Epson 3850 review: Epson EcoTank ET-3850 Review – RTINGS.com

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Epson EcoTank ET-3850 review | TechRadar

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Home office EcoTank with few features but plenty of ink

(Image: © Future)

TechRadar Verdict

Epson’s 3-in-1 lacks some basic features, but it prints well and slashes the cost of cartridges by up to 90 percent.

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Meet the Epson EcoTank ET-3850, the middle model in a new line of all-in-one printers aimed at the home office. It’s a three-in-one device with an ADF (automatic document feeder) and refillable ink tanks instead of cartridges. 

At around $400 (about £360, AU$680) it might seem expensive for a fairly ordinary all-in-one with no touchscreen and no dual scan mode, until you consider that it comes with enough ink in the box to print 14,000 black and white pages, or 5,200 color. That equates to around 70 cartridges and Epson’s bottled ink refills are refreshingly inexpensive to buy. Up to 90 percent cheaper than cartridges according to Epson.

(Image credit: Future)

Aside from the remarkably low running cost, the Epson EcoTank ET-3850 might also tempt you with its compact form factor, which manages to hold 250 sheets of A4 paper and 337ml of ink. That kind of capacity will keep you printing for longer before having to refuel. It comes in Arctic white in the US or plain black in the UK and is supported by an improved companion app called Epson Smart Panel. 

If you really want a touchscreen, fax facility and a front USB port, you should be looking at the step-up Epson EcoTank ET-4850 instead. Otherwise, read on to find out how the ET-3850 performed in out test.

(Image credit: Future)

  • Epson EcoTank ET-3850 at Dell for $399.99

Specifications

Type: 3-in-1 color A4 inkjet printer 

Functions: Print, scan and copy

Connectivity: Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Direct, USB

Data storage slots: None 

Print speed: 15 ppm (mono)

Paper capacity: 250 sheets

Print quality: 4,800 x 1,200 dpi

Scan quality: 1,200 x 2,400 dpi

Apple AirPrint: yes

Consumables included: 4x ink bottles (14,000 mono, 5,200 color)

Dimensions/Weight: 375 x 347 x 131 mm (WxDxH)/6. 7kg

The Epson EcoTank ET-3850 is a little larger than other A4 all-in-ones because it has to accommodate four fairly large ink reservoirs, but it hides its bulk well. It is almost cuboidal in shape with all of its flaps, including the ADF and tilting control panel folding seamlessly away. It is surprisingly light at 6.7kg and it feels a little flimsy in construction. Our sample arrived in a dented carton that had clearly been dropped and despite all the polystyrene packaging, it was enough to make the flaps of the ADF fall off. They clipped back in with no permanent damage, but it doesn’t feel like a premium product.

The ink tanks stand out on the right side, but in other respects they are integrated neatly and we appreciate the way you can fill them so easily. The ink bottles have nozzles shaped to key into the correct tank and open only when inserted correctly. Just invert the bottle, twisting it into place, and watch the reservoir fill through the clear plastic window. The ink will stop flowing when it’s full so you don’t need to worry about that.

(Image credit: Future)

Features and specifications

You will find all of the crucial functionality of a home office printer present in the Epson EcoTank ET-3850, but there are a few features missing. It has an auto duplex mode, but no duplex scan mode, for instance. It can print in color or black and white on any kind of blank media up to A4 size and has Wi-Fi built in with a USB port at the rear for a hard wired connection to your computer, but it does not have a USB Host port at the front for walk-up printing from a thumb drive. 

The 6.1cm LCD is color, but it is not a touchscreen as you might have expected at this price point. The reason for skimping on such features is because Epson is not making its money back later through sales of ink and therefore not subsidizing the initial cost of the printer. The old ‘razor and blade’ business model that worked with Epson’s budget cartridge inkjet printers does not apply here.

(Image credit: Future)

The spec-sheet is also a little underwhelming for the same reason. The top speed of 15ppm (pages per minute) for single-sided mono pages will be fast enough for most home users, but it’s slow compared to a laser printer costing similar money. Color prints emerge at a rate of just 8ppm. There’s room for a useful amount of paper in the main paper tray (250 sheets) and you can fit 30 sheets of printed paper in the out tray. 

