t particularly striking when it comes to user experience nor is all that fast and responsive to rely on. Still, it does give you  ton of options and once you’ve got it set up, it is entirely possible to avoid touching it in favor of things like AirPrint. 

Regardless of my initial reservations about both this process and the way the product itself looks, the first month or so of using the Epson EcoTank ET-4850 quickly won me over. It feels like the hardware here is just big enough to accommodate its myriad functions without feeling like too much of an imposition.

As someone who lives in a relatively small apartment, I might not love the space that this thing takes up but I do respect how much value it crams into that physical footprint. A big part of that has to do with the type of printer that Epson EcoTank 4850 is.

Rather than being cheaper upfront and making the money back on expensive cartridges or ink subscriptions, the ET-4850 costs you more at the outset but promises to let you save over the long run by buying ink refills in bulk. Epson’s take on that value proposition isn’t different all that different to that of its competitors but, depending on the models of printer you're looking to compare, it may well end up being cheaper.

There’s a similar sort of efficiency at work when it comes to the LCD control screen that’s used to control the ET-4850 whenever you aren’t feeding it things to print via a wireless network.

The user interface here isn’t flashy but it is surprisingly savvy about minimising the number of steps it takes to get something done. Even so, it's far from difficult to  take more control over the output if you want or whenever you need to.

Printing

Used in the way that I suspect most people will end up using it, the Epson EcoTank ET-4850 mostly lived up to my everyday expectations and demands. I didn’t encounter any issues with paper jams and while it wasn’t silent, it worked quiet and fast enough that I had few complaints on either front.

That said, as someone who prints a lot tabletop roleplaying components, I wasn’t super impressed with the quality of the print when it came to colored or detailed images. The results weren’t complete off the mark, but they did feel a little bit underwhelming. Held up against the asking price, I expected a little more.

Photocopying and scanning

When it came to photocopying, the Epson EcoTank ET-4850 swings above its weight. There's a lot of extra value in the options it gives you and I found myself really appreciative of the ability to using a 30-page auto document feeder tray or a larger scanner bay depending on my needs.