Epson EcoTank ET-2800

Ink tankBottles

Cheap to buy is not what the ET-2800 is for — cheap to keep is. It is the entry point to Epson's tank line, and the whole argument sits in the 522 bottle set: four bottles that refill the four tanks on the right-hand side of the chassis, rated for 4,500 black or 7,500 colour ISO pages each, at a price that puts a black page at roughly four tenths of a cent. A cartridge printer of the same purchase price runs ten to forty times that. What the low price does cost you is everything around the print engine. There is no document feeder, no automatic two-sided printing, no Ethernet and no touchscreen — a small monochrome LCD and four buttons run the copier. Ten ISO pages a minute in black is slow enough that a fifty-page job is a coffee break, and the single 100-sheet rear tray is the only place paper goes in. It is a printer for a household that prints a few hundred pages a year and refuses to pay cartridge prices for them.

Approx. price: ~$249
Cost per mono page: 0.40¢
Cost per colour page: 1.1¢
Cost to own, 5,000 pages: ~$276
Print speed, mono: 10 ISO ppm

Best for

A household that prints in bursts and wants the per-page cost to be the small number on the spec sheet, not the large one.

marks an estimate. Computed from the consumable's ISO page yield and its list price. An estimate. Purchase price plus ink or toner over the pages shown, assuming four mono pages for every colour page. Price is an approximate snapshot from our last catalogue update.

What it costs to own

Black consumable: Epson 522 black bottle · 4,500 ISO pages · ~$17.99
Colour consumable: Epson 522 colour bottles · 7,500 ISO pages · ~$17.99 each
Cost per mono page: 0.40¢
Cost per colour page: 1.1¢
Cost to own, 5,000 pages: ~$276
Cost to own, 200 pages/month for 3 years: ~$288 (7,200 pages)

Computed from the consumable's ISO page yield and its list price. An estimate. How this is worked out

Cost to own · 5,000 pages

Epson EcoTank ET-2800~$276
~$249 printer + ~$27 supplies
Epson EcoTank ET-2850~$324
~$299 printer + ~$25 supplies
Epson EcoTank ET-4800~$326
~$299 printer + ~$27 supplies

purchase priceink or toner. An estimate: purchase price plus 5,000 pages at each printer’s computed cost per page, assuming 4 mono pages for every colour page. Printers whose consumable price we could not source are left out.

Specifications

Manufacturer-published figures. Cost lines are computed from the consumable figures above and are estimates.

Approx. price: ~$249
Cost per mono page: 0.40¢
Cost per colour page: 1.1¢
Cost to own, 5,000 pages: ~$276
Cost to own, 3 years: ~$288
Technology: Piezo inkjet
Ink system: Bottles
Inks: 4
Black consumable: Epson 522 black bottle · 4,500 pages
Colour consumable: Epson 522 colour bottles · 7,500 pages
Ink in the box: 4,500 pages
Third-party ink lock: No
Ink subscription: None offered
Print speed, mono: 10 ISO ppm
Print speed, colour: 5 ISO ppm
Functions: Print · Copy · Scan
Two-sided printing: Manual
Document feeder: None
Paper capacity: 100 sheets
Max paper size: Legal
Borderless photo: Yes
Resolution: 5760 × 1440 dpi
Connectivity: Wi-Fi
Mobile printing: AirPrint · Mopria
Display: Mono LCD
Dimensions: 14.8 × 13.7 × 7.0 in
Weight: 11 lb
Released: 2021

Features

Four refillable tanks, filled from keyed bottles that only fit one colour
Borderless 4×6, 5×7 and 8×10 photo printing
Flatbed scanner and standalone copier
Prints from a phone over Wi-Fi with AirPrint or Mopria
No cartridge chip and no firmware check on third-party ink
Ships with a full set of bottles, not a starter set

No ink lock Borderless photo

In its favour

Cost per page is the whole point: about 0.4¢ mono and 1.1¢ for a four-ink colour page, computed from Epson's own ISO yields and bottle prices
The box holds roughly two years of ink for an average household, so the first refill is a long way off
Nothing in the firmware rejects third-party ink, which is not true of every printer at this price
Small enough to live on a shelf rather than a desk
Bottles are keyed so a colour cannot be poured into the wrong tank

Against it

No automatic two-sided printing — you flip the stack yourself
No document feeder, so every copy and scan is one sheet on the glass
10 ISO ppm black is the slowest tier Epson sells
A monochrome LCD with no touchscreen makes standalone copying fiddly
Like every inkjet, the head can clog if it sits unused for weeks

What owners say

Distilled from owner discussions and long-term published reviews

This is the printer people buy when the ink bill on a cartridge machine finally becomes intolerable, and for regular printing it delivers exactly what they came for. Owners describe filling the tanks once and not thinking about ink again for a year.

The failure mode is consistent enough to plan around: it dislikes sitting idle. Owners who print a few pages a week report no trouble; owners who print once a month report clogged nozzles, cleaning cycles, and prints with missing colour bands. Artists printing on matte photo paper are the most vocal group, several describing running a nozzle clean before every job and still getting inconsistent saturation.

The practical advice that recurs is to print something — anything, in colour — once a week, and to buy the ET-2850 instead if two-sided printing matters, because the price gap is small and the duplexer is the feature people most often wish they had paid for.

What owners like

Owners who print regularly describe the ink as effectively free — the bottles that ship with it last households a year or more before the first refill
Refilling is reported as quick and clean; the keyed bottles drain into the right tank and stop on their own
Widely recommended to people who print school worksheets, flyers and craft projects in quantity, where a cartridge printer's cost becomes untenable
Small enough that owners keep it on a shelf rather than a desk
Third-party bottles work, and owners use them without firmware trouble

Common complaints

The complaint that dominates: leave it for a few weeks and the head clogs. Owners describe running a nozzle check before anything important
Several owners printing artwork report colour coming out dull or inconsistent between jobs, and having to run cleaning cycles between prints
Cleaning cycles consume ink, which erodes the cost advantage for households that print rarely
No automatic duplex, which owners comparing it against the ET-2850 consistently say was worth the upgrade
Paper-feed errors from the rear tray come up repeatedly

Questions that keep coming up

Does the ET-2800 clog if it isn't used often?

This is the most common complaint about it. Owners who print at least a few pages a week rarely mention clogging; those who print monthly report nozzle checks, cleaning cycles and prints with missing colour. The usual advice is to print a small colour page weekly. If your printing is genuinely occasional, a mono laser avoids the problem entirely because there is no liquid ink.

Can I use third-party ink bottles?

Yes. There is no chip check or firmware block on the tanks, and owners routinely refill with cheaper third-party bottles. Genuine Epson 522 bottles are inexpensive to begin with, so the saving is smaller here than on a cartridge printer — and using non-Epson ink is the sort of thing Epson can point to if you make a warranty claim.

Is it worth paying more for the ET-2850?

Owners who bought the ET-2800 and later wanted two-sided printing say yes. The ET-2850 adds automatic duplex and uses the higher-yield 502 ink set, which lowers the cost per page further. If you print anything that reads better double-sided — reports, booklets, long documents — the upgrade is the one people say they should have made.

How good is it for printing photos and art prints?

Mixed. It has four inks and no grey, so black-and-white photographs come out with a colour cast, and owners printing art prints report needing to fight with paper settings and colour profiles. It is fine for snapshots and school projects. For anything you intend to sell or frame, the six-ink ET-8500 is the machine people move to.

Computed from the consumable's ISO page yield and its list price. An estimate. Owner notes are a summary of what people who own the machine report, not a test result — there is no lab behind this site.