Importantly, both the scan resolution and print resolution are good and high at 1,200 x 2,400 and 4,800 x 1,200 dpi respectively. This means you can make accurate copies and potentially print sharp photos. It prints using Epson’s PrecisionCore Print Head nozzle configuration which is made up of 400 black nozzles and 128 color nozzles.

(Image credit: Future)

Setup and operation

The Epson EcoTank ET-3850 is particularly easy to set up, thanks largely to Epson’s excellent new Android/iOS app which walks you through the procedure. With no touchscreen interface of its own, typing in long-winded Wi-Fi credentials – especially if you’ve used the best password manager to create a strong and complex password – could have been a fiddly process, but the free Epson Smart Panel app makes your smartphone the interface. Every printer has a companion app these days, but this one is the most intuitive we have come across.

You will be prompted to fill the ink reservoirs with the ink supplied in the box. Thanks to the cleverly designed bottles and tanks, we managed to do this without spilling a drop. It’s actually quite satisfying to see exactly how much ink you have in your printer. With cartridges, you never really knew for sure how much was left. 

The Epson EcoTank ET-3850 is also very intuitive in operation, especially if you are using the app instead of the printer’s own tilting control panel. The only slightly annoying thing is that you have to have to confirm your paper selection every time you open the paper tray and this means scrolling to the top of the display and pressing ‘close’ to get back to printing.

(Image credit: Future)

Performance

The Epson EcoTank ET-3850 performed well in all of our tests. It’s certainly not the fastest inkjet around, but neither is it the slowest and the quoted speed of 15pps for consecutive black and white pages is accurate enough. It slows right down to 6ppm in auto duplex mode, but it prints quite quietly and smoothly. 

Black text looks satisfyingly bold and dark on plain paper. Even at very small point sizes the type was legible through a magnifying glass with no smearing or blotting of the pigment based ink. It is perhaps a little heavy on ink, but with the cost of bottled ink so low, that’s really not a problem.

(Image credit: Future)

Full color documents are equally well presented with no banding or blocking and the colors are nice and bright. The three dye-based colored inks work very well on glossy photo paper too. Although it is intended for office duty, it works rather as a photo printer. 

Copies made using the flatbed scanner look remarkably faithful to the original, while the ADF is useful for copying multiple pages. It’s only a pity it cannot scan both sides of the page automatically.

(Image credit: Future)

Final verdict

Epson has pitched this three-in-one printer perfectly at the home office. It’s relatively compact, given its high capacity for ink, and it has all the essential functionality of a business printer on board. It’s a pity there’s no touchscreen, USB Host port or dual scanning, but we would gladly swap those expendable features for running costs as low as this. With so much ink in the box, the Epson EcoTank ET-3850 more than justifies the high price tag. Most importantly, it prints well, and that goes for both documents and photos.

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Jim is a seasoned expert when it comes to testing tech. From playing a prototype PlayStation One to meeting a man called Steve about a new kind of phone in 2007, he’s always hunting the next big thing at the bleeding edge of the electronics industry. After editing the tech section of Wired UK magazine, he is currently specialising in IT and voyaging in his VW camper van.

Epson EcoTank ET-3850 review: Cheap Ink Tank Printing

At a glance

Expert’s Rating

Pros

  • Cost per page is very low
  • Good print speed
  • Excellent print quality

Cons

  • Pigment black isn’t ideal for photos
  • Lack duplex copying
  • One year warranty

Our Verdict

A slightly higher purchase cost is traded against low cost per page printing. However, the ET-3850 is a little flimsy in places. And while it can duplex print, sadly, it can’t duplex copy. Better than the ET-4700 in many respects, this is an ideal solution for those that want to reduce printing overheads dramatically.

Best Prices Today: Epson EcoTank ET-3850

$399.99

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Epson was one of the first printer makers to consider an alternative path, given the understandable public perception of cartridge-based ink printers. It’s EcoTank concept front-loads the cost by making the printer marginally more expensive but reduces the overall cost of printing by using a refillable reservoir.

Unsurprisingly, these printers are highly desirable for those that print in significant numbers, especially in colour, as they provide more extended periods between replenishment while maintaining the high quality of the output.

Epson’s latest design is the ET-3850, a compact four pigment EcoTank design with an inbuilt ADF (automatic document feeder) priced and specified for the home office user.

On paper, this model appears to be better in some respects than some of the more expensive models made exclusively for business users. Can the Epson EcoTank ET-3850 deliver the best combination of features for the cost to make it the Eco Tank design to rule them all in 2022?

  • Compact plastic chassis
  • Found ink tanks
  • ADF on top

As multifunction printers go, the ET-3850 is small at just 375 x 347 x 231 mm (Width x Depth x Height), with the printing direction being front to back, and the ADF document scanning is sideways.

Weighing only 6.7kg before ink or paper is added, most adults should be able to relocate this printer without assistance. It can connect directly to a computer using USB, via the network using Wi-Fi or Ethernet LAN, making few limitations about where the printer can be situated.

As Epson has progressed with its EcoTank designs, it’s refined them successively, and the ET-3850 exhibits how it’s honed the workflow around these high-volume machines.

Mark Pickavance / Foundry

But it has also removed what might be considered extra complications in the way that the printer handles paper. As an example, all paper is placed in a 250-sheet tray at the very bottom because there is no manual feed. Epson does make more costly EcoTank designs with multiple 250-sheet trays and manual feeds, but they’re more expensive.

All printing controls are on a tilt-adjustable front panel with a tiny 5×4 cm screen. At this scale, it was never going to be a touch panel, and all menu options are selected using a control cluster to the right of it.

The printer’s top hosts the ADF (auto document feeder) for scanning or copying multiple sheets. It can accept 30 pages and scan 1200 x 2400dpi (Horizontal x Vertical) at roughly five pages per minute.

The Ink reservoirs are on the front right, with the levels of ink clearly visible from the outside. To add ink, the scanner cover must be raised, followed by another cover to reveal the filling point.

Mark Pickavance / Foundry

Overall, this is a simple but effective design that focuses on what most users will want from this printer, but it isn’t the most robust construction I’ve experienced. Parts of the outside are made from remarkably thin plastic, and the ADF will even bend if even a relatively lightweight object is placed on it.

For home users, this shouldn’t be an issue if the owner is careful, but the flimsy nature of this model probably makes it unsuitable for use in an office.

Set Up, Apps & Printing

  • Plenty of included ink
  • Epson Smart app
  • Wi-Fi, LAN and USB

It is possible to configure the ET-3850 directly using the small menu display, but the simplest approach is to connect a PC with a USB cable. It can also be accessed for printing or scanning via a computer over a network or the Epson Smart Panel application for Android or iOS devices. It also has a direct Wi-Fi functionality for mobile devices.

Included with the printer is a CD containing the Windows and Mac OS applications that enable printing, scanning and copying from a computer. These are worth installing if only to update the firmware on the ET-3850 to the latest release – if you have a CD drive anyway.

The one part of the set-up process that Epson is very particular about is the ink installation. With the first filling cycle, some of the ink needs to enter the printer’s priming system. The ink held in the printer should never be exhausted, as air might cause the ink to dry in those internal pathways.

Mark Pickavance / Foundry

Epson deserves some credit for the ink bottles that come with the printer, in both their design and how much ink you get from the outset. Included with the ET-3850 are Epson 102 dye in Yellow, Cyan and Magenta, all in 70ml bottles, and there are also two black pigment bottles, each with 127 ml inside.

That’s enough colour ink to fill all the tanks and another complete fill for the black pigment. That much ink represents 14,000 pages of black printing (assuming a 5% coverage) and 5,200 pages of colour output.

The era of half-filled carts and other customer-unfriendly decisions isn’t part of the EcoTank generation. Epson replacement ink is also relatively inexpensive for the number of pages a bottle can generate.

For those wondering about spillage, the ink bottles come with specifically designed nozzles that don’t release ink into its plugged into the printer, and keyed nozzles make it theoretically impossible to put the wrong ink into any tank.

Once the ink is fully loaded, the printer goes through a ten-minute process where it draws ink into the printer ready for use, and then it proceeds with a print alignment routine. Bear this in mind if you need to print something urgently.

Mark Pickavance / Foundry

The EcoTank ET-3850 uses the Epson PrecisionCore print head system familiar to many of the better Epson Eco Tank designs. With 400 nozzles for black and 128 for colour, it can generate output at an impressive 4800 x 1200dpi.

Epson describes this model as ‘duplex’, meaning it can print on both sides of a sheet of paper. But there is a caveat to this ability in respect of the scanner as what it can’t do is take a piece of paper that has printing on both sides and copy that, as the ADF can only scan one side.

There are ways around this by either scanning and printing one side and sending the print job through again with the source reorganised. Or you could do two scanning sequences and then interleave the pages into one PDF and then print that in a single operation using the duplex mode.

Neither of these solutions is perfect, and if this is something you do regularly, then the ET-3850 probably isn’t the printer for you.

Performance

  • Up to 15.5ppm
  • Up to 2400dpi scanning
  • Borderless printing has limits

The cheaper Epson EcoTank designs use a Micro Piezo print head that limits the speed of printing, but the PrecisionCore design used in the ET-3850 is superior and generally reserved for the more expensive machines.

The quoted speed under ISO/IEC 24734 is 15.5 pages a minute monochrome and 8.5 pages in colour, though using the draft mode, the product specifications claim up to 33 pages per minute in mono.

Mark Pickavance / Foundry

In my own tests, I sent five mono pages in good quality with 5% coverage, and the first one came out within seconds and the other four within 30 seconds, roughly. Over longer print runs, the printer edged up to around ten pages per minute, and in draft mode, it can achieve nearly double that.

Duplex printing is slow and uses slightly less intense colours, mostly to allow for the ink on the first side to be fully absorbed before it attacks the second, but this is a general issue with inkjets and nothing unexpected.

The quality of the prints is generally very good, although it could be better at reproducing photos if Epson didn’t use the black pigment in those jobs, as it impacts the appearance of dark pictures. However, even with cheap photocopy stock, the documents and copies it outputs are very sharp and clean.

Overall, the print quality is high, and the speed is more than acceptable for general office use.

Running Costs

  • Amazingly cheap per page
  • 3rd party ink available
  • No unlimited ink options

For those that have never experienced a tank printer, the way this works and the cost per print is something of a revelation.

For starters, the printer comes with enough pigment (black) and dye (colour) to print 14,000 and 5,200 pages of 5% coverage with no additional investment required. Once you’ve exhausted that, and some home users might struggle, individual colours and complete sets can be bought to refill the tanks.

To clarify, the ink that comes with the printer is the same as that sold for refilling. But some is used in the initial priming of the system, reducing what’s available to print. With subsequent refills, this reserve doesn’t play a factor, as the printer is already primed.

Mark Pickavance / Foundry

The official Epson EcoTank 102 Genuine Multipack Ink Bottles cost £37. 99 in the UK. Those in America have a slightly different notation, as the ET-3850 sold there uses Epson 502 inks, priced at $47.29. Individual colours or blacks can be bought, a black being around $15, and each colour about $11.

At official ink prices, a set of both black and colour inks has the potential for a total of 7,500 pages of black and 6,000 of colour. That works out at 13,500 pages for £37.99 or $47.29, or a per page overhead of less than a third of one UK penny or 0.35 of a US cent.

If you compare that with typical cartridge printing princes of 5p a page or even more, Eco Tank output is substantially cheaper, and the starter pack is easily worth another £50 or $60 in consumable costs.

Mark Pickavance / Foundry

However, as no cartridge chip control is involved with these inks, there are plenty of third-party suppliers who will supply a set of supposedly compatible inks for as little as £13 in the UK and $21 in the US. The downside of these is that you don’t know what you are getting in terms of quality, and getting the inks into the tanks usually requires fiddly syringes.

Those willing to chance it will reduce ink costs to a level where the true expense of printing is not the ink but the paper.

The only disappointment for official ink users is that Epson doesn’t offer its Epson ReadyPrint option of unlimited ink supply for a monthly fee on this product, whereas the very similar EcoTank ET-4850 model can use ReadyPrint.

Price & Availability

As I’ve already mentioned, EcoTank printers come with plenty of ink, and the cost of use is low. To counterbalance this, Epson made the printer relatively expensive compared to a typical cartridge design of a similar specification.

The RRP in the UK has dropped quickly from £429.99 to £379.99, and you can easily find it for less. Buy it from Amazon, Argos, Very, Box, Currys, Ebuyer, AO and Laptops Direct.

The price in the USA is $449.99 and you can buy the printer from Epson, Amazon, Staples and BestBuy.

The direct competitor for the Epson EcoTank range is the Canon Pixma G Series machines, with the nearest priced product being the Canon Pixma G7020.

It offers the same print/scan/copy design, the same output resolution, and a similar ink tank concept for almost identical costs in the US. But it has a Fax, a larger capacity paper tray and a manual input path.

In the UK, the Canon is cheaper, at around £299, though the quoted print speed is well below that of the ET-3850 at just 13 pages per minute in mono and 6.8 pages in colour. Canon ink is marginally cheaper at around £12.50 for black and £9 for colour refills.

While the G7020 is a good bit heavier than the ET-3850, suggesting it has better build quality, it also only comes with a single-year warranty and 5,000 pages per month use cycle.

See our chart of the best printers to see more options.

Verdict

This printer is a slap in the face to anyone still using and paying for cartridge printing. It produces high-quality output at a reasonable speed for a fraction of a penny per page for normal coverage. And, even full page A4 colour printing isn’t that expensive, at about 7p or $0. 08 per page.

The downside is that the upfront cost of the printer is higher than normal, and Epson hasn’t made the ET-3850 with long operational life in mind.

That it only offers a one-year warranty and/or 50,000 pages, strongly suggesting that if you use it heavily, you won’t be getting through many ink refills before it has potential wear-and-tear issue.

For less demanding volumes, this may not be an issue. But those in business that want the low cost per page but over many years need to consider some of Epson’s EcoTank designs that are exclusively for business use.

It’s worth saying that all the EcoTank designs that are classed as being for home offices and businesses only have a single year of warranty, although the more expensive ones are under warranty up to 150,000 pages in that first year.

The other significant weaknesses of this design are that it is flimsy and doesn’t offer duplex scanning alongside duplex printing. The duplex issue might have been solvable with software, but Epson prefers to sell WorkForce branded designs with that feature.

What’s good about the ET-3850 is that it has an almost identical specification to the more expensive ET-4850, including the same print speed and PrecisionCore print head, and it’s superior to the cheaper ET-4800 model in nearly every respect.

What it isn’t ideal for is photo printing, but Epson has six colour EcoTank designs built for that job.

Overall, it would be nice if this printer had a better build quality and duplex scanning. But even without these things, it’s a dramatic improvement in cost per page that elevates it above any inkjet that uses cartridges, and users can be less concerned about what the document they have will cost to print.

Ultimately, the ET-3850 might not be good news for trees, but it’s a compelling story for those that buy cartridges on a regular basis.

Specs

  • Colour inkjet all-in-one printer, copier, scanner
  • Ink type: Pigment and Dye tank fill
  • Print resolution: 4800 x 1200dpi (colour and black)
  • Scan resolution: 1200 x 2400dpi
  • Maximum paper size: A4 (plain), 13 x 18 cm (glossy)
  • ADF: Yes (single sided)
  • Dimensions: 375 x 347 x 231 mm (W x D x H)
  • Weight: 6. 7kg

Epson EcoTank ET-3850 Review | Trusted Reviews

Verdict

The Epson EcoTank ET-3850 is an excellent low-maintenance office printer with many features and excellent performance for black and white documents. Unfortunately it can’t fax and only has a one year warranty, but it’s still worth a try if you’re looking for a cost effective home office printer.

Pros

  • Incredibly low operating costs
  • Does everything but fax
  • Wi-Fi connectivity
  • Excellent refillable ink system

Cons

  • Expensive to buy
  • Only one year warranty

    • 9000 9 No duplex (two-sided) scanning

Availability

  • RRRP: £430
  • USARRP: $400
  • EuropeRRP: €450
  • Canada not available
  • Australia not available

  • Handy multifunctional peripheral. This compact device can print, scan, and make copies, but cannot send or receive faxes.

  • Refillable ink tanks, not bulky cartridgesThe ET-3850 uses ink tanks refilled from large bottles, so printing is cheaper and less wasteful use

Introduction

If you’re looking for a compact inkjet document printer, the Epson EcoTank ET-3850 might just be the right one for you.

This is a multifunction printer (MFP) that allows you to print, scan and copy, and you can connect to and share it via Wi-Fi. However, don’t be put off by the high purchase price – this MFP’s trump card is its ultra-low running costs, which should make it more profitable in the long run.

But is this one of the best printer options for the office right now? Here are my thoughts.

  • Excellent ink system
  • Control panel with color screen
  • Automatic document feeder (ADF) for multi-page scanning and copying

Epson EcoTank ET-3850 is a fairly compact color inkjet MFP designed for printing, scanning and copying at home or in a micro office. This is a black smart device with a fully enclosed 250-sheet paper tray at the bottom and an automatic document feeder (ADF) at the top. You can load documents up to 30 pages long, and the ET-3850 feeds pages as they are scanned or copied – a great time saver.

ET-3850 supports automatic two-sided printing. Not only is this a great way to save paper, but it also helps you create professional-looking reports and other handouts. Unfortunately, the ADF is single-sided only, so you can’t make two-sided copies or scan two-sided originals as you can with some competing MFPs.

Image Credit (Reliable Reviews)

Speaking of competition, we have to explain the comparatively high price of the Epson EcoTank ET-3850. Judging by the features and performance, this Epson competes with others at around £100-150 but costs twice as much.

The reason is that it uses the EcoTank refillable ink system, which does away with wasteful, inconvenient cartridges in favor of large ink bottles. The ET-3850 has enough headroom to print a claimed 14,000 black and white or 5,200 color pages. Try these volumes on a regular printer for, say, 2p black and 7p color and you’ll pay £644 for ink on top of what you’ve already paid for the printer.

With that in mind, the ET-3850 looks like a bargain. Even when the included bottles run out, you’ll pay less than half a penny for a full color page to keep inked.

If the idea of ​​ink splatter is a concern, it shouldn’t be a problem: Epson has made initial refills virtually reliable. You can’t put the wrong color in a tank, and I haven’t spilled a drop yet with the second version of the EcoTank system. When the tanks are full and the printer is ready, it’s easy to connect to the network, update the firmware and start sharing it with users. Although there is no touch screen, the combination of color screen and buttons works fine.

The only major criticism I have is that Epson currently only provides a one year warranty. Given that a refillable ink printer can take several years of printing to make up for its higher price with cheaper printing, it would be good to keep in mind that the ET-3850 will last long enough.

Print speed and quality

  • Fast printing
  • Fairly fast scanning and copying
  • Excellent quality, except for photo printing

The Epson EcoTank ET-3850 is office oriented, including pigment-based black ink, ideal for bold black text on plain paper. Of course, it produced clear and fairly dark text, perfect for everything from quick drafts to formal letters.

This is a very fast text printer by inkjet standards, outputting five pages of text in 31 seconds after I press Print – at a speed of 9.7 pages per minute (ppm). This increased to 10.5 ppm on our 20 page document, although I recorded a maximum of 19 ppm on 25 pages in draft mode.

Inkjet printers are usually much slower at duplex printing as they have to allow a little time to dry to avoid ink smears. The ET-3850 printed 20 sides on 10 sheets in three minutes, which is still a respectable speed of 6.6 images (sides) per minute.

In color, this printer took 1 minute 23 seconds for a five-page graphics document, which equates to a speed of 3.6 ppm. I’m very pleased with the results, which, while not having the power of the best office inkjet printers, are free from obvious inkjet problems such as banding or excessive grain. However, I noticed that double-sided prints were lighter than single-sided prints – the PC driver allows you to adjust the trade-off between ink density and dry time for double-sided print jobs.

The ET-3850 is not ideal for printing photographs. For lighter objects, dye-based color inks work great on the right paper, providing a glossy finish with good color and tone control. The problem occurs on darker objects, when larger particles of pigment from black ink remain on the surface of glossy media, ruining the finish and reducing color fidelity. I’m surprised Epson hasn’t configured the ET-3850 to print photos without using black ink.

When it comes to copying and scanning, the ET-3850 is fast enough, if not too fast. Using a PC imaging program, I got a preview image in 12 seconds, but this MFP required a leisurely scan of an A4 page in 28 seconds at either 150 or 300 dpi.

The Epson EcoTank ET-3850 made black and white copies fairly quickly. It took 14 seconds to copy one page and 2 minutes 24 seconds to copy 10 using the ADF. Typically, color copies were slower for inkjet printers, with one page taking 31 seconds. I waited four long minutes for a 10 page color copy.

Fortunately, I didn’t waste time on either occasion. The photocopies were reasonably faithful to the original, although the black copies were a little on the darker side. The scans were well above average, showing excellent color accuracy and accurate reproduction of detail except in the darkest shades.

Overall, there’s a lot to like here, fast printing – especially for text – and high quality in every way. The ET-3850 is only let down by poor handling of dark photos, but it’s not the end of the world for an office-oriented device.

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Is it worth buying?

You want an all-rounder that’s cheap to run

The Epson ET-3850 does just about everything well and delivers incredibly low running costs.

You need a fax modem

This printer cannot send or receive faxes. Its ADF is also single-sided, eliminating duplex scanning.

Final Thoughts

The Epson EcoTank ET-3850 is much more expensive than its real competitors, but with the bundled inks and low running costs, it should be a better value. It’s a decent maker, especially with fast, bold black text and excellent scan and copy quality. It’s a pity there isn’t a longer warranty, but if you’re looking for a cost-effective MFP for your home office, then this is a great choice.

How we test

Every printer we review goes through a series of standardized tests designed to evaluate key parameters including print quality, speed and cost.

We will also compare features with other printers at the same price to make sure you get good value for money.

Tested monochrome and color printing

Measured time required to print on various papers

Compare print quality with other printers

FAQ

Can I spill ink?

I have never spilled another drop on ink printers. A couple of years ago, Epson perfected the EcoTank system, after which we literally did not spill a single one.

Should I buy this printer if I don’t print often?

The more you print, the more value this printer gets. If you’re not likely to print more than 3,000 pages in your lifetime, a cheaper cartridge-based model might be a better value.

Is this printer suitable for a home office?

This is ideal if you do not need to send or receive faxes.

Is this printer suitable for the home?

Yes, but it’s not shiny in the photos.

Test Data Trusted Reviews

‹

Print A4 Mono Speed ​​(Single Page)

Print A4 Mono Speed ​​(5 pages)

Print A4 Mono Speed ​​(20 pages)

90 004 color speed print A4 (single page)

A4 color speed (5 pages)

A4 color speed (20 pages)

Epson EcoTank ET-3850

15 sec

31 sec

114 sec

17 s

31 s

307 sec

›

‹

Great Britain RRP

USA RRP

RRC EU

CA RRP

Recommended retail price in Australian dollars

Manufacturer

Size (Dimensions)

Weight

AS IN

Release date

First revision date

Model number

Ports 9000 5

Communication

Ink cartridge support

Printer type

Scanner?

Ink Type

Epson EcoTank ET-3850

£430

$400

€450

N/A

N/A

Epson

375 x 347 x 231 mm

6. 7 kg 13VHV

2021

03/03/2022

C11CJ61401

USB, Ethernet

USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi

Bottled Epson 102 Ink (Pigment Black, Cyan, Magenta and Yellow)

Color

yes

Bottle

›

Jargon Exterminator

ADF

ADF stands for “Automatic Document Feeder” where you place a stack of paper. The printer will automatically pull in each sheet of paper when it is ready to print, scan, or copy.

MFP

MFP stands for Multifunction Printer. This applies to printers that have more features than printing, including copying and scanning.

Epson EcoTank ET-3850 Reviews | Top Epson Printer Reviews

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Expert Review: : David Nield (t3. com)

Epson EcoTank ET-3850 review: a reliable, versatile home printer

The Epson EcoTank ET-3850 prints, scans and copies well – here’s our review

Ink tanks will last you ; good quality printing; On-board display

Tedious setup process ; Not the most well-built

There’s a lot to like about the Epson EcoTank ET-3850: once you get past the high upfront cost, the actual ongoing ink costs are very low, plus it’s a unit that will give you reliable, fast , good quality printing, scanning and copying. It’s not quite…

Jul, 2022

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Expert Review: : Jim Hill (techradar.com)

Epson EcoTank ET-3850 review

Home office EcoTank with few features but plenty of ink

High ink capacity ; Plenty of ink in box ; Strong app support Great print quality

No touchscreen ; No USB Host port ; No dual scan ; Flimsy build quality

Jan, 2022

Partner

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Expert Review: : Mark Pickavance (techadvisor.